Scene 101. An expendable scene that was never shot. I knew early on that I
wanted to drop this because it would needlessly slow the movie down. I did want
the image of the chess piece being carved somewhere in the movie, though, so I
used it as a detail in Scene 62.

Scene 103. The tail of this scene (Red comforting Brooks) was dropped during
editing. It was stronger to end right after Heywood delivers the news about Brooks
being paroled.

Scenes 105 & 106. Expendable scenes that were never shot.

Scene 10S. It seemed a stronger creative choice not to have Red, Andy, and the
other cons present when Brooks leaves the prison. It's sadder and more melancholy
(and less obvious) to have the Shawshank guards being the only ones to see him off.

Scene 111. A prop-driven airliner. This is one of those goofy writer's touches you
know will never wind up on screen even as you're writing it.

Scene 112. Dropped during editing for reasons of length.

Scene 113. Here's another example of production designer Terry Marsh's fabu-
lous work. Brooks Hatlen's hotel room at the Brewster was actually a reworked
office in the administration wing of the old prison.

Scene 121. This scene didn't work the first time we shot it, for two reasons. First,
we shot it in broad sunlight, which didn't match the mood. Second, having all the
cons present started to feel a bit Little Rascals to me (Spanky and Buckwheat and
Alfalfa and Darla...shit, they were always in the club house together!). So, during
filming, we reshot this as a very simple scene with only Andy and Red, placing them
in the shadow of the prison to simulate gray overcast.

Scenes 122 through 126'. I never had time to shoot this section of the film, for
which I'll always have mixed feelings. The writer in me mourns its absence, because
it's among my favorite sequences written. The director in me realizes it's probably
just as well -- since it isn't vital from a strictly narrative standpoint, I ultimately would
have faced the tough decision of losing it in the editing room to tighten an already
long movie. (As William Goldman so wisely observes in his excellent book Adventures
in the Screen Trade, sometimes you have to kill your darlings...)
The absence of this sequence does put an interesting and different spin on thc
Brooks/Jake subtext. As Red notes toward the end of the film, "Some birds aren't
meant to be caged." As written, neither Brooks nor Jake is that kind of bird; nei-
ther can survive on the outside. As filmed, however, Jake can survive, but Brooks
can't. In a symbolic sense, Jake now represents Andy and Brooks represents Red.
It's a subtle but fairly meaningful shift.

Scenes 127 & 12S. Dropped during editing for reasons of length.

Scene 129. Some of the footage at the end of the scene (Andy opening boxes)
was dropped during editing to tighten the sequence.

Scene 131. The action of Andy setting up the record player was never shot (it was
obvious during filming that it would make for a very long scene).

Scene 134. Since it's not a scene that occurs in Stephen King's novella, I've been
asked where the idea came from to have Andy broadcast Mozart throughout the
prison. The answer is, I love music. All kinds, not just what they're dishing up this
week on MTV. More to the point, I tend to write to music, because I find that it
informs and infuses the creative process, sends my imagination wandering places it
wouldn't normally go, gives me ideas, makes me see things. In this sense, I've had
many cowriters, everyone from Duke Ellington to Hans Zimmer to...yes, Mozart.
I happened to be listening to The Marriage of Figaro while writing this script, and
the duet between Susanna and the Contessa simply insisted on being in the movie.
As applied in the film, music represents freedom of the soul in the same way that
the books in Andy's library represent freedom of the mind.
By the way, a lot of people have asked me where they can get that Mozart piece
sung by those particular artists. If you're interested, the duet itself appears on the
extraordinary Shawshank Redemption soundtrack written by Tom Newman and avail-
able from Epic Soundtrack (this is not a sleazy plug; it's simply a great movie score
for which Tom was nominated for a Grammy and an Academy Award) -- but if you
want to hear even more of Mozart's sublime opera (and you should), rush out and
grab a CD called The Marriage of Figaro: Highlights, with Karl Bohm conducting,
from the Deutsche Grammophon label, CD stock number 429 822 -- 2.

Scenes 136 through 143. The footage for this sequence was inevitably dictated by
the location we chose. Though perfect in many ways, the Ohio State Reformatory
lacked certain elements of the screenwriter's imagination (such as motor pool, kitchen,
or license plate factory interior), so we picked the most interesting spots available.

Scene 146'. Dropped during editing for reasons of pace.

Scene 147. All the dialogue spoken by Warden Norton and Captain Hadley
through the glass door was improvised during blocking of this scene just prior to
filming. More significantly, the punchline of the scene -- Andy turning up the volume
instead of shutting the record off as he's been ordered -- was a stroke of genius on
the part of Tim Robbins.

Scenes 148 & 149. Dropped during editing for reasons of length. Red's voice-
over shifted to Scene 147.

Scene 150. Here's a good example of sometimes less-being-more where coverage
of a scene is concerned, and I have our fabulous cinematographer Roger Deakins
to thank for teaching me the lesson. While blocking this scene the day prior to film-
ing it, I found myself at a loss for how to shoot it. For one thing, it's one of many
"mess hall" scenes in the movie, and good luck figuring out how to make a bunch
of guys sitting around a table visually different each time. For another, there are eight
actors at that table, most with lines of dialogue to speak. What does one do? Shoot
angles of everybody? That would have made for one very cutty scene, but more sig-
nificant was the fact that I wouldn't have time. The schedule dictated getting the
whole scene in the can before lunch. These were the dire, doom-laden thoughts
which tormented me as I stood there listening to the actors run their lines -- but then
I glanced over and noticed Roger with a viewfinder to his eye, doing what I can only
describe as a slow, sidling "Groucho walk." He obviously had something in mind,
and it obviously had something to do with a camera move. After Groucho-walking
through a few more rehearsals, Roger suggested boiling what I thought might be
as many as ten setups down to two. How? By starting off with a master of the entire
table that slowly moves into a tight closeup of Tim Robbins, then shooting a
reverse angle that moves into a closeup of Morgan Freeman.
More than a concession to our time restraints, Roger's idea was the smartest cre-
ative choice that could have been made. In fact, it's one of my favorite scenes in the
movie for its visual economy and grace, and it illustrates the value of a filmmaker
(in this case, Roger) thinking like a storyteller. By starting wide on the table and slowly
letting all the peripheral characters drop away, we focused the scene exactly where
it belonged -- on Andy and Red. It's their scene. Everything else is superfluous. It was
a great lesson for me to learn. (I adopted the same kind of thinking in shooting Scene
161, resulting in another one of my favorite scenes in the movie.)