MANSFIELD — Director Frank Darabont doesn’t believe people have to have ever been in prison to identify with his cult film “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“The film actually acts like a Rorschach test for people and they project their own life difficulties into the film,” the 65-year-old director said Friday afternoon at the Renaissance Theater in Mansfield.
“It’s not necessarily about whether you’ve been to prison. It’s about whether you have a job that’s destroying your soul? Is your marriage dysfunctional?
“Whatever the difficulties, people project them into the film and find reassurance and comfort in doing so.
“It’s a very interesting result for a film,” Darabont said during a media session in the Ghostlight Lounge in the basement of the Renaissance before heading upstairs to take part in a panel discussion in front of a packed house in the main theater.
“I’ve received letters from people who were thinking about committing suicide because they had lost all hope. Then they saw the film and decided to carry on, and now life is treating them well.
“They make the most of it. It’s incredibly satisfying and very, very unusual. So compliments to Steve,” said Darabont, who wrote the film’s screenplay based on a novella by author Stephen King.
It was all part of the kickoff to an eventful weekend celebrating the 30th anniversary of the release of the film, which was shot largely at the former Ohio State Reformatory and other locations in Mansfield and Richland County.
(Click here for a full list of Shawshank Redemption events this weekend.)
The three-time Oscar nominee was born in 1959 in a refugee camp in Montbéliard, France, to Hungarian parents who fled Budapest during the failed Hungarian revolution of 1956. He was brought to America as a toddler, settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High School.
He made his way in the film industry the old-fashioned way, working at every level, starting as a production assistant on the low-budget film “Hell Night” (1981), starring Linda Blair.
For the next six years he worked in the art department as a set designer and set builder, while simultaneously struggling to establish himself as a writer.
His first (shared) appearance as a producer and screenwriter was in the 1987 film Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987).
Darabont is one of only six filmmakers in history to have the unique honor of being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for his first two feature films: The Shawshank Redemption (1994) (with a total of seven nominations) and The Green Mile (1999) (four nominations).
The remarkably affable Darabont has earned his stripes in the film industry.
But he clearly understands the value of teamwork and commitment, even in the final scene of The Shawshank Redemption, when his main characters reunite from prison on a beach in Mexico.
Darabont’s original vision was to end the film with Red (Morgan Freeman) on a bus, leaving his fate uncertain. Producer Liz Glotzer and others at Castle Rock Entertainment believed the beach reunion might be a better choice.
They encouraged Darabont to shoot the beach scene and then form his own opinion.
“When I was in the editing room with Richard Francis-Bruce, my brilliant editor, we both fell in love with that ending. When we saw it edited together, we thought, ‘This is the absolute end of the film. There’s no doubt about it.’
“That’s why we (the audience) never tested the film without them,” Darabont said.
“Sometimes it’s worth listening to other people’s opinions, even if you as a filmmaker have a very, very clear idea of the film you want to make. Keep your ears open and keep an open mind, because sometimes the suggestions you hear are the right ones,” he said.
Although he trusts the input of others, Darabont also believes in himself. He wrote the screenplay for “Shawshank” after paying King just $5,000 for the rights. (King never cashed the check and later returned it to the filmmaker in a frame.)
After obtaining the rights, he waited five years to write the screenplay, feeling that he needed to mature as a writer before he could devote himself to the story.
He suggested the movie Castle Rock and people loved it. Director and Castle Rock co-founder Rob Reiner even offered Darabont about $2 million if Reiner would direct the film himself and perhaps cast Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford in the lead roles.
Darabont refused, and Castle Rock eventually allowed him to continue with the film with a budget of $25 million. The filmmaker said he turned down the millions because he wanted to make the film himself.
“It probably boils down to… you feel like you were put here for a reason. If not now, then what? If not now, then when?”
“For a dollar, you can always postpone your dream. But when you’re gone, nobody remembers your bank account. Maybe they’ll remember your art. Maybe they’ll remember that you touched their hearts… and that was more important to me than anything,” Darabont said.
The screenplay Darabont wrote was praised by Freeman, actor Timothy Robbins (Andy Dufresne) and many others as the best they had ever read. He brought King’s novella to life and gave the characters depth and nuance.
One of these characters was Brooks Hatlen, the “old convict” who was released from Shawshank after a life behind bars. In King’s novella, Hatlen could not cope with the outside world and simply died in a nursing home.
But Darabont said he knew there had to be more to Hatlen, played in the film by the legendary James Whitmore, who died in 2009 at the age of 87.
He said “Red” talked about how prison is no place for hope and “Andy” said hope means everything. Darabont said Hatlen is the “lynchpin” on which the entire film is based.
In the film, Hatlen comes to terms with the fact that he cannot survive in the outside world and hangs himself in his apartment building; this scene is narrated by Whitmore.
“It was an incredible honor to work with Jim Whitmore…several times, in fact. He is the most memorable thing about the film.
“When you adapt something, there’s an idea behind it that an author like Stephen King can internalize. He can tell you what the theme of the story is without necessarily having to illustrate it or show it.
“I think I needed that character in the movie. I actually need to see that character because the theme of this thing is hope versus despair versus hopelessness. (Andy) is on one side of that equation and (Red) is on the other.
“I need a fulcrum to really illustrate the theme of this film. I need someone to walk the path that Morgan’s character has to walk (so) the audience understands what the theme of the film is… what we’re trying to convey.”
“It just seemed like the natural thing for a screenwriter to do,” Darabont said. “Thank God James Whitmore was there.”
