'Shawshank' at 30: Actors, director reflect on classic movie in return to filming site

Legendary Frank Darabont, who directed and wrote the screenplay for "The Shawshank Redemption," was right at home in Mansfield on Friday afternoon while talking about his film made in the summer of 1993.

Darabont, who is staying in Mansfield this weekend for the "Shawshank" 30th anniversary events and celebration, talked about the script and more with reporters in the humid lower level lobby of the Renaissance Theatre.

"This feels like our hometown, it really does," he said he and his wife have said to each other. "I grew up in L.A. ... I've always had a thing for smaller towns and, for some reason, this movie has brought us here in a way that we have a connection with it in a way I can't even quite explain, but it's always incredibly welcome when we come here."

Darabont spent Friday in Upper Sandusky at the Shawshank Woodshop and the Wyandot County Courthouse, where scenes were filmed with Morgan Freeman (Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding) and Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne), respectively. His handprints were cast in cement at the woodshop during his visit with Bill and April Mullen, the owners of the lumberyard-turned-film-woodshop.

Darabont said the strength of the movie is truly about hope the audience can project their own lives into.

Darabont wrote his screenplay based on Steven King’s novella, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” He said in his quest to find the perfect filming location for the film, he went to the Show Biz Expo in Los Angeles to talk to all the film commission people.

"I knew we were going to need a big empty, old prison, something very visual, something very gothic," he said. Someone told him to "talk to Ohio" (the Ohio Film Commission) .

When he saw an aerial photograph of the Ohio State Reformatory, he knew he wanted to make "Shawshank Redemption" at the reformatory.

"I thought, that's going to be it. That's definitely going to be the one," Darabont said.

"I knew OSR and Mansfield was going to be the setting for this movie. It's a brilliant setting for this story, and I don't know where we would have shot this had it not been for it," Darabont said.

"Shawshank" was released in 1994. The Internet Movie Database lists it as the best movie ever made .

The late Eve Lapolla, who was director of the Ohio Film Commission at the time and who was the person who showed Darabont the aerial photo of OSR, had told media during the 20th anniversary of film, “When ‘ The Shawshank Redemption’ came here, that prison was within days of being torn down. Now it’s a destination location thanks to this movie."

OSR attracts thousands of visitors each year to the prison-turned-museum on the city's northeast side. The prison is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The reformatory contains the world’s tallest freestanding steel cell block, consisting of six tiers, 12 ranges and 600 cells.

Bob Gunton, who portrayed Warden Norton, said every time he returns to OSR it is more interesting and more refurbished but he can still recognize the warden's office from filming days.

"I'm astounded," he said. "I like to come back because it's my way of paying back to the movie. ... It was one of the best things I've ever done."

Gunton said he could never have imagined that OSR would become a tourism destination for fans of the film.

"I kind of wandered around before we started shooting and went to one of the cellblocks and you could smell the terrible sadness and violence in there," he said. "I'd peek in the cells and there would be some writing on the walls and it wasn't the men's room obscenities. It was like, 'I miss you, Mom' and things like that, and also I looked at the walls and it looked like there were scratches from the hand. And looking at the Potter's field gave me some sense of what a terrible place of tragedy and the loss. It was just so perfect for how the movie unwinds. ... It shows the prison is a character in the movie. It affects a lot of things and how it functions, the way it eventually kills and all this stuff."

Gil Bellows, who played inmate Tommy Williams, said the film opened opportunities for him to be considered for good work.

Bellows, who resides in Vancouver, returned to OSR because of the connection he has to the film and fellow actors.

"It's mind-blowing. When you do what we do, you want to be a part of films or television shows or plays that impact peoples' lives and are meaningful to them," he said.

He said the film has stood the test of time and is beloved around the world.

"I'm very, very proud to be a part if it," Bellows added.

Benjamin Mankiewicz , host for Turner Classic Movies, who was moderating an actors/director panel discussion Friday at the theatre, said like every great piece of art or great movie, there's no time limit on its effectiveness.

"This is a love story we don't see every often, between two men, which is not physical but there is nobody more important in the other's life than each other," he said.

Mankiewicz pointed out the movie was well received on its original release, and earned an Oscar nomination, but didn't fare well with critics and lost money.

"Like 'The Wizard of Oz," and like "It's a Wonderful Life," TV told people how special this movie was," he said.

Turner Classic Movies helped make the movie was it is today and he feels great pride to be at a network that saw value in this film, Mankiewicz said.

He watched the movie again Friday, he said, reminiscing about two scenes: when a pebble is thrown through the Raquel Welch poster and the great sound mixing that can be heard, combined with the look on the warden's face staring down the hole where Andy escaped; and Andy going to the bank executing his plan.

And Mankiewicz said he, too, is moved by the scene where Brooks (James Whitmore) gets out of prison after being institutionalized for so long and is lonely in the world.

"That little four-minute scene. It breaks your heart every time you see it. He's not even sad," Mankiewicz said. "He's making a decision. He's not going to hang around. ... That was all Frank. ... That's not in the book."

The media opportunity with cast and crew felt like the film was made only yesterday from everyones' vivid memories.

Actor William Sadler, who portrayed inmate Heywood, said he will never forget the scene in the prison library where Brooks is holding a dull knife to his neck.

"He (Whitmore) wouldn't get the knife to my throat," he said, noting Whitmore was worried he might accidentally harm Heywood.

Sadler summed up the movie: "The writing was so good, and when you're acting with James Whitmire, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, everybody brings their A-game. I think that's what happened. We were sitting around that dinner table. It was like you could aim the camera at any face and everybody was on board," Sadler said.

Alfonso Freeman (young Red), real life son of Freeman, said his role in the film was eight words, "Fresh fish today. We are reeling them in."

Alfonso Freeman said his father told him he was in a movie with the status of "The Godfather" or "Casablanca," something he said which matters to the larger American public.

"Now I get to tell people I was in this movie, and it's fun and it matters to people," he said. "It was powerful. I'm part of a legacy." His face was also used as a young Morgan Freeman on paper in a parole board scene where Red is rejected for parole release.

He said he made a lot of good friends at OSR.

"I don't think any of us knew what it became," he said.

It was his first time on film and first time working on a set. He was 33 years old.

"I've been in the business for 30-some years now as a result. So thank you, 'Shawshank.' Thank you Frank," he said, adding he lives in South Carolina. "Being in Mansfield was really my first time being in small-town America."

lwhitmir@gannett.com

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This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: 'Shawshank' at 30: Actors, director reflect on classic movie in return to filming site