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The Shawshank Redemption · This Film is Lit

• 0:04
  Speaker A: This Film Is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple Is the book really better than the movie? I'm Brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: And I'm Katie, I have an English degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie.
• 0:22
  Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen the or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers because this film is lit. Remember, Red Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. It's the Shawshank Redemption, and this film is Lit. Hello and welcome back to this Film Is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's a switch episode. I read the Shawshank Redemption this week, which means it's gonna be a long episode cause I talk too much. So we're gonna get right into it. If you have not read Shawshank or Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption or watched the movie the Shawshank Redemption, we're not gonna summarize the book, but we are gonna summarize the film in Let me sum up. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
• 1:35
  Speaker B: This summary is sourced from Wikipedia. In 1947, Portland, Maine banker Andy Dufresne arrives at Shawshank State Prison to serve two consecutive life sentences for murdering his wife and her lover. He is befriended by Ellis Boyd Red Redding, a contraband smuggler serving a life sentence who procures for him a rockhammer and a large poster of Rita Hayworth. Assigned to work in the prison laundry, Andy is frequently raped by the Sisters gang led by Boggs diamond. In 1949, Andy overhears the captain of the guards, Byron Hadley, complaining about being taxed on an inheritance and offers to help him shelter the money legally. After the Sisters beat Andy to near death, Hadley cripples Boggs, who is subsequently transferred to a minimum security hospital. Andy is not attacked again. Warden Samuel Norton assigns Andy to the prison's decrepit library, ostensibly to assist elderly inmate Brooks Hatlin, but in reality to leverage Andy's financial expertise for managing the finances of the warden and other prison staff. Andy also starts writing weekly letters to the state legislature, requesting funding to improve the library. Brooks is paroled in 1954 after serving 50 years, but cannot adjust to the outside world and eventually hangs himself. After years of Andy's ceaseless letters, the legislature sends a library donation that includes a recording of the Marriage of Figaro. Andy plays an excerpt over the public address system, experiencing a moment of personal freedom before he is punished with solitary confinement. After his release from solitary, Andy explains to a dismissive Red that hope is what gets him through his sentence. In 1963, Norton begins exploiting prison labor for public works, profiting by undercutting skilled labor costs and receiving bribes. Andy launders the money using the alias Randall Stevens. In 1965, Andy and Red befriend Tommy Williams, a young inmate convicted of burglary. Andy helps Tommy pass his general education development exam, and Tommy later reveals that his cellmate at another prison confessed to committing the murders for which Andy was convicted. When Andy informs Norton, the warden refuses to act, although Andy promises to keep the money laundering a secret. Norton has Hadley kill Tommy under the guise of an escape attempt and sends Andy to solitary confinement. Norton then threatens to destroy the library, strip Andy of guard protection, and transfer him to harsher conditions if he refuses to continue with his scheme. A disheveled Andy is released from solitary confinement after two months. He tells a skeptical Red that he dreams of living in Zihuataneo, a Mexican town on the Pacific coast where he can start anew. He asks Red to promise, once he is released to travel to a specific hay field near Buxton and recover a package that Andy buried there. Red worries that Andy is suicidal, especially after learning that he asked a fellow inmate for a rope. At the next day's roll call, the guards find Andy's cell empty. An irate Norton throws a rock at a poster of Raquel Welch hanging on the cell wall, revealing a tunnel that Andy had dug with his rockhammer over 19 years. The previous night, Andy escaped through the tunnel and prison sewage pipe, taking with him Norton's suit, shoes and the ledger containing evidence of the money laundering and corruption at Shawshank. While guards search for him, Andy poses as Randall Stevens and withdraws over 370,000 of the laundered money from various banks before mailing the ledger to a local newspaper. State police arrive at Shawshank and take Hadley into custody, while Norton commits suicide to avoid arrest. The following year, Red is paroled after serving 40 years, but struggles to adapt to life outside prison and fears that he never will. Remembering his promise to Andy, he visits Buxton and finds a cash containing money and a letter inviting him to come to Zihua Tanejo. Red violates his parole by traveling to Mexico, admitting That he finally feels hope. He finds Andy on a beach and the reunited friends happily embrace.
• 5:56
  Speaker A: All right, that was a summary of Shawshank Redemption, the film. We do have a brief guess who this week, so let's do it. Who are you? No one of consequence. I must know. Get used to disappointment. Okay, I actually gotta see how much one of these may not even be relevant. But I wrote them down, so I'm gonna. I know. The first one is he was 30 years old. He was a short, neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold rimmed spectacles. His fingernails were always clipped and they were always clean. That's a funny thing to remember about a man, I suppose. But that seems to sum him up for me. He always looked as if he should have been wearing a tie.
• 6:39
  Speaker B: I feel like that's gotta be Andy.
• 6:44
  Speaker A: It is Andy.
• 6:45
  Speaker B: Okay. See, he. I guess he does wear glasses later on in the movie, but not when we first meet him.
• 6:52
  Speaker A: Yeah, he is not wearing glasses when we first meet him in the book or in the movie or in the book. Well, I guess he is in the book. I don't know. That's Red's description. I can't remember where in the timeline that is. Cause the book is not.
• 7:05
  Speaker B: Oh, is the book not linear?
• 7:07
  Speaker A: It's linear. It's hard to tell because it's all just all written from Red's perspective. And it's not so much that we bounce around in time, but he doesn't tell we're in the current time. And then he will tell stories about events. So, like a lot of the scenes in the movie are read recounting of now. I can't remember if it's.
• 7:33
  Speaker B: So he's like telling the story to us after the fact?
• 7:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, it's basically like his journal because like. So that's that. That's that description I just read. Starts when Andy came to Shawshank in 1948. He was 30 years old. He was a short, neat little man. So this is like all retrospectively written, but some of it's written congruently with the events. It's interesting. It is like a. It's basically like a journal style. Like, not journal. There's no journal entries. It's all just one thing. But it's written from the perspective of Red in first person remembering these things about Andy and stuff at Shawshank.
• 8:13
  Speaker B: Gotcha.
• 8:14
  Speaker A: It also makes it easy. I should have. I put the page numbers in here and it makes it easy for you to guess at least the first one, because it's page four. So that made it easy to guess that that was Andy. Let me find the second one. I'm not entirely sure is relevant, but I might. I'm gonna see if I can find it and then read. Yeah, this other description I wrote in here. I'll read it and you can guess, but I don't know how relevant. I'll read it. It's also way shorter. He was a short man with a tight, hard gut and the coldest brown eyes you ever saw. He always had a painful, pursed little grin on his face as if he had to go to the bathroom and couldn't quite manage it.
• 8:52
  Speaker B: Mm. The warden.
• 8:56
  Speaker A: So, yes, I'll say you're correct. I put that in there, wondering if it might be relevant. This is a different warden. We'll get to that later. This is not Warden Norton. It's the warden before him. But we'll get to that. The book combines wardens, so I intend. And I knew that, so I wrote down this description because it was the only warden's physical description that we got. I guess it fits Warden Norton, so.
• 9:22
  Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like it does.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Fair enough. All right, but this one is. This last one here is definitely a character in the book or in the movie. He was a tall, shambling man with thinning red hair. He sunburned easily, and he talked loud. And if you didn't move fast enough to suit him, he'd clout you with a stick.
• 9:44
  Speaker B: So it's from the perspective of Red. So it's not a description of Red? No, because I know from what we discussed in the prequel that Red has red hair in the book.
• 9:56
  Speaker A: Yes, that's true.
• 9:58
  Speaker B: But then there's the bit about hitting you with a stick.
• 10:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, I was about to say.
• 10:03
  Speaker B: So it's remotely red. Probably the guard.
• 10:07
  Speaker A: It is. It's Byron Hadley, who is. Or, yeah, Byron Hadley, who's the head of the guard. He's the main guy. That's his description right before the scene on the roof. So where. It's like kind of his first scene. So, yeah, you got all three of them, basically. So the actual name of the warden that I read the description of the second one is George Stammes, or Stammez. I don't know how to pronounce it. He was the second warden. He's the warden before Warden Norton, but he's also Warden Norton, which we'll get to. All right, those are it for all my questions. Katie Nail. Or all of my game show questions. Katie now has a bunch of questions that she's going to ask me to find out. Was that in the book?
• 10:50
  Speaker B: Gaston? May I have my book, please?
• 10:52
  Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures.
• 10:55
  Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination. Okay. So I know from our discussions that this is a pretty faithful adaptation.
• 11:04
  Speaker A: I had told you that before watching the movie, I was like this. As I read the book, I was like, this is a very faithful adaptation.
• 11:09
  Speaker B: So I'm kind of expecting a lot of the answers to be yes, but I guess we'll find out. So my first question is about. So the movie kind of starts off with Andy's trial. And I felt like. I felt like we were supposed to think during that part that he didn't do it. But the movie is also kind of vague and, like, obviously all of the evidence is against him. So I was wondering if the book did something similar where you're like, I'm pretty sure he didn't do it, but I don't know.
• 11:47
  Speaker A: So I would say no. And I think this is one of the few big changes the movie makes. I think the movie leaves it more vague than you're even saying, or more leaves us more unsure of whether or not he did it than you're even saying necessarily. I think. Cause that struck me watching the movie this time, because it's been so long since I've seen the movie and I couldn't recall exactly the beginning of it is probably the part I've seen the least, just because I'd seen it a lot on tv and you rarely happen to turn it on right at the beginning of the movie. So that first 10 minutes is probably the part I've seen the least in the movie. So I didn't remember how kind of vague they keep it in terms of whether or not we're supposed to think he did it. And I think the movie intentionally keeps it us guessing whether or not he did it. In the book, it's. Red relays the details of Andy's case. And it's very clear very quickly that at a very. At the very minimum, Red thinks he's innocent. And it's verily and strongly implied that Andy is innocent. But I don't think. And I went back and kind of looked. I don't think it's ever explicitly confirmed until later that he is. But it's like very, very strong. Like, way stronger than the movie implied that he's innocent. Like, one of the big lines is that Red and I had it as a note later, but Red says He's only met 10 people in his time in Shawshank, who said they were innocent. That he believed, and Andy was one of them. And so, like. And that's one of. That's when Red mentions that right after he kind of relays the accounts of Andy's details. So I think we're very much meant to assume that he is innocent of this crime. And that does get confirmed later, obviously. But, yeah, I thought it was a fine change to leave us a little more unsure because it kind of. I think it ties in better with one of the main themes of the movie, which is I'll get to later, but really is kind of asking us to reassess how we view people in prison a little bit.
• 13:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 13:38
  Speaker A: And, like, you know, that sort of thing. And so I think leaving it nebulous and not knowing for sure that he's innocent makes that message work a little bit better because we start to like Andy while we aren't sure if he's guilty of killing his wife or not. Whereas in the book, we know for moment, like, we're pretty positive from moment one, as we get to know him that he's innocent. So it's easier to like him because we know he's an innocent man, wrongfully convicted. Whereas the movie, again, I think you can kind of guess that's the case, but it's not. I was surprised at how vague I thought it was.
• 14:17
  Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. My next question is also about the first time we meet a character in the movie. We meet Red as he's going, like, up before the parole board, and then he gets rejected for parole. Is that what happens in the book?
• 14:36
  Speaker A: No, and this is better in the movie for me. I love the recurring parole hearings for Red. We get three of them, I think, over the course of the movie.
• 14:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:44
  Speaker A: And none of those are in the book. Red talks about parole hearings and specifically Andy's parole hearings over the years and, like, what the votes were and how, like, he kept getting rejected, but he never talks about his parole hearings, really, or. And we never sit in on a parole hearing. Like, we never are. You know, get, like, a full recounting of a parole hearing. So I like that. I really like that. It starts the arc we get of Red over the course of the film, that it starts with him saying exactly what he thinks they want to hear. And then eventually he gets to the point where he just. He stops saying what he thinks they want to hear, and that's when they finally let him go. I think it's a fun through line that also helps kind of mark the Passage of time in a way that works, but also shows us Red's character arc. And again, none of that's in the book. So I like that a lot.
• 15:35
  Speaker B: So when Andy gets to Shawshank, he's with a bunch of other prisoners coming in, and they're all lined up, and the warden is there, and he says that rule number one in his prison is no blasphemy.
• 15:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 15:52
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 15:54
  Speaker A: So that specific rule is not mentioned. But Warden Norton is a very religious man who's very similar to the character in the movie. He gives all of the inmates a Bible upon intake. He also has the his judgment cometh and that right soon sign on his wall in the office that's mentioned in the book specifically, as well as, like, another Bible verse on his desk on a little plaque. So he's a very religious man. He's also constantly mentioned of being part of, like, the local. Some local religious organization or something like that. So the rule is right in line with his character. But that specific rule of him saying, like, rule one, no blasphemy does not get mentioned in the book.
• 16:31
  Speaker B: Okay. Another thing that happens as the new prisoners are being admitted is that a lot of the inmates who are already there chant fresh fish at them. Is that something that's from the book?
• 16:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. So Red does recount that the prisoners would mock the new. The incoming prisoners by chanting, fresh fish. Hey, little fishy. Fresh fish. Kind of at them. It also mentions that it was not uncommon for one of the new inmates to, like, break on their first night and cry and, like, bang on the bars and plead with the guards. We don't actually see that in the book. He just mentions that it happens. And so the movie actually shows us that. Which I thought was another small, like, better in the movie change. And that's, like, the thing they're betting on in the movie where they're. Yeah. Again, the betting thing does not come from the book, but is a very obvious extension of what they read, talks about in the book.
• 17:23
  Speaker B: Another thing that we see close to the beginning of the movie is the first time that Andy goes to, like, the cafeteria, and he.
• 17:32
  Speaker A: The commissary of a commissary.
• 17:34
  Speaker B: I don't know the prison terms. It looks like a cafeteria, but he gets his tray of food, and then he picks a maggot out of his food and is, like, looking at it. And then there's this other older man who we will find out later is Brooks, who takes the maggot from him and then feeds it to A bird he's keeping inside his jacket pocket. So, one, are there maggots in the food? And two, does an old man feed one to a bird in his pocket?
• 18:07
  Speaker A: So, no, no maggots are ever mentioned as being found in the food. But the conditions at the prison are not great. So it's within reason that something like that would happen. The biggest complaint in the book about the food specifically is that the meat they get served, they call it mystery meat. And they don't know what it is necessarily. But there's nothing of finding bugs in the meat or anything like that. At least that I could find. Maybe there's one other thing about food was when they get thrown in the hole, they go on what is called Warden Norton's grain and drain diet, which is just water and bread, basically. And there might be a reference to the bread having bugs in. I can't remember, like, when they're in the hole or in solitary or whatever. But other than that, no. And there is no mention of feeding maggots or insects to Jake, who is the bird and Jake is in the book. There is a bird named Jake in the book, which we'll talk more about later, but nobody feeds it any maggots from their food.
• 19:04
  Speaker B: Does he ever live in someone's pocket?
• 19:06
  Speaker A: No, that is not. The bird is very briefly mentioned in, like, one paragraph. And again, we'll get to more later. But what we know of the bird is only of it. Again, it's like two sentences about the bird. Like, oh, this inmate had a pet bird. And that's like, it basically.
• 19:23
  Speaker B: Okay, there was a specific exchange from, I think maybe Andy's first conversation with Red.
• 19:31
  Speaker A: It's when they go. When he asks them to get the rock handle first.
• 19:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. When he asks him to get the rock hammer. And Red is kind of giving him advice about navigating the prison system.
• 19:43
  Speaker A: And he specifically is asking him, you know, like, hey, are you gonna use this rock hammer to hurt anybody? Because the movie. I don't think the movie makes this super clear. But in the book, Red has a very specific rule. He will not get weapons for people.
• 19:55
  Speaker B: Right.
• 19:56
  Speaker A: He won't acquire.
• 19:56
  Speaker B: He's too smart.
• 19:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, well, and it's just part of his moral code that he specifically says he has too much death on his mind because he's in. We'll talk about later why he's in prison.
• 20:06
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 20:07
  Speaker A: But he's like, why Red's in prison.
• 20:08
  Speaker B: Because the movie is not. We don't know in the movie.
• 20:10
  Speaker A: We'll get to that. But he Says I have enough death on my conscious for a lifetime or something like that. So he won't get weapons or anything like that for people.
• 20:20
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 20:20
  Speaker A: And so that's why he asks the line, you have a question?
• 20:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. So Red asks him if he's going to use it to hurt anybody. And Andy says, I have no enemies here. To which Red replies, wait a while.
• 20:33
  Speaker A: Yes, that is directly from the book, as is pretty much that entire scene where that first time they talk where he asks him to get the rock hammer. And I'll say this a lot, and you mentioned it earlier, that I said this is a very faithful adaptation. Some of these scenes are almost word for word. Not only all of the dialogue word for word, but for lack of a better term, the stage direction, the actions described in the book or are basically translated into stage direction in the script. And it's like identical. And this scene is essentially word for word identical in the movie as it is in the book. This whole conversation about the rock hammer and if he's gonna attack anybody with it and blah, blah, all that sort of stuff.
• 21:18
  Speaker B: Cool. One of the big first conflicts that Andy faces in prison is that there's this gang of guys called the Sisters, and the plot point is that they repeatedly sexually assault him, according to the Wikipedia summary. Like, over the course of two years.
• 21:43
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. That's one thing the movie, and I think it works fine, is that the movie doesn't, because the book kind of does this too. Like, it happens over the course of like 30 years or something. And it doesn't always tell you how long it's been between events.
• 21:58
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Speaker A: And I think that works fine for the most part, but it is. There are some times where you're not sure, like if it's been a week or two weeks or two years or whatever.
• 22:08
  Speaker B: Yeah. You're kind of going on context clues, but I think.
• 22:11
  Speaker A: I think that's kind of intentional because they talk about. In prison, time doesn't exist. Like, it's.
• 22:19
  Speaker B: That makes sense.
• 22:20
  Speaker A: You know what I mean? Like, the passage of time is kind of irrelevant in a way, especially for people on life sentences. Like, Ed and Andy are there. They're on life sentences and aren't expecting to ever get out. And so time doesn't really move. Like, it just. It's. So I think that's an intentional choice of not being, like, having a thing that pops up on screen that says two years later, one year later, or whatever. We get some markers when events happen, but other times we're allowed to just kind of let Time pass without knowing because it's that similar idea of being in prison and not really having a good grasp of how much time has passed.
• 22:59
  Speaker B: So back to my question about the repeated sexual assault. Is that from the book?
• 23:06
  Speaker A: Yes. So the sisters are from the book and they are a fairly big component of the book in the same way, or at least the first half of the book. Your specific question about the laundry room that happens in the book specifically because Andy starts he works in the laundry room for the first few years he's there. And there's the scene we see in the movie. One of the scenes specifically is mentioned in the book. They attack him and he tries to defend himself with detergent that like, if it gets in their eyes will like blind them or whatever that is specifically mentioned. I'm gonna read the description of the sisters from the book. Or it's not even just the sisters, it's. There's kind of a whole passage about homosexuality and stuff in prison which is interesting. And my, my, my response I wrote, or my note I wrote after reading this part in the book was like maybe less problematic than it could be. All things considered. I don't think I'll have to edit myself here. But this is about, this is some coarse language in here and stuff. So take that as a warning. Leading in a few words about the sisters. In a lot of pens they are known as bull queers or jailhouse sussies I guess is the term. I don't know, just lately the term in fashion is killer queens. But in Shawshank they were always the sisters. I don't know why, but other than the name I guess there was no difference. It comes to no surprise to most these days that there's a lot of buggery going on inside the walls. Except to some of the new fish maybe who have the misfortune to be young, slim, good looking and unwary. But homosexuality, like straight sex, comes in a hundred different shapes and forms. There are men who can't stand to be without sex of some kind and turn and turn to another man to keep from going crazy. Usually what follows it is an arrangement between two fundamentally heterosexual men. Although I sometimes wondered if they are quite as heterosexual as they thought they going to be when they get back to their wives or their girlfriends. There are also men who get turned in prison in the current parlance. They go gay or come out of the closet mostly, but not always. They play the female and their favors are completely competed for fiercely. And then there are the sisters. They are to prison society what the rapist is to the society outside the walls. They're usually long timers doing hard bullets for brutal crimes. Their prey is the young, the weak and the inexperienced. Or as in the case of Andy Dufresne, the weak looking. Their hunting grounds are the showers, the cramped tunnel like area way behind the industrial washes in the laundry, sometimes the infirmary. Most often, what the sisters take by force they could have had for free if they wanted it that way. Those who had been turned always seemed to have crushes on one sister or another. Turned as in quotes there, like teenage girls with their Sinatras, Presleys or Redfords. But for the sisters, the joy has always been taking it by force and I guess it always will be. So I like it's not. I don't know. I found it to be kind of an interesting assessment of homosexuality in prison that is a lot more evenhanded maybe than.
• 26:06
  Speaker B: Than you might.
• 26:07
  Speaker A: Than you might expect. Might have expected. Yeah. I don't know. And like the movie, I think kind of continues this by having Red have the line because we don't obviously don't get all of that in the movie, but Red has a point in the sister or in the movie where Tim, Tim Rhodes. Andy Dufresne asks, like Red mentions the sisters and Andy asks are they gay or homosexuals or something like that. And Red responds by saying they aren't homosexuals. They'd have to be human first implying that it's not. They're not raping people because they're gay like they are. Maybe they are gay, maybe they aren't, we don't know. But they're predators first is like what they really are, which is at least an. I don't know that to me that brings some level of like non judgment to homosexuality in general. And it's just kind of talking about the very strange and ways that sexuality is expressed in an all men's prison. Like it, it. It's obviously there are whole books I'm sure written on this sort of thing. It's a very complicated topic and I was just kind of surprised that the book was at least a little bit, you know, I don't know the word for it but.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Nuanced.
• 27:22
  Speaker A: Yeah, nuanced in the coverage of it and wasn't just like. Yeah. Deeply problematic.
• 27:27
  Speaker B: Right. I do wonder what kind of research Stephen King did for this.
• 27:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know.
• 27:32
  Speaker B: I didn't find anything about that. I'm sure he's talked about it at some point, but. Yeah, that's interesting.
• 27:37
  Speaker A: But like the line about, like, you know, they're just like straight people. There are a million different flavors of homosexuality. I thought was like, at least this fairly progressive view of it. And like.
• 27:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 27:48
  Speaker A: And like, you know, assess, like assessing the fact that, yeah, like, these things happen in prison. How do we kind of talk about it and I guess categorize the different types of relationships and stuff. It's. I don't know. It's interesting. And I. Like I said I was expecting worse than what was in the book.
• 28:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:05
  Speaker A: And the kind of the same for the movie. I thought the movie kind of echoed that by. By having read Make a Point that, you know, they aren't rapists because they're gay. They're rapists.
• 28:14
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 28:15
  Speaker A: And that happen to maybe be gay.
• 28:19
  Speaker B: That also made me think of. We just did Salem's Lot and there was the reference in Salem's Lot, which is interesting because it would. That would have been before Stephen King wrote Shawshank. The reference to the fictional book in that the author wrote in Salem's Lot and the mother and the daughter talk about there being a prison rape scene in it.
• 28:45
  Speaker A: I don't remember those details. I don't remember what you're talking about.
• 28:48
  Speaker B: We definitely talked about that.
• 28:50
  Speaker A: I'm sure we did. I'm just saying I don't remember the exact specifics of what you're talking about or how it relates to this, I guess, is what I don't.
• 28:56
  Speaker B: Well, it made me think of it because obviously I read Salem's Lot just recently and that was like. At first I was like, oh, I wonder if that's a reference to Shawshank. And then I was like, it couldn't have been because he wrote Salem's Lot before.
• 29:12
  Speaker A: When was he wrote Shawshank?
• 29:14
  Speaker B: Salem's Lot was his second book, like.
• 29:17
  Speaker A: In, like, the 70s.
• 29:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:19
  Speaker A: Because this is like 80 something.
• 29:20
  Speaker B: Yeah. I want to say 77.
• 29:23
  Speaker A: He might have been researching this.
• 29:25
  Speaker B: That's true.
• 29:26
  Speaker A: He might have been like, this is copyright 1982. So he may have been researching this and been, you know, working on it a little bit or something already. And that might be a reference to that. I don't know.
• 29:36
  Speaker B: Another big scene in this movie that I have to imagine is a scene that a lot of people remember from this movie.
• 29:43
  Speaker A: It's probably amongst the most famous scenes in the movie. Or it's. It's one of the best scenes in.
• 29:50
  Speaker B: The movie, in my opinion, is when they're up on the roof. They're like, retarring. Yeah, the roof. And Andy convinces The head of the guards to get everybody beers.
• 30:05
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 30:06
  Speaker B: To drink.
• 30:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 30:07
  Speaker B: And then he does not drink any beer.
• 30:09
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 30:10
  Speaker B: And I was wondering if any of that was from the book.
• 30:13
  Speaker A: Yes. And this is another one of the scenes that the movie absolutely nails it. This scene is damn near identical, down to every last word. This was the one where after I read this scene in the book, I was like, that's just the scene in the movie. Like, it's literally just the scene in the movie. It's crazy. Well, let me get to that. First, Andy doesn't drink any beer. Because we find out, and as he says in the movie, like, he doesn't drink. And it's related to when his wife was killed. He was drinking at the time and blah, blah, blah. So since then he hasn't drank. Although in the book he actually does drink. But he drinks exactly, like two times a year. He has Red get him like a bottle of whiskey on his Christmas and on his birthday or something like that, like two times a year. But then he has exactly one drink and then gives the bottle back and says, pass it around or whatever. Give it to whoever. But he has very strict rules about drinking in the book. And he has exactly two drinks a year. But. Yeah, but the detail in that scene that is the only real difference from the movie scene that I had is better in the book is that after that ends, all of Red's monologue after that scene is identical word for word. And that's how on the 5th of May, 1945, 10 prison, or whatever his line is. But after that, he remarks in the book how amazed he is at how many men were on the roof that day because to his recollection, there were only nine or ten of them up on that roof. But by 1955, there must have been 200 men up on that roof. Because everybody, this story becomes legend in the prison. And all of the other prisoners claim to down the road start claiming to have been there on the roof when that happened. So he hears from, you know, hundreds of people are like, oh, yeah, I was up there. And Rhett's like, there's like nine of us up there, and I know everybody that was up there.
• 31:59
  Speaker B: Is Andy really into rocks in the book? And also, does he carve a chess set?
• 32:05
  Speaker A: Yes, Andy is very into rocks. He has Red get him the rock hammer. And specifically also rock cloths, which we see later in his cell, so that he can polish up stones and make little things. Although he does not specifically make a chess set in the book, the movie adds him wanting to make a chess set. So that's like a side little thing. But apart from that, he does carve little things out of rocks. And. Yeah, it's basically the same.
• 32:34
  Speaker B: Going back to what we were discussing a minute ago.
• 32:38
  Speaker A: The final sister scene.
• 32:39
  Speaker B: With the sister scene. Yeah, the final sister scene. In that scene, they're assaulting Andy and they're gonna.
• 32:54
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 32:55
  Speaker B: So the line that Andy says that. I'm wondering if it's from the book. He says, anything you put in my mouth, you're gonna lose.
• 33:04
  Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, that scene is in the book and plays out basically word for word. They attack him and threaten to do that. And literally every line of that is exactly the same. And Andy does say, anything you put in my mouth, you're gonna lose. And then goes on to explain that, like. And. Cause then the guy's like, oh, well, Boggs, who's the main sister, is like, I'll. Well, I'll stab you in the. With this. He has, like, a knife or whatever. He's like, I'll ram this through your ear into your brain if you bite or if. Or whatever. And he. And he explains that if he does that, like, he'll have to, like. They'll have to open his mouth with like a. What does he say? A crowbar prize. Mouth open with a crowbar or something like that. Because, like, the nerves will just. Yeah, that whole scene is exactly from. Exactly the same. From the. From the book. And. Yeah. Every last word of it. So. Yes. Dancing around it. Because it's. It's a. Yeah. It's a rough scene. And it's like.
• 33:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. So then Andy is in the infirmary for a long time.
• 34:04
  Speaker A: Yes. Because they beat the. Out of them.
• 34:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:06
  Speaker A: Instead of raping him in that scene, they just beat him half to death.
• 34:10
  Speaker B: Yeah. And while he's there, some of his friends dig up rocks for him as a gift for when he gets out. And I thought that was very cute. And I was wondering if that was from the book.
• 34:23
  Speaker A: This is not in the book. This is another one that I had, is better in the movie. I really liked them deciding to find rocks for Andy while he's in the infirmary because this is specifically related to them finding rocks for his chess set. So that's probably the main reason it's not in the Earth doesn't come from the book, but I guess there could be another scene. But, no, they do not find rocks for him while they're out on work detail. But I also liked that a lot. I thought that was very cute.
• 34:46
  Speaker B: We mentioned the bird earlier. So I know the bird is in the book.
• 34:51
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 34:52
  Speaker B: But is the bird a crow?
• 34:54
  Speaker A: Yes, because we see Jake later and it's a full grown crow hanging out in the library. No, in the book, Jake is a pigeon.
• 35:03
  Speaker B: That makes sense, honestly.
• 35:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. And as I alluded to earlier, it's not exactly the same. He's only very briefly mentioned in the book. He belongs to an entirely different character. So there's this other character named something, I can't remember his name, who has the bird named Jake. They combined that with the character named Brooks Hadlin, who was. Brooks is the like head of the. Or runs the library. In the book. They just add the character feature of him having a bird from this other character who's not in the movie.
• 35:37
  Speaker B: So they're combined characters. I gotcha.
• 35:39
  Speaker A: In the book, like I said, the bird belongs to a different guy who's getting out and it is a pigeon. And it specifically mentions in the book that the guy releases the bird when he's getting out of prison. And then like a week or two later, Red and some of the other prisoners find the bird dead in the corner of the yard, like starved to death. And the implication is that it couldn't survive outside of the prison because it was being like, it became, quote, unquote, institutionalized in the same way, except it became not. What's the word for when animals become domesticated? Domesticated. It became too domesticated to survive in the wild. And it's a parallel for the idea of the prisoners not being able to survive outside of the prison. Well, because they have become in the. Institutionalized by the prison. And so I thought it made sense to. To give the berg to Brooks because he. His character does have a similar story arc in.
• 36:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
• 36:38
  Speaker A: In the book of him leaving and not. And being too institutionalized and not being able to handle the outside world that is mentioned in the book. So giving the bird to him, I think makes a lot of sense. They also apparently in the movie did shoot a scene of them finding the bird dead. But then for whatever reason. Yeah, I saw that on Wikipedia, decided to remove it.
• 36:59
  Speaker B: And I'm glad they decided to remove it because I didn't want it.
• 37:03
  Speaker A: Definitely follows through on the thematic idea.
• 37:07
  Speaker B: It definitely does. But like in that first scene in the commissary, when we saw that baby bird in his pocket, I immediately was like, oh, no. And you were like, no, don't worry, the bird doesn't die. Yes, in the movie.
• 37:24
  Speaker A: In the movie. In the book it does. But it's Also a pigeon in the book and not a crow, so.
• 37:28
  Speaker B: Well, and I'm sure it was a crow in the movie because crows are very smart and you can train them very easy. Yeah, I don't know about a. Yeah.
• 37:37
  Speaker A: Pigeons are in movies all the time. I mean, that's true. I guess it wouldn't be that hard. But I think more than anything, crows are just very charismatic. So it's a.
• 37:46
  Speaker B: And it's a very striking visual as well. But I also think a pigeon makes a lot of sense thematically because humans did totally abandon pigeons.
• 37:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:58
  Speaker B: So kind of the major plot point of the last half of the movie is Andy becoming like an under the table banker to all of the guards and the warden and the prison staff and a baseball team for some reason, the opposing.
• 38:16
  Speaker A: So that's the other. That's the intramural. So that's from another prison. That's all the guards from a prison down the road when they play their inner mural bass baseball game. All of the guards from this other prison showed up with their taxes.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Okay, I gotcha. Does he do everybody's taxes in the book and become a banker?
• 38:35
  Speaker A: Yes. After the thing with Hadley on the roof where he gives him the tip about how to not pay taxes on the lottery winnings for his brother in law or whatever, he becomes a financial advisor, the warden moves him down to the library and he becomes a banker for the guards. Initially. Initially, it just starts with kind of a. Which is kind of how we see it in the movie. We see that passage of tits, like a montage of him like doing more and more stuff. Initially he just starts doing like some financial advisory stuff for some of the other guards. Then it's like he's doing it for all of the guards, then he's doing it for guards from other prisons. And then he's like literally by the end of it, he's running the books for the entire prison, basically. And specifically all of the black market shady stuff that the prison is doing.
• 39:20
  Speaker B: So back to Brooks, who has the bird in the movie. Does he try to kind of. I say try to threaten, threaten, act like he's going to kill another inmate so that he can stay in prison because he's afraid of leaving?
• 39:39
  Speaker A: No. So Brooks does get out in the book, but there's no scene where he threatens to kill somebody so he can stay in or anything like that. I had this embedded in the movie. I thought everything with Brooks in the movie was honestly everything with Brooks. Hadlan's story in the movie is more heartbreaking and Sadder than it was in the book. I have some notes about it later I'll get to. But that specifically, I like that scene a lot. And it's not remotely in the book. He just. It just mentions that he got out and.
• 40:06
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 40:07
  Speaker A: And. And then, like, kind of what happened to him after he got out, basically.
• 40:11
  Speaker B: And then along those lines. Red had a line in the movie when they were talking about Brooks. They send you here for life. That's exactly what they take.
• 40:22
  Speaker A: Yes. So basically, the line in the book that. That is a copy of is they give you life and that's what they take. All of it. That counts anyway.
• 40:30
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 40:31
  Speaker A: So pretty much. Yeah.
• 40:35
  Speaker B: Another plot point from the second half of the movie is that Andy is writing to the state senate or state.
• 40:44
  Speaker A: State politicians. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I think it's state senator specifically that is mentioned, but yeah, it's just.
• 40:50
  Speaker B: Whatever. So he's writing letters to the government, to the state Congress to try to get additional funding for the prison library. And he sends letters and sends letters and never hears back. And then at one point, they finally do send him, like, some books and some money and also a letter that says, please stop sending us letters. And I was wondering if please stop sending us letters was from the book.
• 41:19
  Speaker A: So that specific line is not. He does not get. We don't see, like, what the. How they responded. They don't send that specific letter at least requesting him to stop sending letters. But Red does speculate that the reason he first gets some money from the state, because he does the same thing. He sends a bunch of letters, and he does eventually get a little bit of money from them. And Red speculates that the reason they gave him that little bit of money the first time was in the hopes that it would stop him from writing more letters.
• 41:45
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 41:46
  Speaker A: But he doubles down and starts sending two letters a week or whatever, which is the same thing the movie says. And then ultimately that results in them sending. It gets to a point where I think in the book that he's getting close to $1,000 a year from the state for library stuff and other stuff for the prison. I think.
• 42:01
  Speaker B: Good for him.
• 42:02
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 42:03
  Speaker B: At this point in the movie, we see Red's second parole board scene. And what struck me in this is that he says maybe the exact same thing or almost the exact same thing that we see him say at the beginning. And I was wondering if he also does that in the book. Like, he just kind of goes in and gives the same spiel because he.
• 42:25
  Speaker A: Knows that it's pointless yeah, so he touched on that. There are. We don't see any of the parole hearings in the book. I did have this as better in the movie as I did earlier, but specifically, I like that they set up this a second time. They reinforce this for the payoff in the third parole hearing for what he says there by having him again come back hat in hand, very deferential, and saying exactly what he thinks they want to hear in basically the exact same way. But no, it's not in the book.
• 42:56
  Speaker B: Okay. The title of the book mentions Rita Hayworth specifically. And I found out why in the movie. It's because the first giant poster that Andy has in his cell is a big poster of Rita Hayworth looking fine.
• 43:12
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 43:13
  Speaker B: As she was. What I wasn't expecting was for those posters to switch out and for us to get different ladies. And I was wondering if the book also used the posters to kind of. It's one of like the most concrete things that we have in the movie that marks the passage of time. And I was wondering if the book did the same thing.
• 43:36
  Speaker A: Yes. And the movie matches them pretty closely except for the final poster. So let me read. There's like one little short passage about.
• 43:44
  Speaker B: All of the posters in the movie. We see Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, and then Raquel Welch.
• 43:49
  Speaker A: Yes, Here it is. Here's the description from Red. In the book, Rita Hayworth hung in andy's cell until 1955. If I remember right then, it was Marilyn Monroe. That picture from the Seven Year Itch where she's standing over a subway grading and the warm air is flipping her skirt up. Marilyn lasted until 1960 and she was considerably tattered around the edges when Andy replaced her with Jayne Mansfield. Jane was, you should pardon the expression, a bust. After only a year or so, she was replaced with an English actress. May have been Hazel Court, but I'm not sure. In 1966 that one came down and Raquel Welch went up for a record breaking six year engagement in Andy's cell. The last poster to hang there was a pretty country rock singer whose name was Linda Ronstadt. So Linda Ronstadt was the poster on the wall when he breaks out in the book. And they stopped in the movie on Raquel Welch for whatever reason. Maybe they felt it was more timeless than Linda Ronstadt.
• 44:42
  Speaker B: Yeah, maybe because it's the. It's the picture of what is the movie that.
• 44:47
  Speaker A: That's like 10,000 BC or something.
• 44:48
  Speaker B: Yeah. Where she's in like the. The fur bikini.
• 44:51
  Speaker A: Like. Yeah, like fake, terrible, like caveman clothing, basically. Yeah. The movie also may change when he escapes. I think it does, actually, now that I mentioned, now that I think about it. So maybe that may also play a role in what poster was up. Is that the book may have him escape later or something. I can't remember. They may have just tweaked the year when it happened. And so that may be slightly relevant to why the poster is different, but it's fair.
• 45:17
  Speaker B: A bit that I really loved in this movie was so Andy and a bunch of the gang, all of his friends, him and Red's friends, they're all, like, hanging out in the library and they're helping him. Him sort some books that had come in. And one of them pulls out the Count of Monte Cristo and first calls.
• 45:42
  Speaker A: It the Count of Monte Cristo.
• 45:43
  Speaker B: Yes. And then pronounces the author's name Alexander. Dumbass.
• 45:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:50
  Speaker B: And then Andy says, oh, you'll really like that one. It's about a prison break.
• 45:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker B: And I think Red is like, quips like, oh, then that should go in information. All right.
• 46:00
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 46:01
  Speaker B: And I was wondering if any of that was from the book.
• 46:03
  Speaker A: No. And definitely call this one better in the movie. None of that exchange is in the book. But it's very funny and I also like it a lot.
• 46:12
  Speaker B: Another line I really liked was when Andy and Red are talking about all of the, like, under the table cooking, the books that he's doing for the warden and the guards. And I think. I don't remember if Red asks him or if Andy just says, like. He's like, oh, it's funny that when I was on the outside, I was very, like, straight and narrow and I never did anything like this. And then he says I had to come to prison to be a crook.
• 46:40
  Speaker A: Yes. No, that line is not in the book. And I triple checked on that one, but it is not. They actually have a different, slightly more nuanced discussion about criminality that I think that scene is kind of standing in for. It's in a similar point in the story and some of the lines from it are specifically the same. So I think we'll get to that later. I have more on that later and I want to talk about it in a later section. But that line specifically is not in that scene or not in the book at all.
• 47:08
  Speaker B: So then we meet the character Tommy, who's like this young guy who looks like Elvis. He's like an Elvis copy in the movie. But we get this reveal that Tommy, at a previous prison had actually been cellmates with the guy who actually did Kill Andy's wife, Elmer Blatch and her lover. Yeah.
• 47:32
  Speaker A: Elmo Blatch. I think in the movie they might say Elmo Blatch, but I'm pretty sure in the book it's Elmer Blatch. I don't know.
• 47:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. So they find that out, and then Andy goes to the warden, which was his first mistake. He should have written. He should have written to his lawyer.
• 47:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's. Honestly, we'll get to it. Yeah. Or not. We'll get to. But that was that. When he does that, I was like, really, man?
• 47:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 47:53
  Speaker A: You're smarter than that.
• 47:54
  Speaker B: You're smarter than that. You should have. That should have been a letter to your lawyer. But at any rate, so we get that reveal, and then he goes to the warden, and the warden throws Andy in solitary for trying to get out of prison.
• 48:09
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 48:10
  Speaker B: Is any of that from the book?
• 48:12
  Speaker A: Yes. This is all basically identical. The only better. I have one better in the book detail here is that when Tommy finds out and hears, I think, from. It's not from Red in the movie, Red tells him the background, and that's when he realizes in the book it's some other prisoner. But in the book, when he finds out he's working in the laundry and he's asking this other prisoner about Andy's backstory and why he's in prison, this guy explains the backstory about the golfer and his wife or whatever, and Tommy realizes, and he, like, drops all of the laundry he's supposed to be cleaning onto the floor, and it all gets disgusting. And one of the guards comes over and is, like, yelling at him to, like, pick up the laundry, but he's so, like, stunned, and he's, like, talking to the. He's, like, so blown away that this. At this crazy coincidence that the guard just knocks him unconscious because he won't respond. And then when he comes to, he then goes and tells Andy and all of that. Anyways, I thought it was kind of an interesting. That scene. I could have. When I was reading that scene in the book, it was so vivid in my mind of how you would shoot it and how it would work in a movie that I was surprised they didn't do that in the movie.
• 49:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 49:20
  Speaker A: But, yes, it's basically identical, including Andy going to the warden, like we said, super stupidly. But he goes to the warden and he lays it all out. And then when the warden is like, oh, how would you believe that? Andy calls him obtuse. And this is what really pisses off the warden, specifically calling him obtuse. And then the other. Another detail of it that's exactly the same is that Andy's getting drug out of the room. He starts screaming, it's my life. Like, don't you know, don't you care? It's my life. Or whatever. We'll get to the. I want to come back to that specific. Like what feels kind of like not a plot hole, but like a weird moment for somebody as smart as Andy.
• 49:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of feels out of character. It's really the only mistake he makes.
• 50:02
  Speaker A: I don't think it is. Well, I don't think it's out of queer character. I want to get back to that in a little bit later. But when we get to Lost in Adaptation, we'll research to this conversation.
• 50:12
  Speaker B: So then does the warden have Tommy killed and threatened to burn the library?
• 50:18
  Speaker A: So the second one, yes, he does threaten to burn the library. He threatens to get rid of the library and take Andy's private cell away and all that stuff he says in the movie. This is one of the other big changes that the movie makes. In the book, Tommy just gets shipped off to a cushy low security prison up north. It's actually the prison he mentions when his character is first introduced in the movie. He says like he's like, oh yeah, I did some time up at whatever the name of the prison is. That's the one he gets sent to in the book after all of this goes down. Okay, it's like a very cushy low security prison where his wife, because he has a wife and kid, his wife can come visit and he gets out on like work detail. It's just like a very nice prison that warden sends him to that one to like get him away from Andy and blah, blah, blah. I prefer the movies change of having the warden kill him for a couple reasons. One, it makes Norton a more fun villain to root against for his eventual comeuppance at the end of this. And two, to me it feels way more believable that Andy just drops it all after he gets out of the hole. Because in the book. And Red even kind of remarks on this in the book that he's surprised that Andy never like followed up on it after he got out of the hole and everything. Because in the book you would. I would be like, okay, so like you get out of the hole and you know, they sent Tommy to this prison up north or whatever. You could call your lawyer now or not call your write a lawyer. You know, you could some. You could figure out a way to contact your lawyer and do this all without the warden notice. You know, Red knows how to communicate with people outside because that's how his whole prison operation works, basically.
• 51:57
  Speaker B: Right.
• 51:58
  Speaker A: And so you. You could figure out a way to communicate and get this worked out without the warden knowing. I feel like. And so in the movie, killing him just makes it way more final. Now what is he gonna do? He can't follow up on it. There's no real.
• 52:12
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's no witness now.
• 52:14
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now there's no way to follow up on it. So I think it works better in that regard too. Of just like putting a more final. Like. Okay, well, that's why he never pursues that ever again, because there's nothing to pursue at that point.
• 52:25
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 52:25
  Speaker A: Whereas in the book it's like. And I think Red might even speculate that part of the reason he never pursues it is because he doesn't want. He's worried about Tommy getting some blowback or I don't. Or like getting put back in a bad prisoner. I can't remember. There's something like that. But even still, it all feels a little wishy washy of like he knows this guy is out there who has the information to get him out of prison and just doesn't pursue it anymore. Whereas in the movie, it's like, well, obviously the guy's dead now.
• 52:53
  Speaker B: Yeah. So then after he does get out of solitary, he's talking to Red about what he wants to do when he gets out of prison, and he describes to him this place that he wants Red to look if he ever gets out.
• 53:13
  Speaker A: Buxton.
• 53:14
  Speaker B: Yeah. He talks about the cornfield in Buxton with the oak tree and the rock wall and says that it looks like a Robert Frost poem. And he talks about the black volcanic.
• 53:25
  Speaker A: Glass rock that has no earthly business being in that rock wall or whatever. Yeah.
• 53:30
  Speaker B: Is any of that description from the book?
• 53:33
  Speaker A: Yes, that description is identical to what he describes in the book, except there is. Andy does not mention an oak tree in his description. Like, there's no mention of there being an oak tree or anything like that. However, when Red gets there at the end and is walking along the wall looking for the rock, he writes down in his recount or recounting of the events as he's walking along the wall, a squirrel scolded me from an oak tree. So there is an oak tree there near the wall and he just doesn't mention it. So that detail of there being this old oak tree is from the book. It's just not part of Andy's description of the location.
• 54:11
  Speaker B: Okay, I didn't write this down, and I'm technically jumping ahead a little bit, but this. Does Red just have to wander around checking cornfields in Buxton?
• 54:21
  Speaker A: Yes. So the book. The movie doesn't include that. In the book, it's specifically mentioned that Andy spends all of his free time in the book. In the movie, we just see him show up and kind of wander for a bit and then find it pretty quickly.
• 54:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 54:35
  Speaker A: In the book, it is specifically mentioned that there are a lot of cornfields in Buxton. And he. That's, like, his only hobby is, like, whenever he's not working or whatever, he goes down to Buxton and he wanders around the cornfields looking for this one specific cornfield. And it takes him, like, a month or two to find it or something like that.
• 54:54
  Speaker B: So when we get to the big climax of the movie when Andy escapes, one of the first things that we see that, like, kicks this off is the warden opening his shoebox after having told Andy to polish his shoes until they were like a mirror the night before. But he opens his shoebox, and it's Andy's prison shoes in there.
• 55:20
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 55:21
  Speaker B: Is that from the book?
• 55:22
  Speaker A: No, but this is absolutely better in the movie. It's a very fun reveal. I love him stealing the warden's suit and shoes. That's not mentioned in the book, at least. It's funny because I was like. For some reason, my brain thought it was mentioned in the book. And then I went back and I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere of him taking the warden suit. I was like. But I have this thought he did. But what I did find is that there is a mention of Red, like, imagining Andy going into the bank wearing a suit.
• 55:51
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 55:51
  Speaker A: But it doesn't say, like, the warden suit or anything. So maybe that's what I was thinking of. But that. I thought that was a clever change because 1. It gives us that very fun reveal, but also explains how Andy was able to have a suit on him. Like, the whole thing to go into the bank when he gets out because he takes the warden suit with him or whatever. That whole thing is kind of different in the book, which we'll get to of, like, how that all plays out with the money and everything. We'll get to that eventually.
• 56:18
  Speaker B: Okay. So the way that Andy's escape route of the tunnel is revealed in the movie is that the. They're in his cell, and the warden is getting madder and madder, and he picks up one of his little rock Carvings and throws it at the poster of Raquel Welch. And it goes straight through the poster. Is that from the book?
• 56:40
  Speaker A: The tunnel reveal in the book is very similar, like, damn near identical, except for that specific detail of the warden throwing the rock through the poster before ripping it off, which to me is absolutely better in the movie. In the book, he just rips it off in anger. Like, he's like this trash. I don't know. He says this filth or something. And he rips the poster off the wall in anger, and that reveals the hole. And they're like, oh, my God. Which is fine. But I love the detail of him throwing the rock through the poster because you hear it, like that moment where you hear it echoed through a hole. And then the very specific detail where he walks over and he pokes his finger through and it goes through, and then he puts his whole arm through, and it's just that slow burn reveal is so perfect. And then I love the cut to where he rips it off. It cuts the inside the hole, and we see them. And then Red's head.
• 57:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 57:31
  Speaker A: Coming around the corner to, like, look down the hall. It's so good. Everything about that reveal is perfect and just slightly better than the book's version.
• 57:40
  Speaker B: Is there a convenient thunderstorm on the night that Andy escapes?
• 57:44
  Speaker A: There is no mention of a storm in the book. And in the book, it said that he specifically uses the rock hammer to get through the sewage pipe. I thought the movie's changed to having it be a big rock makes more sense because we know the. Watching him do that in the movie with the hammer would be silly because it's this tiny little. Like, I don't know how you would.
• 58:03
  Speaker B: Make that like a dinky little hammer.
• 58:04
  Speaker A: Yeah. And so I don't. I assume that the whole thunderstorm thing was planned because he seems like he's like. That's part of his plan. Like, he, like, waits for. You know, it doesn't seem like he's something he comes up with spur of the moment. It seems like he was planning to do that. And so maybe he knew there would be weather coming or something like that. I don't know. But no, I thought it was very clever, and it worked really well. But it's not in the book.
• 58:28
  Speaker B: Does Andy steal all the dirty money and then spill the beans on the warden?
• 58:33
  Speaker A: So, no, actually. And this is what I mentioned earlier. This is where the movie makes another big change. I mentioned before that the movie combines two wardens or three wardens kind of into one character. Specifically one Thing it does is it combines Warden Norton with Warden Stamus. Warden Norton in the book, who's the final warden or warden and is the warden when Andy escapes and is very religious and an asshole. He's. He doesn't run any illegal, like, book stuff that was under the previous warden. The previous warden, Andy was doing all this stuff, the illegal cooking, the books and all that. And that warden gets arrested for all of that, I believe, and goes down for it. So they move that from the previous warden and give it to Norton. And then the other big change they make is that in the book, Andy doesn't get all of his money from the prison. This is all better in the movie for me, by the way. In the book, Andy explains to Red that before he got convicted, or like, even while he was, like, on trial or whatever, I guess. Or before he was on trial, before he got arrested, charged, I don't know. Once his wife got murdered and he knew he was gonna get in trouble for it. Yeah, he and one of his friends, he has, like, some guy on the outside hid a bunch of his money in a lockbox and created a fake identity and all of this stuff so that eventually, if Andy was ever able out. Ever to get out of prison, he could go get all of this money. Because if all of his money would have been forfeited to the state or what, I don't know. Like, he was worried about, like, all of what he had getting taken by the state when he got arrested and charged with murder. And so he created this fake identity and this fake ID and hid a bunch of his money, invested it so that it, like, was maturing over the 30 years he was in prison or whatever, but he hid it all in this lockbox in some bank or whatever. And then when he gets. When he escapes from prison, he goes to that bank or he goes to the. He. He goes to the rock wall and where he hid that box. But he actually has the key for the safety deposit box under the rock. And then he uses that key to go get all of his money and stuff that he prepared before he ever went to prison.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that is better in the movie.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker A: So what the movie does is take all of the book because all of the. Him cooking the books and everything comes from the book that was in there. It was just the previous warden, and nothing really happens with it. It's just the warden gets arrested eventually and gets replaced. And so I think it's a great decision to have him create this fake identity is who he's laundering all this money through. But then, like, assuming that identity to take all them, it makes perfect sense. It's super fun and, like, satisfying. Y satisfying. And it's. It's fantastic. And then the other big difference there is that in the movie or in the book, Warden Norton, after Andy escapes, just resigns. Oh, he. Because there's not really any big scandal.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker B: He's just.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker A: He resigns kind of. Red does say that, like, Andy escaping out from under his nose, like, broke him. But it's not like. There's not like any big, long running history or. I mean, there is. The Warden has been. Warden Norton is the one who was, like, throwing him in the hole and stuff.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker B: Over.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker A: I think it was Warden Norton was throwing him in the hole and stuff. Sorry. Norton was still cooking all the books and everything. They were still doing all of that illegal stuff. It's just that Andy doesn't, like, turn him in for it because Andy, again, Andy doesn't. None of that. Again, the movie's decision to have Andy take all the money that they've been cooking and then send all that information to get Warden Norton in trouble is way better. Because in the book, Norton doesn't get in trouble. He just resigns and quits because he. He gets. He's mad that Andy was able to escape out from under him.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker B: It's the perfect revenge.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker A: It's the perfect revenge. It's way more satisfying. But it also completely falls together from everything in the book. Like, it doesn't feel completely remotely out of place. Like all of the elements of the plot in the movie are in the book. They're just like. They weren't put together in the way they are in the movie. They're all kind of disparate. And the movie went, all right. How do we put all these pieces together and combine them into a very satisfying climax? Which, again, I just think is brilliant.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker B: Something that I called very early in the movie, and I was very proud of myself because I nailed it, was that Andy was hiding the rock hammer inside of the Bible. Is that the case in the book?
• 1:03:18
  Speaker A: No, this is not in the book. And obviously it's better in the movie. We love a carved out, hollowed out book with a thing in it. And this is what you're alluding to, I assume, but that I love the setup where the Warden, they toss his cell looking for contraband and he's holding the Bible and the warden takes it from him and like, blah, blah, blah, is talking to him about it. And then after he leaves, he still has his Bible and. And Then he hands it back to him through the bars and says, salvation lies within. Yeah, it's such a great tease and setup, especially if you don't know what's coming. It's fantastic. But then I love the little detail too, later of when Andy. Because that's the book Andy swaps for the records book or whatever, puts it in the safe later. And then the warden opens it up and sees the empty, hollowed out spot for the thing. And then Andy wrote a little note that says, warden Norton, salvation lies within Andy, or whatever. It's great.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker B: So we see Red make one final speech to the parole board that's finally different from his previous ones. And we know that we don't. We already have established in the book that we don't actually see Red go up before the Pearl board. But is anything from that final speech in the book?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker A: So, yes, parts of Red's final speech are taken from the book. Specifically his opening line. Have I rebilitated? Rehabilitated myself, you ask? I don't know what that word means that is in the book, but it's like on page three in the book. And he's writing that like he's responding to us, the reader, basically. Yeah, because he's addressing this. Like everything he writes is. Again, it's in first person and he's like addressing it to the reader, basically. And he. So he says that in response to, like, us, the reader. But so I thought it made perfect sense to incorporate that into his parole hearing and making that be the thing where he kind of goes through that whole little speech and the speeches. Most of that speech is not in the book, I will say. But there are little bits and pieces, including that opening line that are pulled from the book. And so I think it's better in the movie. I like it a lot.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker B: So then Red gets out and he. He goes out into the. The real world. And does he stay in the same room that Brooks was in earlier in the movie?
• 1:05:32
  Speaker A: No. This is another good little detail. I love that he. He goes. He gets the same job Brooks did and he gets the same room because they're going through the same, like, halfway program or whatever, basically. And he repeats a lot of the same things that Brooks said as he got out, which none of that comes from the book. Brooks Hadlan's. And I'll talk about this more later, but his recounting of what happened to him after he got out of prison is literally like three sentences.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker A: And all of the stuff that we see at the end with Red is what Red describes him doing like getting the job at the grocery store as a bagger. All that sort of stuff that comes from Red's. Red. Red's recounting of what happened to him after he got out of prison. The movie just takes that and also gives it to Brooks so that. That we get these similar experiences for both of them. And I specifically love the little detail, like you said, of. Because Brooks writes on the ceiling before he hangs himself. Brooks was here. And Red ads on. So was Red, which is. It's. It's a nice little. I like, I like it. I like it all.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker B: All right, last question. Do Andy and Red reunite on a beach in Mexico?
• 1:06:45
  Speaker A: So no, but yes.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker A: It's implied that they reunite at the end of the book, but it is not explicitly shown in the book. In the book, we end as Red is about to. He's at a bar talking about. He's like, I'm gonna finish my drink and then I'm gonna get on a bus to go down to Texas to cross over into Mexico. And so he's on the road to go meet Andy down in Mexico. And it ends on basically the exact same speech. It ends on Red's I hope speech, which is. It's the. Literally the last lines in the book, which is I hope Andy is down there. Or. And it's. This is the part when he's on the bus in the movie. I find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think this is the excitement that only a free man can feel. A free man starting a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope. And that's the last line of the book.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker A: Which is like the last line of the movie. But then the movie actually shows us them reuniting on the beach. I like the book's kind of open ended ending of like leaving it a little more unsure. I think that works fine. I didn't necessarily need, you know, the moment of seeing them on the beach, but I can't lie and say that I don't like it. I like seeing them reunite and get to hug at the end because it's very emotionally cathartic. But I don't think it's necessary like this one. I don't think I would put this in better in the movie because I think it's actually maybe more Powerful to end it on Red's hope and not knowing for sure if they ever meet up again. But you know that they do. Because that's the whole point of the hope thing, like, is.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker B: And it's very literary.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker A: Yeah. It's that whole journey that Red goes on of learning to hope, which is way more explicit in the movie, which I'll talk about later. But that is a part of the book is like, Andy has always. Red talks about how he has this sort of indomitable, like, hope that other prisoners just do not have. And he assumes part of that is because he knows he's innocent. But part of it is also just the kind of person Andy is, which we're gonna talk about here in a second. But he has this kind of never ending hope. And part of it is Red kind of learning to have that same hope. Cause he has kind of resigned himself to being in prison for the rest of his life. And that he doesn't deserve anything beyond that. And that through knowing and meeting Andy, he learns to have that hope. And so ending specifically on that without seeing it, like, explicitly on the screen, I think may be a more powerful ending. But again, I'm sure that it feels to me like kind of like a studio note of like, well, we gotta see them. Yeah, we gotta see them.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker B: We gotta see them on the beach in Mexico.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, we gotta see them reunite with.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker B: The blue Pacific Ocean.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker A: And it's like, you don't have to, but I get it.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker A: All right. Those are all of Katie's questions for. Was that in the book? But I do have one thing I wanted to talk about briefly in Lost. An adaptation.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker B: Just show me the way to get out of here and I'll be on my way. Yes.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker B: And I want to get unlost as soon as possible.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker A: So I briefly want to talk about Andy Dufresne. And I wanted to see if you got this at all from the movie. I want to talk about Andy Dufresne as potentially neurodivergent representation. And I think arguably, good, nuanced neurodivergent representation, especially in light of this movie squaring off with forced gump during awards season and losing, as we mentioned in the prequel. But I wanted to see if you got that at all from the film. Because I will say that it's not something that I had ever thought about watching the movie. Now, to be fair, the last time I watched this movie was more than a decade ago where I didn't think about those kind of things. Watching. I didn't really watch movies through a critical lens at all. I just kind of watched movies and, you know, like a normal person, I guess. And so it's not something I ever really thought about. But it was. As soon as I started reading this book, it became very painfully obvious to me that I feel like Andy Dufresne has to be intentionally neurodivergent of some sort. Like, I think the. Probably, like Stephen King, while writing it, would just say maybe like, some form of Asperger's or autism or something like that. It's not. It's something that is related to his ability to, like, socially engage with people and not something that, like, affects his, like, mental faculties. Necessary. I don't know the. Again, it's not like a learning disability or anything like that. He just has. Yeah. Some. Something. Something autism spectrumy. I'm not sure what.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker B: No, I definitely got that read from watching the movie. Specifically the trial scene at the very beginning and specifically when the opposing lawyer and then also the judge are talking about the way that they perceive his behavior on the stand. Whereas to me, he read as more, like, bewildered the entire time. But they interpreted that as cold and lacking emotion.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker A: Absolutely. And that is very. That's the same note I had in the book. And that was when it jumped out to me, was during the trial scene at the beginning. Because it is very much. They talk constantly. Red recounts constantly how Andy's demeanor and the cold way, the way he responded on the stand and stuff like that, and how he would just. He was very specifically stating what he saw as the facts of the thing.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker A: And, you know, all of this sort of stuff. And they interpreted that as him, like. And because he didn't do it, he's like, just recounting what he knows and what he can remember. And he specifically, like, in the book mentions that he had been drinking. So he doesn't remember. He's, like, honest to a fault, honestly, like, is a big part of it.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker A: Where he, like, he will not lie, like, and say he remembers things that didn't happen. Like, there's, like, details about, like, the neighbor saying, oh, well, we heard you shout some. Shout something like, oh, like they overheard him and his wife having a fight before this all went down, like, the night before or something. And they heard him say, like, oh, I'll see you in hell, or something like that. And he's like, well, I don't remember saying that, but I was drunk and this was like, a year ago. So I don't. He, like, won't say that. He didn't say that. You know, he doesn't deny stuff that he doesn't remember because he's like. He's honest to a fault in that regard. And I 100% think that what we're. What we're going for is that Andy. Yeah, he has some sort of. I think he's autistic of some sort and just doesn't respond to those kind of social cues in the same way that, you know, a neural neurotypical person would. And it was also very apparent in the movie to me. And it's also why I think Tim Robbins is great at it. Like, I can't imagine some of the other actors that. That, like when we talked about in the prequel, I was trying to imagine, like, Tom Cruise doing this, like, awkward, honest to a fault, like, nerd.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker B: Like, I just can't imagine that at all.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker A: I just can't picture it. And like, Tim Robbins is perking for. And I'm not saying there are other actors who could do it, but I think Tim Robbins just nails it. And I was like, I can't imagine Tom Cruise, even Tom Hanks again. Like, do we get a Forrest Gump version of this? I don't know. Now, that's a very different thing. Forrest Gump is. It's a whole different.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker A: Type of thing going on there. Point being, I just thought it was like this movie and this book do a very, like, nuanced. And it's never explicitly stated. Like, the book never says Andy was autistic. Andy was, you know, had whatever. Or whatever the term they would use in 1982 when he wrote this or whatever. There's none of that. They never say anything like that. But it was so obvious to me that Andy is autistic and doesn't understand in the trial, like, why people are not reacting to his answers the way he thinks they should be.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker A: Anyways, that was all I had. I just wanted to bring that up briefly because there wasn't, like, a better place to talk about it. It's another thing that I think the movie nails. Like I said, I think the movie does capture that. That element of Andy's character very well. But I just wanted to briefly talk about that before we get to all the stuff that I thought was better in the book. You like to read? Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read?
• 1:15:31
  Speaker B: Everything.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker A: So some of the stuff that I haven't better in the book is maybe not better in the book. It's just other details that I thought were interesting that the Movie leaves out. Some of them are things that I think were better, but some of them are just interesting. One of the things I mentioned earlier is that in the movie, we do not know why Red is in prison. Yes, in the book we do. He recounts his crime. At the beginning of the book, he murdered his wife for insurance money. But the way he went about doing this was. And he was, like, 18 or 19. He was very young, but he. He sabotaged her car. Like, he. He basically. He put out. He got an insurance policy on her, and then he, like, cut the brakes in the car.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker A: So she would get in an accident or whatever. But then he gets. He ends up getting a ton of more time added onto his sentence. Because what happens that he wasn't anticipating is that his wife picks up the neighbor and the neighbor's young baby, like, and they are also in the car when this happens. And so all three of them die. So he gets three life sentences for killing all three of them. And I was like, I do not remember the movie recounting that. It's maybe a nitpick I have with the movie that it doesn't. That it smooths over some of those character flaws in some of our main characters, like Red specifically Red, I guess, because there's not really anybody else. Because Andy is just innocent, and we know he's innocent.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker A: With Red specifically, we like Red a lot by the end of the book, and we want him to get out of prison, and we think he deserves it. I think the movie Cowards out a little bit by not going, oh, the reason he's in prison is for. I mean, it's already bad enough that he murdered his wife, but he also.
• 1:17:13
  Speaker B: I mean, the reason he's in prison is, like, almost the same thing that Andy didn't do.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker A: Yes, essentially. Yeah. And they. Again, the book even adds on, like, an extra layer, like, we needed it. Of, like. Well, he also, like, it would have been fine. It wouldn't be that bad if he just murdered his wife for insurance money. It's like, okay at it. But also, he murdered this innocent woman and her child or whatever. It's like, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily need that. But it does add this extra layer that I think, knowing what we know, I think we can assume in the movie that Red killed somebody. I think he says something along those lines at some point, but we don't know who. We don't know why. We don't know any of the details. And I think the movie is happy to let you assume that, like, During a robbery, he shot a guy, like a cop or something. You know, something that we can all be like, all right, whatever. 40 years later, let him out. Intentionally murdering your wife. And then on top of that, accidentally murdering the neighbor and the kid. I think is a deliberate choice the book makes to have us really reevaluate our feelings on prisoners and rehabilitation. And what that means is because we know he did this horrible thing. But at the end of the book, we're still like, yeah, this guy doesn't need to be in prison anymore. Like, we grow to like him over the course of the book and we realize that he is not a threat to anybody and he doesn't need to be in prison. Prison. I think the movie going. We're just not going to talk about what he did. And when he gets out at the end, you're like, yay. I think cheapens the message, honestly, quite a bit.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker B: I could definitely see that.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker A: I think it's my biggest criticism of the movie as a whole upon this rewatch. And I have some of this in my final verdict, and I'll get to it then. But I think my biggest criticism of the movie overall this time is that it has some stuff that it's saying, but it's not like. I don't think it's like a. An incredibly profound movie necessarily. Like, I don't think it's saying anything super deep or interesting. I think the stuff it's saying is fairly compelling about, like, rehabilitation and what that means and prisoners and having us reevaluate prisoners and their humanity and all this sort of stuff. But I think it. By pulling some of the punches of, like, what these people are in for cheapens that it makes it easier for us to make that journey and root for Red because we don't know why he's in prison to begin with. This is a thing that's not really better in the book. I just thought it was interesting. Red recounts that at one point he got a bunch of marble slabs for a guy who he specifically said was a pedophile because. Or. And it's mentioned that this guy, he. He's talking about it in the context of, like, the types of people that are in prison and, like, the weird things. Hobbies, not the weird hobbies people have. I would have to go find the exact context. It's an interesting conversation. Or the interesting reason that he brings up this guy, but he brings up this guy that he. Who is a pedophile, that he got all these marble for, who was like an artist who carved The. He carved this series of statues called the Three Lives of Jesus or something like that. It's like, Jesus is a baby, Jesus is a young man, and then Jesus is, like, crucified, maybe on the cross or whatever. And that those three statues that this pedophile carved were bought by the governor or, like, in his governor's mansion or whatever. It's just an interesting little, like, world building. World building sounds weird for this kind of story, but I thought it was interesting. I mentioned the line earlier where Red says that there have been 10 men that he believed were innocent and Andy was one of them. I like that line a lot in the book. This is one of the things that I thought was great. This is an exchange in the book from the trial scene that does not make it into the movie. One of the other ones makes it into the movie. That is great. But this scene from this exchange between Andy and the lawyer, the prosecuting lawyer in the book is fantastic. The lawyer says, would it bother you over much, Mr. Dufresne, if I told you? Because the setup for this is that Andy said he was contemplating suicide that night when he was sitting outside the house with the gun. He wasn't thinking about murdering them. He was thinking about killing himself. And the lawyer responds to that by saying, would it bother you over much, Mr. Dufresne, if I told you that you do not seem to be, to me to be the suicidal type? And Andy responds by saying, no, but you don't impress me as being terribly sensitive. And I doubt very much that if I were feeling suicidal that I would take my problem to you got him. Which is a really good comeback I thought was very funny. Did you ever wonder how Andy was able to pay Red for the rock hammer? Because he says he has to pay him $10 for the rockhammer. Did it even cross your mind of, like, how does Andy have money?
• 1:22:08
  Speaker B: I didn't really wonder over much about it. I just assumed that there was, like, a bartering system and maybe Andy, like, cigarettes or something.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker A: That is a thing they do. But no, he paid him in cash. The book I say implies, basically explicitly states that Andy smuggled $500 into prison in his ass.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker A: Red is like, there are ways to get things.
• 1:22:31
  Speaker B: Check for that.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker A: He says there are ways to get things into prison. And he goes. And depending on who's searching you, if you put it up there far enough, they won't find it. And so he basically says that andy, yeah, smuggled $500 in cash into prison up his butt. So, all right, there you go another little detail related to the sisters. When Red is kind of recounting Andy being assaulted by the sisters for the first time, or knowing that it happened because he sees Andy with bruises in the yard the next day or whatever. He says he recounts in his. In his. In the book that he wishes that he weren't speaking from experience when he said he knew what it was like. So Red implies that he had also been raped by the sisters at some point in his previous. Earlier on in his time in Shawshank. And this line specifically from the book that I thought was really. It doesn't make it into the movie, Red says, about recovering from those assaults when they happen. He says, I can't remember the lead up to this, but he says basically, most of the time there was no physical harm done. But rape is rape, and eventually you have to look yourself in the mirror and decide what to make of yourself. Just kind of. He talks about, like, coming to terms with that. Another line that's in the book that I really like that doesn't make it into the movie is that when Red is kind of talking about Andy being in solitary confinement, he remarks about it. I don't think solitary was the hardship for Andy that it was for some men. He got along with himself. Which, again, I think kind of goes back to that idea of maybe him being a little neurodivergent and the idea of, like, it's not quite the same issue for him to be in solitary confinement because he's perfectly content to just kind of sit in his own mind and entertain himself. And on top of that, he's an innocent man. He doesn't have, like, this guilt that's like, wracking him in the same way. So it's maybe not quite as torturous. The movie leaves this out, and I don't know why they swap it for the. Now that I think about it, they swap it for the harmonica. It's fine. But in the book, Andy gifts Red some of the quartz that he has been shaping and polishing. He carves into these little. He says they look like cufflinks. They're just little rocks. But he spent all this time carving them and polishing them, and he gives them to Andy as a gift, which I thought was nice. I mentioned that there's a moral discussion in the book that gets left out of the movie and kind of truncated. And I want to just read part of that here from the book of their discussion about the morality of what Andy is doing. Because Red does confront. Not confront him, but is like, hey, so you're like, you know, how do you morally square all these like illegal doings that you're running the books for? He says. Besides Red, he told me with the same half grin, what I'm doing in here isn't all that different from what I was doing outside. I'll hand you a pretty cynical axiom. The amount of expert financial help an individual or company needs rises in direct proportion to how many people that person or business is screwing. The people who run this place are stupid, brutal monsters for the most part. The people who run the straight world are brutal and monstrous, but they happen not to be quite as stupid because the standard of competence out there is a little higher. Not much, but a little. I don't want to tell you your business, but you make me nervous. Reds upper oh, and Andy is involved in helping the prison like run pills or he's like doing the books. The prison is like doing drug deals or whatever and Andy is helping with that. And Red responds, but the pills, I don't want to tell you your business, but they make me nervous. Reds uppers, downers, nim brutals. I don't know what those are. Nembutols, maybe. Now they've got these things called phase Fours. I won't get anything like that. Never have. No, Andy said. I don't like the pills either. Never have. But I'm not much of a one for cigarettes or booze either. But I don't push the pills, I don't bring them in and I don't sell them once they are in. Mostly it's the screws that do that, but yeah, I know there's a fine line there. What it comes down to, Red, is some people refuse to get their hands dirty at all. That's called sainthood. And the pigeons land on your shoulders and crap all over your shirt. The other extreme is to take a path in the dirt and deal any goddamn thing that will turn a dollar. Guns, switchblades, Big H, what the hell. You ever have a con come up to you and offer you a contract? I nodded. It's happened a lot of times over the years. You are after all, the man who can get it. And they figure if you can get them batteries for their transistor radios or cartons of Lucky's or lids or reefer, you can put them in touch with a guy who will use a knife. Sure you have, andy agreed. But you don't do it. Because guys like us, Red, we know there's a third choice, an alternative to staying Simon Pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It's the alternative that grown ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the Hogwallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you're doing by how well you sleep at night and what your dreams are like. So, yeah, they just kind of discuss, like, you know, the things they're doing in prison and the morality of them. I just think it's a very interesting, like, kind of conversation that doesn't make it into the movie. Red talks briefly about this one. The only cellmate that Andy had over the years is this large Native American guy that. I can't remember his name.
• 1:27:40
  Speaker B: We never see him have a cellmate in the movie.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker A: He doesn't in the movie, but he has one. Briefly has one cellmate in the, in the book. And Andy talks to that guy.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker B: Red does.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker A: Or, sorry, Red talks to that guy. And the guy's like, yeah, he's. He was fine. Like, just asked him about, like, Andy and being a cellmate. He's like, yeah, he's fine. He goes, I liked him well enough. The only issue was that his cell was always cold. There was a draft, and this is long before they know anything about, like, yeah, Red has no idea what he's doing in there, but he's like, it was always cold in his cell. I didn't like that. And I thought, that's a fun little tease. This line is about Warden Norton, that I believe, Red. This is from Red talking about Warden Norton and how religious he is. He had a Bible quote for every occasion. And whenever you meet a man like that, my best advice to you would be to grin big and cover up your balls with both hands. Which I thought was very funny. Red also briefly catalogs all some of the other famous escape attempts from Shawshank. There was one guy who they say literally was lining the fields on the, on the baseball field in the, in the prison yard and just walked out the. The front gate with the line machine and kept going during guard change and nobody noticed him. And he was able to just walk right out of the prison. In the movie, when Andy escapes, we specifically hear a big siren go off.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker A: The book explicitly states that unlike in the movies, when there's a prison break, a siren doesn't go off. So I thought it was very funny that the movie's like, yeah, well, we're a movie, so we're doing that.
• 1:29:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, we gotta have the siren.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker A: Yeah. But yeah, the movie or the book very specifically states that that doesn't happen. Which I thought was funny. There's a little detail that Red kind of figures out that Andy must have had that hole in the wall done for like eight years before he escaped. And kind of is like wondering to himself, this is before he meets up with Andy again or hopefully meets up with Andy again at the end. Yeah, he's kind of wondering like, why didn't. What. What if he had that hole there for eight years? Why? What took him so long? And he basically thinks that. He boils it down. He's like, I basically assumes that it was because of fear that one of the. Of the escape not working potentially. Because one of the things that I thought was really that the book mentions that I hadn't. That I don't think is in the movie is that he's like, you know, one thing that Andy saw some blueprints. So he knew roughly where that sewer pipe went. But what he wouldn't have known is whether or not that sewer pipe had a grate at the other end or not. And if it did, yeah, he's fucked. Probably, like, I don't think he'd be able to go back, like shimmy backward. He'd just probably be stuck there and die. I don't know. Like. And so like, that was probably a fear specifically, but also just like he speculates just the fear of leaving prison and like that change and being out. Like in the same way that like Brooks and Red himself kind of fear that they've become institutionalized and being out in the real world. And a little detail that I really liked in the book that was kind of fun is that because this is all written from Red's perspective is that we. The story kind of ends and that's the story and I'm glad I told it, even if it is a bit inconclusive. Inconclusive. And even though some of the memories the pencil prodded up made me feel a little sad and even older than I am. Thank you for listening. And Andy, if you're really down there, as I believe you are, look at the star for me just after sunset and touch. Touch the sand and wade in the water and feel free. And that seems like the end of the book. And then we get a line break. I never expected to take up this narrative again, but here I am with the dog eared, folded pages open on the desk in front of me. Here I am adding another three or four pages, writing in a Brand new tablet, a tablet I bought in a store. I just walked into a store on Portland's Congress street and bought it. So he gets out of prison, and he was not expecting to. And he like. So that story just picks up from him getting out of prison, which I thought was interesting and fun. The other thing is that Red does mention that he smuggled his journal out of prison the same way Andy smuggled his money into prison. Because he said he almost burned the. In the story. He's like, I almost burned this because when I was getting out, I didn't want them if they found it. Obviously, I wrote all this stuff about Andy and what he did and where he went and all that sort of stuff he said. But I decided not to burn it. He says, instead, I changed the name of the town, Zayhuataneo, to a different town so they wouldn't be able to. At least wouldn't be able to, like, immediately find him. And then also he hit it up his butt so they could. And it worked, apparently. And then the last thing I have here. And this isn't really a better in the book, it's just another one of those weird little details that I thought was interesting. Red mentions as he's. He gets the job in the grocery store as a bagger. And he mentions that he has not been around women, a single woman, in, like, 40 years. And so he is constantly aroused working in this grocery store, just at the sight of women, just generally shopping. Like, it's just being around women generally. He's like, I'm constantly aroused, and it's miserable. And he says it makes him feel like he feels weird about it. He's like, I don't like it. I don't. I don't like that. He says it makes him feel like a weird pervert. But he's like, I. I don't know. I just thought it was an interesting little detail because I can't imagine something, you know, it's just one of those weird things you never think about. Like, the idea of, like, I don't know, if you're attracted to women, then you're literally not around. Women haven't seen a human woman for 40 years. Like, it's just a weird thing. I don't know. It's very fascinating. All right. That was all I had for better in the book. It's time now to talk about all the stuff I thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the Movies. The line, put your trust in the Lord, your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank from the warden. That line's not in the book, but I love it. The intake scene generally and, like, the delousing and stuff. I think it just does a better job showcasing some of the dehumanization of the prison that the book doesn't really get into any of that. The Fresh Fish game. But specifically the element of the Fresh Fish Game that I think is really compelling in the movie is. I think it's Haywood or Haygood or whatever. The. The one friend of Red. Like, the main friend.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, him.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker A: He's, like, taunting the one guy that he keeps calling fat ass that he bet on breaking. And he keeps taunting him. But then as soon as the guy breaks and the guards come over and start, like, threatening him, that guy immediately switches and, like, dude, shut up. Like, he immediately starts pleading for the prisoner to, like, shut up and be quiet.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker A: Which I thought did a really good job of showcasing the way prison fucks with people and makes them kind of weird and cruel, but also that he still has his humanity. He doesn't really want this guy. You know, like, he's mocking this guy and being an asshole to him, but he doesn't want him to get the shit beat out of him by the guard. Like, I don't know. I thought that was really compelling, the line. And you had this. And I moved this up from odds and ends, but this line is not in the book where Andy comes up to Red and says, red, why did they call you that? And. And Red pauses for a second and goes, maybe it's because I'm Irish. Which I thought was funny, because in the book, he is Irish.
• 1:34:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. And that was why I assumed that was from the book. But I liked that the movie included it because I felt like the specific delivery still really worked for the character.
• 1:35:07
  Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. It's very funny in the way that Red is funny. And, yeah, I think it works great. I liked in the movie that we get to see kind of behind the scenes of how Red gets his stuff in through the laundry delivery. We don't know how he acquires the items, but we see in the movie one of the laundry workers, the guy who delivers the dirty laundry or whatever, brings the items, puts them in special things. We just see the whole process, which I thought was kind of cool. I like the little detail that when they're trying to get the. They announced that they're gonna tar the roof and that a bunch of prisoners want to go do that because they get to work outside instead of in the laundry or whatever. And they get to work outside in spring. And I like Red's little throwaway line about, wouldn't you know it, me and some of the guys I know were among the names called, implying that he paid off the guards to get that done. That's not in the book. And I like that. I thought that was fun. I like this exchange, which is. I couldn't find it in the book. And I did. I was able to. I got a PDF of this and I was searching for a lot of these specific things, but when Andy asks Red, what are you in for? Red says, murder, same as you. Oh, so he does say, we do know he's in for murder.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, but I wasn't sure if I should interpret that as the truth or not. Right.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker A: He says, murder, same as you. And Andy replies, innocent. And Red says, only guilty man in Shawshank, which is in line with his character in the book. He does not, like, say he's innocent in the book. He fully admits his guilt, pretty much. I mentioned this earlier, but the entire Brooks Hadlan subplot is just way sadder in the movie. The line where he's thinking about J and hoping he's making friends made me almost bawl again. Like, it's so sad. And then carving his name in the wall and hanging himself. It's in the book. It's still quite sad. But in the book, he. He ends up in an, they say, an indigent old folks home, and then he just dies there. Like. Yeah, basically less than a year after he gets out, he just ends up in this old folks home basically for. Yeah, not like a nice old folks home, just like a shitty old folks home. And dies there alone. Which is also sad, but I think the movie's dramatized version of that is a little more compelling. I also like his little line where he's talking about how much he hates his manager and he's talking about potentially committing a crime to go back to prison. And he's like, I could get a gun and rob the grocery store I work at and I could even shoot the manager while I was at it. Kind of like a bonus because the manager's an asshole to him. I thought it was really fun that there's one of the guards when Andy gets all the stuff for the library. The one guard is like, genuinely like. Like, good for you, Andy. Like, yeah, not all of the guards are complete assholes like most of them are. But yeah, that guy was like, good for you, Andy. That actor. I think his name's Don McManus. I. I was like, I recognize this guy's name. He was just. He's in. He was in the Maze Runner as like, a. A very bit part. I think he's one of the. Like, I think at the end, like, when some of the people burst in, he's like one of those guys or. Anyways, I thought that that was funny. Andy playing the opera music over the intercom so all the prisoners can hear it. That does. Not at all. Not even a little bit. I really like that setting up. So this is an element from the book, the idea that Andy kind of has this eternal hope and optimism and that Red has to kind of learn that from him that is present in the book. I just think the movie dials it up and makes it way more obvious that that's what's going on. Specifically by having, like, Andy talking about, like, after the music scene. He's talking about, like, music is hope or whatever. And Red says, hope is a dangerous thing. There's no exchange like that in the book where we have read kind of explicit. At least not that I could find or remember where Red explicitly, like Poo Poo's hope or whatever.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker A: And then gets to the end where he's like, you know, the last line is literally, I hope. I just think the movie gets a more concrete arc for that that I think works really well. I like the detail in the movie that Andy works with one of Red's competitors to get him a gift. And it's that harmonica that Red blows in one time and then we never see again. Like I said, I think that's actually kind of a stand in for the rocks that he gives them. But he's like, I had to work with one of your competitors, which I thought was funny. I like that we see the library after it gets all made up and better. They put up a Brooks Hadlan Memorial Library sign, which was not. That's not a detail in the book. I like the safe being behind that. The safe where the warden stores all of his illegal money dealings is behind the. His judgment cometh in that right soon embroidery that his wife made. Again, that is mentioned in the book as being on the wall. But there's no mention of a safe being behind it or anything like that. So I thought that was a good little addition. Tommy doing his high school equivalents under Andy is in the book. He does that. But I think the movie just amplifies their relationship in a way that's really compelling. Like really. They really add to the. Like in the book it's just mentioned that Tommy or that Andy helped Tommy like take his tests or whatever and like helped him study. But adding in the drama of like Tommy thinking he, like, this sucks, I failed, blah, blah, blah. And then turns out he passed. But then he gets killed. Like I just. The movie just amplifies that drama all quite a bit, which I think really works. And the detail along with that of the guard telling Andy that Tommy passed his exams while he's in the hole. I thought it was just like, you know, even in that he's like stuck in the hole and miserable. There's that guard's like, he passed. I really like the scene in the movie where Andy kind of comes to terms with the fact that he was not a great husband. And like, he's like, I didn't kill my wife, but like she cheated on me because I was not a good husband. Which there's no sort of of anything like that in the book of him thinking about that at all. I thought that was really interesting and compelling. And like I, I enjoyed. I don't know if this was an intentional joke or not or if I was just reading it. I feel like it had to be. But right before, like during that scene where they're. It's. They're sitting and Andy's talking about Zayuataneo and wanting to go down to Mexico, Red says to him, these are just shitty pipe dreams.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker A: And I don't know if that's an intentional like call forward joke to him crawling through a pipe full of shit in the next scene, but it has to be, it feels like, which I thought was funny. In the book, Red says the line get busy living or get busy dying at the end. But he's the only person that says it. It's the only time we hear it. I really like Andy being the first one to say get busy living or get busy dying during that scene where Red is like worried that he might kill himself. I think it's ominous enough that it leaves us wondering what's gonna happen with Andy. But I also like making it a thing that Red is quoting from Andy at the end. So he. When he says, you know, get busy lizard living or get busy dying, he's. He's quoting his friend, which I thought was. Was fun. The mystery of what's buried under the rock wall in the movie is fun because he doesn't tell Red what's under there. He just says like, look for this rock.
• 1:42:08
  Speaker B: And yeah, look underneath it or whatever.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker A: In the. In the movie or in the book. He tells him, like, well, that's where I put my safety deposit key. And I think he even. I kind of have to go back and forth. I think he even tells him, I'll leave a note for you there or something when you get out of prison. Like, it's more explicit, like, what he's gonna find when he gets there. I'm pretty sure the line where after the warden escapes or finds out that Andy escaped, this line is. It's one of those that is just buried in my head for whatever, where the warden goes where they're like, well, he was there last night and now he's gone. He's like, lord, it's a miracle. Man up and vanished like a fart in the wind. The man up and vanished like a fart in the wind. It's one of those things that is just in my head constantly for whatever reason. I don't know. I love that line, though. It's not in the book. We talked about the shoes earlier, but I love Red's line. When we see Andy walking. Like, we get the reveal of Andy walking back to his prison cell, and the camera tilts down and you see his shiny, polished black shoes. And Red says in the voiceover, honestly, I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes? Which I thought was fun. The reveal of what the rope is for. Because that's not in the book at all. Like, we find out that Andy got some rope from Haywood or whatever. Hey, whatever his name is. And they're all like, jesus Christ, man. He's gonna kill himself with that rope. But the reveal, we don't know what he's using it for. And then we see him crawl out of the hole.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker A: And as soon as he gets out and he drops down, the rope is tied to his ankle and it's a bag full of, like, his stuff in a waterproof bag. And I just love the reveal of that. You're like, oh, that's what the rope's for. It's great. And then my last note for better in the movie is this line is inspired by the line in the book, but it is way better in the movie. I like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet was to wonder how the hell Andy Dufresne ever got the best of him. The line in the book is, I like to think one of the last things that the warden wondered before he quit or whatever, was how the Hell, did Andy Dufresne ever get the best of him? But there's.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker B: That's way better.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker A: I like to think the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet was the one is really, really good.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker B: All right.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker A: That was everything I had for better in the movie. Let's go ahead and talk about everything the movie nailed as I expected. Practically perfect in every way. So obviously the answer to this is everything. As I've said already, it's one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever seen. But these are handful of other things that I hadn't mentioned so far. The. The line in the trial where the lawyer is like, well, isn't that convenient that we never found your gun? And Andy's like, well, I don't think it's very convenient because I didn't murder them. So, like, he. Yeah, that. Like, well, it's not very convenient for me. Like, in response to them being like, isn't it convenient that straight out of the book, they make a big point of how the. The gun only has six rounds. And so there was. They. They were shot eight times, so he had to reload. And that's like part of the way they. They paint him as this ruthless murderer is that he stopped to reload to shoot them. More. The details, the fact that in the trial, like, every single detail, like, is comically against Andy. He has. He got a gun, he bought a gun or the day before the murders happened, he told. Supposedly told the bartender he was going to the house. When they get to the house, they find his fingerprint on like a whiskey bottle outside the house, including a bunch of cigarettes that he smoked outside the house. They know his car was there. And I think they might even find some of the bullet casings like they do in the movie. So it's like literally just the worst part. You're like, how could he not like, you know, I don't even blame the. The jury necessarily for, like, it is ridiculous. Like, it's literally just his word. Like, no, I then left and drove home and didn't murder them. That you're like, okay, sure. All right, man. Yeah, yeah. The line which is how the. Basically how the book opens, which is also one of the first lines in the movie. There must be a con like me in every prison in America. I'm the guy who can get it for you. What Red says. The part where Red gets the joke, where Andy tells him the joke. Like, he's like, oh, are you going to use that rock hammer to tunnel under the wall? And Andy's like, no, once you see the hammer, you'll know. And Red said, I got the joke. It would take a man about 600 years to tunnel under the wall with one of these. Which then gets a callback later where he's like, that line is also in the movie where he's like, I said it would take a man 600 years to tunnel under a wall with this rock hammer. It took Andy Dufresne 19 or something like that. The line that we get in the movie, I wish I could tell you Andy fought that. This is about the sisters. I wish I could tell you Andy fought the good fight and the sisters let him be. But prison is no fairy tale. That comes from the book. At one point, when Andy is trying to petition the warden to write so that he could. To let him write letters to, like, the governor or whatever, for funds, the warden says, there's only three ways they send more money to prisons. More walls, more bars, or more guards, and basically, like, good luck, but they're not gonna give you any money. Norton's Inside out program where he sells prison slave labor. Essentially, the line specifically in the movie where Red says, sometimes at night in prison, time can draw out, like, a blade, which is a very evocative line that comes from the book. It's very funny, though. In the movie, that line is said on that final night when he's worried that Andy is going to kill himself in his cell. He's like, you know, sometimes time can draw out, like, a blade. In the book, that line is in reference to the fact that a bunch of dudes buy their girl, like, smuggle their girlfriend's underwear into prison and use it to jerk off with. He's like, you know, in those long nights where time can draw out, like, a blade, the prisoners, like. He basically alludes to them, like, jerking off with their girlfriend's underwear, which I just. The movie elevates that, you know, a little bit. Yeah, because it's a very. It's a very evocative, you know, way to talk about the passage of time in that instance. And I think applying it to something like worrying about your best friend killing himself is way more compelling than in the book's version. The passage in the movie where Red talks about how Andy was into geology and that geology is just a study of pressure and time. That all comes from the book, Red. In the movie, we see Andy realizing that he can tunnel through the wall when he goes to carve his name.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker B: In the wall, and it, like, crumbles out.
• 1:48:48
  Speaker A: We don't see that in the book. But Read speculates that he's like, I can imagine one night Andy using that rock hammer to carve his initials in the wall and that wall crumbling to pieces right in front of him or something like that. And so the movie just shows us that, basically. And also him showing Andy taking the wall out into the yard, one pocket full at a time, and dropping it down his pants leg is also in the book. And then Andy crawled to freedom through 500 yards of shit smelling foulness that I can't even imagine. Or maybe I just don't want to. Lines from the book. Also, Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Great line, also from the book, Red always asking his manager for a bathroom break when he gets a job at the thing. Although in the book it's not that he asked for a bathroom break, it's that he literally can only pee at 25 minutes past the hour because that's when his allotted bathroom break time was or something in prison. So that similar idea. But yeah. And then my final note for movie. Nailed it, is Andy's letter and everything about the rock wall in Buxton, but specifically the letter that Andy writes to Red is word for word identical. Basically, the whole ending.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:49:58
  Speaker A: Again, like, 99% of this book is identical. There's just a handful of little things here and there. All right. We have a handful of odds and ends before we get to the final verdict.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker B: Something that I thought was really striking right off the bat was when the movie opened and we see Andy sitting in his car. I thought he was dead at first.
• 1:50:29
  Speaker A: Oh, he does kind of look that. Yeah.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker B: Because I didn't, like, I didn't really know. I didn't really know anything about this movie. Go again. Other than that it was set in a prison. And, like, when we first pull in on him, he's sitting, like, super still and you can just kind of barely see his red necktie. And it kind of looks like blood. I thought it was interesting.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker A: Yeah. One of the things I had forgotten was how much I like the score. It has this very ominous, deep string main theme that's both hopeful but also, like, melancholy. I think it's like a beautifully haunting, perfect kind of score that again rides that line between capturing the horror of prison, but also is able to immediately translate or transition into hopeful, swelling stuff I think is really compelling. And I think the main first time we really hear that score in full is during this other note I had, which is there's a really cool helicopter shot. It's when Andy and them are arriving, and we get this big, swinging helicopter shot that goes around the prison yard, and you see the whole prison layout and all the inmates rushing to the gate as the bus arrives. I just thought that was a really cool shot.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker B: This movie also had some really nice, like, very subtle and realistic age makeup.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker B: In it. Like, subtle and realistic enough that I was actually not sure which direction it was going in.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker A: Like, if they were making them younger.
• 1:52:01
  Speaker B: If they were making them look younger or older.
• 1:52:03
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think they're making them look older. Specifically, Andy. There's a few, like, they put like, some little, like, age.
• 1:52:09
  Speaker B: He gets some little crow's feet, and they do some like, really nice. Nice, subtle, like, gray and white in their hair.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, they do a very good job of. Of keeping it super subtle, but showing that passage of time that way as well. And the last note I had is. I don't know. Go back and watch the scene with headphones on, Katie. The scene where Red gets to the wall and is digging through the rocks to find the volcanic rock and then pulls the, like, little cigar box or whatever up and brushes the dirt off has always, like, hit me in a real ASMR way. Like, specifically the sounds the rocks make.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker B: As he's moving, like, clinking on each other.
• 1:52:51
  Speaker A: So sad. I don't know what it is, but the way those rocks are sound and then the dirt, it's something about that specific scene always makes me want to go dig through a rock pile and, like, find an old, dusty box. It's very similar, actually, a little bit to the scene I think I talked about in Jungle Book where they get the. The. The board game out of, like, the dirt and the sand all runs off. It's kind of similar. Sorry, not Jumanji. Jumanji, yeah. Anyways, it's kind of similar to that. But that scene, I. If you're. If you think I'm crazy, go watch that scene with, like, headphones on. It's specifically just like, the 30 seconds where he gets there and he looks down and he moves the rocks and then gets the box out. Whoever did the sound design on that. Kudos. It's very good. Before we get to the final verge, we want to remind you you can do us a favor by heading over to Facebook, Instagram, threads, Goodreads, Blue sky, any of those places interact with us. We'd love to hear what you have to say about the Shawshank Redemption. You can also help us out by hanging over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Drop us a five star rating, write us a nice little review that helps our show get out to more people. If you would like to support us monetarily, you can do that@patreon.com thisfilmislit get access to to bonus content, priority recommendations, all that fun stuff. You can find out all the details of that over on Patreon. Katie it's time for the Final verdict.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker B: Sentence passed, Verdict after. That's stupid.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker A: This might be one of the easiest and shortest final verdicts I've had to write. This is one of the most faithful adaptations I've ever read. So many scenes are transcribed nearly verbatim onto the script. Scream. There are a handful of changes. Tommy being killed, combining several different wardens into one main villain and said villain getting bested by Andy and his dramatic departure from the film. But all of those changes feel completely in line with the spirit of the book and just dial up the stakes to 11. The book is really good. I really enjoyed reading it, but because it was so similar to the movie, I had a really hard time divorcing it from the film as I read read. I had seen this movie dozens of times before. I read this book for the first time and my mind just couldn't help but conjure up the corresponding scenes from the film. So I'm not really sure that the book ever had a fair shot. There are a few small details that I really enjoyed that the the movie left out, but when 95% of the book is just there on the screen, it's kind of hard for me to complain. But what really sets the film above the book for me are the performances. If the book is really about anything, it's about humanizing prisoners and celebrating the indomitability of the human spirit. Both of those main themes benefit greatly from an adaptation to film. All of the prisoners bring a vulnerability and relatability to their characters that really help us connect with them. I'm not sure how successful either the book or the movie are at truly moving the needle on how the American populace views prisoners. I'm routinely horrified by the way most Americans seem to relish the punitive retribution that we enact on the incarcerated, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear some of the cruelest among us cite this movie as like one of their favorite movies without a hint of irony. But it does at least try to get people to rethink the way that we view prisoners. And there are issues with the movie that I alluded to earlier with the way it sands off some of the warts of like red and and makes us identifying with him a little bit easier. But all of that to say it's a really good movie. I'm actually not convinced it's a masterpiece and I definitely don't think it's the best movie ever made according to IMDb's, you know, rating or whatever to general audiences. But it is a damn fine movie adapted from a damn fine book. And while it's damn near a draw, I'm going to give this one to the film. Katie, what's next?
• 1:56:42
  Speaker B: Up next, we are continuing with our 2025 Summer Series and we're going to be talking about the Maze Runner, the Scorch Trials book by James Dashner and 2015 film.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker A: Yep. Summer series part two.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker B: So excited.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker A: So excited. We'll just leave it at that for now. Come back in two weeks time. We're talking about the Scorch Trials. In one week's time we'll be be previewing the Scorch Trials and seeing what you all had to say about the Shawshank Redemption. I also remind me, I want to get your feelings on the movie when we do the prequel because we never, I never like your over. We don't, I don't want to do it right now. But just for listeners, if they're still here, we'll get your overall feelings like generally how you felt about it because I am curious about that. We never really talked.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker B: Yeah, we didn't really talk about it.
• 1:57:31
  Speaker A: So we'll talk about that on the next prequel episode. So look out for that. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals and everybody else keep reading books, keep watching movies and keep being awesome.