Scene 253. It was my editor Richard's wonderful inspiration not to reveal Andy's
face in this scene, but to hold off showing him until 254.

Scene 255. For the sake of pace, I eliminated the second half of this scene during
editing (the newspaperman jumping up to summon his reporters). Since that also elim-
inated the door with the words PORTLAND DAILY BUGLE on the glass, I com-
pensated by adding an offscreen woman's voice answering a telephone with: "Good
morning, Portland Dai]y Bugle." (This tighter version also improved the joke of sud-
denly cutting to Warden Norton's newspaper hitting the desk in the very next scene.)

Scene 256. While blocking this scene for filming, Roger Deakins made the bril-
liant suggestion of simply having the newspaper slap down into frame, thereby elim-
inating all the "shoe leather" of Norton entering the office and going to the desk.

Scene 264. During filming, I decided to simplify our shooting day by eliminat-
ing the D.A. and state troopers from this scene.

It became apparent early in pre-production that the physical layout of this room
(placement of the desk versus that of the safe) would make it impossible for Norton's
"blood and brains" to spatter on the sampler as written (which is just as well; this
Scorsese-like effect would have clashed terribly with the more oblique approach I
found myself using in depicting the violence throughout the rest of the film). Since
the desk would be right in front of the windows, I decided instead to have a pane
of glass blow out behind him. (Even though I toned down Norton's suicide sub-
stantially from what was written in the script, I was surprised when a few people in
our test audience complained about this scene being too "graphic." Again, it just goes
to show how compelling sound effects can be. If you examine it closely, you won't
actually see anything graphic or gory when Norton shoots himself -- no squibs were
used on the actor, no gun was ever fired, no blood was sprayed all over the room.
What you do see is an actor press a gun under his chin, a quick image of a window
shattering, and a closeup of a gun hitting the floor. Once you add the sound effects
of a gunshot and glass breaking, you've convinced some folks in the audience they
actually saw something that they didn't.)

Scene 267. This, along with Scenes 298 R 299 (Andy and Red reunite on the
beach at the end of the movie), was shot on our final day of principal photogra-
phy on Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands (doubling for Mexico). I love this
scene -- the aerial shot has a wonderful, sweeping sense of freedom -- but it also con-
tains the worst continuity error in the movie. Though nobody's ever mentioned
noticing it, the fact is we have Andy driving down to Mexico in 1966 behind the
wheel of a Pontiac GTO circa 1969. Our intrepid and resourceful transportation
coordinator, David Marder, had arranged for a 1965 convertible Mustang to be
shipped over from Miami for the shoot, but the owner of that car balked at the last
moment. With the crew's arrival imminent, David scrambled to find a suitable
replacement there on the island. What he found was the '69 GTO. (Beautiful car,
even if it is a few years off.)

Scene 268. This illustrates the advantage of having really terrific actors. The story
that Heywood is telling, plus all the reactions around the table, was completely unre-
hearsed and improvised. Bill Sadler, the superb actor who plays Heywood, just dove
right in and worked that mess hall table like a conductor works an orchestra. The
other actors gave right back, providing a lovely texture of camaraderie. For this rea-
son, it's one of my favorite scenes in the movie.

Scene 269. The saddest thing we discovered at the old Ohio State Reformatory
was the small pauper's graveyard that lay just outside the walls. This was the burial
ground for those convicts who died in prison but didn't have families to claim their
bodies. Sadder still, the headstones did not bear the name of the deceased, only his
number. (As Bill Sadler observed, they didn't give a guy his identity back even after
he died.) As evocative a detail as this graveyard was, I spent most of the shoot try-
ing to figure out a way to work it into the movie. This scene gave me the perfect
opportunity -- given the context and Red's frame of mind, I think it strikes a
haunting chord of melancholy and loss.

Scenes 270 through 273. Another sequence we didn't have time to shoot. Of all
the scenes that fell victim to the schedule, this is the one I regret most. No, it's not
vital to the narrative, and I suppose the movie doesn't really suffer from its lack. But,
speaking as a writer, I thought it was my best work in the script (it was certainly the
riskiest, and sometimes the riskiest stuff winds up being the most interesting). If I
could have captured on film what I put down on the page...well, frankly, it might
not have worked at all. Then again, it might have been sublime. We'll never know.

Scene 277. Dropped during editing for reasons of length.

Scene 278. An expendable scene that was never shot.

Scene 281. The Beatles cue was dropped (see 282 through 286 for explanation).

Scenes 282 through 286. The practice of "test-screening" generally gets a bad rap
from filmmakers (and many movie buffs), but here's a great argument in favor of
it. Yes, it is the most nerve-wracking night of your life. You're showing the very
"work print" that your editor has dragged through the Steenbeck a zillion times;
it's got scratches galore, color mismatches, temporary sound with a monaural mix,
music borrowed from other soundtracks, tape splices jumping through the projec-
tor gate every time you cut to another shot -- basically, everything you don't want
an audience to see. Still, though you suffer through every second of it, the truth is
you don't know how a film's going to play until you're trapped in a theater sur-
rounded by real live moviegoers reacting to every moment of the film as it occurs
on the screen before them. An audience, when observed closely, becomes an
organic creature -- I swear, you can feel them breathing, sense their mood, taste their
reactions. It lets you see your own movie with new eyes. More to the point, it makes
you painfully aware if something isn't working...
...which brings us to 282 through 286. It was an amazing experience to sit
through these scenes with a live audience. They were good scenes, don't get me
wrong. They played beautifully in and of themselves (especially 282, with Red
checking out the women; hell, the audience loved that scene). But here's the odd
contradiction: though the audience enjoyed what they were seeing scene by scene,
the sequence itself made them terribly impatient. Why? Because it spent three minutes
telling them something they already knew. They knew Red was institutionalized; they
knew he wouldn't make it on the outside. And why shouldn't they? Not only was
all that subtext and groundwork laid earlier in the movie with Brooks Hatlen (James
Whitmore), but Red himself stated it outright in 205. So by the time Morgan
Freeman entered the same hotel room in 279 and glanced up to see "Brooks Was
Here" carved into the ceiling beam, the audience understood. They believed. And
having believed, they now wanted to see Red go to that tree with the long rock
wall. They wanted to know how the movie would end.
It shows that moviegoers can sometimes be far more intuitive than a filmmaker
thinks. Sometimes they get three steps ahead, so you have to catch up. Though the
scenes themselves were fine, eliminating 282 through 286 brought the entire end
of the movie into focus. It was like extracting an irritating burr from the audience's
side. (In this sense, it was not unlike losing 222 through 227, where the young guard
is lowered down the shaft after Andy has escaped.)

Scenes 287 & 288. Since the object of Red's upcoming quest would be a hay-
field "with a big oak at the north end," I always knew I wanted him searching the
countryside with a compass in his hand. It occurred to me during filming that
adding this compass to the pawnshop window might be a nice detail, providing a
visual and thematic counterpoint to the guns on display. Symbolically speaking (not
to get too artsy-fartsy about it), I thought "guns versus compass" might reflect l4ed's
torn state of mind as he teeters between despair and hope. In 288, when we see
him in his hotel room with the compass in his hand, we know he's leaning (tem-
porarily at least) toward hope.

Scene 292. I decided while filming to shoot a version where the name "Red" isn't
written on the envelope. I'm glad I did; it worked out much better delaying for even
those few extra seconds the revelation that the "mystery object" is actually a mes-
sage from Andy.
Also, during his examination of the mystery object, Red glances around on two
separate occasions as if fearful of being observed. This funny and poignant bit of
"convict's paranoia" was an inspired and insightful ad-lib by Morgan Freeman.

Scene "292A". I've put this scene number in quotes, because it doesn't actually exist
in the script you've read (though it appears as a handwritten addition to the script
supervisor's continuity draft). The scene I'm referring to occurs in the film between
292 and 293, and it consists of a lyrical shot of Morgan Freeman crossing a sun-dap-
pled field after having read Andy's letter. The reason I single it out is that -- along with
the aerial view of the prison in Scene 10 -- it seems to be everybody's favorite shot in
the movie. What makes it unique, what elevates it from nice to breathtaking, is the
fact that countless grasshoppers are bursting from the alfalfa stalks all around Red, tak-
ing to the air with wings that literally glow in the late afternoon sun.
It's a hell of a shot, my personal favorite, but it certainly wasn't anything we planned.
(Can you picture trying to train a bunch of grasshoppers?) We'd chosen that location
months earlier, which gave my genius production designer (yes, Terry Marsh) and his
stalwart crew plenty of time to ready the site for filming. A deal was struck with the
farmer who owned the land, the existing alfalfa was harvested, and Terry's do-or-die
gang of art department gonzos proceeded to build that damn wall stone by stone, lay-
ing every inch of it in by hand. (You didn't think we just found that wall, did you? What
God or the universe does not provide, the art department must.) Stephen King
described the wall as "right out of a Robert Frost poem." Well, I think Terry and his
pirates did both King and Frost proud. I have no idea how many truckloads of rock
they carted in before all was said and done (I never had the heart to ask), but having
once worked in the art department, I can assure you it was an awesome task.
The theory was, once the wall was in place, the next crop of alfalfa would grow
in, thereby providing us the perfect location when we came back to shoot those
scenes months later. And the theory was correct. The planning and hard work paid
off, the location was spectacular...
...with the unexpected bonus that, apparently, late summer in Ohio is grasshop-
per breeding season. The new alfalfa was swarming with them. I mean, you couldn't
take two steps without those suckers scattering into the air. As we went through
our day's filming, the thought of those grasshoppers kept tormenting me. If only u e
could get them on film...
Let's go to the blow-by-blow. Finally the day's work is complete. I glance at my
watch. There's still twenty minutes left on the clock. I scan the fields. There's a per-
fect view to the west, with that magic late afternoon sun slanting in over a dark-
ened treeline. I ask Roger Deakins, our cinematographer, if we can squeeze in one
more quick setup. I describe the shot. Before you know it, there's a mad scramble
to get it done, elbows flying as grips lay dolly track and the camera team loads film.
This is the fun time, the no-pressure time when all the real work is done and every-
body gets into the spirit of grabbing one last bonus shot just for the hell of it...
Camera's set. I'm seeing grasshoppers leaping and bounding perfectly as Morgan
Freeman is escorted out into the field by our second-second assistant director, Mike
Greenwood (why they aren't just called third assistant directors, I'll never know).
Morgan is positioned on his start-mark per my shouted instructions. Mike ducks
out of frame, vanishing like a shadow. The camera rolls. Action! Morgan starts walk-
ing across that field just as lyrically as anyone could ever want...
...and not one single miserable grasshopper pops so much as a twitching antenna into view.
The reason hits me upside the head like a two-by-four: all the little critters were
scared out of Morgan's path when he and Mike first trudged out there (shit, and I
watched them fleeing!). I yell cut and glance at my watch. Minutes left to go before
union overtime kicks in. I shout for Morgan to hurry back to his start-mark, which
he gamely does. Suddenly, before the startled eyes of cast and crew, lunatic direc-
tor goes charging into the alfalfa field, hollering and doing the boogie, trying to
scare those recalcitrant insects back into Morgan's path. I'm a beater flushing the
lion! I'm Peter O'Toole in The Stunt Man! I will not be denied my grasshoppers!
Thank God the ASPCA lady ain't here or she'd kick my ass for frightening the poor
little darlings!
Roll camera! Action! Morgan starts to walk and -- lo and behold! -- grasshoppers
fountain into the air, dozens and dozens of them, rimmed with light and glowing
like fairies, a veritable grasshopper kaleidoscope! Cut! Print!
It just goes to show that, sometimes, what the art department does not provide,
God or the universe will. You just have to be paying attention.

Scenes 298 & 299. The dialogue in 299 played fairly nicely on the page, but stank
on screen. When spoken, these lines not only trampled the clarity and emotion of
the moment, they had a cloying "golly-gee-ain't-we-cute" quality that would
have sent you and everybody else screaming from the theater. Never before in
motion picture history has a movie benefited more from leaving two simple lines
of dialogue reeking like dog turds on the cutting room floor. Trust me.

Since it's not in Stephen King's original story, I get asked all the time about the
finale on the beach. Most people love this ending, though there are a few purists
in the crowd who would have preferred ending with King's image of the bus going
down the road. Either way, folks have wanted to know whose idea it was, the rea-
soning behind it. Truth is, my first draft of the script didn't have this scene; it ended
on the bus exactly as King's story does. However, the fine folks at Castle Rock (pri-
marily Liz Glotzer, our patron saint) suggested that the audience would want to see
Andy and Red reunite at the end after all the struggle and misery we've put these
characters through. Though I was skeptical, I wasn't convinced Castle Rock was
wrong. So I wrote the added scene, knowing that if it didn't work on film I could
always leave it out of the movie.
Once we cut the sequence together in the editing room, we all started falling in
love with it. (My editor Richard was particularly voluble on the subject: "Are you
nuts? Ya gotta have it in the movie! Look at the smile on Morgan's face! It's great!")
Nevertheless, I was still on the fence about using it, still a bit cautious. I wanted to
see how the ending would play with a real audience before making a firm decision.
The night of our first test-screening, I had my answer -- they loved it. They wept, they
cheered. More to the point, on the test cards they filled out, well over 90 percent
of the audience singled this out as among their favorite scenes in the movie (the other
favorite was Scene 60, with the convicts drinking beer on the roof).
Who was I to argue with those kinds of results? I think there's a difference
between pandering to an audience and giving them something they love. Besides, as
I said, I'd started falling in love with it myself. Looking back on it now, I wouldn't
have it any other way. Liz Glotzer was right about it providing emotional cathar-
sis. But even more than that, in a purely cinematic sense, I think it gives the movie
a tremendous sense of closure. By ending with that final image, we've brought the
viewer on a full journey that begins in tight claustrophobia defined by walls and con-
cludes where the horizon is limitless; the movie has traveled fully from darkness to
light, from coldness to warmth, from colorlessness to a place where only color exists,
from physical and spiritual imprisonment to total freedom (which is the very thing
I wanted to convey in 271 & 272, the dream sequence I never got the chance to
shoot). Bottom line is, I think it's a magical and uplifting place for our characters
to arrive at the end of their long saga...