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Screenwriters Award-Winner Set, Collection 3: The Shawshank Redemption, Adaptation, and A Beautiful Mind

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The Newmarket Shooting Script® Sets offer a value-priced opportunity for screenplay lovers to build their collection. Each book within the set includes a facsimile of the film's actual shooting script, plus exclusive extras, such as introductions by or interviews with the filmmakers, notes on the film's production, selected movie stills, and complete cast and crew credits.


Sideways : Oscar®-winner for Best Adapted Screenplay; includes full-color section of photos from the film
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind : Oscar®-winner for Best Original Screenplay; features a Q&A with Charlie Kaufman
American Beauty : Five-time Oscar® winner, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay; with an Afterword by Alan Ball

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First published December 12, 2005

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About the author

Frank Darabont

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Frank Darabont (born January 28, 1959) is a Hungarian-American film director, screenwriter and producer. He has directed the films The Shawshank Redemption,The Green Mile, and The Mist.
Early life
Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France. His parents fled Hungary after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. When he was still an infant, his family moved to the United States.
Career
By the age of 20, Darabont became involved in filmmaking. One of his first films was a short adaptation of Stephen King's The Woman in the Room, which made the semi-finalist list for Academy Award consideration in 1983, and was shown in its entirety in the 1986 syndicated television special, Stephen King's World of Horror.[citation needed] The short, a Dollar Baby, led to a close association with King, who granted him the "handshake deal" rights to another one of his shorter works, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from the collection Different Seasons.

Prior to his directing career, Darabont was a successful screenwriter with work on genre films that included: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, The Blob, The Fly II and an unproduced sequel to Commando. Darabont made his feature length directorial debut with Buried Alive, a TV movie with a $2,000,000 budget that aired on the USA Network in 1990. Darabont followed with an extended run as writer for George Lucas' short-lived television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. He became famous, however, after making good on the deal with Stephen King by writing and directing 1994 The Shawshank Redemption for which he was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay at the 1995 Academy Awards. The film was also nominated for six other Academy Awards including Best Picture.

After a five-year hiatus, Darabont returned to the screen with the well-received The Green Mile, a film he directed, scripted and produced. Like The Shawshank Redemption, this film is also based on a Stephen King work. The film was nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture and Darabont was nominated for his second Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. He followed this with The Majestic two years later in 2001 to considerably less fanfare. Following lukewarm reviews from critics, the film failed at the box-office, recouping only half of its $72 million budget internationally.

Darabont is known to have doctored the scripts of the Steven Spielberg films Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report. In 2002, he penned an early draft of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and while Spielberg reportedly loved it, George Lucas rejected it.

In 2005, Cemetery Dance Publications published Darabont's novella Walpuski's Typewriter in a limited edition. The story, originally written in his early twenties, first appeared in Jessie Horsting's magazine Midnight Graffiti. His 2007 film The Mist marked his fourth adaptation of a Stephen King work, and the film received worldwide praise from many audiences, despite not being a hit at the box office.

Recently, director Guillermo del Toro commented that he had read a draft of Frankenstein written by Darabont that he would "kill to direct." However, in recent months Del Toro has been attached to many other projects and it looks as if his involvement in the project is unlikely. No official word has been given on the film's development. Darabont has also explained that he will be adapting King's The Long Walk into a film. No plans have been made for it yet, but Darabont explained that he would "get there eventually."

Darabont appeared in an October 26, 2008 episode of Entourage called First Class Jerk, where he propositions Vincent Chase to star in a TV show he is executive producing. He appeared in a September 12, 2009 episode where he is now the director of the film about Enzo Ferrari, who Vince is portraying.

Darabont is currently at work on a new AMC series based on Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F

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Profile Image for Realini Ionescu.
4,019 reviews19 followers
September 26, 2025
The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King


Historical, epic works are rare, but Shawshank Redemption is one of them, considering that audiences – nearly two million voters on IMDB – have rated the motion picture inspired by the Stephen King book as the Best Movie Ever.

Alas, the film based on the Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption story has been nominated for seven Academy Awards, only to win none of them, in a case of unjust decision that can also top the charts in the domain.
The acclaimed motion picture is reviewed here - http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/t...

There are some aspects, characters that have been changed for the adaptation that has Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman in the role of Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding on the big screen.
In the Stephen King original material, Red is actually the nickname of a…Irishman with red hair, but the decision to cast the majestic, charismatic, impressive – if mentioned in an unflattering context recently- Morgan Freeman has been a very good one.

Red tells the story of the Redemption and it is seems to have everything, culminating with an escape ( at this point, it appears farfetched to assume that there is anybody left out there who has not seen Shawshank Redemption and in order to decide that would reach for this note to make up his or her mind).
Furthermore, the narrative becomes deep, thought provoking in that it mixes in, together with thrilling “action”, an invitation to meditate on values, the morality of keeping in prison someone like Red – who although guilty of a past capital crime has changed completely, having next to nothing in common with the very young man who had been sentenced – and especially Andy Dufresne.

When he arrives at Shawshank, Andy appears to be destined for downfall – in the movie version, there are bets on his inevitable breakdown – he used to be a banker outside prison, an intellectual who would not be able to adapt to the vicious life behind bars, especially after the “Sisters” set him as a target.
The book is realistic in describing the ordeal of the hero and other inmates, the narrator even says that he “wishes he would be able to say that the protagonist manages to escape the harassment, abuse of violent homosexuals” but he cannot.

There is even an account of the sex life of jail birds, some of whom are naturally of different sexual orientations, other are heterosexual, but faced with the solitude, frustrations of imprisonment resort to getting a male partner, yet others decide to impose their desires on others.
Andy Dufresne is in many ways the archetypal role model, a man of extraordinary strength, most of all psychological, but also physical, considering the difficult, formidable achievement of the breakout, with a brilliant mind, an outstanding IQ, but more importantly in the light of scientific discoveries, he has an astonishing Emotional Intelligence, apparently much more important than other types of smartness.

He reads from one point on how he can change his life in jail, insinuating himself with guards, supervisors and ultimately the warden, all the while making plans for an escape that would take many years, grit, resilience, courage, dedication, Will to Power, phenomenal resources, but that would assure…Redemption.
It was not easy, for the hero had to resist the abuse of the “sisters”, telling two of them that if they want to force him to perform felatio, he would bite anything they put in his mouth and in response to the death threat, he states that when dying, a man would automatically release his bowels and clinch his teeth shut.

Overhearing a conversation between guards, one of them being the epitome of the negative man, who is always complaining – making one think of the famous John Milton quote –
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven...”
The miserable personage has just inherited a rather large sum, but he is morose about the prospect of paying so many taxes, then getting a car, with ever more duties to pay, the damn kids would be a nuisance inside it – in short hell on earth, when it should be wine and roses…

Paradoxically, he may have a point – if exaggerated to the brink of absolute absurdity – because there is a phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation, which refers to the fact that we adapt to the material things we keep buying – urged on by the publicity which makes us spend on so many useless things – the Dalai Lama is famous for crying out in a supermarket:
“Wow, so many things I do not need”

Andy Dufresne offers financial advice, soon gets an essential position as adviser to the warden, who is involved in shenanigans and kickbacks from companies that influence decisions regarding the inmates work, but when he learns details that might exonerate him, prove his innocence and hence free him from detention, the hero is sent to solitary instead of out the gate.
There are some more differences between the book and the motion picture, apart from the aforementioned Red, such as the fate of the warden, the manner of dealing with the witness that has heard the real murderer explain how he killed Andy’s wife and her lover and a few other details.

This is an extremely rewarding work, both in book format and in the version that you can see in a cinema or on Netflix…presumably.

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