274. Sacred Cows: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Since I contain multitudes, have run out of ideas, and since I aspire the podcast to embody Paul Krassner's iconic satirical magazine The Realist's motto of "Irreverrance is our only sacred cow", I am debuting the first in a series of occasional episodes where I revisit those films so firmly ensconced in our collective filmgoing conscience that we can be forgiven for forgetting if they're actually, you know...any good.

So let's start with one of the odder films to achieve cinematic immortality: Frank Darabont's adaptation of a Stephen King short story (not that you'd know that from the films marketing materials) 'The Shawshank Redemption".

This film has so entrenched itself that one forgets that it was a bomb upon release, that audiences didn't know what to make of the title nor the trailer, that it was unloved by the Academy despite 7 nominations, and that six months after its release you'd be forgiven for thinking that it would disappear forever as a weird but understandable failed experiment.

Except. The film became one of the most-rented video store films of all time, in the time of video stores. And when cable TV really took off in the 90's, there again was The Shawshank Redemption, appearing nightly somewhere. Steven Speilberg called it his "Chewing gum movie" meaning that when you encounter it (step in it), you can't get rid of it and you end up watching the entire thing.

Others have posited it as the primary example of a Relationship Movie For Me. Master & Commander being the other one. Does Shawshank exist to allow men to cry? Or just to indulge their fear/fascination with prison rape? Or both? There's plenty of evidence to support all theories, so let's all get locked up with Shawshank, Andy, Red and the fellas and see whether this enduring, schmaltzy, effective weeper deserves a filmic pardon.

The hard-to-peg (no pun intended) original Trailer for Shawshank.

Margaret Heidenry's excellent history of Shawshank for Vanity Fair