Great story honoring Morgan Freeman on his birthday from our friends at Crew Stories on Facebook.
Speaking on the box-office failure of The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
It took a long time for word of mouth to kick in because no one could say it. It was "The Shimshunk Reduction", "The Hudsucker Redemption"; I mean people just couldn't say it, which really made me angry because I knew that at the time! The movie we made was called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption". Isn't that a great title? But they were like "That won't fit on the marquee". So it took a year or two for people to say it. Some people still can't say it.
Andy and Red's opening chat in the prison yard, in which Red is throwing a baseball, took nine hours to shoot. Freeman threw the baseball for the entire nine hours without a word of complaint. He showed up for work the next day with his left arm in a sling.
Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Paul Newman, and Robert Redford were considered for the part of Red. In the original novel, Red is a middle-aged white Irishman with graying red hair. However, Frank Darabont always had Morgan Freeman in mind for the role, because of his authoritative presence, demeanor, and deep voice. Red's reply, "Maybe it's because I'm Irish," to Andy's inquiry about his nickname was kept in the film as a joke.
This was Freeman's first time narrating a movie. Unusually, the narration was recorded before filming began and was then played on set to dictate the rhythm of each scene. Freeman recorded the guide track in an Iowa recording studio in only forty minutes. However, there was a minor hiss to the track, which sound engineers in Los Angeles were unable to eradicate. Consequently, it had to be re-recorded in a proper studio; this time it took three weeks.