Today, we look at a scene in The Shawshank Redemption that has always bugged me.
This is Disgrace Distract and Bother Me, a feature where I just point out minor things that annoy me in pop culture. Basically, think of it like the lowest level of criticism, then Remember to Forget is the middle, where it’s like, “Okay, this is bad, but not, like, offensively bad” and finally, Things That Turned Out Bad is for, “This is seriously messed up.”
SPOILER WARNING FOR A 27-YEAR-OLD MOVIE!
The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, who also wrote the screenplay adapting the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film stars Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman as two prisoners, Andy Dufresne and “Red” Redding, who become close friends after spending almost twenty years together, a time that the falsely-imprisoned Dufresne spends trying to improve the lives of the prisoners while also helping the warden in a criminal enterprise. However, after the warden has another prisoner murdered who could have proven Andy was innocent (as the warden can’t afford to lose Andy’s accounting skills), Andy decides to either “get busy living or get busy dying.”
One night, Red fears that Andy has killed himself, but in reality, Andy has decided to break out of prison, having secretly been tunneling his way out his cell a little bit every night for the past 19 years. Andy put a suit into a sealed plastic bag as he escaped through a sewage pipe. Andy steals the warden’s shiny pair of shoes for the occasion, as well, and Red, as he retells the events of Andy’s escape (where Andy just wore the warden’s shoes back to his cell before he escaped), he notes, “Seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes?”
It’s a great line and it would be one of the most amazing pieces of “rewind to get more detail” in the history of film if you watch the film a second time and see that Andy is wearing the warden’s shoes. However, in the actual scene where Andy goes to his cell the night before (where is supposedly wearing the warden’s shoes), WE AREN’T SHOWN HIS SHOES!!
What in the what? If your whole deal is that no one pays attentions to guys shoes, why wouldn’t you SHOW THE SHOES? You could obviously hide it pretty well with shadows or whatever if you really thought that the shoes DID draw attention, but to not even SHOW them was just so silly!
Still an amazing movie, though!
If anyone has a suggestion for a pop culture pet peeve that you’d like to see spotlighted, drop me a line at brian@popculturereferences.com.
Obviously, he was correct, because it took me about 30 viewings to catch the MISTAKE. Take a close look at the scene where Andy climbs down to the sewer pipe. HE IS WEARING HIS SHOES! But his shoes were in the box in the warden’s office. Where did the second set of prison shoes come from?
They did show Andy wearing the Wardens shoes when he was walking back to his cell. it’s obvious he hid his shoes, or wasn’t wearing any that day to put his on. I’m not seeing the issue. he had the new shoes and clothing suit in a bag with a rope tied to his hand while climbing through the sewer. watch the original. some scenes are cut for time.