Frank Darabont Describes the Scene From THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION That He Cut to Make the Ending Flow Perfectly

The Shawshank Redemption is one of those movies that you can’t resist if you see it on TV, and it always ranks on favorite lists of movies by fans. It’s based on a beautiful short story written by Stephen King, and adapted and directed by Frank Darabont. It has a lengthy runtime of 2 hours and 22 minutes, but it tells an incredible story.

In a recent interview with /Film, celebrating the 15th anniversary of Darabont’s sci-fi horror thriller, The Mist, Darabont remembered back to the test screenings he did for The Shawshank Redemption before its 1994 release, and he described the one scene he decided to cut from the film’s ending:

"[W]e go [...] into the market, where we see [Red] bagging, and he asks permission to go to the bathroom. [A]nd there's this sequence where it all just closes in on him, and he has a panic attack, and he runs to the back of the store and into the men's room and he goes into one of the stalls, he closes the door just to feel the walls around him. It's cool stuff.

[W]e were just taxing the audience's patience, waiting for [Red to get to the tree], with something they already knew. There was no new information. There were new scenes, but no new information. Oh man, we couldn't get back to the editing fast enough. It was like pulling a thorn out of our butts, losing that five minutes of movie, and then the movie just flowed beautifully from there."

Luckily, Darabont was able to look at the movie from the eye of a masterful editor, and we got the final product to enjoy. I love to watch extra scenes from movies I love, because I like to see more from the characters and story, but you can usually tell why they didn’t make it to the final cut.

What’s your favorite scene or line from Shawshank?