GQ

Shawshank Redemption from beginning to end was nearly perfect. When I read it, I was, I'm in. So this is first time director. Well, I'll tell you what, let's get cinematographer approval. And I was working with Roger Deakins on Hudsucker Proxy at the time when I was reading Shawshank Redemption. I gave it to Roger. He loved it. He said, "I'm in." Roger and I and Morgan Freeman, when we met, we all talked about how much we loved this script that Frank Darabont had written. We decided that we were going to fight for that script. If it was the producers that were going to try to cut days or scenes, we were going to fight. Even if it was the director that was going to get in the way of his own work, we were going to fight. And I think that's the tension that you've read about is that we all love that script and we all wanted that script to come through. And there were times when Frank Darabont would have an idea or two that we didn't feel was going to realize what was on the page. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. You're busy living, you get busy dying. You get busy dying. When we were in the first rehearsal for that, he had us about 10 feet apart. It's a small thing, but it's a big thing. And as an actor, you have to pursue the truth of what you believe is on the page. You have to trust that instinct sometimes. You look at a kind of way to get to that without the conflict. And there wasn't conflict. Morgan Freeman and myself and Roger Deakins thought, "Well, it's probably better intimate." You know, and what about over here? Sometimes directors have a shot in mind and the shot might be beautiful, but it might not get at the truth that the actor wants to bring. So that's the compromise and the dance that one has to go through is how do we get to the truth? If I'm having a hard time as an actor getting to the truth 10 feet apart, it's kind of my responsibility to fight for what I believe the truth is. And the truth for me of that scene was very intimate, very quiet. I had secrets. I had to keep them even in this conversation with this good friend of mine. I also had to be playing a lie. We kind of wanted the emotion that he was feeling at that time to work in the truth of, "I love this man and I'm not going to see him again," versus what the audience might think was, "I love this man. I might not see him again because I'm going to kill myself." Both those truths had to be told at the same time. And so now everyone's fearing that something bad might happen. Morgan's Freeman character feels something bad might happen. Nobody is suspecting that he's hiding a secret of a jailbreak.