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'Shawshank' reunion rekindles fun 15 years ago
By David Giffels
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Wednesday, Aug 27, 2008
There's a weird advantage for northern Ohioans playing the old ''six degrees of Kevin Bacon'' game.
That's the film trivia exercise in which you name a random actor and you have to connect him or her to Bacon in six steps or less.
Take Rob Lucas, for instance. Guy lives around here, no Hollywood connections, no movie star friends. The operations director of the Akron Film Festival made a local independent film called American Stories, in which he played a cameo role. The cast included another local guy named Larry Miles . . . who was in The Shawshank Redemption . . . with Tim Robbins . . . who was in Mystic River with . . . Kevin Bacon.
Three degrees.
You start testing this, and you find it happening over and over. The Shawshank Redemption was filmed 15 years ago at locations in Mansfield and Upper Sandusky and Ashland, making use of the creepily ornate, out-of-commission Ohio State Reformatory and the well preserved mid-century architecture in those towns.
It also made use of lots of gaffers, best boys, crowd scene extras and a few local professional actors.
All of which adds up to a certain kind of legacy unique to places like ours, where brushes with fame are rare and therefore have unusual staying power.
People in these parts will rent The Shawshank Redemption and freeze the movie on their DVD players to relive their 15 seconds (or less) of fame. They scan the backgrounds for familiar buildings. They look at, say, the bank where protagonist Andy Dufresne makes a notable withdrawal and realize — it's the actual bank in downtown Ashland where they make their own withdrawals.
Next thing you know, you're rubbing metaphorical shoulders with Kevin Bacon.
Reunion next weekend
That's why a 15-year Shawshank Redemption Reunion organized for next weekend seems entirely reasonable, and why it's scheduled over three days at seven locations in three different cities, and why Gov. Ted Strickland has signed an official proclamation recognizing the event: ''FRANCES AND I EXTEND OUR BEST WISHES FOR AN ENJOYABLE CELEBRATION!''
It's why Rohn Thomas, a veteran Kent actor, can always count on a piqued response when he mentions The Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't matter that he has appeared in an impressive number and caliber of Hollywood productions, nor that his Shawshank role was a blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, nor that he has no degrees of Kevin Bacon separation — they were in a film together.
''Shawshank Redemption,'' he said. ''When I mention that movie, that's the one they get excited about.''
Thomas played the editor of the fictional paper, The Bugle, appearing only for a moment in a montage scene late in the film, as Robbins' character completes his elaborate escape plan. He was originally cast in a different, larger role as a parole board member, but was committed to another film shooting at the same time in Pittsburgh. The newspaper office scene was filmed on the last day of shooting in Ohio, so he squeaked in.
These slim degrees of separation are not limited to human participants.
You can walk into Stagecoach Antiques in Akron and pick up, say, a hairbrush, and learn that this hairbrush used to share shelf space with the vintage shoeshine brush purchased by the Shawshank crew for use in the scene when Robbins buffs his shoes in preparation for his escape.
And Tim Robbins was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon, and there you have it — a brush's brush with fame.
Stagecoach owner Leo Walter once described the production company as ''wonderful customers'' for their purchase of tin cups, pocketknives, toiletries, tools, books and even the baseball glove Morgan Freeman uses in a game of prison-yard catch.
Lots of movies have been made in Northeast Ohio. Kevin Bacon even made one, for gosh sakes — Telling Lies in America, shot in Cleveland in 1996.
So why does Shawshank seem to have such particular resonance?
James Renner, who worked as a film and TV director before becoming an author and staff writer for Scene magazine, has a theory. ''It's become like one of those historical events — in reality, only 20 people probably were there, but 100 say they were in Shawshank,'' he said.
Renner, who plans to attend some of the reunion events, never brushed up against Kevin Bacon, but he has his own unique connection to The Shawshank Redemption. The Akron resident, 30, directed one of Stephen King's so-called ''dollar babies'' — a series of films made when King granted one-year movie rights to his stories for one dollar.
The first dollar baby was made by Frank Darabont, who also directed Shawshank, which itself was adapted from a King short story. Renner made the 10th dollar baby, All That You Love Will Be Carried Away. And he later organized a festival of the films in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine.
So he has a certain insight into the way even a mainstream film like The Shawshank Redemption also has a corollary cult following.
The King effect
Some of it is the King effect — an author whose celebrity is magnetic; some is based on the the movie having made a slow, grass-roots build toward popularity; and some is that unique connection to Ohio Everyman-ness.
Renner recalls working on a commercial one time, and chatting with an electrician on the set:
''He said, 'If you watch the movie' — and he even knew the exact frame number — he said, 'That's totally my right hand hanging out that door.' And he was so proud.''
David Giffels is a Beacon Journal columnist. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.
There's a weird advantage for northern Ohioans playing the old ''six degrees of Kevin Bacon'' game.
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