Despite a disappointing box office performance, The Shawshank Redemption has gone down in history as one of the best movies of all time. But if certain deleted scenes were kept in, the drama movie may well have missed out on one of its seven Academy Award nominations.
Like a lot of classic ‘90s movies, deleted scenes from The Shawshank Redemption are now in the public domain thanks to taped television specials and YouTube. Sometimes, the cutting of a specific scene feels like a mistake. Other times, you kind of get why the scene in question was cut. And with The Shawshank Redemption, there’s one deleted scene that definitely falls into the latter category.
Narratively, the deleted scene takes place right after Andy tunnels out of his cell. It’s the moment when prison officers realize what he’s done and decide to send in a younger officer after him. But the pursuit goes wrong when the guard ends up encountering an exposed sewage pipe. This leads to the officer screaming, “Oh my God, it’s shit,” before projectile vomiting amid the pouring poop water.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Stephen King, who wrote the novella the movie was based on, explained that while it was a “funny scene,” it “slowed down the action” and ended up being cut for the sake of time.
“These cut scenes haven’t appeared on the various DVD and Blu-ray releases, but they did air on television a few times, and someone had the foresight to tape them and post them to YouTube,” he added.