Thanks for everyone's high rating. I adapted the short story for the screen

Rating: 10/10 (14 August 2011)

Wow, been a few years. I'm editing my old post. I'd like to humbly thank everyone here for rating my flick so highly. #1, huh? Providing the story for Shawshank Redemption was an imagination of myself under the short story's circumstances. It is similar to K-PAX that way and of the same vintage. Having been a business major at Georgia Tech, it would be natural for me to help with estate planning, taxes, and accounting had I been taken prisoner. The inside out program of public works and attendant graft, corruption, intimidation and murder was my way of encouraging scrutiny of similar programs nation-wide. I had been Postmaster of the Georgia State Senate at 21, so that is why the State Senate was written instead of the more common oracles, say the Maine Governor's office or other organs of government and foundations. The Mozart duet wasn't of my choosing, but it's generally acknowledged as among the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, so that choice was a no-brainer. I would have preferred the flute solo from Orpheus, but that's just me. I purposefully decided against another loathsome portrayal of racial casts that were very common at that time, so as not to 'date' the picture and to influence viewers toward tolerance even in intolerable circumstances. Against opposition, I gave the important Red character to an African-American actor. (In the short story Red had been an Irishman.) At the time, that dimmed prospects for box office success, but given that the flick is now well- received, emulation has led to further improvement. When we did this one in 1988ish, in Syracuse, New York, I was attending graduate school of medicine at SUNY-upstate and working in Max Mozell's lab. At about the same time, I did dozens of films and won many Oscars for the various ghost writers. (Gladiator, Good Will Hunting, Cast Away, Mystic River, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Enemy at the Gates, Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, Vanilla Sky, A Beautiful Mind, Forrest Gump, The Matrix films, The Bourne films, National Treasure films, Pirates of the Caribbean films, Avatar, Titanic, Lost in Translation, UP, ). The name of the Mexican town on the seashore was conveyed to me by my old friend, Frank Arnold, who was Zawataneo (sp?) on vacation while in medical school. He spelled it for me over the phone while the 'creative team' and I worked out the flick's details. Since then, the town has boomed, an unexpected gift to Mexico. I set this one in Maine, to de-stigmatize inflexible regional prejudices then current. It seems to have worked. Michael Meyers figured me out, this flick is part of the series designed to change the world, save the planet, and bring the human race closer to God Almighty.