Shawshankin': An Online Transcript (And More)
me: at the end of Shawshank, the warden slams down the paper when he sees it's a story about his illegal deeds. but wouldn't the paper have had to contact him for a quote before running the story?
Sis: haha
yes and no
if they're wanting to break a story, they might just run it
me: true, but they can be reasonably assured it's an exclusive, given that they're probably the only ones who received a package containing the prison's ledger, not to mention this is way before online/instant news
it seems like it would only be responsible to contact the warden before going to press
maybe that would have changed everything
maybe the warden would've run off or plead out instead of killing himself
and now the paper's editor has the warden's death on his conscience
Sis: yeah, he might have been a flight risk
me: oh totally
bail would be super high at the arraignment
assuming they caught him
• Further thought: Andy created the fictional Randall Stevens as a way to launder the warden's money and act as a kind of nexus for all the illegal goings-on at Shawshank. Andy even says that if anyone wanted to trace the cash, it wouldn't lead to the warden, but to the nonexistent Stevens. But once Andy escapes, he temporarily assumes the Stevens identity to make a series of withdrawals at local banks before splitting for Mexico. Now that the local news and law enforcement officials are pursuing the missing Andy Dufresne and investigating the warden's life, isn't it reasonable to assume they're going to discover the Stevens alias and eventually track Andy to Mexico? I'm not saying this is a given; it just seems like Andy would want to stay on his toes.
Comments: 6
Come on man, Andy's too smart to have left a trail all the way to Mexico. Although, Kevin, they could very easily extradite him if they found him.
And as for your chat with your sister, just goes to show you that the media's always been as irresponsible as it is these days, rather than this being an entirely new trend.
This was before answering machines and cell phones. Maybe the warden was unreachable for comment.
Or maybe they were just expecting the viewer to be more obtuse than you.
Am I the only one who thinks this movie gets way more attention than it deserves? Seriously; it's voted the #2 movie of all time on imdb.
It isn't as if Andy was using credit cards in the alias' name, he cleared town with a big bag of cash...fairly untraceable.
Maybe the suicide means they can't track the alias. If the newspaper doesn't run with the story, and the warden doesn't kill himself, you don't have a happy ending.
Newspapers used to be less responsible than they are now.
Even if they did track him down there, they couldn't cross over a get him. No jurisdiction.
Feb 19, 2008 2:47 AM