From the back cover: “How did a low-key prison movie which was considered a box-office flop on its original release become one of the most popular movies of all time?” #KingAtoZ #schooldaze #filmcritique #shawshank #localauthors
CouronneDhiver Don‘t know but it really is fantastic! 7y
GarthRanzz If you think about it there‘s nothing to make you think it would be the cult it that it has become. I think it‘s because it is full of hope, amongst all the horrors of prison life. And I think that‘s another of King‘s great feats; giving us hope where there is none. 7y
kgriffith @CouronneDhiver Agreed; I counted it among my favorites the first time I saw it, and rewatching it in class last week, I stand by that claim. 7y
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kgriffith @GarthRanzz And that‘s something I said to my prof when he and I talked about it before watching the film in class: you think cult films, you think Rocky Horror, The Princess Bride, The Big Lebowski. There‘s usually a gimmick, a gag. Shawshank doesn‘t have that. And there‘s no real demographic foundation like for queer cult favorites, or the brat pack, etc. So I think you‘re right, it qualifies as a cult film, but it‘s in a league of its own. 7y
SandyW This is one of my favorites as well. The fact that it flopped at the box office? I'd chalk that up to poor marketing. 7y
kgriffith @SandyW I was right in the midst of a very locked-down adolescence when it hit theaters so I wouldn‘t have seen whatever marketing WAS done. I can absolutely see how it‘d be a “sleeper hit,” though. One of those films that gets under people‘s skin, but not in any kind of explosive way — they just keep thinking about it, and so it works its way into conversation, and eventually they‘ve convinced a friend, a few friends, a dozen friends, to see it. 7y
saresmoore Hmm, a sleeper hit...your description sounds a lot like what happened with Napoleon Dynamite my freshman year of college. 😆 7y
kgriffith @saresmoore I saw that once and was mostly just bewildered at how into it my friends were 😂 7y
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