The Tree from The Shawshank Redemption Breaks its Silence

“Andy is guilty as hell,” states the White Oak, “and the film was ruined in reshoots.”

The famous Quercus alba from “The Shawshank Redemption” is finally speaking out on its involvement with the 1994 film. Despite having been damaged in 2011 and toppled in 2016, the tree’s wood has been shaped into myriad objects, including a writing implement which penned a statement mailed to all major entertainment publications.

“Dads of the world,” the letter begins, addressing the film’s core demographic, “it has been nearly thirty years since ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ premiered, and Andy Dufresne has been anointed as one of the most righteous heroes in all of American cinema. His innocence, his unbroken spirit, his dazzling escape—all these have become legend in the eyes of all fathers and perhaps others as well.

“And they are all egregious lies,” the tree asserts.

The Oak then gives a brief history of his involvement with the film: “In the script I was shown and agreed to appear in, and in the scenes I subsequently filmed with Tim Robbins, Andy is a calculated sociopath who whispers his entire master plan to a tree before enacting it step-by-step—first through murdering his wife and her lover, then through gaining mythic status within the walls of Shawshank by endearing himself to the inmates and staff, then through gaining the financial trust of the warden, and finally by escaping with the hard-earned investments of the prison endowment. The original script was even titled, ‘What the Tree Knew.’”

“I signed on because I thought it was a taut thriller about a cold, brilliant, endlessly patient mind. A Hitchcockian study in psychopathy.”

The tree asserts that the final version film—the film the public knows—was mostly reshoots: “The warden was originally the hero. The whole first half of the movie—nearly all my material where Andy doles out the details of his master plan bit by bit, just like his tunnel onto the courtyard (that part was great and I was glad they left it in)—was deleted in favor of a treacly treatise on the human spirit. I don’t even know who this ‘Red’ character is.”

Some of the film’s racier scenes were deleted as well, states the tree: “There was also a beautifully erotic scene between Andy and his wife, who he would later murder. It was expert screenwriting, in my opinion: after finishing their meal of cucumber sandwiches and Mountain Dew in the bottle, the two made loud, violent love upon my roots, using my great buttresses as backstops for their thrustings. This was my favorite scene, because it is a real-life fact that many human beings have demonstrated their wild passions under my canopy and I always take it as a tribute to my priapismic effect on the species. The scene was deleted.”

The only scene with the tree that remained, the tree asserts, employed a stand-in:

“It was a mast year for me so I had to take the day off to photosynthesize properly because I was exhausted from the shooting schedule and my chloroplasts were completely out of whack. So the close-ups you see are of another tree. It’s insane. They must have CGI-ed Morgan Freeman in at some later point.”

Despite all of this, the tree insists, it isn’t disappointed with the film’s afterlife.

“People love it and that’s great. I also became one of the most famous trees in all of cinema. Of course basically no one recognizes me now because I’m a pen, but it’s a perfect surprise during cocktail hour with the other writing implements. And, finally, in terms of royalties…well, I have no complaints, let’s put it that way.

“But I hope that now, when people watch that movie, they understand that it was much better before the production team bowed to the pressure of the test audiences. There was a real movie in there somewhere. In fact, it could have been a contemporary noir masterpiece.”

But “that’s Hollywood,” the White Oak ultimately concedes,

“It is what it is, I guess.”

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