UnScripts:The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption is part of

The UnScripts Project

Your personal Shakspearian folio of humor, love, woe and other silly emotions

• UnScript
• Main Page
• Marlowe of the Month
• Requests
• Write
• Best Of

"THE BARBECUE REDEMPTION" (Working movie title: "Shawshank Redemption)

FILM SETTING: The Lonestar State Penitentiary & BBQ, a fully operational prison located inside the largest barbecue restaurant in Texas.

TAGLINE: Some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Mostly because they’d ruin the damn barbecue.

CAST

• ANDY DUFRESNE – A white banker who looks like he’s never put sauce on anything in his life.
• RED – A seasoned lifer, political commentator, contraband dealer, and black person. Wears an apron stained with sauce.
• WARDEN HICKORY NORTON – A Bible-quoting, flag-waving pitmaster-politician who believes freedom is earned through obedience, dry rub, and a diet of nothing but meat in any and all formats.
• CAPTAIN HADLEY-Q – Head guard. Finds new and creative ways to get sauce out of inmates.
• THE SISTERS OF SWEET BABY RAY’S – A gay gang obsessed with condiment-in-the-ass based harassment.
• GUARD – Generic Aryan male with a superiority complex. This applies to all with role of guard.

OPENING SCENE

INT. TEXAS HIGHWAY – NIGHT A pickup truck idles outside a neon lit BBQ JOINT.

ANDY DUFRESNE (V.O.)

They said Texas justice was slow… but thorough. Like brisket.

CUT TO: INT. COURTROOM A JUDGE bangs a gavel shaped like a rib.

JUDGE

Mr. Dufresne, you are hereby sentenced to two hundred million life sentences inside the Lonestar State Penitentiary & BBQ for the crime of "sliming out" your wife, even though the court unanimously agrees she was a cheating whore. No chance of parole. Mild sauce only.

Andy adjusts his tie. Calm. Confused.

ARRIVAL AT PRISON

INT. BBQ DINING HALL / CELLBLOCK – DAY Inmates line up behind sneeze guards. Trays slide down. Guards carry rifles and meat thermometers, used to probe the orifices of inmates and meat.

RED (V.O.)

First night’s the hardest. Everyone cries. Except the guy arguing about dry rub ratios.

An inmate breaks down sobbing over coleslaw before the literal sauce is beat out of him by Hadley-Q.

MEETING RED

EXT. SMOKER YARD – DAY

Massive smokers belch smoke.

Andy sits quietly. Red approaches.

RED

You new, white boy? You look like someone who thinks politics can be saved.

ANDY

I do taxes 'n shiet, who gives a fuck bout some politics.

RED

Oh, you gonna hate it here, office boy.

They bend you over to talk about bad coffee and even worse politics.

RED

In here, everyone’s either left, right, or just trying not to get smoked.

YOUR BLUETOOF DEVICE IZ CONNECTED

INT. WARDEN’S OFFICE – DAY Andy locks himself in the main office. Guards panic. He connects his phone to the Bluetooth speaker.

SPEAKER

Your Bluetoof device eez paired.

Hardcore gangster rap featuring Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg blasts across the prison. Inmates freeze, sauce dripping from their mouths.

RED (V.O.)

For a brief moment, every man forgot his sentence… and wondered if maybe Andy had spoiled meat for brains.

WARDEN NORTON screams outside.

WARDEN

That ain’t no country! That’s GAWD-DAMN SOCIALISM!

NORMAL PRISON LIFE MONTAGE

• Inmates arguing over sauce politics.
• Red smuggling a Bluetooth speaker inside a baked potato.
• Andy helping guards hide offshore accounts disguised as church donations.
• An election poster in the yard: WARDEN NORTON: TOUGH ON CRIME, TOUGHER ON PORK.

THE ESCAPE PLAN

INT. LAUNDRY ROOM – NIGHT Andy taps at the wall behind an industrial smoker.

RED

You ain’t fixing that wall with a spoon.

ANDY

I’m not fixing it. I’m filibustering it.

RED

You stupid as hell office boy, you know that?

ANDY

Grab that ladle, and shut up.

THE ESCAPE

INT. CELL – STORMY NIGHT Andy crawls through a grease coated tunnel.

ANDY

(to himself)

Should’ve gone with leaner cuts.

He bursts out through a drain behind the restaurant, not only covered in sauce, but as a free man covered in sauce. Andy kneels in a stream of sauce as sauce rains down from the heavens onto him.

DISCOVERY OF THE ESCAPE

INT. CELLBLOCK – MORNING

Guard opens Andy’s cell.

Cell is empty.

Poster of a smiling bipartisan politician is peeled off the wall, revealing a hole dug with a soup ladle.

GUARD

Well I’ll be… he beat the system and the fuckin' health code.

WARDEN opens Andy’s secret ledger proof of tax fraud, bribes, and illegal barbecue cuts.

WARDEN

This is… unamerican!

He trips, falls into the smoker. Symbolic but also nonlethal.

FINAL SCENES

EXT. BORDER TOWN BBQ SHACK – DAY

Red, newly released, walks toward a small shack by the beach. A sign reads:

“ANDY’S BBQ & FINANCIAL CONSULTING”

Andy stands outside, wearing linen, flipping brisket.

They smile.

RED (V.O.)

I guess freedom’s just another word for knowing when the meat’s done.

They clink iced teas.

FADE OUT.

TEXT ON SCREEN:

Hope is a good thing. But so is brisket, so come on down to the Lonestar State BBQ. Kids eat free on Tuesdays.