Short Film Within a Feature: "Brooks Was Here" from the "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)

Brooks Was Here

"Short Film Within a Feature" is a new, ongoing segment of Continuity Film that examines a sequence in a feature film that can stand-alone as its own short film.

There is a sequence in Frank Darabont's "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) that would make a perfect and powerful short film.

I've titled it "Brooks Was Here" and it is about Brooks Hatlen, an elderly man who struggles to adapt to his new life.

Taken out of the context of "Shawshank", "Brooks Was Here" still works as a short.



A raven crows as we see Brooks Hatlen, an elderly man in what we assume is a library, talking to a raven named Jake. He tells Jake that he can’t take care of him anymore and that he is free.

The raven flies through a window and Brooks is sad.

Brooks shakes hands with Prison Guards as he walks out into the new world.

The piano slowly chimes in, playing a song of melancholy.

Brooks is then seen gripping tightly, with both hands, onto a railing in a bus. He is frightened. He looks like a lost boy.

Brooks is then seen walking down a street carrying a briefcase. A large bus passes by in front of him.

A Voice-Over starts with “Dear fellas…”.

It is Brooks’s voice.

Brooks almost gets hit by a car as he attempts to cross a street.

He uses the word “automobile”, an old term for car, which indicates that he’s been away for awhile.

A door opens and he is given keys to an apartment.

We learn from his VO that the parole board got him a room in a halfway house called “The Brewer” and a job bagging groceries at the Foodway.

He is brow-beaten by a young Store Manager who reminds him to double-bag his groceries.

Birds eat feed as Brooks sits on a park bench. We learn that he goes there and hopes that his raven Jake might show up.

But he never does.

Brooks tosses and turns in his bed. It is night time. We learn that he has trouble sleeping at night, that he has bad dreams of falling, that he wakes up scared and he doesn’t remember where he is.

Brooks contemplates getting a gun and robbing the Foodway, maybe even shooting the Store Manager. What is critical in this scene and VO is that Brooks says: “Maybe I can get a gun and rob the Foodway so that they can send me home.”

Home.

We see Brooks neatly folding his clothes into an open suitcase and he thinks again about the gun and says he’s too old for that nonsense.

While fixing his tie and looking into a mirror, we learn that Brooks is tired of being afraid and decides not to stay.

He pulls out a knife and we automatically fear that he’s going to slit his wrists but instead he looks up and climbs a chair and then a table.

He balances himself on the table as he begins carving something on the wall of the threshold.

Wood fragments fall onto the table, in-between his two feet.

Through the prison-like railings of the threshold, we see Brooks closing his knife and smiling at what he wrote.

We then see the shot of his feet. He raises himself to his tippy-toes.

He balances his feet again and then rocks side-to-side and…

…the table gives way but Brooks is suspended in the air.

His feet shake and we can see the back of his body in the reflection of the mirror in the background.

We track-back from the wall that reads “Brook Was Here” to reveal…

…Brooks hanging from a rope.

Dissolves to:

A letter being read by Andy and his prison-mate Red.

It turns out that the VO of Brooks was his suicide letter to his friends in prison.

Home.