Brubaker
Short description
Brubaker is a 1980 crime drama about a man who arrives at a small Arkansas prison farm as an ordinary new inmate, only to reveal that he is in fact the institution's newly appointed warden. Henry Brubaker has deliberately gone undercover among the prisoners so he can see for himself how the place is run. What he finds is a system built on corruption, forced labor and illegal profit, with trusties and local interests benefiting from the way convicts are treated. Once he drops the disguise, he sets out to reform the prison, a campaign that brings him into conflict with staff, inmates and powerful figures outside the walls who prefer things as they are.
Stuart Rosenberg directed the film, which was written by W.D. Richter and produced by Ron Silverman for 20th Century Fox. It was released in the summer of 1980, between Rosenberg's Love and Bullets and The Pope of Greenwich Village, and it shares with his earlier work a focus on men resisting an entrenched institution. Robert Redford leads as Brubaker, with Yaphet Kotto, Jane Alexander, Murray Hamilton, David Keith and Morgan Freeman among the cast.
Made for about 9 million dollars, the film took roughly 37 million worldwide, a strong return on its budget. On IMDb it holds 7.1 out of 10 from about 21,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.1 from roughly 530 votes. A critics' rating of 6.6 from 23 reviews sits slightly below those audience scores, which are close to each other and rest on very different numbers of voters.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the true story of Thomas Merton, who was appointed in 1967 to reform the Arkansas state penitentiary system. In the spring of 1968, after making numerous scandalous revelations, he was fired under pressure from the new governor of the state and returned to academic work. In 1969, he co-authored a book about these events with Joe Hyams, titled “Accomplices to the Crime.”
- Fifteen-year-old Nicolas Cage appears in the film as an extra. This was his first work in cinema.
- The majority of the filming took place at Junction City Prison, located near the town of Junction City, Ohio. The prison was officially closed by the state administration in 1977.
- The film was based on the true story of Thomas O. Merton, who was appointed in 1967 to reform the Arkansas state penal system. In the spring of 1968, after numerous scandalous exposures he made, he was fired under pressure from the new governor of the state, after which he returned to academic work.
- Thomas O. Merton participated as a technical consultant during the making of the film.
- Over 6,500 people applied to be extras, although the film showed up to 1,000 prisoners at once. Several retired guards from various prisons were involved in the movie, including from the active prison in Kansas where filming took place. In his pursuit of authenticity and realism, Stuart Rosenberg wanted to cast as many former convicts as possible.
- The plot element of a 'prison warden posing as an inmate' was fictional and was not based on the experiences of screenwriter Thomas O. Murton. According to one hypothesis, this plot device was inspired by the story of Thomas Mott Osborne, the warden of Sing Sing prison in New York, who in 1913 voluntarily became an inmate at another prison in the same state.
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