Gladiator: Everything You Didn't Know

on Twitter about about the Rids the ridsler. Uh does that do anything anything?

it in a while. I have to admit I love Gladiator as a kid, and bear in mind I was a weird kid because it was the last chance to see a bunch of my beloved sixties hell raiser actors on film, because part of that I'd only seen them in like old sixties movies. But suddenly you had Richard Harris, Oliver Reid, and David Hemmings being cool on screen. So that was really thrilling to me.

all that great action. And you know, Ridley, God bless him for as much of pain in the ass as he might be personally and professionally. Man can move a camera, you know. And and it's great. I mean, it's Russell. I like Russell Crowe more than I did at the time. I think he he's like the best thing he's ever done is The Nice Guys with Ryan Gosling, No right as the other Guys.

But great movie. Great movie. Let's talk about Gladiator. So from the acts of violence, creative and otherwise that Russell Crowe brought to the set to legendary British hell raiser all over reads tragic demise and tragic comic demise, to the thousands and thousands of pieces of arms and armor they made for the film, to the perils of live tiger wrangling. Here's everything you didn't know about Ridley Scott's Gladiator.

Of course, it was an Italian. The story of Gladiator begins with David Franzoni, a screenwriter best known for writing basically Amistad, Amistad, Amistad Stad. I thought it was okay. He wrote Amistad, and then he wrote Gladiator, and then

not much else. Grew up in Vermont, got into war movies thanks to his dad, who was a veteran, Like a load of people from that generation that it was John Ford and the Westerns and Roger Corman and like his World War II sort of stuff, The Hell's Angels and the flying you know all that right, ringing a bell. I'm talking out in my ass there Hell's Angels.

white boomer men. Franzoni took time off following graduation and decided to travel. He arrived in Europe, where he about a cheap motorcycle and took off across Europe and Western Asia. It was in Baghdad where, whilst living in a yurt, he traded a book on the Irish Revolution with an Australian woman in return for those about to die a book about the Roman gladiator games. That whole thing sounds like an extended Matt Berry riff. It was in Baghdad.

We're living in a yurrop. I traded a book on the Irish Revolution with an Australian woman and returned for those about to Die a book about of a Romania game.

a true American, because yeah, Hollywood screenwriter brain there. Then, in his words, I'm more in India. I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter. Despite this, Franzoni's first script in Hollywood was the exact polar opposite of a historical epic. He sold a treatment that would become nineteen eighty six is Jumpin' Jack Flash, which is a spy comedy starring Whoopee Goldberg and directed by Penny Marshall in her theatrical film directorial debut. There's a little bar trivia question for you.

The whole thing was your typical first screenplay sold nightmare. This movie was originally intended as a starring vehicle for Shelley Long, you know, in her Get Me the Hell Out of Cheers phase, but Goldberg hated the film's director, who were just peeling with nesting matroysh cadals of trivia here. Jumpin Jack Flash's director was Howard Ziefe, who's an ad guy best known for writing alcas Seltzer's That's a Spicy

Meat de Ball TV spot. And then the studio hated this guy's dailies, so they bought in Penny Marshall, who sat down with producer Joel Silver, who was also in this, and they rewrote a bunch of Frianzoni script They brought in a bunch of other writers, so the whole thing was a debacle for the guy. His next project, though, was nineteen ninety two's Citizen Khan, which is an HBO biopic of framed attorney Roy Kahan played by James Woods. In a truly one to one ratio bit of casting

a real life scumbag to an actor scumbag. This earned him one of those famed Cable Ace Awards that we constantly hear about but that are not real and don't mean anything. But he won a Peabody.

Franzoni became the historical guy. He wrote a script about Shakespeare, he wrote about one about George Washington, and he was supposedly tapped to write Ralph Nader's life story, but all he had to say about that to the La Times was that doing research, he decided Nader was a crank, that's it, and then didn't pursue it.

it being a prestige historical piece of the era. The La Times noted in their review of Abishtad that Frenzoni's script was praised for its facile, if occasionally hamhanded, synthesis of historical sources and for its unflinching description of the whrrors of the slave trade. Newsmax called it the feel good movie of the year, a laugh a minute, edge of your seat, thrill ride, wacky for the whole family.

Variety called it FAFO. For his next pick with DreamWorks, Franzoni dug out his old concept for a gladiator focused movie, and he pitched Spielberg. And this was the entirety of the process that he recalled to The La Times. I get a call from Stephen's office. You got two days to come up with a pitch. I walk in and Stephen goes, David, you want to do a gladiator movie for DreamWorks. Yeah, ancient gladiators, Yeah in Rome, ancient Rome, Yeah, in the coliseum. Yeah. Okay, he says, that was it.

I said yeah, four times, that was it. That makes me sad and mad. Yeah yeah, yeah, also ancient gladiators as opposed to American gladiators. Oh right, right right with drawn blaze and laser and charger and the rest the aristocrats.

Forum starring Zero Mostelle with music by Stephen Sondheim. And also Fellini's Satrakhan in nineteen seventy, which focused on the declining decadence of the Empire. Truly weird movie. Never seen it. I'm not a big Felini guy. I should start. You would enjoy it?

say yes Governor. And then the the American crew on Blade Runner printed up T shirts that said yes Governor, my ass and then Scott, rather than diffuse the situation, uh and every other British person on the set printed up their own T shirts that read xenophobia sucks.

got to have dirt on someone. Anyway, This is probably a good time to talk about the original book Daniel P. Mannix is nineteen fifty eight Those About to Die, republished in two thousand and one as The Way of the Gladiator. You may remember that quote appearing in the movie, said by Tigris of Gall in the film's penultimate fight scene. He says, we who are about to die, salucchu Moron.

Tigris of Gall later Manix as one of those biographies that, as mentioned earlier, were only available to white men in the twentieth century. He was born to a naval family, and he was set to follow in that tradition until he flopped out of training so badly that his commandant wrote a letter to his father saying he is definitely not officer material. Now. This so traumatized the young man X that he spent the next two months in bed.

Though in nineteen thirty one he earned a degree in journalism from the University of Pennsylvania after failing out of zoology first, Mannix did end up working for the Navy during World War II, where he was tasked with creating training films. After that, Wikipedia notes helpfully that Mannix's civilian career could be briefly described as engaging in various adventurous activities, which he filmed for lectures or wrote about in magazines

and books. One such example was the series of Collier's articles that he turned into nineteen fifty one's Step Right Up, a book about Mannix's experience allegedly traveling with a carnival after college, where he supposedly learned how to be a sword swallower, fire eater, stage magician, escape artist, mind reader, and lock picker, working under the stage name The Great Zadma.

Another big thing for Mannix was hunting. He enjoyed hunting creatures great and small, specializing in ancient or traditional methods of doing so, like a blowgun, boomerang, or bow and arrow. He also trained hawks and hounds, and also hunted with a trained cheetah, otter, seabird, cormorant, all of those things rule And then somehow, after doing all this magically funded both he and his wife, who is like his chief

creative collaborator, would create movies, lectures, articles, books. One of these was turned into an OSCAR nominated short called The Boy in the Eagle. Here's just a Wild Thing. Mannix witnessed a famous herpetologist person who studies reptiles, Grace Olive Wiley, die in real time in front of his eyes when she was fatally bitten by an Indian cobra at her house in nineteen forty eight.

incredibly troubled. Disney Production purchased the rights to Manic's novel the same year it was published, in nineteen sixty seven, but work on the film adaptation didn't start until ten years later nineteen seventy seven, and at that time, then Disney CEO Ron Miller wanted to use the film as a vehicle for newer talents because the famous nine old men of Disney's animation, these were the pioneers of the studio,

basically launched the division we're nearing retirement. Consequently, The Fox and the Hound would be the last film that Ollie Johnson, Frank Thomas and I can't say that name, Hooly Reitherman. You've got to be kidding me. Nope, who are some of the legends of Disney would ever work on? But arguments developed between Rutherman and the younger director of the film,

Art Stevens. The younger team sided was Stevens, except for Don Bluth, who eventually walked out of Disney based on this whole kerfuffle, taking eleven others with him to form his own animation studio, which you would use to then traumatize millennials with movies like Lamb Before Time All Dogs Go to Heaven. I remember, his movies were distinctly sadder than Disney movies. Anyhow, this exodus forced Disney to bail

on The Fox. In the Hound's original nineteen eighty release date, though it eventually premiered a year later in nineteen eighty one.

and Oliver Stones. Any Given Sunday was completed. And this is the last detail that you'll get about the actual script, because there were many writers brought in and then, if you believe many different parties, Ridley and Russell Crowe basically rewrote it on set. So it's so funny to me that David Franzoni got a three picture deal out of one script that he wrote, and his other most famous one had like charitably four other people writing it.

and nineteen seventy one's classic badass driving movie Vanishing Point. Unfortunately, there was a back and forth with the studios and with Scott and Crow once they were all brought on board, hence why the film is ultimately credited to not just David Franzoni, but John Logan and William Nicholson and I'm

uncredited Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe. John and Williams's influences on the shooting drafts were indelible, but there were too many screenwriters involved, Franzoni said, although he ultimately blamed the studio, the big differences were between competing drafts, where the studio was trying to enforce their rules on how a hit movie was composed. Studio is one of the usual audience friendly stuff, such as happy endings and heroes triumphing over adversity.

For example, Franzoni wanted to begin the movie with Maximus's death and then work backwards from there. Irascible King Ridley Scott came aboard without even seeing a script. Producer Walter Parks met with Scott, who then had just wrapped Gi Jane with Demi Moore, and simply pulled up a nineteenth century painting. Ridley Scott told Variety, I'm a very visual driven director. Walter Parks opened a picture of a painting called Pelisse Verso Latin with a turned thumb by a

fellow called Jean Leon Jerome. It shows the armored man with the TUNEI fork that would kill You, standing over a netted victim, which is a perfect and poetic description of a painting of a gladiator. The armored man with the tune of fork that would kill you. He's looking up for Italians.

I don't care. I'll do it, and that was it.

I in Reno just to watch them die. Anything there, no matter. It is a brainstorm, yes, and screenwriter friend zone. He said, my wife and I will never forget the day they sent.

jaw line back. But around this time he did have that sort of fay aristocratic mia from talent to mister Ripley that would have I think sold him as this.

looks like snow, which he does in the film. Again, I really like Russell Crowe for nice guys, but his his loudish Australianism is so godamn funny in every quote that he gave or excited to, saying in this movie.

Someone was tweeting at him. I believe about Oh yes so, Russell Crowe tweeted fight back, humiliation is news, denile of climate change, etri it over education. Media should not be the enemy of progress. Brendan McClaskey at T Bones thirty two on Twitter replied at Russell Crowe, li rural Hollywood. Just keep acting, pretty boy, leave politics alone. Russell Crowe at T Bones thirty two, Simple facts. I'm not pretty. I'm not your boy, you simpleton, Send me your address

so I can visit you and explain my passions. No period. It is the perfect threat. I love it so much. There's like there's been a trend like on Twitter lately or I don't know lately pass a couple of year of variations on what if I came to your house with a weapon or something like that. But send me your address so I can visit you and explain my passions is the rawest line of all time. Anyway, Hell

was I talking about? Uh oh yeah? So Ridley Scott, David Franzoni, Russell crow would sit together after day of filming as new bits of writing would come in, and over whiskey and cigars, they would just decide what was going to stay for the next day of shooting. These editing sessions occasionally crossed over into real on set disputes. Writer William Nicholson recalled to The Daily Mail that Russell Crowe said to him one day, your lines are garbage, But I'm the gradiest actor in the world, and I

can make even garbage sound good. That's bad, I'm not dialed into it, Nicholson added. And the funny thing is that it's true extremely beta move. Okay, the lines weren't garbage, and he was a bit aggressive, but he is a great actor, so his occasional fits of arrogance didn't bother me at all. Richard Harris, who was playing Marcus Aurelius, was too old for the and took a more dignified route. He simply ignored all rewrites as they came in for

his scenes and said the original lines. This all gets so much funnier to me when you learn that throughout filming Ridley Scott wore the red USS Alabama navy hat that Gene Hackman wears and cribs and tide. It was given to him by his brother Tony Scott, who directed that film. So in all these onset photos you can see Ridley Scott with his like veteran USS Alabama with the navy wings, like red trucker hat. This is all anyway.

A Time magazine article from May of two thousand and went a little further detailing Crow's shenanigans on the set of Gladiator. They quoted a DreamWorks executive who said Russell was not well behaved. He tried to rewrite the entire script on the spot. You know, the big line in the trailer in this life for the next, I will have my vengeance. At first he absolutely refused to say it. He did a lot of posturing and put the fear

of God into some people. Thankfully, Ridley never yelled. He was the voice of reason dealing with many unreasonable factors, not the least of which was his lead. There was an Entertainment Weekly article in which Crow remembered originally pushing Ridley Scott to let him voice Maximus with a Spanish accent, since the character is from the Iberian Peninsula and he's referred to thusly as the Spaniard, which is a bit

of historical inaccuracy. Ridley Scott pushed back and asked for the generic British you know received pronunciation style accent, which Crow said ended up as Royal Shakespeare Company, two pints after Lunch. As I mentioned earlier, this is sort of the ground zero or assent for I guess it really started with La Confidential, where he plays like a like

a muscle bound passionate La police Detective. But this is all in the on ramp bleeding up to South Park's depiction of Russell Crowe as having a show called Russell Crowe's fighting round the world, which is just that a very cartoonish Australian accent and Russell Crowe just travel log style but just getting into fights. The phone throwing thing is at one point in New York he'd like literally hawked a desk phone at a clerk, I believe, and

was arrested for it. But also from that time magazine article is the quote a hard drinking perfectionist Crow got into brawls with villagers on one occasion and laid such waste to his rented villa in Morocco that the caretaker protested to Ridley Scott saying he must leave. He's violating every tenant of the Quran. Another hilarious story about Crowe, Sorry, one more, well, a couple more, Sorry, two more. Russell Crowe once made reference to George Clooney having quote sold

out when Clooney was doing then espresso commercials. George Clooney supposedly didn't take kindly to this, and ward traveled about this through Hollywood to Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe's apology to Clooney was a mail package that included a CD of Russell Crowe's band thirty odd Foot of Grunts, a book of Russell Crowe's poetry, and handwritten note saying he had been misquoted. Fro did supposedly improvise the line at my signal unleash hell in the Battle of Germania, which is

incredibly raw, so we can call it a wash. He also did the maximum speech. He also asked to write a speech when the guy says like, what is going home mean to you? Or something? And he just jotted that speech down thinking about his ranch in Australia, which is a great Yeah, it's a nice little moment as you meditate on that. We'll be right back with more too much information after these messages.

hard for Oliver Reed. German weightlifter Ralph Mohler, who plays the towering gladiator Hagen, told Yahoo in an interview he later went to Oliver and said, look, they didn't want you, but I want you. Don't let me down, and he never did until he died three weeks before the movie ended.

He was arrested once for brawling in a pub. I think this was a separate incident, and he apologized to the court and sent flowers to all the responding police officers.

of him on talk shows. But the most notorious is him on a show called After Dark, when he showed up drunk and offended the feminist writer Kate Millet by telling her give us a kiss, big not good.

His argument was kind of undercut on this British interview by falling off his chair and making his exit from the show by crawling away. He was on Letterman a bunch of times, and when Letterman tried to ask him about an incident when he challenged Lee Marvin to a

drinking contest, Reid replied, that's hearsay. When Letterman continued with this line of questioning, a seemingly genuinely angry Reid told Letterman that the showrunners knew that this topic was not to be discussed, and so he said, let's cool it with that one, get to a new subject. I love trees and boats. Cool, God bless him.

their career, you know audition. Shelley Winters actually famously was asked to audition once and she showed up with a big bag, reached in and pulled out an oscar and slammed it on the table and said, here's my TV. Reached in and pulled that her second oscar and slammed it on the table and said, here's my head shot.

to read twice, you read twice. I'm getting like Don Draper and oh you know, watch Man Man nevermind and.

the bar. Eight beers in and with only one scene left to film, Reid was about to head back to his hotel when, as the story goes, he was recognized by some of the officers who called out, shall we have a drink Alie, which activates something in his brain. So Reid sits down with these guys and this all comes from. None of the Western newspapers had this. This is a Spanish newspaper, El Paiees who all of this detail comes from so grain of salt, but print the legend. Yeah.

In addition to the eight beers, he'd already had read down a dozen double shot of rum while chatting with these naval men and as arm wrestling matches subsequently piled up also had a bottle of whiskey next to him. He supposedly won five arm wrestling matches against British navelmen

at age sixty one. Whilsh Shoust at the age of sixty one will drunker than you or anyone you know has ever been signed autographs, hugged these guys and bid farewell, and then just said I don't feel very well, collapsed on the floor and died in the ambulance before they made it to the hospital. He was buried in Bruney Graveyard in Churchtown, Ireland, where he'd been living, and his epitaph reads he made the air move.

mortals are but shadows and dust. A clause in the production's insurance contract would have allowed them to reshoot all of Reid's scenes with another actor at a cost of about twenty five million, even though this would have been paid for by the insurer. Ridley Scott felt that the cast and crew were exhausted by this point because the movie was shot in sequence, so this would have been near it if they were writing it. Yeah, exactly, so they were. This is ultimately at the end of both

filming and the plot of the movie. So he accomplished the final scene of Reid's character by finding an actor of his similar build and then they just pay did a CGI version of Reid's face over him and then overdubbed a bit of dialogue from an alternate take of that earlier scene. So this is a really early example of how what they could do with CGI, and I think it won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars, or

at least was nominated for it. So it's a really As I said earlier, it's a great example of tasteful CGI, which Ridley has apparently not leaned into. In the New One, Iranian British actor Omit Djili, who's also known for his work in nineteen ninety nine's The Mummy, he has a tremendous story about working with Reid on the set of Gladiator. He says he was scared of Oliver Reed, going back to again read's Roland Oliver. They wrote this op ed

for The Guardian, which we'll quote now. In the script, Ali was meant to punch me in the face and say you sold me queer giraffes. I'd worked with some of the crew a few months before in the Mummy and they knew I was scared of Oli, so they decided to play a trick on me. They thought it would be funny to get Oli to grab me by the nuts during the scene. Ollie said, do you mind if I really grab you hard to make it authentic?

I said fine, so he did. Usually you do the scene, they say cut and you have a few minutes to reset before you go again. Ollie continued to hold my nuts during the reset. I was so frightened of him that I thought it was part of his acting process, so I allowed him to hold me while we talked about the food in the hotel. By take three, I became aware of a massaging sensation. By take four, he said, you do realize this is a wind up, don't you.

Everyone thought it was so funny they kept it in the final cut and he didn't have to punch me. Rip Oliver reed.

especially rattled Joaquin Phoenix. Sorry, serious voice. An on set death is never easy, but it must have especially ratted Joaquin Phoenix, who was returning to the screen for the first time since the death of his brother River from a drug overdose in West Hollywood on Halloween nineteen ninety three. Phoenix told Collider in twenty eighteen, Gladiator was one of the most intimidating films I've done, because it was the

first set I went on that was just massive. It looked like it was acres of land and tons of trucks and trailers and you know, hundreds of extras, multiple cameras. Suddenly, the scale of this hit me, and I was overwhelmed by that. I didn't think I was going to be able to make it through. He continued. I went to Ridley Scott and said, I don't know what to do. I just can't do this. I don't know what you're gonna do. This just isn't going to be possible. And

Ridley was really smart. He just shot me for four hours and he didn't put film in the camera. The first scene that I did, I was really nervous, and we shot I don't know, an unbelievable amount of takes, a shocking amount, over and over again. At some point at the end, after hours, Scott finally said, okay, we got it. And then later on when we were working on the film, he told me that he hadn't been putting film in the camera for like the first thirty takes.

But everybody did everything. The camera did its movements, sound people, everyone behaved as if we were shooting takes. I don't understand that. Well, you just get all the nervousness out of his system.

a number of cans of Guinness. I got the point across to Joaquin that is actually an internal journey and everything he needs to do with the character lives within him. Just imagining like a all right mate, an act of prepas handing of a copy of the artists way. Yeah, how many affirmations you been doing in the morning? I love here, You're great, you can it lives within you.

goes on to say some very uncharitable things. He says something like disgusting and undignified the way that he behaved, like striding down the set and wanting to fight people drunk in the middle of the day and dying in your own piss and vomit and like blah blah blah blah blah.

and it just hit me in a really heavy way. Now, not to make an immediate pun on heavy, but Joaquin Phoenix also deliberately decided to gain weight as his character gained power, which Scott noticed during the dailies and mentioned to a producer the following day. Ridley explains in the DVD commentary for the film, Joaquin walks up to me. Commitis Joaquin. It is full regalia and armor, and he says, I hear, I look like a fat little hamster. He then didn't eat any food for weeks. But enough about

all this acting and personality and stuff. Let's get to the real meat of the episode minute production details. As usual, Ridley Scott, trained Lest we Ever Forget at London's prestigious Royal College of Art, was heavily involved with storyboarding before filming began. Storyboard artist Sylvan de Fretz, I don't know recalled for the film's making of book. Several months out Ridley will give very detailed sketches, shot by shot, blow

blay blow. A couple weeks out, sketches get very rough, and the instruction's very loose because he just doesn't have the time. I'm imagining just like a stick figure with a story.

between January and May of nineteen ninety nine. Production designer Arthur Max were called in the book we trumped around the Roman Empire for six weeks, scouting all of the existing remains in England, France, Italy, Eastern Europe and North Africa. But your access to us left of the real Rome is quite limited. All the ruins are historical monuments and

so cannot be touched. Consequently, the film found stand ins for certain historical settings, and as we will get too shortly, used CGI to restore others to their period accurate glory.

was because production learned from England's Forestry Commission. At the area Bourne Woods was slated to be deforested anyway, so as really Scott remembered, I said, I'll do it, I'll burn it to the ground. And they said, good, incredible sound.

of wounded, heavy browed gravitas to this. I don't dislike him in this, just when you weigh it against all this priggish stuff that you hear, Like, okay, buddy.

the Ridley Scott Epic Making of book. But they were also aided by the fact that Morocco just kind of looked like that. David Franzoni, the screenwriter, told Yahoo. The reason it worked is because Ridley built the real thing. When you drove up to it, it looked like it was part of the city. The gladiatorial arena, the bedroom would come in from the desert to watch the shoot, and so Ridley just put them in the movie. It

has this legitimacy to it that happened naturally. The areas around ie ban Hado may look familiar to folks at this point. It's subsequently been used in Oliver Stones two thousand and four epic, Alexander Releas, Scott's historical drama Kingdom of Heaven in two thousand and five, and twenty ten's Prince of Persia. Not to mention, portions of Game of Thrones.

intervening in nearly two centuries. All told, the fort's existing structure and its compounds and parade grounds would be used for about half the final sets seen in the movie. So if you go to this place in Malta you can see about half of Gladiator, which is tight. This not quite the real thing, but close enough. Approach served the art direction of the film as well, which pulled in influences from Modernist architect Hugh Ferris and Nazi architects

like Albert Speer. Filmmakers used large scale miniatures to model the Rome sets before over one hundred British crew members and two hundred Maltice workers took nineteen weeks to build

the real thing. During the high winds and storms of what was eventually reported to be Malta's worst winter in thirty years, Production literally used one hundred percent of the plaster and plywood available in Malta and had to start importing those materials, eventually using around six hundred tons of plaster in a process that was also hampered by the storms that would leave ships unable to dock and unload.

This isn't like some obscure substance wood and plaster. You've taken all of it from the siland there's simply no more. Ridley puffing on a cigar, chuck it in, burn it, burn it to the ground. I don't care. The ships can unload, Ridley, burn them, bring in new ones. The real coliseum, just a historical note, was begun by the Emperor Vespasian in seventy a d. And finished about ten years later by his son Titus and then Emperor Nero, who gifted the public the grounds from his sprawling palace.

So Production thought about using these existing smaller structures, before eventually determining that they would simply build a small chunk at full scale of the Colisseum and then expanded digitally so they programmed these initial scale designs into a computer used that to determine lens angles and camera movements to figure out how much they would actually need for coverage. This ended up being a fragment of the coliseum's first tier, about one third of the circumference of the original and

fifty two feet high. Now, this also included sets for the lower portions of the arena where the gladiators enter an exit and the animals were released from. And then they also made a massive seventeen sale PVC and steel sunshade. This is somewhat historically inaccurate. In the gladiated times, they did have these massive sheets hanging over the seating crowd called valarium that were necessary because of the it was

the Mediterranean at high noon. This one was controlled by a massive system of rigs and pulleys, and they used it to light and shade the set. Accordingly, cinematographer John Matheson called it the most expensive shadow ever and it's really beautiful in the film. I mean to know that they were using this thing to generate all the kirascuro the beautiful light and shading the shafts of light that

come in really something. And then The rest of the imaging of the coliseum was handled by mill Film in London. They filled the structure with a combination of cardboard cutouts, two thousand real extras and about thirty three thousand CGI spectators, while also adding the rest of the structure digitally. Scott relied on natural lighting as much as possible for the film to achieve the proper pseudo realism, but they didn't need to create much of their set dressing. For example,

the elaborate mosaic floor of Commodis's Joaquin Phoenix's chambers. Those were bespoke linoleum tiles that arrived in Malta in one hundred and forty boxes, accompanied by a team of employees straight from the fabricator who spent weeks piecing them together. Movie magic, I love it. Just blank checks. Now, of course, we have to get into the most fun parts of historical epic filmmaking. Wardrobe in weapons, costume designer Janty yeats

wonderful name. She had got her start in the world of high fashion, and so she did research from artists like Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema and George de la Tour, and the resulting wardrobe that she designed of it. The Emperor's family was of course the most elaborate for Connie

Nielsen's wardrobe. For example, not only the raw materials, so the raw fabric has gold thread woven into it, but then there's also gold thread that's embroidered in and around all the detailing to make it subtly shimmer in lighting. All of the footwear for the film was handmade in Rome, although devout vegan Joaquin Phoenix refused to wear period correct

leather and I guess was given full leather. The Royal jewelry was largely handcrafted by England's Martin Adams, although one of Connie Nielsen's rings was a two thousand year old signet ring that she found an antique store and I guess she found it, yeah, and I guess bought it herself or build it to production which power move The armour portions of the wardrobeough had to be flexible and much lighter than they would have been in real life.

So some of them like Committis's beautiful like white marble armor thing that he wears that was made of rubber which was then covered in leather or I guess vegan leather in precious Little Joaquin's case, although Crow's armour, since he was fighting in it, had to be made from leather covered foam, so these things would have just been like basically Halloween costumes wouild I love as opposed to like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones where

they like handhampered. This sh it was just an enormous chore for people to wear. Also, fun fact for Crow and his stunt doubles every single piece of his armor, not just the breastplate, but the gloves, all the different discrete little pieces had to be made twelve times over every single piece twelve times for continuity so that they could have different stages of combat wear and et cetera.

Production also put together five hundred gladiator tunics out of rough linen and over ten thousand other costumes for the rest of the cast and extras. Costume supervisor Rosemary Burrows had the fun job of supervising the quote costume villages that had to be set up to manage costume, hair and makeup on location, which for the Germania shoot also

included mud baths. That's right, folks, mud baths. Friend of the Pod mud babs mudbaths so that they could just look disgusting and grimy, and Burrows was also responsible for finding the quaint little British ferrier. Who's that's a horse equipment maker? I believe I think you're right. Yeah, who made all the film's chain mail?

Easter eggs nestled throughout the film. You can hear a sample of chanting from the nineteen sixty four film Zulu mixed into the beginning of the Germania Battle. That's cool, and one of the totems carried by the opposing forces is a mask from the much mocked Sean Connery film Zardo's that's the one of him in the in the Sling the Sling speedo. Yes, yes, it's painted gray and

subjected to appropriate weathering to make it look slightly less obvious. Meanwhile, art director Cliff Robinson was responsible for putting together the film's vehicles, which included the Royal carriage, but more importantly the chariots used in the Colisseum. They both had the

look cool as hell and served various functions. Twenty four of these were built in total, which is incredible rannging from the more ornate ones used by a commutus Antigris of gall and sixteen of these were used for the battle scene. For that scene, some were stunt ready, meaning they were able to take a beating and or be destroyed, but others were constructed with special combat angle camera mounts.

Cliff Robinson, the art director, also built the Roman War weapons like arrow volleying scorpions and two full sized catapults, each weighing a ton incapable of launching missiles four hundred and fifty feet.

the real deal. He started his life as an armorer as an apprentice in a gun shop when he was sixteen, and subsequently went to work on two Indiana Jones's A Highlander, Two Aliens, A Bond, The Three Musketeers, Brave Heart, the Fifth Element. I don't know why I emphasized it like that. He made Ridley's gun, the pulse rifle in Aliens, which is like one of the most iconic pieces of sci fi weaponry ever, the mask of Zoro and the Mummy

before getting onto Gladiator once again, Happy Mumvember to everyone. Ironically, Atherton says in the making of book that there was not much reference to be found in books for weaponry and armor from this period, sure Man, and so many of the film's weapons were original concept, like scissor shaped sword gauntlets and the multi firing crossbow used at one scene.

after a fashion Athington. This is interesting because there are like specific if you're a nerd like me, for taxonomy, there are like a bunch of actually documented types of gladiators that they got from frescoes and different writings. So like Murmillos is a specific class of gladiator who have these fish helms, and if you see these, it's hard

to describe with in a podcast. But if you see these sort of goggle eyed, grilled mask with the big almost conquistador style helmets, like those archetypes are present in frescoes and stuff. And now that's how they pulled out of this. The aforementioned men with a tuna sword who could kill you in the source painting is called a reterrioris or retire. They were specifically armed with a trident and a net. Thracians had a very specific kind of

almost boomerang as curved short sword. There were basically guys who just fought with enormous brass knuckles or like knife gloves and were otherwise unarmored. And then there was a special guy who appears in the film named for Pluto, the Roman god of the dead, and you can see him in the film. His job is to just he was specifically just to walk around the arena afterwards and with a giant spear combo spear club combo, just bash people's heads in real good if it didn't look like

they were going to be able to recover. And so that one of those weapons is on auction, I believe currently it's called the A lot of this is on auction. It's all over Julian's in different prop places because they made so much of it. So if you want to for a loved one, or say a podcaster you really like, go buy one. They're called Elysium Dispatchers. So that's cool, man. The fun note that everyone about the hip hop nerds will note about this is that MF. Doom wears a

version of Maximus's mask. Jordan. Hip hop is a genre speak rhythmically over beats. It might be a bit of a blind spot for you since the fifties. But sorry, that was necessarily mean. But yeah, that Maximus's mask that he first wears just became stage makeup for this for British rapper m F. Doom, who sadly died a few years back. At this point, I think Tigris of Gulls sick, absolutely raw as hell. Tiger head face mask that has a tear on one eye, it's so unbelievably cool as

hell that was made up. Copies of certain weapons were also rendered in leather or rubber for close ups that required people to take real hits. And then I just want to drop in a quote about from Simon Atherton about archery, which is cool Roman archery. He said, while Roman soldiers would use they typically use short swords, spears and shields and military situations. He gave this very interesting

breakdown of the Roman field tactics. You know, they had the They would first throw these spears that were very weakly constructed so that they couldn't be repurposed. They were javelins essentially that were designed to break. And then they would advance either with longer spears that were more sturdy behind shields, or the short swords which are called gladyeye. That's where you get the term gladiator from. And what Simon said is that Romans didn't actually like archery very

much as a concept. That was more of a I think it evolved more of British stuff. But then he gives this insanely minute detail of how they were made. They used a horn and sinew bow because from that part of the world, Mediterraneans very dry wood. So you make a bow on a small wooden cord, and then on the outside you lay sinew from the achilles tendon or the backstrap of an animal dried out, and then the inside of the bow you put horn from an animal.

So in fact what they were making was ancient. Three layered fiberglass. Wow, I think that's all so neat, really cool.

almost accidentally stab somebody in the head. In the fight sequence at the coliseum where Maximus gets on the horse, most of us got carried away, and I think when you're truly doing it for real, the pretend sort of goes out of the way and the emotion takes over. So a lot of people got hurt.

game of soccer. Get over it, love Russell. You know that's really missing. That's really lacking when it's not done. In the Australian accident, can you give us a I.

back again. I do remember saying to my mom when I got home from that shoot. She said, how do you feel? I said, I actually feel like a football player who's played one season too many.

because they're going too fast. They just have to rein in and slow down fast. And I knew I was fifteen percent short, so it was really tricky. They were grazing the other end of the stadium.

of transporting exotic animals over international boundaries. However, production had to borrow animals from a local zoo when they were shooting in Morocco, of which Reynolds has the following cheerful note in the book. Of course, these are not animals that have been raised and trained for this work. They're really wild. But everyone survived and we sent all the animals back healthy.

days for tiger's shooting purposes. This ended up taking weeks. The workflow was, at least in some parts alarmingly real. Animal trainers would use bait to get the tigers to lunge, leap and roar with, you know, just chunks of meat, and their controls were just the chains you see in the film, just a caller and some chains to run through ira eye hooks, you know, in the ground. But these were done independently of Crow's stuntwork and his stunt actors,

So basically they would composite shots. Basically, the tigers do something in one take that they put Crow or his stunt double in a you know, another in the same background, film their reaction, and then they paste it together. And

this happened daily. Film editor patro Scalia would view the dailies to see if he had enough of these angles to edit with and then ask for reshoots accordingly, Now that there were some shots that they did do within a degree of distance, Ridley Scott in the book says that he allowed for fifteen feet of distance between the tigers and actors most of the time, although in recent

years that number has shrunk. In the telling, he said to Variety the tiger would come out of the hole and Russell would roll out of the way and he said me, that was close, and I said, we were there as well, Russell, you were two feet I was like four feet. Anyway, four six hundred pound tigers were used for that fight scene. Two were more docile ones from the US that had been hand raised, and two were quote less predictable ones from France. This is where

you fade in the so fade in that music. In France, we do not trains italielles MWC and feeds in the cigarette wine, collected cameo and paperback. Buff.

like an eye roll. So much of the close distance shots that you do see were created with a full size animatronic tiger that could be positioned over Maximus's shoulders and move or on top of him and move suspended, be suspended in mid air for leaping shots, and so the shots that you see in the final film were achieved by a combination of compositing, real tigers, with the actors and the animatronic one and some subtle CGI work. One of the live tigers actually did get sort of

loose one day. It reared back suddenly on its chain and it knocked its handler to the ground, and so all this slack went into the chain and he had to run and scramble to grab it before the thing had enough lead to I guess eat crow, get it work.

about Rome Wolf, et cetera. Britain's strict anti rabies laws meant that they could not use a real wolf for filming those nanny state Yeah, I know, because of woke They don't want you to have a wolf for a pack. Yeah, the woke left doesn't want you to have wolves, so they used a teruvi teruvein Belgian shepherd dog's name was Kite. He appears with Russell Crowe in the Battle of Germania scenes.

Now that dog may be familiar to the anglophiles among you, because it plays Robbie Jackson's dog Wellard in the British TV show east Enders.

not wrangle it. So, of course, like what's his name, Streisan director John Peters, So of course, like John p who was agitating for a giant spider scene in the Kevin Smith Superman, didn't get it. That film didn't get made, and so then in Wild Wild West, which he also produced, got an enormous CGI monstrosity giant spider. Ridley Scott wanted a rhino ingladiator and twenty four years later got his

damn CGI rhinos scene. So yeah, they would use rhinos, tigers, cheetahs, all leopards, just anything they could get their hands on, and throwing an arena against humans bears. Sorry, what are you laughing at?

and a furious Jake Gillenhal interjects melancholy. It's melancholy, and everyone sort of nervously jitter laughs, and then he just very cataly goes and it's not the first time today, So sorry, Yeah, it's it's Tigris, buddy.

He's a good friend of mine. Schwarzenegger for Rigno have this weird dynamic because they're both in pumping iron together or the former can be seen mocking Loo's body.

rates and with a forty five degree shutter. This is a method that had been recently seen in Saving Private Ryan, which helps make fast moving action feel more real and better captures minute movements without getting too nerdy about how lens's work. When you're shooting moving images, the anger the angle of the shutter forms a proportion to the time that each frame of film, the length of time that

each frame film is exposed. A one hundred and eighty shutter angle is considered normal for your twenty four frames per second film shooting, So a tighter shutter angle will constrict motion blur. And when you see this in Saving Private Ryan, and you see this in Gladiator, that means when the look in quality changes, that's the shutter angle. But then what it means is that stuff like swords rather than blurring or sand in Saving Private Ryan, rather than blurring, you can see a lot more of the

kind of individual frames of those action scenes. And this is also different from what would then be seen in three hundred and what has become a signature move of that jerk Off Zack Snyder called ramping, which is an effect that happens in the battle scenes where the overall rate of action suddenly slowed down to like a slow motion thing, and then very immediately sped up within the same shot. That's called ramping. That's different than shutter angle.

Scott explained it to Deadline in twenty twenty three. It was the last shot of principal photography. Russell didn't come to Italy. That was his double. The guy was standing there in this field smoking. I say, get out of the field. Are you joking? It was midsummer dry, He says, oh sorry, man. He walked off the field and did that thing with the hand. I said, stop right there, get the steady camp. We followed the hand. It became the list for immortality or Heaven if you like. Right there.

It was discovered the last day. Spontaneously, Russell said, you'll never use that. I said I will when he saw the scene. When he saw on the scene, he groaned, I said, too late. It's shot I got it, mate. It was put out that cigarette and get the steady cam and don't walk on the wheat. What a character he is.

just to the keyboard. So he's supposed to be very like a virtue also with that, but doesn't read music properly. One of the big charges from him is that he's one of those guys who, you know, this happens all the time. Composers come in and they just go, here's the theme, like, here's the melodic structure for this moment. I want to make it sound like ex composer, and then like five or six interns or staff orchestrators they're

called fill that in. And that is apparently like especially gratuitous. In Zimmer's studio. It will just come in and be like, you know, here's this melodic frame, and then like all of his people who are either not credited or very underpaid, actually make it sound like what you're hearing and do what a lot of people would consume is the actual work of composition, harmonies, rhythmic motif elaborations, etc. But that's not even what we're talking about here. We're just talking

about straight up theft. Zimmer's score for Gladiator contains what, depending on where you fall in this conception, this understanding of art is either homage references jumping points, or just straight up theft to Gustav Holst's suite the Planets, in particular Mars, the Burner of War. Now nerds will also remember that this dramatically informs John Williams's score for Star Wars, particularly the Imperial March is the one that's widely cited

as using Mars as jumping off point. Zimmer didn't stop there. He also decided to yank stuff from Wagner, particularly the ring cycle. Now this this is standard practice, you know, this happens all the time. But Zimmer's quotation of Holst was glaring enough to merit a lawsuit from the Holst Foundation, who sued Zimmer over it in two thousand and six. Now, in the liner notes, Hans himself copped to using quote the same language, the same vocabulary, if not the same syntax,

which is an incredibly weasily thing to say. Let's parse that for a second. The same language, the same vocabulary, but not the syntax, meaning all of the words and all of the specific.

the whole theft evolved as an accident. I also read one other thing that says an early part of Zimmer's queue for the battle lifts a melodic passage from Tchaikowsky's Symphony Number six. So take all this theft homage however you will, but the Gladiator score drama doesn't stop there. A few years later, fans noticed a striking similarity between one of Gladiator's themes and the main theme of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Caribbean. Whatever the emphosisis is

there Paramel. The film's music was originally supposed to have been done by Alan Silvestri, who left that production over differences with producer Jerry Brockheimer. Zimmer took over the job with another composer named Klaus Badelt, who was employed by Zimmer's film scoring company, and Zimmer supposed that they wrote much of the themes for this for Pirates in a

single night. He repurposed, allegedly, if you will, rather than self plagiarized or just recycled themes from not only Gladiator, but also a score he wrote for a movie called Drop Zone. And he may have also taken stuff that he composed for The Lion King to Simba's Pride. So punch all this in because it's difficult to describe, but people on YouTube have done the legwork of comparing the Gladiator theme to the Pirates theme and yes, also to the line kicked two simplest Pride theme. Yes, so yeah,

I don't know. I don't I don't like Han Zimmer very much. The vocals, though, are interesting. Apparently Pavaratti was offered a song on the Gladiator soundtrack and he turned it down. He said later in an interview with Billboard that it was a regret of his but he performs the song titled unsurprisingly ill Gladiatore in concert. Lisa Girard is the woman from much of the score. Throughout the eighties and nineties, she had been one half of the

Gothic world music, experimental Melbourne ensemble. Dead Can Dance music was described once by Ian McFarlane as constructed soundscapes of mesmerizing grandeur and solemn beauty, African polyrhythms, Gaelic folk, Gregorian chant, Middle Eastern music, mantras and art rock plug for Dead Can Dance. The group disbanded in nineteen ninety eight, but

Gerard continued as a prolific solo artist. She comes into the film world with nineteen ninety nine's The Insider, which is the film that Russell Crowe got super fat for and then had to lose a bunch of weight for for Gladiator, and then she worked with on the Zimmer on Gladiator. Interesting only Zimmer was nominated for Best Score at the Oscars, but the Golden Globes at least recognized

Gerard's contributions to the film. She has a contralto register, but she can also access the higher ranges of a mezzo soprano, which is why you hear music journalists cliches like otherworldly being fixed to descriptions of her voice. Many of her songs this is interesting, especially in Gladiator, are sung in what's called idioglossia, which is a technical term

for self created idiosyncratic language. You might hear it reference in terms of singer ros, where the lead singer Jonzi sings in a made up language that he has termed Hopelandic, but the more technical linguistic term for that is idio glossia like.

But in those lyrics, she literally says, with Rob Dickens, executive producer of the album at the Wheel and then also co producer Ross Column, we can sigh say goodbye Ross and his dependencies, which is a pun on the Ross dependency region of Antarctica, and yeah, man that whips.

which we know for a fact didn't exist. There are a number of other inaccuracies that have been raised since the film first hit screens, which allegedly costs historians working as consultants on the film to either quit or ask their names be removed from the credits. Fact number one. Despite looking cool as hell, catapults and the arrow firing scorpions depicted in the opening scene probably wouldn't have been

deployed for ground combat in a forested area. Those were largely siege tools and considered unwieldly for fighting in open battles, particularly one surrounded by trees. Fact number two. In real life, Marcus Aurelius did not ban gladiator fights as his filmic version did.

his finger, just stab him. He's got a lumper, he's got a ladder, so this would he would spare their lives though, But while he was practicing, though, he did like to kill his sparring partners. He was just kind of a male slot of the era. A lot of writings make reference to his good looks and height, but he didn't have a thing for his sister. Just hundreds of conki male, one of which may have been a sister.

Who's to say they slip in in the middle of one of the lurgies done, you know, there'd be no way of knowing, there would no be yeah, you know, writings about the real Commudists paint him is just kind of stupid with a sadistic streak, a bit cowardly and overly impressionable. Mostly just a himbo who was really into slaughtering exotic animals in Rome's arenas, but not just limited

to that. He publicly slaughtered amputees who were veterans of Roman wars, a fun little quirk, and though he wasn't actually killed by a gladiator in the ring, he did meet a suitably brutal end. First, he was poisoned by his mistress, and although that didn't take while recovering from this process, his enemies tasked Commatist's wrestling partner, the aforementioned Narcissus, with strangling the emperor in the bath. The entire thumb system,

and this is much funnier, is actually inverted. In ancient Rome, thumbs up meant raise your sword and strike the killing blow, while thumbs down meant lower and sheath your sword. But because of the ingrained modern associations with the gestures, they have been inverted in pretty much all gladiatorial depictions. Is that interesting, Jordan?

first century name of the massive structure. However, in the ancient world it is known much less casually as the Flavian Amphitheater, after one of the emperors who aided in its construction. Not until the Middle Ages did people refer to it as the Colosseum. The notion of Maximus being known as a Spaniard is preposterous. The Romans had occupied the Iberian Peninsula and the region was known as Hispania,

but it was just considered part of Rome. The earliest use of the term Spaniard didn't even pop up until the fifteenth century. The entire naming conventions used in the movie are inaccurate. Romans had three names, the first name, the family name, and then an added name denoting position e g. Gayis Julius Caesar, who would went by Caesar.

High ranking Romans went by their second or third name, since they weren't as common, so as in the film, someone named Maximus Decimus Meritis would have been addressed as either Decimus or Meredis. While there are plenty of minute anachronisms as far as the wardrobe, arms, and armor, one of the worst is probably the every German in the opening scene are depicted as wearing Stone Age era clothing like animal skins and such, which ended about two thousand

years before the events depicted in the film. Lastly, the entire note of the film ending on the restoration of the republic and the rule of the people in Rome as Maximus peacefully dies, that sure didn't happen. Firstly, horrible things happened to commentist's sister, Lucilla Chilla. For being Italian, she was married off twice to her father's political allies, and then after her brother succeeded their father as emperor, she became concerned about his behavior and concluded that he

must be overthrown. She orchestrated an attempt to rid rom of her brother, but this plot failed and she was banished to the Isle of Capri, where she was later executed. Then, when the next assassination attempt on communist did succeed, rule hardly returned to the people. There was a predictable rush to fill the power vacuum, and the year one ninety three CE following his death was dubbed the year of

five Emperors. The last of those guys was Septimius Severus, and the forty two year dynasty of his messy, messy, turbulent family then precipitated a period in Roman history known as the Crisis of the third century. So that sucks for him and his family. Most hilariously, the filmmakers omitted one actual piece of document historical fact that they simply

found too silly for the film. Gladiators were like today's athletes, popular figure for product endorsements, and one of the script drafts contained a real life detail that Maximus, who is then named Narcissus, would have seen himself portrayed in an ad for all of Oil, with the copy Narcissus would kill for a taste of Golden Pompeii olive oil. Wait, is that like actually the extent dead ass? Bro? Wow? Take out the fact that I said that. I don't

know why I responded in that way. Was I going to find something a little bit more, a little bit more in detail about this live.

He pitched them the name the hot Rod Project, as he was worried that other studios would catch wind and rush their own rejiggered Sword and Sandal epics out to beat the new studio on the block to the punch. Because this was very early in DreamWorks life is probably in the first like four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The rumor mill did turn out to be wrong, but in fun, hilarious ways. Screenwriter David Franzoni told Yahoo, a lot of people thought we were making Cone in three. They had

no idea what the hell we were doing. In fact, somebody suggested that perhaps we had Schwarzenegger as the big gladiator with the tigers. The other level was that we were out of our minds and shooting a terrible, horrible Sword and Sandals movie that nobody would go see. Franzoni also alleges that Russell quote, until he saw the final cut, thought it was the end of his career. That's my impression. I guarantee you he was really worried. Our beloved Australia need not have worried.

million dollars. Released to the rest of the world, Gladiator grossed two hundred and seventy two point nine million for total worldwide gross a four hundred and sixty point six million against the budget of one hundred and three million, making it the second highest grossing film worldwide in two thousand, behind Mission Impossible Too. I guess big, no, lot first one was the first one?

The Killer again. Yeah, I don't know, man, he's kind of stumbled in Hollywood. I felt bad for him. He had a great ron he did Hard Target with JCVD, Face Off Am I two and then.

and Best Costume Design. Ridley Scott lost out on Best Director, and Franzoni went away empty handed for Best Original Screenplay and Joaquin Phoenix lost Best Supporting Actor. Hans Zimmer lost, which is great, and they also lost Best Cinematography, Art Direction, and Film Editing. In case you were wondering. Stephen Soderberg and Benzio do Toro won Best Director and Best Supporting

Actor for Traffic. Best Original Screenplay went to Cameron Crow for Almost Famous, which is objectively correct, and Best Score went to Tan Done for Crouching Tiger. The other Technical award we're also given out Ridley's memory. I mean, I mean it's such a bummer man, Like they really need

to give out a stunt oscar first of all. But like, even though I'm in ther for this kind of it is just so funny that like they literally give the technical awards out like a completely different day and broadcast. People work their entire lives in Hollywood, create all these magnificent technical you know, contributions push the art form forward, and they're like, yeah, you get four pm the day before and we're not going to televise it. No open bar, yeah,

cash bar. H Ridley's memory of the night in Variety was I was knocked over in the trample so bitter. I love it. I mean, maybe justifiably so. I don't know. I was knocked over in the trample to get on stage because I'd actually given up the right to be a producer. Because there's so many producers. I said, oh, what the I won't bother and I was run over when they all got up on the stage. So I just sat down, thinking I'm not gonna do that again.

Why do people go to bat for him? Man? He seems like such an a It's all because of Alien and Blade Runner, right, Yeah, I mean, I solid bragging rights man. Ridley's story does have a semi happy ending, though years later, despite not getting the Best Director trophy, he did wind up with a different statue Italian actress jen Nino Faccio, who played Maximus's murdered wife. That's nice. He just married a lady he met on a film stories. Yeah now, yeah, you said people finding love? People finding

love on movie sets. He checked at House of Gucci. Jesus, that film has the most preposterously offensive alive face I have ever seen in my life. Yo. Obviously we should get to all the sexual misconduct allegations first for Jared Leto, but then we need to break a pain or a thumb or something for what he does in that movie. It is so it's, like I say it, it's like

an Italian minstrel show. I said, but enough of this, this, this preceding two hours has been but a taste, an apport, not apperteeve an amused boosh for the real meat of this episode, Nick Cave's batch script for Gladiator too. It is a well known bit of law at this point that Australian vampire crooner and goth icon Nick Cave was tapped to write a sequel to Gladiator, And that's basically it.

We don't know that much about this thing other than one interview and Mark bron and like glancing bits of commentary from Ridley Scott, but everyone is in love with it because of how cool it is. Who tapped him to do that? Russell Crowe supposedly Astralia. This is I know, right, there's like six of them that have succeeded, right, so they.

you sort that out. Cave did as follows quote. Maximus goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods who are dying in heaven because there's this one god, there's this Christ character down on Earth who is gaining popularity, and so the many gods are dying, so they send Gladiator Maximus back to kill Christ and his followers. I wanted to call it Christ Killer. And in the end you find out that the main guy was his son, so he has to kill his son and was tricked

by the gods. He then becomes this eternal warrior, and it ends with this twenty minute war scene which follows all the wars in history right up to Vietnam and all this sort of stuff. And it was wild. It was a stone cold masterpiece. I enjoyed writing it very much because I knew on every level that it was never going to get made. Cave turned this far out vision into Crow, who, in Cave's words, responded, don't like it. Mate. Cave asked what about the end, to which Crow responded, again,

don't like it, mate. And I guess this got worked out because Scott had said in the intervening time that he did actually work on this idea with Crow and Cave. We tried to go with Cave's script riddle. Scott told Ugo Russell didn't want to let it go obviously because it worked very well. And then an all time Ridley Scott quote. When I say worked very well, I don't refer to success. I mean as a piece it works

very well storytelling. It works brilliantly. I think Cave enjoyed doing it, and I think it was one of those things he thought, well, maybe there's a sequel where you can adjust the fantasy and bring Maximus back from the dead. In an interview just this month, Ridley Scott gave another quote it got rich and started to go to time warps,

which frankly I thought was bloody silly. But the one thing I added to it was this great idea of opening portal of time in death, and it would have come from the dying soul of a dying soldier in a battlefield. Isn't that cool. I kept it as a little silver bullet, thinking I'll use that again somewhere. I hated it, it was silly, we killed it, but my addition to it was great and I'm keeping it. Love him. Years prior to all that, Nick Cave was sanguine about

the Project Dissolution. He told Variety, I'm very comfortable my day job as a musician. The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with was Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea, you could possibly do something, but there's a one and one hundred chance that it could get made. It's a waste of time and I have a lot to do, like being Nick Cave. Yeah, man, all right, that takes us to the end of Gladiator.

I had this whole idea in here for a bit of like, oh, here's my day as a twenty one year old gladiator in film. And then this is a smash cut of a skull getting caved in with a mace TikTok style. But you'll have to imagine that great film. Love it, Go watch it with your boys and hit each other with sticks, as the spirit of the film intended.