Gladiator: In Print Page 4

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SWORDS, CAMERA, ACTION!
By Rachel Price
Sky magazine (UK October 2001)

RACHEL PRICE looks behind the scenes of blockbusting Roman epic Gladiator.

"I cracked a bone in my foot. I fractured my hip and I still don’t have feeling in top of one finger" – Russell Crowe

The roar of the crowd, the clash of the swords and men in leather skirts and sandals – It’s been a long time since Hollywood last ventured into the realm of the Roman epic, but that didn’t deter British director Ridley Scott. He says: "Spartacus was 40 years ago, Ben Hur before that. These movies were part of my youth, but at the dawn of a new millennium, I thought this might be the ideal time to revisit what may have been the most important period of the last 2000 years.

"I love the idea of creating worlds in the movies I make, and this was certainly no exception. I feel like we built Rome and then fought all the way from the Rhine to North Africa and then back to Rome. But it was great fun to do." The result is one of the most ambitious movie events of recent years.

One of the biggest problems the team had was finding the right actor to play the heroic general Maximus. It’s hard to imagine many of Tinseltown’s current crop of pretty boys being able to carry it off. And as producer David Wick says: "It was crucial to find an actor who you could believe possessed the ferocity of this great warrior, but in whom you could also see a man of strong principle and character." Luckily he found the perfect man in Kiwi actor Russell Crowe. "His name came up pretty fast," Wick continues. "His intensity, his dignity and his utter conviction in every role he undertakes made him everyone’s first choice."

Fighting fit

Not that it was an easy role to play, Crowe had to loose the 38 pounds he had gained for his role in The Insider. "He went from being a paunchy middle-aged man to a gladiator – not bad," laughs Scott.

Crowe himself admits that it was the most demanding role he has ever played. "I’ve done some pretty physical stuff before but this was unrelenting," he says. The injuries he suffered during filming were pretty extensive. "I cracked a bone in my foot. I fractured my hip. I still don’t have any feeling in the top of one of finger because it got slashed in the very first battle sequence." Ironically, it was football the production company were more worried about, and Crowe received a memo asking him not to play in case he got hurt!

The other major challenge of the film was creating a realistic set. This was achieved with a combination of computer generated imagery (CGI), unfailing attention to detail and good locations. As Scott notes: "Every film has it’s own challenges, but how often do you get the chance to rebuild the Roman Empire?"

It took 19 weeks of and more than 300 people to recreate the heart of the Empire in the middle of a Maltese desert and their efforts were constantly hampered by high winds and storms. Even so, they weren’t able to recreate entire structures, so a lot of what’s been seen on the screen is thanks to CGI – even the extras.

Alongside 2000 real people there are 33,000 computer-generated spectators (and it’s impossible to see the join). Costumes posed their own problems too –Russell Crowe’s character alone had 12 identical costumes, as wardrobe designer Janty Yates explains: "There were different versions of each costume as scenes progressed – clean, dirty, torn, bloody, etc." But Scott did strike lucky in one respect – the forest shown in the opening battle scenes was due to cut down by the British Forestry Commission. "I’ll do it for you. I’ll burn it down," he said and had 16,000 flaming arrows fired into it.

Given the magnitude of the project (both in terms of time and money) it will probably be a long time before Hollywood ventures back into the Colosseum. But in the meantime, as you wipe the dust off your sandals at the close of one of the greatest epics of all time, the blood and gore might be make-up but it is so realistic that you can almost smell it.

(Thanks to Dulcie)

The Gladiator Shouldn't Play Soccer
Interview by Mr. Attila Seres
Nepszabadsag Magazin, 26th May 2000.
(Hungary)

Note: This article was originally printed in Hungarian and has been translated. Quotes and other wording may not be exact, but the original meaning is represented here.

About 40 years have elapsed since the making of the last film about the glory days of the Roman Empire, 2000 years before our time. The monumentality of "Spartacus" and "Ben Hur" must have frightened away directors ö and their still-unfaded popularity attracted them at the same time. Ridley Scott has now yielded to this temptation, taking the glorious battles of Roman arenas to the big screen, paying tribute to Maximus, a former general of emperor Marcus Aurelius. Gladiator (already in our cinemas) is a real American spectacle. The protagonist, Russell Crowe, gave an interview to the Nepszabadsag Magazin in Rome.

He arrived in Rome just a short time before our interview. The Australian actor Russell Crowe, who plays Maximus, sees now for the first time the [real] places where [the fictional] Maximus has been.

Have you seen the Colosseum at last?
I only arrived yesterday evening but I went to see it first thing. During the shooting I spent weeks in the Colosseum imagined and built by our technicians, but the real thing is totally different. It's such a gigantic building even in ruins --it reflects the powerfulness of a once-existed empire.

What can we know about the story of Gladiator?
The film opens with a terrible battle scene, evoking the brutality of those times. The scene is Germania, the northern border of the Roman Empire. The commander of the legionnaires, Maximus, triumphs in another murderous battle but doesn't join in the feast afterwards. His only wish is to return to his wife and son after almost three years of absence. But the dying emperor, Marcus Aurelius, wants him to take on another task: he wants him to become the next emperor. But the heir to the throne -- Commodus, Marcus Aurelius' son -- is jealous of Maximus and orders him to be executed. Though Maximus escapes death, he finds his family dead upon his return home. He himself falls prisoner to a slave-trader who runs a gladiator school and earns his living by showing his slaves in the arenas.

Maximus is very strong, he is accustomed to fighting. So his fame keeps growing and his master takes him even to Rome to show him in the best-known arena of the contemporary world. Maximus feels his time has come to take revenge on his family's murderer, who has become emperor in the meantime. But to get near the emperor, Maximus has to fight beasts first, and grim warriors who kill by order or by their own pleasure.

To evoke the atmosphere of 2,000 years ago is not an easy task. Where did you find authentic locations?
We were making this film for nine months in four different countries. We had to synchronize the work and movements of four different teams, so from time to time we had this feeling of making four different films at a time. Hats off to Ridley Scott who made coherent material of it in the end!

One part of the team was in London; another in Malta; the third in Morocco; the fourth, the "core," was on the road among locations. For example, we shot the opening scene, the battle between the Roman Legion and the Germans, in England. There's a forest near Farnham, the grimmest, most authentic location one could imagine. And at the last moment luck came on our side: Everything was ready for the shooting when British authorities told us it was decided the zone had to be deforested and they had to start work immediately. "Don't worry," Neil Corbould, effects specialist of the team, told them, "we'll make devastation you've never seen the likes of!" Then during the shooting of the battle scene we covered the whole area with fire. Sixteen thousand flaming arrows flew through the air, and the replicas of period flame-projectors did a thorough job, too.

Talking about this particular scene: how did you manage to film speeding horsemen on that uneven ground?
Good question. We were thinking about it a lot. It was clear that cars couldn't be used to film the scenes because of the topographic conditions. In the end our technicians came up with the idea of building a steel-framed net to hold the camera-frame. The camera could then move up and down and sideways with the required speed so the audience could feel as if they were speeding along.

And where was the Colosseum built?
In Malta where there are many amazing ruins from Roman and even pre-Phenician times, 6,000 years before our time. It's true that they don't have a Colosseum. We had to build it after having studied the original arena, and by using computer technology. The base for it was a 17th century Spanish fortress, which also served as the set for certain scenes. The Colosseum in the film was built in 17 weeks by more than 100 British and Maltese engineers and technicians -- and they have created quite a pretty arena. Computer technology also helped to create a crowd of over 30,000 out of some 2,000 extras. But we couldn't get the right lighting, the required light and shadow effects in the Colosseum. The problem was solved at last by using a colossal textile of 150 meters long, fortified with glass-fibre knots. It was held in place in 250 meters altitude by 14 cranes and it could be used to shadow the scene or to reflect the light, upon the director's wish.

The Moroccan scenes are very original, the market-scene most of all.
Well, this was where we had to invent almost nothing. It turned out that the oldest Casbah in the world was actually in Morocco, its walls being at least 500 years old. In addition there's a huge grassy ground on the outskirts of the little town where the local folks gather for a game of soccer. We built there that small arena where I fought my first gladiator duel as Maximus.

I'm glad you mentioned it. Special effects or not, it is hard to imitate body-to-body fight and battles with a two-blade sword. How did you endure physically so much fighting?
With a lot of training and of course with a good deal of help. My greatest master was Ralf Moeller, a former bodybuilding champion who also appears as a gladiator in the film. He taught all of us ö me and my fellow gladiators, all of them practicing some kind of martial art ö how to "wrestle," following the tough rules of gladiator schools of the period.

It's not the first time for me to appear in a film that is physically challenging, but I can say I have never had a role like this. I even questioned myself whether I should take the role of a bus driver in a quiet film. If only we had battle scenes alternating with quiet dialogues! But we had days in a row when from morning to night we were chased gladiators fighting for our lives. And I was looked after like a piece of china: I shouldn't hurt myself or injure my ankle because that would have brought the shooting to a halt. Once, during one of the most elaborate battle scenes, I was handed a piece of paper with this message: "Russell, please stop playing soccer for a couple of days, we cannot risk your being injured!" I took a pen and replied: "Am I good to fight four tigers from time to time but I can't allow myself a little soccer? I hope you're kidding!"

A propos, tigers. They weren't real, were they?
They were tamed beasts, as much as a tiger can be tamed. They left their claw marks on me after wrestlings. The make-up artist had nothing more to do with my chest. He couldn't have painted more authentic scars.

(Thanks to Nitta for the article and the translation)