GLADIATOR Behind The Scenes

I will empower you to one end alone. To give power back to the people of Rome and end the corruption. My name is Gladiator. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife and I will have my vengeance. Commodus is not a moral man. Must not rule. What we do in life echoes in eternity. You are the son that I should have had. There's no one left to fight, Sire. There is always someone left to fight. The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The day I saw a slave become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome. A gladiator who defied an Emperor. Because I loved you. And what could be more glorious than to challenge the Emperor himself in the great arena? I get sucked into the world and into the environment and start to imagine the logic of how it would be and that's how you start to make things real. Back up a bit. Back up a bit more. Cue is when you lunge up and go back and then you're attacking. Right. One of the biggest challenges when you're doing a period film is not to let it feel like it's period film but in fact to allow the audience to enter into that world. And feel absorbed by that world. Watch. Watch. Watch. Then you can come back. I think we felt it was an opportunity that hadn't been visited in a long time. And to revisit ancient Rome was to take them to extraordinary spectacle, extraordinary action, but all grounded in a kind of reality. Take action! We try to bring to Gladiator the sense of the grandeur of the Roman Empire, its greatness and at the same time its corruption and its decay. It's a fascinating period. To think of the achievements, the intellectual, social achievements of the Roman Empire underscored by absolute brutality, I think, is still fascinating to people. I must tell you, every time I walk onto a movie set, I'm in awe. I'm still in awe. I'm still a little boy back in Limerick who wanted to go into movies and dreamt of it one day. In every movie I do, I walk on and I say, especially this, the size of this. When you walk in, you think, God, how did you do it? How did you think of it all? How did you marshal it in your imagination? It's just the sheer size is a bit overwhelming and takes some getting used to. For this production, size matters. Consistently, the one driving desire was to create a sense of scale. Initially, I'm thinking, like, how do I do this? Who am I kidding? I'm from Florida. I'm going to walk out and wave. I've had three different art departments working in three different countries, in England, in Morocco, and here in Malta. We made everything ourselves. We made our own costumes. We made our own weaponry, armory. We built our own chariots. Action! This is just unrelenting. We have, like, that massive fight sequence at the beginning of the film, and that's followed by a series of massive fight sequences, building up to a massive fight sequence, so we can end on this fight sequence, which is in what I'd describe as massive. One fight sequence alone that we just did the other week was 80 moves, 80 sword moves, regardless of the fact you get in your ass, swiped at by tigers. The way the tiger fight goes in the movie is very dangerous. There's a lot of contact very near the actors, and so consequently, you have to be very careful about the tigers actually grabbing the actors. They did send me a memo asking me not to play in the soccer game, and I went, so I sent a memo back. So I can wrestle with the four tigers, but I can't play a girly game like soccer. It's still dangerous. Kiss my butt. Love, Russell. Action! Definition of gladiators, they're slaves of entertainment. Gladiators are a spectacle, like anything else, except they pay with their lives. If you take the stadium in Rome, the Colosseum, there were games where the games would run nonstop for 135 days. Think about it. It's immense. It's enormous. It's going to be a magnificent marriage of old-fashioned filmmaking values and absolute cutting-edge technology in terms of the computer work that we're doing on the film. With this shot, it comes under the auspices of showing the grand scale and scope of Rome, the city, and also of the Colosseum. There's a chance to really make the audience feel as if they're in this period, as if they're in Rome at this time. We can basically do anything. Given enough time and given enough money, anything is possible. But I think filmmaking is a wonderful opportunity for recreating worlds. And I think that's what I like to do best. That's what I enjoy most, is finding stories to put within that. See you later, now. What are you thinking about? I'm thinking it's lunchtime and we've bloody all done this shot by now. The first assistant ran over and he said, he said, did you hurt anything, mate? Are you all right, mate? Are you bruised? Have you ripped a muscle? Yeah, a little battered and bruised and scratched. I don't actually think that there's one part of my body that hasn't had some kind of physical rupture, shall we say. It's been a fascinating experience. Every film has its own difficulties built into it. And it's how far you allow those difficulties to get through the door and start to control you. This wasn't difficult, it was enjoyable. I mean, how often you get to do the German front in the Danube where you have thousands of troops fighting, Roman troops fighting the German barbarians. You don't often get to do that. To do history, your challenge really is to, you know, see how accurate you can be in that process. Everything that you can think of has got something to do with Rome. Perhaps if the Romans hadn't come along, we'd have a completely different culture. The army, it was a professional army. It's a heck with glory. You're fighting for pay, and you want to get the battle over in time for lunch. And the way to do it is to be as professional as you possibly can. Now imagine, the Roman army is stretched out. Their lines are a mile long. You have five lines, roughly a thousand soldiers each. Now, the enemy charge. There are a hundred thousand of them in some cases. It's quite feasible. They come roaming down on you like a great avalanche. It's a shambles. And then out come the swords. You start off with a huge bang in probably one of the longest sequences in the whole movie. And it's all in mud and filth and battle. The Forestry Commission wanted to lose some forest, so I said, I'll do it. I'll burn it to the ground. They said, good. So I had 400 meters of forest I could burn. And do what I wanted to do. Have I missed it? Have I missed the battle? You have missed the war. Every picture I've done in the past ten years has been my last. And then scripts arrive, and I don't want to read them in case I like them. And if I like them, then I say, okay, I'll do it, but this is my last. Here I am. And this part here is a dream. No, I'm just saying that instead of doing the line from here, it's kind of a shout. Yeah, prove your valour yet again, bollocks. But it comes right up to him here. And he says it very quietly. He said, fair enough. Yes. Yes, Ridley? Is it okay? Yeah, that's cool, he said. Thank you. How can I reward Rome's greatest general? Let me go home. But with me, when you read something, it's like a chord goes ding. You will not be empty. Which wise old man is to take my place? My powers will pass to Maximus. It begins where the father says, you will not succeed me as emperor. And that's where the trouble begins. And that's how the story unfolds. Lament with me, brother. Our great father is dead. That leads to Max being in a totally different situation. Your emperor asked for your loyalty, Maximus. Take my hand. Come on, push. He's not crossing, just stepping. The soul of the movie was always going to be Maximus. Maximus is a Roman general at the heights of power who is thrown from power. And how to cast Maximus was very challenging because you had to completely believe his ferocity of a warrior. But you also had to believe he was a man of great principle, of great character. I just thought Russell was fresh. New generation. I would say he is definitely on fire. Russ, I'm so nervous. He just took me aside and gave me words of support. Anyway, that's enough about me. Let's talk about me. I don't mix with people in my business. And they're probably delighted that I don't. I'm not comfortable with it. With this guy, I love him. Because he's grounded. He doesn't carry that Hollywood star crap with him. As a kind of, I am Russell Crowe. Do you not see L.A. confidential? Scalpel. I've done quite a few good operations today. I've severed a head. And I'm not quite sure what I was trying to fix. But the guy is a hell of a lot better looking now than he was with his head on. Go through. See the guys down there, next in line. Any chair free, go through. We've had to dress about, here in the UK, 2,000. We're in at 4 o'clock this morning to make a start. We've got 250 Germans, 300 Felix troops, 100 Felix archers, about 80 cavalry. And we bring them through in batches. Otherwise, it's like a major stampede. We pick up their costume, change. Then we put them in the mud pit. Hair down the left-hand side. Makeup down the right-hand side. And prosthetics in the small tent behind. In that period, weapons were designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that was inflict a fatal wound. How many weapons have we made for this picture? It must be near 2,000, 2,500. 16,000 arrows just for the flaming ones. 10,000 arrows for firing. So remove that corks and have him slide back into the shot. How does he actually kill him? Two cameras down here, guys. Now, where's the guy on fire? I think a little higher, don't you? Then you go around. You wrestle in reverse. It's going to be tricky, but I'll be all right. And he goes up for the kill. And he gets smashed by a horse. Can we do another one? Your family will meet you in the afterlife. Don't die. They'll feed you to the lions. First thing I did was to look at the hairstyles. I didn't know whether I should come out looking like Peter Ustinov or James Mason, you know, in Cleopatra or Kirk Douglas in Spartacus. So I've grown mine the beard, which is, you know, semi-Moroccan because you don't really know. As Ridley says, we're not making a documentary. I did not pay good money for you for your company. I paid it so that I could profit from your death. Well, Max goes on a very strange journey from being a general who's in control of, you know, 10,000 troops in the immediate and 20,000 and 30,000 troops on the broader scale. He's now shackled, being sold off as a slave in a market in Morocco. It's a slightly different change in lifestyle, folks. Which is part of his journey, his transition from his demise in Germany. This is day two of the chain fight. And what's become a series of fights, really. I think last time we were talking, it was in the snow. Morocco, they basically rebuilt a town onto an existing town. We've been rehearsing this for two weeks. That was good. Everything up until that time was good. Good morning. Made specially by a company here in Morocco who's been making band-aids for the last 300 years. With shields and, you know, masks. You know, obviously that's where I got my cut from. The horn of the helmet even got my shoulder cut deeply. But I'm a gladiator now. Doors open, knees steps up. We needed an arena, a Roman-esque arena, which is pretty large, pretty extensive. With bleachers and underneath the bleachers are prisons and holding cells for animals, etc. Morocco was a dream. There was an empty field which was used for football by the local people. Which was the ideal place to put a small provincial arena. Where our hero encounters the gladiator lifestyle for the first time. I think we built almost 30,000 mud bricks using local techniques, local materials. And baked in the sun, they melted right into the existing landscape. And looked like it had been there for 800 years. When you look at the set and the crowd and whatever goes with it, there's not much you need to bring the emotions out and to be there as a gladiator. I came in one move too early, right? Yeah, but that's kind of okay because they still caught you. This way, I'll be like that if you can, so I'm facing German behind you. Background action! The young emperor has arranged a series of spectacles to commemorate his father, Marcus Aurelius. We're finally going back to where we belong, the Colosseum. Oh, you should see the Colosseum, Spaniard. 50,000 Romans watching every movement of your sword. Willing you to make that killer blow. The silence before your strike and the noise afterwards. Have you ever seen anything like that before? Action! What you're looking at now is the interior of the Colosseum. If you went through those arches behind my back, that would take you on the streets of Rome. Hello everybody at home, how are you? Welcome to Rome. Maximus finally gets a transition to Rome and he's in the Colosseum where there's a huge battle, which is what they call the Carthage battle, which is with chariots and archers. It is possible, if he becomes a really good gladiator, that he can get in front of this guy and exact his revenge. Your Emperor is pleased to give you the Barbarian Horde. Whatever comes out of these gates, you've got a better chance of surviving if we work together. It was an extremely brutal life, but Nadia has received 20% of what they want, so they could eventually buy their own freedom. And once they were free, it didn't mean they had to stop fighting. It's a myth of heroic death, that you could claim a position in the afterlife, or even in the memory of people living on, through having shown bravery. It's a question that we've all been asking and debating about, what is the desire for bloodsport? Is it an escape, in a sense, from the reality? We are ready to die, actually, for a game, for entertainment. And then, he's in a battle with four Bengal tigers. If you've got four tigers on chains, you keep letting the chain out, the arena gets smaller and smaller, because there's two of you in the middle of it. The old Bengal, it's probably 600 pounds, and from tail to tip of nose is about 10 feet. Hey kids, how are we? Here we are today, in the wild safari park, in the middle of the Malta forest. That over there, is what we call here in Malta, a tabby cat. They don't act, so if they act mad, they are mad. This tiger's right here. They're so quick, and that's what you've got to watch out for. You've got to be constantly aware, remind yourself what you're dealing with. That's good. Because if he gets a hold of you, you'll be dead in a second, before the handler gets in there. I was drawn to those animals. And they got close to Russell. It's just like, fascinated by them. Lions and tigers, pretty special. The only predictability is the unpredictability, and I think people forget that. You know, our job is to make them look tame and quiet, and in reality they're not. Tigers don't do what you ask them to do every time. Gladiator, you know, that's such a boy's movie, you just think it's going to be an action movie. And my ambition was that the music would support the story, would really be emotional, so that no woman would ever leave her seat in the theater. My brother hates all the world, and you most of all. Because your father chose me. And because I loved you. When the big moments come, they are pretty big as well. This is the exact replica of what it would have been like in both dimension and architecture. The problem was to try and realize how to achieve the scale, knowing how big the Colosseum was, knowing how big the Empire was. The greatest empire of its time in Rome was the biggest city of its time. It had a million people in 175 AD when the story takes place. The next city that had a million people was a thousand years later. The games were the biggest thing going in the Roman Empire. They were the heart and soul of the Empire. So we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to build a section of the arena, full size. It's an accurate reconstruction of the first tier only, and only about a third of that. It would have been twelve times bigger, three times as high, and four times as big around. And then using computer graphics, we would extend the scale of the set artificially. We covered the Colosseum as if it were the Super Bowl of today. Built the top of the Colosseum, changed the inside of the Colosseum, and then populated the Colosseum with people. As these gladiators walk out, you go completely around them. So you see in 360 degrees what they see. So I look at visual effects as we're sort of a supporting actor to really bring across the story that the director wants to get across. We built a large, epic vision of Rome. In doing that, we've helped Ridley achieve his vision. Togas and sandals and wreaths, I've tried to avoid that. Nobody lies down on this on a couch eating grapes. Today I saw a slave become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome. Yeah, I mean it's a very lucky, fortunate, wonderful occupation because in a way we're the last of the explorers really. I feel we've built Rome and fought all the battles from the Rhine through to North Africa and back into Rome. But it was unusually great fun. If there's ever such a thing as movie magic, it's sitting in a room for a year talking about story, and then one day getting on a plane, going to the location, and there's the idealized version of what you've been chatting about. This is combining a movie about political intrigue and based factually on the events of the time with a huge action spectacular. For an actor, the minute I put this on, you just feel like you're in a completely different world. And it's been kind of fantastic exploring that, yet making it feel natural, like it's ours. It is a huge film, but there are so many scenes that are so intimate because they're about the truth of the feelings between the people, what is going on in their minds, in their hearts. This is a boy's dream, you know, come and play, you know, gladiators, be a tough boy. It's great for an actor to work with a guy like Ridley Scott, who is so in command of his profession and his craft, and he knows precisely what he wants. That is a gift for an actor. Great old-fashioned yarn that's been really well illustrated, and we ain't seen this before. At my signal, unleash hell. It's a fake! It's a fraud! It's a fake! This is not in the movie, alright? This is all just set up, like, you people at home, you're being fooled by these people, alright? This is like this Hollywood trickery, and I wouldn't believe it now, I would look over here, because that's where the film's being made, okay? It's over there. See? That's the movie. What the **** is this? Look, and for a start, the guy's Scottish. He's Scottish, for God's sake. How many Scots were in ******* Rome? Not that ******* many. Let's do a practice. Come on, knees together, like you've been taught. Ready? I'm trying to work. Well, you know, I took a lot of lessons when I was young, actually. Every now and then you get an accident. We've just been having fun. Joaquim's come along extremely well, actually. Normally, about this time, we have to start using the rubber, because everyone gets worried about their fingers. But with Joaquim, we've been able to use the metal all the way along, and it's been productive and positive, and hardly any injuries, so it's been good. He's actually excellent. I've got to really get out of the way of him. He's like a jackrabbit. Like a jackrabbit, I've just got to move. I've got to move so quick. This guy's so fast, it's unbelievable. Somebody give him a glass of wine. Give him a glass of wine, save my life. Excuse me. See, so now, I'll come here, and you go like that. And then you come over. Right, yeah. Then I'm going to come over. I'm going to do that, right? And I'm going to come, and this is the headbutt in the ass. That is choreography, mate. That took days and weeks of intense training. Yeah, well, in this movie I'm playing a surgeon. As you can see, it's not in contemporary times. It's probably, you know, 10, 15 years back from where we are in real time at the moment, and as I said, I'm playing a surgeon, a scalpel. I've done quite a few good operations today. I've severed a head. And I'm not quite sure what I was trying to fix, but the guy is a hell of a lot better looking now than he was with his head on. And I've taken off a couple of arms, and one leg. And later on I'm going to do, I've got an appendectomy to do, and which I'm not quite sure how successful it's going to be because I don't know what an appendectomy is. But I will find out before I do it, rest assured. Okay, see you later, folks. Get preparation each in Malta. These are period bandages. Made specially by a company here in Morocco who's been making bandages for the last 300 years. The fellow's name is, oh, let me think, Mustafa? Perhaps? Him and his brother Mohamed. Period bandages. No expense is paid. Hey kids, how are we? Here we are today in the wild safari park in the middle of the Malta forest. That over there is what we call here in Malta a tabby cat. He's the smallest of his breed. He's quite cuddly. I'm just going to go over and have a little chat with him, a little friendly howdy doody, a little tickle under the chin. Okay, I'll see you later. I'll be back in a moment. He does like me, you hear? That's what I'm talking about, eh? Tastes like ----. This is day two of the chain fight. It's become a series of fights, really. I think last time we were talking it was in the snow. And after the damage done on day one of the first chain fight, I feel like an old man. So I've asked production for one and they've just gone to find one. Here we are in Malta with one of the world's top filmmakers, young Adam Sumner. Adam, say hello to the folks at home. Adam is the second assistant director on this film and a man who's at the backbone, the nerve centre of this movie. Now Adam, the question that's on everybody's lips is how the hell did you ever get made a member of the DGA? He's talking to the microphone. Don't show this because I'm still a member. Fully paid up, old boy. And the old residuals, boys, the old residuals. Keep them coming. I have a very good friend in Rome called Biggest Dickhead. Sorry, I stole him from another movie. Excuse me for one second. Shut up, you fuckers! Yeah, well, I'll do the same exact take two. It was a really good idea to come round here where it was less noisy. Why don't we just do it on a chariot? Oh, sequel! So, where were we? Take 57. I started by shooting a lot of guys that were driving around in trucks when I was trying to talk on TV. That helped me get into the mood. Well, your crowd's appreciating you. Yes, yes, yes, thank you, thank you so much. No, they're clapping the truck drivers because they shut up. A slightly different change in lifestyle, folks. Lions and tigers. Pretty special. You just keep on going. So you don't do that. But you want to do it. Doing your close-up, talking very seriously to a piece of tape just to the right of the camera lens. Rome the Earth? He works on these puns, you know. This is not a good place for an alcoholic to be. Anyway, that's enough about me. That's Talk About Me.