behind the scenes

[kalaa_pipaasi]

certain movies are hard to forget, especially movies like Gladiator. We see these clips or soundtracks regularly once in a week or two. such is their impact on us. Behind the scenes of those movies are even more interesting.

 

"at my signal, unleash hell"  ,

"there hasn't been single part of my body without any bruises and ruptures" - both of them are on screen and off screen dialogues of Rusell Crow. there is an unwritten story behind each and every dialogue of the movie.

The script rewrite has been a never ending story to this film. they started shooting Gladiator with 32 pages of script ready to shoot. But soon actors started complaining about the issues in script. how often, you wield a mega phone and ask your actors to say a dialogue to which they are not convinced of? Its not easy to make them(actors) say something which they don't trust.

Ridley Scott is no exception to this even with a opinion like this from his actors

"its great for an actor to work with guy like Ridely 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"

they have to write and re-write the script to make it look close to reality of the characters and their worlds. They had an English writer, an American writer and some producers with their ideas. Not knowing what to fill in the skeleton, Ridely himself started writing the dialogues. It's then Russel crow collaborated with each other.

Some times you need grandeur like this  in your dialogue. 

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next"

Some times you just need simple lines like this   "Are you not entertained?"

where we put a simple dialogue and where we put a heavy dialogue makes a difference to the movie and the movie watching experience. this is where collaboration saves you. You talk to each other and exchange views. That's what Ridley Scott did with his actors. improvise on the dialogues. This is how the famous dialogues are born.

 

Production :

there was an empty field used by locals to play football. They converted it with 30,000 mud bricks using local architectural style, sunbaked to melt it in to the surrounding areas to make it look like "this existed for 800 years". This was that small arena where the gladiators fight initially in the local towns. our hero fights for the first time here.

those 4 tigers weighed 600 pounds each and its 10 feet from nose of the tiger to its tail tip. the best part is you cant make them act. if he gets hold of you, you are dead in a second. The chance of tigers grabbing the actors i very high

10,000 men fighting the German barbarians. the Roman army is stretched out a mile long. they have 5 lines with roughly 1000 soldiers each. they have to finish the battle by lunch as per the schedule. it was a professional army and they made it by lunch time and the forest department is kind enough to give 400 meters of forest land for the director, so that he can burn it down during the fight scene

 

enough said..i think its time for me to re-watch this classic again.