By 1 o'clock he was walking across the lot with his jacket over his arm.
Paramount kept its smaller productions in bungalows, low one-story buildings from the silent film days that sat between the big soundstages like houses on a street.
A sheet of cardboard on one door read GLADIATOR in black marker.
Duke stopped outside it for a second, then went in.
Pre-production was everything that had to be settled before a camera rolled, things like where, who, how much, or how long.
Most pictures were saved or ruined in this stage, in rooms like this one, by people arguing over drawings.
Every wall was covered in sketches.
In the middle of the room, on a wide table, stood a scale model of the Colosseum with tiny paper people glued into the seats by hand.
"Someone spent a whole weekend on the crowd," said Dante Ferretti. He was the production designer, an italian man who had built Roman streets for movies like Fellini Satyricon or Medea.
Of course, he was well known even on the future cause he would become a big collaborator with Martin Scorsese even winning an Academy Award for Best Art Direction for 'the Aviator'.
Of course, Duke admired his work on Silence(2016) more than anything.
"Well, it doesnt look bad," Duke said.
Rome had not been on screen much lately.
The last big sword-and-sandal pictures had come out in the early sixties, and one of them, Cleopatra, had nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox.
Epics whether it was in the past, the present or even in the future had a reputation for swallowing money.
Last year epic western, Heaven's Gate had made it worse, costing 44 million dollars, opening to empty theaters, and leaving its studio bankrupt.
Duke looked at the little arena and felt calm.
No board of directors was waiting to be convinced.
The studio was his, and he did not intend to become the next cautionary tale.
'If it fails, i'll just direct the next Star Wars or something.'
He was not short on money at least.
"Walk me through the cost," he said.
Dante rolled a long sheet across the table. "9 million, all in. We build one section of the Colosseum at full size. the lower seats, the entrance tunnel, the sand floor. Plaster over timber, painted to look like stone."
"We will still shoot mostly on locations, but we must save the time we have in the Colosseum the most we can."
"And the rest of it?"
"Glass."
A matte painting was a scene painted on a large sheet of glass and placed in front of the camera, so that a small set looked as if it stretched for miles.
Star Wars had already used them to build whole cities.
Lucasart had agreed to paint the upper tiers, and a few thousand extras in one section could be moved and filmed again from another angle until the stands looked full.
The man beside Dante cleared his throat.
Bernard Williams was the line producer, the person who turned a script into a schedule and a budget.
Duke poached him from Stanley Kubrick's hand to come work here, he needed on-set producers who could solve shit in Italy if neccesary.
"90 shooting days," Bernard said. "That's short for an epic, but the plan is locked. Winter in England, desert in Morocco. Arena and city streets in Rome and Malta."
Rome didn't meant the city in this case.
It meant Cinecittà, the enormous film studio the Italians had built in the 1930s when a certain dictator for some reason liked the film industry.
Its back lot was where the chariots of Ben-Hur had been shoot in 1959.
"One rule," Duke said. "After the script locks, nobody improvises on the budget."
"That rule I like... but you know Moroccans... Their officials sometimes need a little something to speed things up." Bernard said.
Duke raised an eyebrow directly. He had heard some hellish production stories from Morocco but what else could they do. "Is Jordan available to shoot there...?"
Bernard stood thinking for a moment. "I know the Jordanian king, he's a cinephile and supported Lawrence of Arabia when it was shoot but I'm pretty sure the Middle East is on a war right now."
Duke just shrugged accepting the statement, he didnt know enough about middle eastern geopolitics to respond anything.
He was only asking cause Dune 1 and Dune 2 were shoot there and he loved the cinematography.
Next to the model sat a tray of helmets.
Real Roman armor was heavy, and a man wearing it under the Moroccan sun would faint before lunch.
Dante's department planned to cast the helmets in fiberglass and paint them to look like steel, which made them half the weight and twice as easy to replace.
Bernard turned to the next page. "The tigers are also a problem. Two trained tigers from a ranch, one handler for each, and the insurance company also wants a cage the size of a house."
"Then build a cage," Duke said.
Insurers disliked animals on a set more than almost anything else.
A single tiger in a single scene could cost more in paperwork than in dinner, and Bernard said so in a flat voice that made Duke smile.
On the desk lay a bound script with a plain title page: GLADIATOR, third draft, by Duke Hauser.
A general betrayed by his emperor, sold into slavery, rising through the arena.
At the end of the table sat a woman with glasses and a script bristling with colored tabs.
Dr. Helen Ward taught classics at UCLA, and Duke had hired her to read every page for mistakes.
"Gladiators weren't all slaves, you know," she said. "Some were free men who volunteered, signed a contract and swore an oath to be burned, chained, beaten, and killed by the sword if their trainer ordered it."
"Is that in the script?"
"It's in the margin on page 31."
"Good. Keep it there."
Dr. Ward turned a page. "Your emperor fights in the arena himself, by the way. I wasn't sure you'd want to keep that."
"I made that up." He lied. He surprisingly knew a lot about Roman emperors, but prefered to not say much.
"The real one did it. Commodus and gave himself prizes." She took off her glasses.
Duke nodded, but did notice she didnt mention how Commodus would force disabled people to fight him while he used blunt weapons.
Or how he believed he was the reincarnation of the god Hercules, renamed Rome and the calendar months after himself.
He also liked to fight wearing a Lion skin and a wood club like Hercules.
Maude Spector, the casting director, leaned in the doorway with a stack of photographs. Another guy Duke poached from Stanley Kubrick.
With strong credentials too.
His resume was... stacked.
55 Days at Peking (1963), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Doctor Zhivago (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).
He had casted for all of them
"We've seen forty actors for the general," he said. "They're either too soft or too famous. If they're famous, the audience sees the star and forgets the soldier."
Duke picked up the top photograph, studied the stern jaw and the careful pose, and put it back down.
"Keep looking," he said. "Stage actors, if you have to. I want someone who looks like he could lead an army and would rather be home with his family."
"Middle aged, rugged kind of guy. Doesnt have to be on the best shape in the world at the beggining but willing to train."
Maude wrote that down word for word, which was why he had hired him.
"And the emperor?" he asked. "He's the harder part. A young intense ruler who wants to be loved and doesn't know how."
"Young or at least younger than Maximus, trained on the stage, and a little dangerous," Duke said. "Bring me a short list and I'll sit in on every reading."
He wanted a sort of Male Jessica Lange. Someone who was able to perform on raw feeling rather than adhering to a rigid technique.
Maude nodded and went out.
Duke went back to the Colloseum prop, wondering if he should take it now or after the movie is done.
It seem like a great addition to his Prop Collection.
___
My own vote is Nick Nolte, Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren
This chapter was supposed to be short, but i just keep writing... anyways vote
------------General Maximus
Nick Nolte
Harrison Ford
Kurt Russell
------------Commodus
Malcolm McDowell played the lead in Caligula (1979).
Christopher Walken
John Malkovich
------------Lucilla
Helen Mirren
Sigourney Weaver
Jacqueline Bisset