Russell Crowe used to be insane, threatened to kill people with his bare hands
I’ve been watching the trailers for Robin Hood with growing trepidation. Judging from what I already know about the film, it seems like they did the best out of a weird filming situation, and you know how much I love my Cate Blanchett. So, I want the film to do well, even though I really think it might not. Of course, I’ve been wrong before. I remember, back in college, seeing the ads for Gladiator and thinking “only geeks who love Russell Crowe already will want to see this”. Because I already loved him back then, because of L.A. Confidential. But I was wrong – Gladiator became a phenomenon, and Russell won the Oscar for his performance.
Since then, my love for Russell has dissipated, just because he comes across as an a-hole in too many interviews and situations. Through the years, I’ve also heard various stories about how he’s an a-hole in real life, although some part of me always wanted to believe that he was just a nice, humble dude. Not so much, according to a new book. The book is The Men Who Would Be King: An Almost Epic Tale of Moguls, Movies, and a Company Called DreamWorks. The book is all about Dreamworks obviously, and Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, and the films that they’ve made together. According to Gawker, there are several Russell Crowe stories, all involving Gladiator (which Dreamworks produced). Here are the excerpts, via Gawker:
“You motherf-cker. I will kill you with my bare hands.”
“Hello?” Branko Lustig said, confused and barely awake; it was, after all, 3 a.m. in England.
“You motherf-cker,” the speaker repeated.
“Who’s on the phone? Who is this?” Lustig demanded.
When Russell Crowe identified himself, the genuinely terrified Lustig, one of the producers of the about-to-be-filmed Gladiator, hung up and called Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles.
“Steven,” he said. “I’m leaving. Russell wants to kill me. I’m leaving.”
Having survived a concentration camp, Lustig was not taking any chances.
Crowe, not yet Russell Crowe, but still just another verkakte Australian coming off a sleeper (L.A. Confidential), was sour because he believed DreamWorks was low-balling his assistants on their per diems. Rather than raise this grievance at a mundane daylight hour, Crowe opted for a more dramatic statement, a tactic not unknown in these parts. The actor’s recent behavior had been erratic, just like everything else on the project.
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After Ridley Scott talked Russell into coming back for the cast’s read-through:
Finally, Crowe materialized—unrepentant and sans affability. If Scott’s pep talk had any effect, it seemed to have lodged deep in the actor’s subconscious. Crowe played along, but refused to summon a scintilla of good humor. He didn’t so much recite his lines as growl them in a deranged accent that flitted between indeterminate continents of origin. More absurd was Oliver Reed’s delivery. Even though his lines were as long as haiku, he filled them with dramatic flourishes. Having recently renounced drinking, he said that the only thing he was chugging was lemonade, but the question was just what he was mixing in the stuff.
“My oold frrriend,” he read, puckering his lips and rolling his r’s with all the pomp of a 17th century thespian.
Crowe, in turn, chewed up monologues, spitting out each and every poisonous syllable.
Screenwriter John Logan, who has lovingly crafted many of these lines, watched in horror. He scrawled four words on a piece of paper: “Kill me! Kill me!”
A month later, after filming in England, the shoot moved to Ouarzazate, Morocco – a town near the Sahara Desert, where Hollywood has traditionally gone for its sword and sandal needs (Lawrence of Arabia was filmed in the area). Crowe’s mood did not improve. Twice, he had walked off the set. Even when he was supposedly having “fun,” Crowe was a puffy pain. After challenging members of the crew to a foot race, and losing, he would mutter for days, “I would have won, but I can’t run in the sand in sandals.”
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Never were Crowe’s spirits more in flux than when he was to read the climactic, “And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next” scene, in which his character, Maximus, removes his helmet and reveals his identity. It was only the most seminal line in the entire movie, and yet Crowe was convinced that it was ridiculous – overwrought, puffery that no man would ever be caught dead saying, least of all a brawny, sword-carrying killer standing under the unrelenting African sun. Scott was one of the few people who seemed to understand Crowe, that underneath all that volatility was a very scared actor who needed to feel safe. Rather than blow up at him, Scott waited until the tantrum subsided. Then he agreed to shoot the scene the way Crowe preferred.
After doing the take, Crowe still looked dissatisfied. “Let me see the other script again,” he said to Scott, referring to the loathed revision. After studying the page stonily, he shrugged. “Well, we might as well try it.”
And so, the scene was reshot. Everyone agreed it was brilliant. Everyone, that is, but Crowe. “Russell, what’s the problem?” Scott asked, finally showing a hint of exasperation. “It worked.”
“It was sh-t,” Crowe repeated, “but I’m the greatest actor in the world and I can make even sh-t sound good.” And with that he marched off.
Could these stories be total bullsh-t? Of course. But I believe them. I can totally imagine Russell saying and doing these things. But I’d just like to point out one thing, in Russell’s defense – I saw him talking about the production for Gladiator, and they truly didn’t have a working script the entire time they filmed. Many lines were ad-libbed by many actors, and Ridley Scott mostly cared about the action, not the characters. I guess what I’m saying is that it must have been a horrible way to work, and I forgive Russell for some of his crazy. But calling himself “the greatest actor in the world”? Please.
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