Written by Karen Idelson -- March 8, 2001

Saturday night Ridley Scott's head was projected from Morocco onto a screen at the AMC 14 in Century City, California near his actual current stature in the film industry, roughly two stories high. Part of a weeklong series of GLADIATOR screenings, each night featuring a different collaborator on the film, Scott was broadcast live to the theatre where audience members had the opportunity to ask the filmmaker questions.

The film's editor, Pietro Scalia, was also in attendance that evening. Other screenings in the series featured producers Douglas Wick, David Franzoni and Walter Parkes, composer Hans Zimmer, cinematographer John Mathieson and a soldout screening with Russell Crowe.

Scott is in Morocco filming BLACK HAWK DOWN, starring Ewan McGregor and Tom Sizemore. The film, the director's thirteenth theatrical production, will tell the story of a group of elite U.S. soldiers who drop into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis.

GLADIATOR, currently nominated for 12 Academy Awards, has grossed over $100 million to date. Scott's latest film, HANNIBAL, had a $58 million opening weekend in early February on 3230 screens in the U.S. The film has nearly reached $90 million in box office receipts since then, according to the Internet Movie Database.

Most of the evening's questions dealt with GLADIATOR's development and direction. Scott said from the very beginning, when the idea of the film was brought to him, he felt, ."..there was something there, a bell started to go off." Some of the film's first images came to him right away. "I saw a door going to a field immediately and from that moment on I worked toward that end." The image of that door appears as the film opens and the main character, Maximus, has a vision of his future and at the end of the film as he dies.

Other moments in the film were also designed to reflect to specifically reflect the director's themes in GLADIATOR. "Logically this film is about mortality," said Scott. "So, Maximus picks of the dirt from that ground and he smells that ground because he may die there on that day. It's like a talisman."

Scott acknowledged the contribution of the film's actors to the final strength of the picture. The director described his relationship with them on this work as well as his other films as more of a partnership than anything else. "I like (actors) to bring their ideas to the table," Scott said. "I trust them to do what they can do. I do what I can do. So, we move forward very quickly."

One of GLADIATOR's cast, Oliver Reed, was particularly close to Scott. Reed, who died during GLADIATOR's shooting, was a friend of Scott's for 27 years and veteran of more than 100 films. "For those who didn't know him, he was pretty well known for having a jolly good time," said Scott. The director looked to Reed to give the role of Proximo, the owner of the gladiators and a slave trader, a certain shady but lovable quality. "I cast him because I wanted the role to be that of a rascal rather than a villain and the difference between the two is that a rascal is someone you'd like to have a drink with."

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