All language subtitles for The Making Of Caligula

Memo to the chief of studio security
from head of production of Gore Vidal's

Caligula.

No journalist, photographers, friends,
or even family of those involved on the

production will be allowed on the set.

Everyone, repeat everyone, will carry at
all times an identity card producible on

demand.

These instructions must be adhered to.

I'm Gore Vidal, and I've written a
screenplay about one of the most

extraordinary, some think one of the
most wicked young men that ever lived,

the Roman Emperor Caligula.

Rome's really buzzing about the film.

They're a little shocked, maybe, that
something like that is going on right

outside the city.

There are many rumors around town.

I don't think I can refer what I've
heard now here.

Everything one has heard about Caligula
is pure fantasy.

That's probably because no one's been
allowed on the set of the film.

Many of the terrible things that we are
going to show in this movie are indeed

from history, are indeed from the only
two sources that we have, Suetonius and

Tacitus.

And they may be true or they may not be
true, but whatever they are, they are

representative of something that...

Those who are interested in history have
known for 2,000 years and which until

now have never been, how shall I say,
divulged to the general public.

What you are about to see is a
documentary on the making of Gore

Vidal's Caligula.

Hello, are you running?

This is Malcolm McDowell speaking from
the set of Gore Vidal's Caligula.

And we're now at the end of the film,
very nearly. We have another three days

to go.

It's very nearly Christmas and we're all
freezing.

The last shot was actually filmed on New
Year's Eve.

It was very cold and here in Rome an
incredible motion picture saga was

drawing to a close.

The brief tragic story of a young man to
whom the inexplicable vagaries

of human history had decreed an empire
had been told.

I have existed from the morning of the
world, and I shall exist until the last

star falls from the night.

Although I have taken the form of Gaius
Caligula, I am all men as I am no man,

and therefore I am... a god.

What's it like with your husband?

What's what like?

He's so fat. He's disgusting.

He's not. He's just loud. But tiny where
it counts.

How do you know?

I saw him at the bars.

The rumors, speculation, and controversy
generated by Gore Vidal's Caligula

still continue to this day.

Malcolm McDowell.

The young British actor who achieved
international stardom in Stanley

Kubrick's Clockwork Orange plays the
very demanding role of Caligula. What's

happening to you now?

Nothing. His 77-year-old grandfather and
predecessor, Tiberius Caesar, is played

by Peter O'Toole.

Sir John Gielgud plays Nerva, senator,
friend of Tiberius.

Teresa Ann Savoy plays Drusilla.

Caligula's sister and favorite lover.

Helen Mirren, member of Britain's Royal
Shakespeare Company, plays Saisonia, his

wife.

The film was directed by Tinto Brass,
with additional scenes

directed and filmed by Bob Guccione and
Giancarlo Lui.

It was early in the Roman spring when
construction began on the first of the

64 huge and complex sets that alone
distinguished this film from

any of its epic predecessors.

And work on a scale reminiscent of the
late Cecil B. DeMille's more spectacular

efforts continued for over a year.

Hollywood on the Tiber.

had once more returned to Rome.

The reasons for filming this picture in
Italy are fairly obvious.

Firstly, it is the historic site of

the Roman emperors. This is where
Caligula lived, where he loved, and

where he died.

And apart from that,

Making a film of this magnitude,
particularly because we had to start

from scratch, that is to say, every
single prop had to be manufactured,

every bit of costuming, clothing, wigs,
the architecture, it all had to be done

over again.

There was no such thing as a prop house
in Italy that was prepared, or anywhere

else in the world for that matter, that
was prepared to supply the sort of

things that we needed.

And in fact, we needed hundreds of
artisans, not just men who were

particularly expert in the area of
costuming, sandal making,

propping, whatever description, but men
who have a particular artisan, with a

particular feeling for Italy, for Rome,
the kind of architecture that we

encounter on every single street corner.

And there's no greater concentration of
this sort of talent anywhere else in the

world. Italy is the best.

And also because Italy is, and
particularly Rome, is the home of Danilo

Donati, whom I personally feel, and I
think a lot of critics will agree with

me, is the very best art director that a
film like this could have.

Danilo has won at least three or four
Academy Awards.

He's probably the finest costume and set
designer in the world.

And I wanted him. He was part of the
package of excellence that we were

putting together.

And Danilo's a strange guy. It's very
difficult to get him outside of Rome.

From bronze to clay to plaster.

This. is the god Jupiter.

Sculpted and cast exactly as if the
Romans themselves would have created the

original. A mold is made, covered by
various thin layers of plaster.

Then a final thick layer is spread over
all to form the outer shell.

When it dries, it's chipped away.

to reveal the finished statue
underneath.

Expert draftsmen, using photographs of
the remains of many Roman vessels,

together with other historic references,
executed their most extraordinary work

to date.

It was to be the largest single prop
ever designed for a motion picture.

A Roman ship, which would never put to
sea its 300-foot nautical brothel,

was gold-leafed from stem to stern.

and was decorated with hand-carved,
larger-than-life statues.

These sculpted figures and ore carvings
were models based upon detailed

research of actual Roman artifacts,
which are like this material, hidden in

the secret vaults of the Museum of
Naples, and shown in this book,

containing photographs of the ruins of
Pompeii.

As history teaches us, sex, as expressed
in many of its forms,

was a way of life to the Romans.

When I heard from Franco Rossellini that
Gore was going to do this

script, I was delighted.

I took the first opportunity to go to
Italy, to Ravella, where he lived, and

spend three or four days with him just
discussing the script and some of the

ideas that we had conceptually in the
beginning.

And I found him to be enormously
well-informed, enormously himself

excited by the project.

And he had this great willingness to
pour himself into it.

Not just to sit down and write the
script, but to go, to make a personal

pilgrimage to some of the historic sites
that involved the life and death of

Caligula.

I knew that Gore would be as liberal and
as liberated as I wanted him to be and

as I wanted the film to be.

I've always been interested in the Roman
Empire.

Since, after all, like so many of us,
I'm a child of the American Empire, and

empires tend to be more like one another
than different from one another.

In a sense, we are looking in a mirror,
and we are seeing not just an emperor 2

,000 years dead, but we see ourselves.

It's odd to think that

18 years ago, almost exactly, I was here
in Italy writing

a film called Ben-Hur. There's a
photograph of the first day of shooting

with Charlton Heston, William Wyler, the
director.

And now, 18 years later, I'm back in
Rome, and we are doing a movie

called Gorby Dow's Caligula.

History tends to be pretty much what we
make.

Each generation has its own view of
Roman emperors.

It was a strange society that's not as
corrupt as it is sometimes

depicted.

And, of course, there was slavery.

You could own another person.

Caligula lived nearly 2,000 years ago.

The question is, why do a story about a
young man who was murdered 2,000 years

ago? He was an emperor of Rome. There's
much written about.

We don't know whether what we know is
true or not.

We know that he did exist.

He was regarded as a monster.

And I think what attracted me to
Caligula as a character is what happens

if you take a normal young man, rather
ordinary,

and you give him absolute power of life
and death over everybody in the world.

And I think it's a fascinating study to
watch as Caligula begins to regard

people as things.

In a sense, when you allow people the

power to use other people as things, you
begin to treat them

As toys and as children sooner or later
break their toys, so Caligula began to

break people, to murder them.

I'm not particularly in love with blood
and violence, but there is a degree of

that.

When Caligula became emperor, I think he
tried to be a good emperor.

He tried to be popular.

In fact, he always was popular with the
people until the end of his life.

Today, we begin a new era.

All those who have been exiled from
Rome, I do now recall, I grant a

general amnesty.

I think the most interesting thing about
him is his terrible family.

His grandfather, by adoption, the
Emperor Tiberius, in whose reign was

born Jesus Christ.

Tiberius managed to murder Khalil, his
father, his brothers, put away most of

the family.

So as I begin the movie, the story...

You see this young man terrified that
this wicked old man, played by Peter

O'Toole, is going to murder him.

So in a sense, one has great sympathy
for Caligula. It's not his fault that he

was born into this family. And it's not
his fault that his grandfather would

like to murder him.

So suddenly it's a case of who will
murder whom.

My colleague has survived.

And I find that very terrible things
were done by him.

Some of these things we show in the
film.

Very slowly.

I want him to feel death.

I want him to smell death.

His wife's expecting her first child.

We're not quite sure who the father is.
Him or God.

Soon. The great love of his life was his
own sister, Drusilla, and I think that

that has to be shown.

And you will be my queen.

You can't marry a sister.

You can in Egypt.

But we're in Rome.

And you already promised.

And when she died, I think he began to
change.

And he picked as his enemy the ruling
class of the country, which was the

Senate.

Treasury, which was a considerable
amount of money that Tiberius had

amassed. He was giving it away to the
people in order to be popular.

Meanwhile, he was systematically killing
off the members of the Senate.

Systematically, he began to rape their
sons, their daughters, their wives.

He was fairly indiscriminate.

And this, more than anything else,
shocked Rome.

It was a pretty unshockable society.

And finally, at the end, they could take
it no longer.

So their dignity assaulted and
affronted.

They conspired to murder him.

And then finally, at the age of 29, he
was murdered.

would be murdered.

And in a sense, what is quite exciting
in the character is he looks forward to

it and he plunges into death, which for
him is the last great trip.

People think of him as a revolutionary
or a figure of

fun or a madman.

There are so many aspects to him. We
know very little really about him.

Just the information that was given to
us through a historian, a Roman

historian called Suetonius.

And he was from the other side of the
family.

So Suetonius paints Caligula as a very
wicked madman.

That's the only reason that Suetonius
can see why he did so many, on the face

of it, crazy things.

My interpretation of the character is
not quite like that.

You think I'm a lunatic, don't you?

You don't understand me.

We worked on the script, naturally.

I wanted to work on my own character, my
own part, and we wanted to take it a

few steps further and give Caligula a
definite point of view and give a reason

for this so-called madness.

Yes, Jupiter.

What?

Yes, I hear you.

What?

Speak up!

He's very angry because I'm the king of
the gods now.

But he has to do what I tell him.

Don't you, Jupiter!

I suppose I see Caligula as, to put it
in a nutshell, the ultimate anarchist.

I, Caligula Caesar, command in the name
of the Senate and the people of Rome.

The Roman Empire, like any other
empires, are made up

purely of bureaucrats. The army and the
priests and everything else, and he

systematically goes...

from one institution to the other,
trying to provoke them and trying to get

an action out of them. And this is why,
in our view, the misconception is that

Caligula was completely mad.

Things are going far too well, Longinus.
Too well?

Yes. No wars, no catastrophes, nothing.

Yes, Lord.

Can't you ever say anything except, yes,
Lord?

No wonder life's so dull.

Having no work

to do?

Anyway, he tries to destroy these
institutions.

Of course, naturally, he never fails. I
mean, he does fail.

simply because it's impossible to
destroy the bureaucracy.

And I think that that is a very relevant
point for modern-day audiences.

Tiberius's palace, once poised on the
topmost point of the tiny jewel-like

island of Capri, provides the setting
for our story.

Today, the ruins seem harmless.

But the legends passed down to us tell
of terrible happenings.

Here is where Tiberius used to walk.

And up here is where he indulged in his
favorite way of disposing of

those who displeased him.

It is still called the

Tiberius Jump.

When Tiberius died on the island at the
age of 78, Caligula inherited the city

and an empire.

Indeed, the world.

The Rome of the first century AD was a
city of enormous contrasts.

On one hand, there was great poverty and
squalor.

And there were those whose life was a
constant search for bread and a corner

to sleep in.

Human rights were unheard of.

And whereas the terrible games at the
Colosseum had not yet started, people

were already being thrown to the lions.

On the other hand, there were the
privileged few who had much more than

they could possibly need.

And here, the film draws some succinct
parallels with Western society as we

know it today.

Today, Caligula would be seen as a
revolutionary, a dangerous radical.

Is it any wonder that the memory of this
fledgling emperor

despite his three brief years on the
throne, should survive these 2,000

years.

I think the only reason for dealing with
a historical figure is if you

have something to say about the way
people are today, the way people have

always been.

be Gord Vidal as Caligula, but I myself,
sitting there in the audience, would

never do the dreadful things that
Caligula did.

Well, I think that there is a Caligula
in everybody.

This, after all, was a pretty normal,
average young man put into an abnormal

and extraordinary situation.

And I think that if I can communicate to
an audience

That in this monster there is something
that is in present in all of us

But for one reason or another generally
lack of opportunity

Or some ethical sense that stops us
therefore we are not in

action Caligula But I'm trying to go to
something much deeper Which is that

in our dreams?

We are Caligula

And what, after all, is a film? What is
celluloid?

But dreams made into a kind of shadow
reality.

I know that there is a terrible
controversy between the

director and the author, Gore Vidal.

The director told me that the writer
wanted to do a realistic film and had

done an extensive amount of research.

On the other hand, the director wanted
to do something completely different and

said Vidal had no understanding of
history.

By now, I think everybody in America is
aware of the... Well, I think everybody

in the Western world is aware of the
problems between Gore Vidal and our

director, Tinto Brass.

Gore was struck by the fact that a great
number of directors today take credit

for the films that they produce. They're
known as the authors of the films.

And Gore felt that the true author of
the film was in fact

the man who wrote the screenplay, not
the director. He said that

directors were really parasites and that
they lived off the backs of the authors.

And that a director would be well
advised to simply follow the directions

as well as the dialogue of the script
writer.

Well, this is as unrealistic, in fact,
as some of the subsequent antics of

Tinto Brass.

What Tinto Brass says is that he's
trying to make a film on the

effects of power.

I've heard about this film ever since
they were trying to put it up.

in the house of Gore Vidal when he had
finished writing the script.

And he also asked, as a friend probably,
my advice

on who would have been the best
director.

And I said, jokingly, that in order to
make a film on a sexual maniac

and a madman, you needed another sexual
maniac and madman.

And... The only answer was Finto Brass.

Who is Caligula for me?

Surely I know exactly what he's not.

He's not what he is for Gore Vidal,
that's for sure.

Anyway, from what comes out from
Zvetonius, it seems that

Caligula wanted the power just to use it
in a

positive way.

even a moral way but that from a moment
a certain moment on he started becoming

he became crazy foolish and totally
immoral so

i did a how do you call it um
spiritually

spiritual meeting and i evolved the
spirits of caligula and he told me that

i was correct the 65 percent

in the interpretation of his character.

So, well, I am happy. The 65% is a good
percentage.

And now I hope to keep the 65% and, if
possible, even to bring

it to the 70, 80%. That would be really
a good, good...

percentage in front of such a big
character as Caligula was.

I'm using sex, surely, because I believe
deeply in sex as a medium of

communication.

I mean that everybody understands the
language of sex.

Action!

The Imperial Brothel.

As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, we
have gone to great expense to bring you

the finest flesh in our empire.

victims that power does.

I'm deeply convinced that power is
something that is absolutely

immoral.

Morality of power is immorality.

I must admit that power, I hate it
deeply, but it also appealing to me

deeply.

There is such a big amount of energy, of
vitality involved with power that it can

be fascinating.

But at the same time, I think that it is
a duty of an artist to warn

people about the dangers that are
implicit in power and mainly in the

men of power.

If one takes into consideration that a
film is really the work, it's probably

the only art form today that's made up
of the collective

efforts of a great number of people.

And both Gore and Tinto really have to
accept, not only in the practical

sense, but in the philosophical sense,
that neither one nor the other of them

are all important.

And that they are, together with
everyone else, contributors.

Contributors to a single final work of
art.

An enormous work of art.

An enormous work that could never have
been completed without all the efforts

of all the people that were involved.

Many, many talented and creative people.

The rigid disciplines and pressures of
filmmaking were felt by all.

But there was no letting up.

And as time passed,

Men and machines seem to contribute to a
single goal.

People.

Work.

The days and the nights punctuated the
continuous labor.

The flow of time.

Of life.

Uniting the legends of yesterday with
the work realities of today.

Night became day.

And day became night.

And the strain of all those long hours
began to make its present obvious.

But in the end, as always, the show went
on.

The Emperor!

Alice Caligula, came about as a result
of the decision that we took in the very

beginning, and that was to bar the
press.

This is the kind of decision that one
doesn't take lightly because one wants

as much publicity as one can get.

But because of the extraordinary nature
of the film,

even to the way in which it was being
cast,

We didn't want people with the wrong
idea to

start talking about what they had seen
and exactly what we were doing.

So the result was that a considerable
amount of rumor was bandied about and in

fact picked up by the press all over the
world.

But it was always rumor.

No one to this day to this very moment
unless they've actually seen the film

knows what's in it

And it was important to, once we had
begun, to maintain the secrecy of

production. We had people who, cameramen
who tried to break in. We had people who

tried out for parts of the film who were
in fact journalists rather than actors.

And I'm happy to say that although a few
pictures, a few still pictures were

pirated and secreted out of the
organization, out of the studio, out of

the production, that...

No one person or no one collection of
photographs or no one

grouping together of stories and rumors
can tell exactly what happened, exactly

what we did. That was and remained at
all times an absolute secret.

One by one I watched you murder your
family, your friends.

The best men in Rome.

I went one day to the set and saw Sir
John Gielgud and Peter O'Toole lounging

around in the bathroom with lots of
naked, pretty little boys.

And I was impressed.

Liar!

This unusual secrecy surrounding the
production, particularly because of the

few selected exceptions to the rule and
the planned leaks to the news media,

created a great deal of interest and
gossip around Groton.

People in the media did guess that
unusual things were indeed happening

behind those closed doors.

And some of them may even have deserved
the rumors they themselves had

generated.

We've heard things about...

really explicit and somewhat degenerate
sex scenes.

And the studio, of course, is
encouraging all that, I think.

They just keep saying, oh, well, you'll
see, you'll see.

And they've barred people from the set.

We've heard a lot of

News. Malcolm McDowell in bed with his
horse.

News.

Malcolm McDowell going to bed with his
sister.

Those kinds of things. They got people a
little bit excited.

Incest and homosexuality shown rather
explicitly, but nobody knows what

kind of aversion we'll get here in
Italy. I don't know. I'd like to see the

original, if it is as bad as they say.

We have lots of sex in the film.

I think in Rome of that time, the
decadent period of Rome, that sex was

used as a pleasurable exercise and not
frowned upon. It was only when the

Christian ethic came into being that the
famous Roman orgy

was frowned upon.

But we treat it as part of everyday life
and therefore...

People enjoy it.

I never thought I would find myself in a
real live orgy.

It was exciting. It was tormenting.

I love sex.

It comes very naturally to me.

It's the embodiment, if you like, of all
the good qualities of life.

You can feel happy. You can feel sad.

It can bring out all kinds of emotions
in you.

It's fun.

It's people.

It's togetherness.

It's great.

Quite an experience. I got a chance to
watch and to look around at everybody

else. In fact, most people looked like
they were enjoying it.

I suppose when I was looking at the
other girls doing their thing, I was

wondering what they were thinking.

It was a real orgy. People were actually
doing it.

and I was not in the least inhibited. I
did not feel shy or that

I was doing something bad.

I wasn't ashamed of anything that I did
in the film because it's something that

everyone does all the time.

The Romans admitted it, but we don't. We
have hang-ups about it.

And the film is explicit, sexually
explicit, there's no question about it.

Now, nowhere do we make any apologies
for this.

Nor do I wish now to provide any kind of
exceptional rationale or apology.

Suffice it to say that in order to make
this film historically accurate, and it

was an important part of the original
concept, we decided to show life in Rome

exactly as it was.

And that meant taking into consideration
a new kind of morality, a kind of

morality that was peculiar to Roman
culture, the Roman mores.

I've always had fantasies of being in
something like that, performing sex on

film.

I was excited, anxious, and...

They told me the movie would be strong
sexually, but I didn't know specifically

what I would do, what I was going to do.

But at the time, I became very close
with Annika DiLorenzo,

who was the pet of the year.

And we preferred to do something very
sexual in Caligula

with one another, knowing we could trust
each other.

knowing that we were beautiful together,
knowing we could imagine that

and that we could act it out.

It was spontaneous.

We didn't pre-plan it.

We made love together.

There was no jealousy. We related to
each other.

So we did it.

indicates nothing more than the fact
that we see Rome as

accurately as possible in the historic
sense.

And we think this is absolutely vital to
the success of the film.

The reason why we decided to make
Caligula in the first place was to

bring together two diametrically opposed

Aspects of the film industry.

The traditional overground establishment
side.

And the underground side.

The X-rated side.

Because X-rated films, for better or
worse, have become an industry. They are

a force that has to be dealt with in our
society.

And I felt that the fastest and best
way, the most meaningful way to deal

with this kind of a force was to bring
it right up.

to date and make it acceptable, make it
part of the establishment aspect of

filmmaking.

And Gore Vidal's Caligula offered an
opportunity to do this in a way that I

hadn't imagined before.

Hence the use of people like Malcolm
McDowell and Peter O'Toole's John

Gildgood and Helen Mirren, members of
the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespearean

Company, to give it the kind of acting
guts.

the kind of quality that are really
needed.

There are scenes in Caligula that will
shock, surprise, and no doubt offend a

great number of people.

But if I can just use the word rationale
for a second, the rationale for this is,

this is not pornography, this is
paganography.

This is the morality of pagan Rome,
pre-Christian Rome, where one can see

the liaison, the relationship.

The profound love that existed between
Caligula and his sister.

That we can show this love affair in all
of its beauty.

And indeed in all of its tragedy.

Because that's the way it was and that's
the way it was accepted.

Another particularly good reason for
doing this film was because it gave us

as a company a terrific advantage.

And that was of using the beautiful
girls that we portray in the magazine,

the Penthouse Pets.

And indeed, I brought 13 of them to
Italy with me.

13 gorgeous girls, two of whom were Pets
of the Year.

And because of the...

extravagant use of female beauty in any
film dealing with the

court of the Roman Caesars.

This gave us, I think, an advantage over
almost anybody else who would be making

that kind of a film.

One, two, three, four. All right. Now
move a little bit to the right.

All right.

Ellen, let's do the other step. Now.

Good. There followed many rehearsals,
many trials, and

some errors before the actresses were
ready to become priestesses and enter

the pool of the sacred goddess Isis.

Go ahead.

Two thousand years ago, the poet Ovid
demonstrated in verse that he too

had a keen eye for the feminine form.

I admire a girl in makeup for what

she is, and a girl without for what she
could be.

I love the pale, and I love the golden.

The swarthy are lovely too.

Black hair on snow-white shoulders
reminds me of Leda's raven locks.

A platinum blonde of flaxen-haired
aurora love, I find,

pathologizes life.

I fall for the young and feel for the
not-so-young. One has the looks, the

other... The experience.

Put it like this.

There's beauty in Rome.

To please all tastes and mind are all
embracing.

I know that this film about Caligula is
going to be very

expensive because in Italy they used to
make historical Greek and Roman films.

That is this one.

There was one scene in particular shot
in the Roman Senate which had been

rebuilt.

There were more than a hundred senators
and a large number of extras.

I've seen certain scenes

which were very impressive,

and I've seen several scenes which were
being shot, and it was clear that the

style of the actors was very original
and intense.

This is certainly not going to be a
conventional historical film.

It doesn't matter.

It's all right. It's only a show.

I would say that Caligula is probably a
film about power, about the structure of

power in old Rome, but a film that would
also tell about how power is exercised

nowadays and how power is abused.

It has an irresistible mixture of art
and genitals in it.

It's an adult film.

I really think the film is going to be
an enormous success. It has to be.

It has things in it that no one has ever
seen before in a motion picture. And I'm

not just talking about the X-rated
aspects of it.

It's the kind of film that, no matter
what the critics say, you're going to

have to see it.

My lords, I am now to be married to
Sisonia, the mother of my

son, Caligula Germanicus.

People are going to have to go and see
this film, whatever.

Because it is so richly embroidered with
life.

We're happening with a whole human
drama.

You are now mother, wife, and
son-in-law.

But you cannot possibly absorb all that
there is in this film with one viewing.

It's going to make a tremendous splash
wherever it's shown.

In fact, I defy a normal, healthy, young
American male or woman

to not go and see Gore Vidal's Caligula.

I think the film is going to be
something.

I think it is a film that will be widely
discussed around the world.

And everybody's dying to see it.

Simply because I think it is a very
entertaining picture, and I think...

That, in the end, is what people want to
see.

Whatever Gauvidal's curricula may be,
one thing is certain,

it will, without question, be the most
widely seen and talked about film of

our time.