Gladiator Easter Egg - Oliver Reed

That sounds odd. Why would they insert him in the crowd as a gesture of "good will" when he is already in the film a whole lot?

It would seem to me that, and my basis of this is not having looked back to see the egg for myself, that Mr. Reed was just in the crowd for filming. As we all know, movies are not shot in the order they end up on the screen. Oliver may just have been around and been used as an extra. But I could be way off and he could have been digitally pasted into the scene.

Yea, but at the end, where the soldiers come in to kill Proximo, that's digital. That's why you can't understand what he's saying under his breath.

He says "Shadows and Dust" before he dies - he did actually say these lines. His lines (as a digital reproduction) are "It seems you have won your freedom" and "Pah!" Which are quite easy to tell apart from his actual accent.

The UK press yesterday reported a hidden outtake (i.e. Easter Egg) on the Gladiator DVD. Something about a fight against a rhino. Don't know if R1 or R2. Came looking for details of this exploit but so far no details on this site.

F.Y.I. - The people are being thrown bread before Maximus is to fight the undefeated gladiator, not before he fights Commodus.

Ya, I've known he was saying "Shadows and Dust" since the first time I saw it. It wasn't hard to understand.

I heard someone else telling me this. Oliver Reed died during filming. Most of his parts were done. I suspect he was to be in this shot and have a closeup, however, they had to use a digital image instead and thus did not zoom in.

OK. So when am i supposed to look? When you people are throwing the bread, or before he fights the emperor?

gul1: if you go to the DVD features of this site, it tells you where to find the rhino fight script and animation. the storyboards are right in the "deleted scenes" section of "storyboards" on disc two.

They had to change the ending of the film slightly due to Ollie Reeds untimely demise, Proximo was originally going to get away with it all and survive the end of the film, thats why he hadn't filmed the release of Maximus or his death scene 'cause those scenes weren't written until after Ollie popped his clogs in the best possible fashion.

The bit were Oliver reed says "You sold me gay camels," was said after the director said "Cut." To fill time, they put it in.

I'm sure the end of the movie had to be changed as a result of Oliver Reed's unfortunate demise, but there is not that much to this new ending. Right before Proximo is killed by the guards (Chapter 24, 2:12:17, he says, "shadows and dust." If you pay attention to the guards in the background, they're not the ones that were sent there to kill him. They're actually the guards that were standing behind him at the Colusseum from earlier in the movie when Proximo shouted to Maximus that Commodus knows too well how to manipulate the crowd. In other words, it was the same footage. They used another take from the scene at Chapter 18, 1:43:11 and placed it later in the movie as Proximo's final words. There was no digital work of any kind to do this--this is very noticeable.

If you are referring to the guy I think you are referring to, then he looks a lot more like Brian Blessed with a short beard than he does Ollie Reed. Incidentally, a guy I went to school with was in the film, playing one of the other Gladiators. Huge guy, hardly recognized him at first. Unfortunately he has passed away now, in somewhat mysterious circumstances.

if you watch all the commentaries on the dvd Ridley Scott (director) talks about what happened, and it changed loads because of Reed's death, and his death was a cross between a double and computer graphics. Also, the crowd was almost completely computer generated, so was Reed's face.

Proximo doesn't say: "You sold me gay camels." He says: "You sold me queer giraffes."

hey jas, seens aren't shot from ending to begining, they shoot them at any order

The shadows and dust scene at the end was digitally made - it's not oliver reed who is kneeling, but they did add his face. The shadows and dust line was a line that he has spoken earlier in the movie that was re-entered here, as if he was remembering his earlier conversation.