Right I readed this years ago but it’s popped up on the little wonder that is the internet the other day again, you now can embedded it your own website easily so to go with my own little Nick Cave database here on my blog, plus anyone one else who would like to read it can too. Now this is not the first time I’ve blog about Nick and his Aussie actor mate Russell Crowe, you can see/read/listen to part one here if you want even more? That post includes Crowe playing a Cave cover song and Cave playing a award show hosted by Crowe, he give one hell of a crazy intro to Cave too.
Anyway my weekend reading was Christ Killer screenplay, that’s what Cave himself wanted to called the sequel not just plain old boring Gladiator 2. Now also he wrote it thinking it was never, ever going to be made into a movie. It was just an idea Crowe and him cooked up but not saying Crowe didn’t want to do a sequel at first. Only after reading Cave final script did Russell change his mind but before Crowe loved The Proposition, the Aussie western from 2005 which Cave wrote plus a little known fact Russell was even going to be in the film at one point. Big Rusty asked little Nicky to somehow bring back to life his character Maximus who if you don’t remember the film, he die. So it’s a crackpot idea in the first place to bring back to life a character, not that it’s stop hollywood before. Now Crowe totally hated Cave’s screenplay and it was binned as soon as he finished reading it but they’re still mates. Over the last week the director of the original film, Ridley Scott has given wind to the idea again while promoting his yet another new prequel to the Alien film.
Now every single review or whatever of Cave’s idea of calls it mad as bats but me being a big Nick Cave fan it’s yet another genius of his written word, different to the sung or spoken word like his songs or his other well, books. He takes his love for the bible and that history to another whole level. Did you know both his novels strated as scripts? But ended up being too hard or even impossible to make. Like say the opening scene he wanted what became his debut novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, he had thunderstorm in just one single camera shot covering the whole town, swamps, camps, sugarcane fields which were then set alight by lightning strike and burning all at the same time. The director John Hillcoat asked do you know how much that would cost? But Nick didn’t seem to care at all and then just turned it into a novel. Same thing happen with The Death Of Bunny Munro, another one Hillcoat wanted to make and that was even after the success of The Proposition film. That movie didn’t happen once again but Cave again turn it into a novel again and then Hillcoat got called to America to do a few films now which one did have a Cave screenplay too, Lawless from 2012.
So a lot of people have pointed out the closing sequence where Maximus doesn’t ever died again is the totally madness thing about Nick script, he time travel thru history fighting all the wars known to man. Sorry but this makes sense to me, if you’re going to bring back someone from the dead he’s not going to die again so why the fuck not? Sequels are always a bad idea but they keep coming but it seems Nick’s idea is a bit of a joke on the internet but I would like to point out here and now on my blog another Aussie actor pretty much did this in his own big blockbuster, the montage of opening credits for Hugh Jackman in X-Men: Origins Wolverine from 2009 did this. When I saw it I thought of Cave’s screenplay because it was only a couple of years earlier. Here that is it below and if it’s not almost the same thing written above in the script. So it does start in American civil war and ending in Vietnam war but it’s really the same idea, if it’s not I’ll eat my hat!
After all that here’s a song by Cave’s side project Grinderman dressed up like they’re going to taken part in the Gladiator 2 The Christ Killer movie!
Plus One More Time With Feeling doco is now out on DVD/downloading and the little bit with Cave’s Steve McQueen poem/spoken word thingy is on now on YouTube!
Anyway I really enjoy re-reading this again and hope others will do even if you do think it’s mad as hell. Now I’ve put in my Books categories not that it was ever official published or anything but reading like say his last book, The Sick Bag Song it works just as well.
Have you read it before or not? Liked it or hated it? Why leave a reply now?
a1000mistakes 