HBO and BBC partnered, have committed $75 million for 12 one-hour episodes of "Rome," a drama scheduled to debut in 2005. If successful, a second or third season could follow.

The enormous crew shooting "Rome" is six miles from the city's historic center, on the famous Cinecittà lot, where Federico Fellini once worked and, more recently, Mel Gibson made much of "The Passion of the Christ" and Martin Scorsese molded "Gangs of New York."

OK so far, But here is where it starts to get dicey!!!!

Bruno Heller, executive producer and its chief writer, explained that ancient Rome was really a scruffy, teeming bazaar, not the monochromatic showcase for neatly pressed tunics and regal posturing that generations of screenwriters and directors have emphasized.

"Rome of that period was more like Bombay or Mexico City," Heller said. "It was a dirty, wild, savage place."

When Heller showed up at HBO's LA office "to pitch an idea about white-trash America." They asked about a white-trash Rome."Love ancient Rome," he said.

The concept was to peek at imperial Rome from the perspective of the common man's rather than from Caesar's lair. What emerged was a plot that whirled around two soldiers who return to the city after years away on duty in the Provinces.

To further capture the "real" Rome, a cast of mostly unknown British actors will be speaking relatively colloquial English. :) :)
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RENDERING UNTO CEASER'S SUBJECTS
New York Times
By Frank Bruni
April 5, 2004

ROME— As everybody knows or can at least surmise, Rome was not built in a day.

But it did rise in just a few months, resplendent in all its plywood, fiberglass and sheet-metal glory. One of the few unfinished civic projects on a recent afternoon was a patch of the piazza near the Temple of Venus, where the cement had yet to dry.

"Watch your step," warned Anne Thomopoulos, an HBO senior executive, but the words came too late. There it was, sullying the classical cityscape and blowing its cover: a size 11 footprint from a shoe that belonged most definitively to a later period.

Ms. Thomopoulos laughed and vowed that it would be repaired. A visitor's clumsy misstep was not about to throw HBO off its latest loopy vision.

The cable network that made morticians sexy ("Six Feet Under") and that just began deconstructing the western ("Deadwood") is now reconstructing and revivifying ancient Rome.

To do so HBO enlisted the BBC as a partner, and together they have committed around $75 million for 12 one-hour episodes of "Rome," a drama scheduled to have its debut in 2005. If the show is successful, a second and even third season could follow.

The series has also set up production in modern Rome, partly on the theory that proximity breeds historical fidelity, or at least a convincing approximation of it.

"They shot `Sex and the City' in New York," Ms. Thomopoulos said. "They shoot `The Sopranos' in New Jersey. There's a texture and verisimilitude you get when you shoot in the actual place."

The enormous crew shooting "Rome" is six miles or so from the city's historic center, on the famous Cinecittà lot, where Federico Fellini once worked and, more recently, Mel Gibson made much of "The Passion of the Christ" and Martin Scorsese molded "Gangs of New York." Bits of the Scorsese film linger: if you wander to the far edge of Rome circa 51 B.C., you stumble abruptly into New York City around 1850.

Rome is bigger and much, much brighter than expected. It has a thicket of Ionic and Corinthian columns in red, yellow, orange and black. Joseph Bennett, the show's production designer, said that those hues were every bit as accurate as the time-weathered white of the pillars remaining in the Forum downtown.

"Everything was colored," Mr. Bennett said as he guided a reporter on a tour of his version of Rome. "It was vibrant."

Bruno Heller, one of the show's executive producers and its chief writer, explained over lunch that ancient Rome was really a scruffy, teeming bazaar, not the monochromatic showcase for neatly pressed tunics and regal posturing that generations of screenwriters and directors have emphasized.

"Rome of that period was more like Bombay or Mexico City," Mr. Heller said. "It was a dirty, wild, savage place."

Cue HBO.

Ms. Thomopoulos hatched the broad idea for the series in 1997 after watching a DVD of "I, Claudius," the 1970's British television drama about ancient Rome. She said she had an appetite for more, and for something different.

Several years later, she said, Mr. Heller showed up in her Los Angeles office "to pitch an idea about white-trash America." She asked him if he would be willing to rechannel his energies toward white-trash Rome.

"Love ancient Rome," she recalled him responding.

The concept was to peek at imperial Rome from the perspective of the common man's living room rather than from the Caesar's lair. What emerged was a plot that whirled around two soldiers who return to the city after years away dismembering Gauls.

One of those soldiers is "very worried that his wife has been unfaithful to him," Mr. Heller said.

"Complications ensue," said Stan Wlodkowski, another of the executive producers.

Those twists and turns are rendered not in Latin or Aramaic but in relatively colloquial English: one way, said the show's creators, to coax a cast of mostly unknown British actors into naturalistic performances to help bridge the gap between the millennia.

"As soon as actors put costumes on they adopt bizarre personalities," said the director Michael Apted.

Mr. Apted, whose movie credits range from "Coal Miner's Daughter" to the James Bond adventure "The World Is Not Enough," was hired to direct the first three episodes of "Rome."

"That's one of the challenges for us: not making it a freak show," he said, sitting across the lunch table from Mr. Heller and Mr. Wlodowski.

Dialogue aside, the show's creators took great pains to be true to the past.

They collected a small library's worth of obscure tomes, including several on the physical gestures of ancient Romans.

In early March Mr. Apted rented a bus and with a large group of the actors traveled two hours south to the remains of Pompeii, near Naples.

"It just gives you a sense of the life: the width of a street, the size of a room," he said. "It builds a subconscious picture that's part and parcel of everything."

Mr. Bennett said that as his crew constructed fiberglass sculptures for the Roman temples on the set, they visited Rome's many museums, using actual relics as reference for the reproductions.

April Ferry, the costume designer, educated herself about the era's fashions, making surprising discoveries.

"Who knew that the Gauls wore plaid?" she said, walking among the armor and frocks in her costume shop.

She said she learned from a book on eros in Pompeii that prostitutes wore halter tops and tube tops not so different from their descendants' attire. "They were people just like us," she said.

Well, not quite. Her research also showed that Roman soldiers sometimes affixed small parts of vanquished rivals' bodies, not excluding genitals, to their battle helmets.

Ms. Ferry's costumes reproduce this, but when she tried one recent afternoon to find an example, the helmets nearby dangled only fake fingers; the faux phalluses were nowhere to be found.

There was, though, some confusion in and around ancient Rome that afternoon. Filming was scheduled to begin in a few days, and everything was coming together in a hurry. Mr. Bennett said that he had started contemplating the sets' construction in September but did not break ground, so to speak, until November.

Just four months later his Rome, covering at least five acres, has a vast Republican Forum of majestic temples fronted by mammoth columns. It has an upscale enclave of capacious villas with what look like smooth stone walls, and a downscale neighborhood with what look like brick tenements.

All of the structures were sturdy to the touch: no Potemkin facades or flimsy cardboard here.

"It has to have a certain amount of longevity, like ancient Rome," Mr. Bennett said. In television time that did not mean centuries or decades, but the course of a respectable run. Five years would do.

Rendering Unto Caesar’s Subjects
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/
arts/television/05ROME.html?8hpib