The Making of Alexander by Dave Simkiss

F o r t u n e

Fav o r s

t h e

The Making of

B o l d

I first discovered the nuances of Alexander’s life, in the novels of Mary Renault in the 1960s and ‘70s. He always fascinated me, and certainly was a model for an ambitious life. I found his ideas of glory and honor to be very much in keeping with the historical view of the Greeks. In many ways he is the epitome of the Greek man. Ironically of course, the Greeks couldn’t stand him, and yet he ended up carrying their ideas farther, and deeper than most Greek ever did -- in my opinion, anyway. When I was at in NYU in the early ‘70s, of course it was a fantasy of mine to one day make a film on Alexander. I was hoping for a documentary, where I could go back in time and actually film the army moving through the passes of the Hindu Kush, but that didn’t quite pan out. I started thinking seriously about doing a film in 1989 and various false starts were made throughout the ‘90s. We finally got it together in 2002 and 2003 through the magnificent efforts of European producers Moritz Borman, Paul Rassam, Thomas Schuhly, and Patrick Wachsberger. Getting this film physically made, finishing in Thailand, was perhaps one of the greatest days of my life. What a dream come true! Of course the fate of the film was something typically Greek in its most ironic and tragic sense.

Oliver Stone

The Making of Alexander

The Making of

He was many things to many people - a dashing warrior king, filled with ambition, courage and the arrogance of youth, leading his vastly outnumbered forces against the massive Persian armies… a son desperately longing for the approval of his stern, battle-scarred father, torn and conflicted by his mother’s legacy… a relentless conqueror who never lost a battle and drove his soldiers to the very edges of the known world… a visionary whose dreams, deeds and destiny echo through eternity, helping to shape the world as we know it today. He was all that and more. He was Alexander the Great.

Warner Bros. Pictures and Intermedia Films present a Moritz Borman production in association with IMF, an Oliver Stone film, Alexander. Directed by OLIVER STONE, Alexander stars COLIN FARRELL, ANGELINA JOLIE, VAL KILMER and ANTHONY HOPKINS. The film is produced by THOMAS SCHÜHLY, JON KILIK, IAIN SMITH and MORITZ BORMAN. The executive producers are PAUL RASSAM and MATTHIAS DEYLE. The co-executive producers are GIANNI NUNNARI and FERNANDO SULICHIN. Written by OLIVER STONE and CHRISTOPHER KYLE and LAETA KALOGRIDIS. The director of photography is RODRIGO PRIETO; JAN ROELFS serves as production designer; the film is edited by TOM NORDBERG, YANN HERVE and ALEX MARQUEZ; costumes by JENNY BEAVAN; VANGELIS serves as composer.

The Making of Alexander

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 06

FINDING ALEXANDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 08

FORGING AN ANCIENT ARMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 14

CAPTAIN DALE DYE DISCUSSES HIS WORK ON ALEXANDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 23

RECONSTRUCTING THE ANCIENT WORLD . . . . . . Page 26

COSTUMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 32

THE JOURNEYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S END . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 34

ABOUT THE CAST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 36

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 38

AFTERWARD - OLIVER STONE DISCUSSES ALEXANDER IN RETROSPECT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 40 TOP RIGHT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias, Colin Farrell as Alexander and Val Kilmer as King Philip BOTTOM LEFT: Farrell, Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Cassander and Jared Leto as Hephaistion BOTTOM RIGHT: Sir Anthony Hopkins as the aged Ptolemy

The Making of Alexander

OLIVER STONE’S ALEXANDER is based on the true story of one of history’s most luminous and influential leaders (COLIN FARRELL) - a man who had conquered 90% of the known world by the age of 25.

invasion from Macedonia, first leading his armies to wrest Western Asia from Persian control, then driving his enormously outnumbered troops to an impossible victory over the mighty Persian army itself.

Alexander led his virtually invincible Greek, Macedonian, and later Eastern armies through 22,000 miles of sieges and conquests in just eight years, and by the time of his death at the age of 32, had forged an empire unlike any the world had ever seen.

Alexander expands his empire into the unknown lands of modern day Central Asia before venturing across the Hindu Kush, further than any Westerner had ever gone, continuing his conquests into the exotic world of India. Incredibly, and possibly unique in the annals of military history, Alexander was never defeated in battle.

Set in Alexander’s pre-Christian world of social customs and morals far different from today’s, the film explores a time of unmatched beauty and unbelievable brutality, of soaring ideals and staggering betrayals. The film takes a bold, honest look at Alexander’s life and his relationships with his mother, Olympias (ANGELINA JOLIE), his father Philip (VAL KILMER), his lifelong friend and battle commander Hephaistion (JARED LETO), Roxane, his ambitious and beautiful wife (ROSARIO DAWSON), and his trusted general and confidant Ptolemy (ANTHONY HOPKINS). His extraordinary journey begins when Alexander launches his

LEFT: Colin Farrell as Alexander ABOVE: Promotional poster art

He relentlessly pushes his army across the sands, mountains and jungles of strange and mysterious lands, conquering every enemy who dares oppose him and weathering near-mutiny by his own men. The film chronicles Alexander’s path to becoming a living legend, from a youth fueled by dreams of myth, glory, and adventure, to his intense bonds with his closest companions, to his lonely and mysterious death as ruler of a vast Empire. Alexander is the incredible story of a life that united the known world and proved, if nothing else, fortune favors the bold. The Making of Alexander

OPPOSITE PAGE: Oliver Stone directs Colin Farrell as Alexander

INTRODUCTION Alexander the Great conquered the world not only by virtue of his military genius, but perhaps even more importantly, with the power of his ideas. What Alexander accomplished in his near 33 years on earth have reverberated through the centuries, still informing how life is lived throughout the lands he conquered more than two thousand years ago. Although he was the ultimate warrior, Alexander had the soul of an explorer - in his 22,000-mile march, he sought not to destroy, but to reinvent each society in the mold of his own vision for a new world, and perhaps a new destiny for the human race. Through his actions, Alexander temporarily united East and West, spreading Hellenistic thought and culture throughout the Eastern world with lasting effect. His accomplishments were astonishing by any standards. His empire included lands that now comprise the countries of Greece, Albania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Egypt, Libya, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India. In 323 B.C., the year of his death, it comprised well over two million square miles. Alexander has been the subject of an enormous body of written works, historical, fictive, psychological and even practical (as evidenced by two recently published books that translate Alexander’s military strategy into a guide for modern businessmen), but except for one attempt by Hollywood nearly 40 years ago, no filmmaker has found a way to translate Alexander’s extraordinary life to the screen - until Oscarwinning director/screenwriter Oliver Stone took on the challenge of telling the story in the epic Alexander. The film’s production incorporated a multitude of disciplines, all designed to bring the exact quality and look of Alexander’s world to life. The numerous sets included detailed re-creations of lavish palaces, the extraordinary Alexandria Library and the magnificent city of Babylon, including its legendary Hanging Gardens, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Additionally, each actor’s accent was specifically chosen to reflect the interconnected languages and wide array of dialects of the time. In preparation for their roles, all the actors portraying soldiers, including stars Colin Farrell and Jared Leto, underwent extensive training in ancient battle strategies and the use of exact replicas of Macedonian and Greek weaponry. The battles are epic in scope recreated for the screen are the Battle of Gaugamela, where Alexander’s heavily outnumbered troops resoundingly defeated the vast Persian army, and a vicious battle in the forests of India in which his troops fight against enormous elephants. "The beauty of Alexander is that he won," says Stone, whose acclaimed films include Any Given Sunday, Nixon, Natural Born Killers, JFK, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and Platoon. "He’ll always be known for at least two reasons - that he conquered the world without ever suffering a military defeat, and as a visionary and a man of remarkable and generous spirit. He was perhaps the greatest warrior of all time, greater than his mythic

The Making of Alexander

heroes Achilles and Herakles. He grew up under the influence of these mythological Greek figures and he believed in them as no other child. Out of that belief and faith grew this monumental drive and destiny, which he actually achieved." Fascinated by Alexander since childhood and inspired by Greek mythology, Stone dreamed of making Alexander’s story for years. "I had frustrated student fantasies of going back in time with documentary cameras and a small crew to actually film Alexander’s military campaigns," he recalls. "32 years later, I finally had one chance to go back in time and actually recreate the period as best I could." Alexander producer Moritz Borman was intrigued by the extent to which Stone had delved into Alexander’s mind in his screenplay. "Most of us have some historical knowledge of Alexander," Borman notes, "but don’t know much about the man himself, his soul, his inner workings. Oliver’s script asked where he came from, what were his trials and tribulations, how did his cultural environment form him, what happened when he encountered different cultures and confronted apparently impossible situations. This was not just a history lesson, but a script about a man who all of us could very well relate to today, with many of the themes of our time. The whole story of Alexander just came alive in the script, a truly dramatic and glorious tale." Serving as historical advisor to Stone was Robin Lane Fox, a fellow of New College, Oxford, whose 1972 biography of Alexander has sold more than a million copies and is considered one of the finest contemporary works on his life. Lane Fox’s encyclopedic knowledge of Alexander’s life provided the filmmaker with information for his screenplay and occasional on-set expertise. "I first met Oliver three years ago in London," Lane Fox recalls, "and he bombarded me with questions, a process that went on for months. He wanted to understand everything from how Greeks would behave at a dinner party to what Aristotle meant to Alexander. "I think Oliver’s strength as a historical dramatist is that his mind has a real feel for the character. He has an epic eye and dimension. Oliver has aimed high to present the greatness, and it will surprise historians to the degree to which he’s tried to convey the balance of Alexander’s accomplishments, both good and bad." Stone’s film is by definition interpretive, as are all works of historical fiction. Alexander lived in ancient times, and even his earliest historians could only take their best guess at the truth. "Cramming every incident of Alexander’s extraordinary life into one feature film would be quite literally impossible," notes Lane Fox, "and there are also mysteries that may never be solved. I understand why Oliver made the decisions to omit certain incidents in Alexander’s life, or to make slight changes in the sequence of events. One of the fascinations about Alexander is the gaps in what we can know - they give such scope for the imagination."

The Making of Alexander

FINDING ALEXANDER How does a filmmaker cast a role that is larger than life? In the case of Alexander, it meant finding an actor who was eminently human, yet physically impressive and who possessed the range to paint a full portrait of the complex character. Stone found his man in Irish actor Colin Farrell, star of such films as Tigerland, Minority Report, Phone Booth and The Recruit. "Like Alexander, Colin has the spirit of a rebel and the confidence of a warrior and a leader. He became Alexander on many levels - he led the actors as a group, he built himself up physically, mastered the horse and sword, and fought like a lion to give his best. I often offered to replace him with a stuntman, both on horse and foot, but he truly wanted to hang in there himself and do as many of his own stunts as possible. As crazy as he might be sometimes, he is one of nature’s noblemen. It’s an honor to have met him at such a moment in his life."

"Oliver wrote an incredible script," says the actor. "I never in my life read anything as dark and as light and as full of potential as that script. It was, very simply, the best I had ever read in my life. "Alexander was a man who would stop at absolutely nothing to achieve his dreams," Farrell continues, "which I truly believe were based on much more than greed and the desire for conquest. All his life, Alexander was looking for answers, and I also think that he was looking for love all his life. Alexander had an almost insane passion for everything he did. He could have lived a fine life in Macedonia in his palace, taxing his people and enjoying the luxury befitting a king. But there was a hole in his chest that couldn’t be filled, and his search for answers took him to the ends of the earth." Farrell took his inspiration not only from the man he was portraying, but also from the man who created the film. "Oliver is more Alexander than I could hope to be," the actor states. "He strives for excellence at any cost. He’s an amazing filmmaker and he’s a brilliant leader. Oliver is always working his arse off. We wrap, and while we all bitch about what a long day it’s been, he’s off to the editing suite. The man is a complete inspiration to be around." Central to Alexander’s character are the expectations and deeply held beliefs put upon him by his mother, the intense Olympias. "Part of what the movie deals with is Alexander’s bargain with his mother," says Stone. "In our script, Olympias tells Alexander, ‘In you lives the light of this world. Your companions will long be shadows in the underworld, when you will be the one, forever young, forever inspiring - never will there be an Alexander like you - Alexander the Great.’ Olympias put the mythology into Alexander’s head that he had a destiny that was equal to Achilles, and that like Achilles, he would die young. That was the trade-off. Great fame, but early death, as opposed to long life and little glory." It was essential that Stone find a talented actress who possessed the intensity, presence and passion to play the woman who would set Alexander the Great on his path to destiny. His choice was Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie.

ABOVE and RIGHT: Colin Farrell as Alexander

"I met Angelina soon after she did Gia," recalls Stone, "and I thought she was a spectacular young actress. A lot of modern actresses play the polite middle, but with Angelina, you have more of the Bette Davis tradition. She goes for it in a strong, determined way, and it’s rare to see that with young actors. They don’t have that confidence. But Angelina had developed a strength that was just right for Olympias. You couldn’t ask for a better match." Jolie was attracted to the challenge of bringing to life a woman who has intrigued readers of history for centuries. "I think you have to love every character you play," says Jolie, "and understand them or at least support their flaws. If you think they’re crazy or just wrong, you can’t play them with conviction. I am a mother now, so I simply saw Olympias as a mother. A lot of people

The Making of Alexander

say that she was insane, but I don’t know that I wouldn’t do exactly the same for my son. That might sound scary, but in 330 B.C., when people were being murdered left and right, it was a harder way of living and so Olympias was a hard, sometimes frightening woman. But in the end, she wanted Alexander to be as great and as strong as he could be, and I identify with that." Characteristically, Jolie plunged full force into her character. As a worshipper of Dionysus, the Macedonian queen was accustomed to being surrounded by snakes, and Jolie had to quickly become comfortable having a number of serpents draped around her neck and writhing at her feet during filming. While it might seem anti-intuitive to cast Jolie as the mother of an actor only one year her junior, the scant age difference between Jolie and Farrell made little difference, as most of her scenes were filmed with the child actors who portray Alexander at different stages of boyhood. Although no one really knows how old Olympias was when she gave birth to Alexander, Robin Lane Fox surmises that, typical of the era, she may have been only 16 or 17 years old. Thus, in Jolie’s few scenes with Farrell, she’s playing older - with an assist from the hair and makeup departments - while he’s playing younger.

ABOVE AND ABOVE LEFT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias and Jessie Kamm as the Child Alexander LEFT: Alexander ‘bus stop’ theatrical poster

The Making of Alexander

Also influential in Alexander’s life was his father and Olympias’ estranged husband, King Philip II of Macedonia, played by multitalented actor Val Kilmer. Kilmer had previously portrayed Jim Morrison in Stone’s The Doors to critical raves more than a decade before, and was excited to re-unite with the filmmaker. "Oliver’s vision is really vivid, and he’s the perfect director for this story," says the actor. "He and I talked about Alexander when we were doing The Doors together. He plays it as a very personal story, which is unusual for screen biographies, especially epics. The film has a kind of intimacy that we’ve never seen before. The makeup of the character of Alexander is really the subject of the story, told against the backdrop of a world in which myth was very much alive." Whereas many of the actors were required to buff up for their roles, for Kilmer it was the opposite: to portray the formerly powerful, now dissipated king, Kilmer was required to gain weight, much as he had done before for sequences portraying an increasingly unhealthy Jim Morrison in The Doors. Kilmer also had to undergo an hour of daily makeup to don the scar tissue that covers the eye that Philip lost in battle. "Philip established all of the foundations for what made Alexander great," says Kilmer. "He was from all accounts a grand character loud, an insatiable lover, and a drunk, but he obviously had unimaginable power in battle, as his son did. Philip keenly understood human nature, and once he had taken over an area he established peace and connections through marriage.

ABOVE: Jared Leto as Hephaistion RIGHT: Val Kilmer as Philip OPPOSITE PAGE: Rosario Dawson as Roxane and Colin Farrell as Alexander

The Making of Alexander

He was a prisoner of war for several years, during which time he learned and refined new, advanced and very successful techniques for war, and he was able to employ them in a way that made his people richer and more secure." Cast as Alexander’s closest lifelong companion Hephaistion is Jared Leto, rising star of such films as Panic Room, Requiem for a Dream and Girl, Interrupted. "It was my first audition since Panic Room, which was a couple of years before, and I was completely petrified," confesses Leto. "There were 50 other people there to meet Oliver, and it was incredibly intimidating. But when I auditioned, thankfully, he saw something in me that he thought might be right for Hephaistion. I’ll be eternally grateful to him for believing in me and giving me this experience. He works harder than any other person on the set. He’s obsessed, he’s a mad genius, like Van Gogh or Beethoven. He’s taught me a lot on this film, and I’ll carry those things with me for the rest of my career." Leto also appreciated the presence of his co-star. "Making the movie with anyone other than Colin wouldn’t have been such an incredible experience," says Jared Leto. "First of all, he’s a friend. He’s also a tremendous actor, really generous, and incredibly committed. He raised the bar for all of us. He’s got a lot of Alexander in him, and it was easy for us to see Colin in that part." "Colin was Alexander," concurs Rosario Dawson, who was cast by Stone as princess Roxane, Alexander’s first wife. "Colin’s just got that presence, and you can see the Pied Piper in him. It was magic, and it was really wonderful for me. Young actors don’t usually give you that much - they’re not that generous, or prepared, or confident in their own talent." Working with legendary director Stone drew Dawson to the project immediately. "I always wanted to work with Oliver," she enthuses. "When I first heard about the film, I wondered what kind of roles there were in it for women. We talked for a while, shot a screen test, and after an hour-and-a-half he was calling me ‘Roxane.’"

The Making of Alexander

For two relatively brief but crucial roles, Stone reached out to two of the world’s most distinguished actors. As the elder Pharaoh Ptolemy, the film’s storyteller and central voice, Anthony Hopkins was only too pleased to reunite with Stone eight years after their fruitful partnership on Nixon. "Oliver Stone is one of the most extraordinary directors, and I’ve worked with some really great ones," notes Hopkins. "There’s nothing safe about Oliver, and there’s nothing safe about his films. They are brilliant and outrageous."

ABOVE AND BELOW RIGHT: Sir Anthony Hopkins as the aged Ptolemy

"Once Anthony gets it right, he doesn’t let go," Stone says. "He’s like a dog with a bone. He works quietly, methodically, and as he goes, sucks more and more of the marrow. On his last day in front of the cameras, Anthony worked until three or four in the morning to finish, which means it was an eighteen to twenty hour day. It killed everybody except him - Anthony loved it. He said ‘I love to work hard, and I don’t like to sit and screw around on set. I wish you had come to me with seventy days of pain!’" "They were pretty intense days," Hopkins confirms, "but I felt fantastic at the end of it. Working with Oliver is intense, because he drives and needles you in a good, constructive way. But it was the most satisfying time I’ve had on a set for a long time."

The Making of Alexander

For the role of the immortal Greek philosopher and naturalist Aristotle, who as Alexander’s boyhood tutor influenced the king throughout his life, Stone approached Christopher Plummer, an actor whose remarkably prolific career spans several decades and dozens of films. Although the role would require that he journey from his home in the United States to Morocco to be on camera for just two days, Plummer was excited by the prospect of breathing life into Aristotle, and undaunted by the notion of portraying the great thinker. "He is a difficult creature to play because we can’t really know him," the actor notes. "It’s impossible to research a character like Aristotle, because there are millions of argumentative thoughts on the chap. So I gave up searching and put myself in the trustworthy hands of Oliver Stone. I tried to infuse the character with as many colors as I possibly could to suggest Aristotle’s intellect, his wit, and also his energy and mesmeric powers of teaching." Aristotle’s lectures to Alexander and the boys who will later become his closest companions - including Hephaistion, his lifelong best friend - touches on many subjects: geography, politics, the gods, and sexuality as it was understood in the ancient Hellenic world, a time in which contemporary definitions were meaningless. Alexander deals with the sexual mores of the era naturally, with neither apology nor sensationalism.

"There was a philosophy in that period that the sharing of knowledge and the physical was a very pure thing between men," explains Farrell. "It was Eros, pure love, about growing, sharing and educating. There was no ‘homosexuality’ or ‘bisexuality.’There was just an inevitable sexuality whenever it happened. Hephaistion was a friend who Alexander grew up with, and someone who, from the start to the finish, never had an agenda. He was the only one in Alexander’s life who in the truest sense of the word was a real companion and a true friend who just wanted the best for him." "I think that Alexander and Hephaistion had an instant kinship and brotherhood that transcended mere ‘friendship,’" adds Leto. "Most important was the love they had for each other, which wasn’t based on the physical, but on spiritual kinship. They played a part in each other’s destinies, which was a source of real tension between Hephaistion and Olympias, and later Roxane." In the wake of casting his leads, Stone had to come to a carefully considered decision about how the language in his script would be spoken on screen. Ancient Greece and Macedonia were melting pots of different dialects - people moved around the ancient world constantly, mixing their own dialects with the local tongue. Philip

extended the borders of Macedonia to include territories in which people from different backgrounds had settled. As a result, the people of Macedonia in Alexander’s time had varied ways of speaking. Even the high-country Macedonians and the lowcountry Macedonians spoke in different dialects. To southern Greeks, Athens being the center of Greek culture, Macedonian Greek would have a pronounced accent. To reflect this, the actors portraying the Greeks and Macedonians speak with outlying English accents (Irish, Scottish, Welsh).

BELOW LEFT: Christopher Plummer as Greek philosopher Aristotle with Connor Paolo as Young Alexander

The modern equivalent would be the way in which English is spoken in different dialects throughout the British Isles. As Greek royalty from an outlying Greek kingdom, Angelina Jolie as Queen Olympias has her own distinctive accent in the film. Stone enlisted the aid of British dialogue coach Catherine Charlton to work with the actors, and she in turn worked with Robin Lane Fox to ensure that all the pronunciations of ancient names and places were correct. The end result is that while all the film’s Greeks, including the Macedonians, speak a master English tongue, their accents synchronize with the various outlying kingdoms from which they hail.

The Making of Alexander

FORGING AN ANCIENT ARMY Stone asked that the highest level of historical accuracy be achieved in every detail of the film, from props to costumes to the film’s elaborate battle sequences. In order to achieve the level of realism the director was looking for, Captain Dale Dye, USMC (Ret.), Stone’s longtime collaborator and perhaps the film industry’s foremost military expert, was brought in to train star Colin Farrell and the rest of the key performers who portray Alexander’s comrades.

ABOVE: Director Oliver Stone discusses a scene with Colin Farrell RIGHT: Captain Dale Dye, USMC (Ret.) - second unit director and senior military advisor OPPOSITE PAGE: Actors enjoy a break between filming battle scenes

The Making of Alexander

Stone and Dye first started the now commonplace practice of holding military ‘boot camps’ when they worked together on Platoon nearly 20 years ago. During a long, hard month of work, the cast gained expertise in such archaic specialties as sword fighting, wielding shields, bows and arrows, slings, javelins and sarissas (fearsome lances that measured up to 14 feet long), as well as cavalry horsemanship, standard bearing and military formations. "I don’t train actors," states Captain Dye unequivocally. "I train people who become soldiers, and hopefully they have some talent as actors. These kids came in and the first thing they did was learn that

there is something more important than themselves. They learned to live with other gents who were in a military unit and support the mission of that unit. My job was to turn them into credible Macedonian soldiers, with an emphasis on the word ‘soldier.’They had to understand that concept before they could understand anything else." One of the most significant challenges facing the actors was their varying degrees of experience on horseback. Macedonian cavalry rode bareback, without the benefit of saddle or stirrups, which even for experienced riders is an exceedingly difficult skill to master. Horse trainer Ricardo Cruz Moral and his Spanish team first trained the actors on saddles before moving them to bareback. Finally, he taught the cast how to employ weaponry while riding, for battle sequences in which they had to wield 14-foot-long sarissas while maintaining their positions in historically accurate formations, often in the midst of dust storms that seriously restricted their line of vision.

The Making of Alexander

Also trained by Cruz Moral was 13-year-old Connor Paolo, who was cast by Stone to play young Alexander. Paulo had to master the skills required to effectively portray Alexander’s fateful first meeting, and subsequent taming and bonding, with the wild stallion Bucephalas a catalyzing moment for a young Alexander, who in achieving what several experienced horsemen had failed to do, dramatically won his remote father’s approval.

Key to the training of the film’s actors, stuntmen, extras and soldiers was the re-creation and execution of the "phalanx," the strategic battle formation developed by King Philip and later perfected by his son Alexander. A phalanx consists of 256 men bearing sarissas, formed 16 by 16 squared, assembled into a nearly impenetrable formation. (The phalanx’s modern-day equivalent might well be a tank.)

Having grown up in New York City, Paolo had no prior experience on horseback. Cruz Moral trained him every day for two months, and by the time the cameras were ready to roll, he rode like a true Macedonian prince.

Philip’s utilization of the indomitable phalanx and his idea of maintaining a standing army of paid soldiers ensured that when Alexander rose to power, he had the tools in place to conquer the world. Says Dye, "The tactics of the phalanx were so good that it was the primary infantry formation employed on the battlefield for 150 years. The only ones who finally beat it were the Roman legions. It provided a field commander like Alexander with a very strong, rigid yet flexible tactical element on the ancient battlefield." The training camp proved to be an historical laboratory of sorts. By virtue of experience and practical implementation, Capt. Dye, his staff and the filmmakers discovered the truth behind accounts of how wars were fought in Alexander’s time. This intense period of training and preparation then allowed Stone to stage onscreen battles that are as true as possible to historical and military reality. "We were learning so we could teach, essentially," says Dye. "Oliver and I worked with the classical scholars, and once we had heard their opinion, we were able to actually put that knowledge into practice on the field and see what worked." In addition to realistically depicting the bearing and deportment of

ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT: Young Alexander Connor Paolo with Angelina Jolie (Olympias) and Val Kilmer (King Philip) RIGHT: Alexander’s army prepares for battle

The Making of Alexander

soldiers who lived thousands of years before their own time, the film’s actors had to be readied to enact two monumental battles.

of style had to be incorporated into what Alexander was feeling at that moment in the film."

"Captain Dye worked us all day," recounts Farrell, who began his training in the United States and Spain six weeks before the start of the film’s official training camp.

There was also the matter of volume, as the actual battle in 331 B.C. was fought by approximately 297,000 soldiers. Although there were more than 1,000 extras in the field in front of the cameras, visual effects supervisor John Scheele later worked for months with the innovative visual effects houses BUF Compagnie in Paris and the Moving Picture Company in London to create digital enhancements for Gaugamela and several other sequences.

"Then every night we would stand down and he talked to us about Alexander’s tactics and strategies, the history of various battles, and explained the mind of the warrior. We definitely got stronger physically, and it got us ready, because the first scene we shot was the Battle of Gaugamela, which was tough going on everyone." A vast stretch of the Moroccan desert, eight miles in circumference, was selected as the site on which the Battle of Gaugamela was staged. The film’s base camp on the location was massive, and included an actual military encampment for the Royal Moroccan Army, which had contributed several hundred personnel (many of them cavalry) with the full cooperation of His Majesty King Mohammed VI. Swirling dust, the sounds of men in desperate hand-to-hand combat, and the thunder of pounding hooves permeated the filming of the Battle of Gaugamela, in which Alexander achieved the seemingly impossible, defeating King Darius III’s 250,000-strong Persian army with only 40,000 infantry and 7,000 cavalry. Darius fled, and the victory opened up the east to the Macedonians and crystallized Alexander’s status as a living legend.

"Our challenge was to make an entirely believable army fighting in the bright midday sun," notes Scheele. "Visual effects set in a dark fantasy world have more tolerance, and the audience will accept the look. We had to match the dust and grit of the real world."

ABOVE AND LEFT: Robin Lane Fox - historical advisor on Alexander as a Macedonian Cavalrymen BELOW LEFT: Colin Farrell and Robin Lane Fox

"Oliver wanted realism," stresses stunt coordinator Gary Powell. "He didn’t want exaggerated fight scenes, like you see in swashbucklers. If you’re going for realism, most individual fights don’t last that long, especially when you’ve got the weapons that we’re using. It’s fast and rough, and for Gaugamela, we had more than a thousand people packed in very tight using practical weapons." The first time historian Robin Lane Fox caught a glimpse of an extra mounted on horseback in the full regalia of a Macedonian Companion Cavalrymen, he wasn’t just a witness to this recreation he was a participant. Part of his arrangement with Stone was that he would play a part in Alexander’s immortal charge at the Persian center. "Oliver and his crew took great care to get people armored with due reference to history from the ancient sources and to show the main maneuvers," says Lane Fox, "and the result is a really terrifying battle that has an exceptional degree of authenticity. In my view, the film’s battle scenes could be circulated to schools, historians and universities for fruitful discussion. They give a splendid impression of the units in action, the blood, the chaos - above all, they give a stunning sense of scale."

FOLLOWING PAGES: The battle of Gaugamela ▲

Director of Photography Rodrigo Prieto shot the Battle of Gaugamela with two full camera units, utilizing up to eight cameras to cover the full scope of the action. Prieto notes that he and Stone "didn’t want something that felt imposed upon by the modern eye. Oliver wanted the images to enhance the perception of really being there, of being able to feel and smell the place and the time, so we approached the cinematography in a very subjective way. Any decision made in terms

The Making of Alexander

The film’s second pivotal battle is a fierce forest conflict in India where Alexander and his soldiers face dramatic weather, a landscape inhospitable to their military formations, and most incredibly, elephants - the Macedonians had never encountered anything akin to the giant armored beasts that the Indian soldiers employed in combat. Production traveled to Thailand for this leg of filming. Appropriately for what Stone was trying to accomplish, the country has absorbed considerable Indian influences dating from the 1st century A.D., during which time merchants from the subcontinent arrived in peninsular Thailand, bringing with them their country’s art, architecture, religion and government.

ABOVE RIGHT AND OPPOSITE PAGE: Colin Farell as Alexander

Shot at Phu Kae Central Botanical Garden, a leafy forest some 130 kilometers north of Bangkok, the landscape for the forest battle had to be temporarily altered by production designer Jan Roelfs and the art department. "We couldn’t shoot in a real jungle for practical reasons," explains Roelfs, "so we had to actually build a jungle inside of the Botanical Garden, which worked better for lighting and staging purposes. We were filming during Thailand’s dry season, so we had to water the section of the forest that we were permitted to use for three months."

The Making of Alexander

Following the completion of filming in Saraburi, the botanical park was restored exactly as the company found it. As in Morocco, the Thai government generously contributed real soldiers to portray ancient warriors. "It was a very interesting cross-cultural exercise," muses Captain Dye. "I had just given up an entire Moroccan army, and immediately picked up an entire Thai army. They were great, and very, very quick to learn, despite the fact that we were teaching them tactics and weaponry that are 2,300 years old. We were able to quickly form them into phalanxes and teach them how to break apart and regroup, which was necessary when navigating the thick foliage of the forest, unlike the open desert battleground of Gaugamela." In the forest landscape, Dye was faced with some of the same challenges that may have confronted Alexander. "The problem that Alexander encountered in India, and in any restricted or jungle terrain, was that the phalanx was forced to break up, separate and lose its cohesiveness and unity in order to navigate around natural obstacles and trees. When Alexander used a phalanx on flat, maneuverable ground, as he did at Gaugamela and in several other battles, it had all the strength in the world. But when a terrain breaks up its unity, then the phalanx is in jeopardy, which is what we depict in the forest battle."

The Making of Alexander

In the film, the Indian forces strikingly employ battle elephants. Nowhere in the world are elephants better trained or more loved than in Thailand. (Elephants figure prominently in Thai folklore and religion, and efforts have been underway for years to stem the destruction of their forested habitats so that they may continue to thrive.) To handle the training of the elephants, production called upon the skills of Sompast Meepan, proprietor of the popular Ayutthaya Elephant Palace and Royal Kraal. Meepan brought 30 pachyderms from Ayutthaya to the Phu Kae Central Botanical Garden. The battle, as scripted, called for very specific actions that the elephants had to be capable of performing. Dale Dye and stunt coordinator Gary Powell spent two months working on developing the special skills, including acclimatizing the elephants to working with the horses, with Sompast and the elephants’ "mahouts," trainers who have worked with their elephants since they were calves. "An elephant is going to do what an elephant is going to do," notes Dye. "They aren’t interested in hitting marks. But we had an extraordinary bunch of elephants. They were intelligent and extremely well trained." Stone adds, "The horses were more problematic, except oddly enough for Bucephalas, Alexander’s great black steed, who was very calm and in one of the film’s central shots, actually took on an elephant on its two hind legs, without any semblance of fear. That dramatic shot in the film is real, it’s not digital by any means. The horse, the stuntman, and Colin were all amazing." To assure the safety of the film’s animals, noted conservationist Richard Lair, co-founder of the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre, which is one of the world’s most prominent elephant sanctuaries,

The Making of Alexander

and the Thai government’s chief veterinarian, Dr. Preecha Puangkham, were present at all times during the elephants’ training and filming. Miraculously, throughout the two-and-a-half-week-long filming of the forest battle, no injuries were caused by the elephants, nor were any animals harmed. "They were amazing," enthuses Stone of his pachyderm thespians. "It really seemed as if they were enjoying themselves." Needless to say, the mayhem inflicted upon the elephants and horses in the course of battle onscreen was entirely fabricated by the special and visual effects departments, along with the prosthetics division, which was responsible throughout filming for providing extraordinarily realistic depictions of the cruel physical effects of war on humans and animals alike. In preparation for the staging of the film’s massive battles between clashing armies, armorer Richard Hooper was charged with producing the vast array of weaponry utilized by the Macedonian, Persian, Indian and Bactrian armies. Hooper and his crew sometimes had to equip as many as 1,500 soldiers per day, necessitating the creation of over 12,000 functional pieces of equipment: approximately 1,000 sarissas, 2,000 shields, 2,000 swords, 750 bows and 9,000 arrows. Most of the weapons were tooled by Hooper from actual metal, with realistic plastic versions created for stunt and horse riding situations. To outfit the soldiers and animals for the forest battle sequence, Hooper added 500 shields and the same number of swords, clubs and axes; 150 bows and 2,000 arrows; and livery for the Macedonian and Persian cavalry, as well as for the elephants. Art director Stuart Rose was assigned to create and maintain the elephants’ elaborate armor.

Captain Dale Dye discusses his work on Alexander Training This project for Director Oliver Stone represents one of the most difficult and demanding missions Warriors, Inc. has undertaken to date. Just the amount of research we had to do before we could begin training was daunting. We read everything from the four classical sources to impressions on Grecian urns just to get us into the ancient military mindset. Naturally, there were no surviving veterans we could call upon for detailed information, so we adopted a standard template in planning for this project. In essence, we decided that a veteran Macedonian Phalangite was - above all else a professional soldier. Therefore, he would have been unlikely to do things any modern soldier would not do in similar circumstances. We kept this concept in mind as we began to decide how to train for this mission. We took what the sources and scholars told us about the Macedonian Army and then held it up to the template. If it looked like it made sense, we adopted the concept. If it looking like hyperbole or nonsense, we either rejected it or changed it to fit the template. Before shipping out for the North African shooting location, we began to train Colin Farrell who was to portray Alexander in the film. Captain Dye took over for tactics, leadership and command training while WO J. Dye and WO Farnsworth trained Farrell in weapons and combatives and horsemanship respectively. This training continued at a hectic pace even after the CO left for London to begin longrange planning. He was to direct the 2nd Unit for the film, so demands on his time and attention were heavy. Our primary training took place in western Morocco and involved some eleven principal performers, 50 special ability extras, 200 Moroccan extras, and 1,100 Moroccan soldiers trained to fight in phalanx formation, so we needed a fairly large Cadre carefully structured to get the work done in the three weeks allotted before filming began. In addition to the CO and XO, we took Warrant Officer Julia Dye as Weapons Master, Warrant Officer Freddie Joe Farnsworth as Cavalry Leader/Trainer and three Syntagma Commanders: Sergeants Billy Budd, Laird Macintosh and Charles Currier. About half way through the training, we were forced to reconfigure the command structure when we received 250 Moroccan extras in our field campsite and were informed that they would need to be trained for service as Persian forces in the film. In a scramble to make this happen, Captain Dye formed Task Force Apple and assigned WO J. Dye to command the Persian troops with Sgt. Currier and Cpl. Ian Prater of the Silver Shields Special Ability Extras to assist her. What started as a cross-cultural nightmare ended with a fine Persian Army force that did great duty throughout the film.

While all this was taking place, WO Farnsworth was conducting mission-specific training on horses and camels for the principal actors. He was also serving as the Cavalry Leader for Moroccan, French and Spanish horseman who would compose Alexander’s Companion Cavalry and double as Persian horsemen and chariot crews. If that didn’t keep him busy enough, he also became the riding double for Colin Farrell and did stunts throughout the filming. We did our best throughout a rugged training period to organize ourselves and exist much as Alexander’s troops would have lived on campaign in the 4th Century. We ate a meager diet and prepared all the food ourselves in the field. We held our regular stand-down briefings - in three languages - by fire pits located adjacent to each company’s tents. Our only reprieve was a lack of night activities. Since Alexander’s forces rarely - if ever - fought at night, we dispensed with this aspect of training and tried to give everyone a good rest at the end of long, hard days.

Thoughts on the production It’s a real shame that the critics slammed Oliver Stone’s epic Alexander so badly. It’s a dense, profuse story told by a visionary filmmaker and deserves better treatment. All of us at Warriors Inc. worked hard to support the Director’s vision of this historic figure and our efforts paid off in the battle sequences, but the people who write about such things just didn’t like a lot of what Stone deliberately chose to present in the telling of this story. Only a writer/director with Oliver Stone’s courage would approach a story like this and risk what he did to get it told. Our hope is that the film is better received in overseas markets and thrives in video sales and rentals. It deserves to be seen and appreciated.

FOLLOWING PAGES: Filming battle scenes in Thailand ▲

Executive Officer 1st Lt. Mike Stokey did most of the training to make the Macedonian 256-man Phalanx combat formation come alive and function on the battlefield. Capt. Dye was still running the over-all training evolution, but his position as 2nd Unit Director was taking up precious training time. We focused on Physical Training (PT) to bring everyone up to the level of physical fitness that the story, shooting schedule and rugged weather demanded.

We also followed WO J. Dye’s lead in teaching all hands to use ancient weapons including the 16-foot sarissa spear carried by Phalangites, as well as bows, slings, fighting spears and javelins. When we had finished three weeks of intense activity, our actors and extras were handy with all these ancient weapons and could serve in the Phalanx or as light skirmishers or heavy infantry whenever a need arose.

The Making of Alexander

RECONSTRUCTING THE ANCIENT WORLD

ABOVE TOP: Director Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell discuss a scene ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT: Alexander and his men enter the Babylonian palace

In keeping with the aim of achieving the highest possible level of historical accuracy for Alexander, each prop, weapon, piece of furniture and set dressing was designed and created specifically for the production. Workshops for the art and wardrobe departments were established and active months before the cameras rolled.

We wanted a golden feeling for Babylon, saturated with color, then later, when Alexander crosses the Hindu Kush, we started going a little cooler. For the India sequence, we wanted the exact opposite of Macedonia, so we went for a very grainy film stock and did a process on the negative that enhanced the contrast."

"The look of the movie began with figuring out where the natural settings could be shot," says production designer Jan Roelfs. "We needed to find locations to stand in for Macedonia, Persia, Bactria, Sogdiana, the Hindu Kush and India. Bactria and Sogdiana don’t even exist anymore, and are now part of modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Outer Mongolia. It’s amazing the puzzle you put together. With landscapes, you have to be very specific, otherwise they all blend together."

Few aspects of the Alexander shoot were as daunting as the need to re-create the elements of the world that surrounded the young king, covering more than 30 years of ancient history and crossing much of the world as it was known during his lifetime. Jan Roelfs and his art department team were being stared down by historical necessity and artistic veracity. The question was how to re-invent this ancient world with both authenticity and cinematic imagination, and Roelfs was determined to find a balance.

On location scouts, Stone and Roelfs combed much of the world to find appropriate landscapes for Alexander’s journey, ultimately deciding upon Morocco and Thailand, as well as Pinewood and Shepperton Studios outside of London for the interior sets. Morocco was perfect for the film’s expansive requirements. What the country had to offer in terms of landscape, personnel and an atmosphere evocative of ancient times made it the perfect place on the world map in which to recreate much of Alexander’s life.

What resulted are some of the most detailed re-creations of the ancient world in motion picture history.

"Most importantly, we had to consolidate to make the film possible," says producer Jon Kilik. "We couldn’t actually go through dozens of countries and thousands of miles, as Alexander did. We had to focus on a couple of different areas in which we could find different looks. Just outside of Marrakech, we had deserts, plains, mountains, heat and snow, all within an hour-and-a-half of each other. In Essaouira, we had our Macedonia, with the ocean, vegetation, rock formations and plant life all different from the Marrakech area. For an important river location in India, we couldn’t find anything exotic enough in Morocco, so we found an amazing location in Ubon Ratchathani province on the Mekhong River in Thailand, on the Laos border. Thailand also allowed us to solve the problem of staging a battle featuring trained Asian elephants." Well before the start of principal photography, Stone and director of photography Rodrigo Prieto shot special footage in both Malta and India’s Himalayas, to be used for visual effects "plate shots" - the former for Alexandria’s harbor, including the fabled Pharos Lighthouse, another of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the latter as a backdrop for Alexander’s journey across the snowy wastes of the Hindu Kush. Stone and Prieto worked out a carefully designed visual scheme, which they threaded throughout the entire film. "We decided to give a different look and feel to each period of Alexander’s life," says the cinematographer. "The Macedonia sequences in which Alexander is younger have very pure, ‘innocent’ colors. For the Battle of Gaugamela, we wanted the color of the desert and the sand to infuse the whole image, so we used a tobacco filter, which gave it an orange-yellow look, and we also went with a film stock that’s just a touch more grainy to give more texture to the battle.

The Making of Alexander

ABOVE AND LEFT: Babylonian palace central courtyard

The Making of Alexander

On an 8-mile stretch of desert outside Marrakech, Morocco, the art department constructed Alexander’s magnificently decorated headquarters in his tented camp on the edges of the Gaugamela battlefield. Alexander was inestimably influenced by stories of Greek heroes from his youth, so the designers mounted the mythical Shield of Achilles above his throne and encased the scrolls of The Iliad and The Odyssey in an ivory box by the side of his bed. Also shot in Morocco were scenes in the Macedonian horse market in which young Alexander first encounters and then tames his lifelong equine companion, Bucephalas. The art department added terraces, stone roads and cypress trees to the lush green valley. More than 50 horses and donkeys were placed in the market, as well as autumnal fruit and vegetables in stands and pavilions lining opposite sides of the horse ring. ABOVE: The magnificent furnishings of Alexander’s campaign tent include the Throne of Darius III, taken by Alexander after his defeat of the Persian King at Gaugamela. RIGHT: Alexander’s campaign encampment

The Making of Alexander

Extras dressed in simple white linen to portray country peasants dappled the landscape like moving sculptures, some with flocks of sheep on the hillside, presenting a beautifully bucolic vision of ancient Macedonia. Built on a nearly sheer bluff above the glinting ocean in Morocco was a small, ruined temple to Pallas Athena, which contained the rudimentary map of the world that intrigued a young Alexander, and was the site of Aristotle’s lectures to him and his friends in the Gardens of Mieza. In Boufarziza, a Macedonian amphitheatre and 20 four-walled ancillary buildings, including another, larger temple to Pallas Athena were constructed.

The amphitheatre was built to be determinedly modest in scale, as befitted a regional city. The vividly colored buildings and statues served as a reminder that the past wasn’t as devoid of color as is commonly believed. As part of a ceremony in the amphitheatre, Roelfs team created polychromatic statues of each god, almost garishly colorful, more theatrical than artful by intention. Some of the sets were impractical to shoot on location, and so London’s famed Pinewood Studios housed several of the enormous environments constructed by Roelfs and company. Pinewood’s hangar-like "007" stage is the largest such permanent facility in the world, and the Alexander crew filled up nearly every inch of space to erect these elaborate replications of the distant past. The first of the two grandest sets erected at Pinewood was the exotic courtyard of an ornate Indian palace. Due to the fact that ancient Indians constructed their palaces of wood, no architecture from Alexander’s era is left, leaving the design of the Indian palace courtyard open to interpretation. Inspired by Indian shrines that incorporate steps into their design, Roelfs chose an open air concept, with stepped walls leading down to the courtyard, which was accented with pools of water. The Indian Palace required four months of construction, with an average of 150 people working on a daily basis building, plastering, painting and carving. A huge, embroidered canopy covered the central area of the Indian palace courtyard and adjacent pools.

While the Indian Palace is an undeniably beautiful and impressive achievement, Roelfs’ piece de resistance proved to be the magnificent city of Babylon. "Babylon is definitely the richest set I’ve ever done," enthuses the designer. "Alexander’s entry into Babylon is the pinnacle of his career. He’s never seen such splendor in his life, never before encountered a culture which in many ways is superior to his own.

LEFT: The Pella Palace BELOW LEFT: The Amphitheatre where King Phillip (Val Kilmer) has himself enshrined as the 13th god of the Greek Pantheon.

"The design concept was done quickly," Roelfs continues, "because it was one of the first sets where I knew exactly what I wanted. But the whole technical process of getting it built was quite something. There was an awful lot of drafting and manufacturing. I decided to integrate the famous ‘Hanging Gardens of Babylon’ into the overall concept so that it’s an indoor-outdoor palace, open to the elements. I also wanted really high ceilings, and many different levels of the palace, layer upon layer." The set stood nearly 50 feet high from the floor to the gantries of the 007 Stage. Perhaps the most dazzling part of the set was Darius III’s bedroom, which Alexander takes as his own after defeating the King. The intricate wooden screens were all hand-carved in Morocco, as was the huge overhead fan featuring the woven image of the Persian supreme deity Ahura Mazda, and all of the canopies and drapings, fabricated in Pakistan.

The Making of Alexander

BELOW RIGHT: Sir Anthony Hopkins as the aged Ptolemy in the Library of Alexandria

Scenic artist Steve Mitchell, with only one assistant in attendance, painted a 150 foot long, 45 foot tall wraparound cyclorama depicting a photo-realistic, microscopically detailed panoramic view of Babylon from the palace terraces, revealing a cityscape rich with ancient skyscrapers, bridges, gardens and paved roadways, illuminating a civilization at its apex. For contemporary films, such backings - known as translights - are generally composed of photographs that are enlarged to massive size. For Babylon, however, there were obviously no such photos, so the art department relied on traditional artistry to recreate the past, which took Mitchell five-and-a-half weeks to complete. To re-create the lush Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, set decorator Jim Erickson called upon his gardening skills and horticultural knowledge to acquire plants appropriate to the historical time and place. The harsh English winter - and the fact that the 007 Stage lacks central heating - didn’t bode well for such foliage. As a result, the plants were carefully covered and warmed with special lamps after each day’s filming, throughout the night and into the next morning, when they were unsheathed once again for the benefit of the cameras.

The Making of Alexander

Once the Babylon palace was fully populated by actors and extras, with blazing torches, incense and a fully operative water pumping system creating the verdant fountains and pools that add to the building’s splendor, the illusion of reality was virtually complete. Even Stone was sometimes surprised to emerge from the stage into the dreary light of the British winter. "What a strange world we create," he muses. "Just a few steps between centuries and cultures." However, the reverse was a good deal more pleasant: stepping from the miserable gloom into the sparkling Babylonian interiors. "On sets, we externalize what we internalize," says Stone. "We were walking onto fantasy sets, and it was very hard to go back out." The magnificent Gates of Babylon, through which Alexander and his troops triumphantly march after his victory over Darius, were actually constructed on location in Marrakech. "There are parts of the eastern gate of Babylon preserved in a museum in Berlin," says Roelfs, "but although it gave us great ideas for the overall design, I didn’t want to just copy it. I struggled for quite a while, and then came up with the notion that the main gate into the city is actually connected to a bridge over the Euphrates River. At that point in history, Babylon was the land of milk and honey, a fertile

land on a major river. When Alexander enters, we have to know that it’s the richest place on earth."

THIS PAGE: Alexander enters Babylon

Gleaming with blue-glazed stone and reliefs of mythological creatures, the Babylon gates built for the film were constructed to a height of 37 feet. They would later be extended to 80 feet with the addition of visual effects, which would also create the entire panorama of the city of Babylon itself. The strappings on the huge wooden gates were made of actual brass, and the huge statues of winged bulls looming over the bridge leading into the gate were carved in England and then shipped to Morocco, where they were painted and finished. An illustration of the care to even the smallest details can be found in the sequence in which Alexander and his army enter the city - set decorator Jim Erickson made certain that no yellow rose petals were to be included in the rain of flowers showered on the soldiers, as the avid gardener knew that in the 4th century B.C., yellow roses only existed in China. Also constructed at Pinewood was a watery cave set lined with more than 20 primitive, sometimes barbaric paintings - designed and painted by illustrator Simon Thorpe - depicting ancient Greek myths, in which Philip educates young Alexander in the terrifying and violent ways of the world in which they live. Alexander grew up in the royal palace of Pella, Macedonia’s capital. The detail of the production’s re-creation of the Palace was considerable. Olympias’ chambers - in which Alexander spent his earliest days - contain powerful frescoes from Homer’s The Iliad, and the floor is comprised of a mosaic of inlaid pebbles, with handpainted bas relief human figures decorating the walls. The palace courtyard was utilized for both Philip’s riotous wedding feast, and for a sequence in which Alexander and his young friends are trained in the art of wrestling. London’s Shepperton Studios played host to the ambitious recreation of one of the world’s lost treasures, the Alexandria Library, from which Sir Anthony Hopkins as Ptolemy recounts his memories of his days with Alexander to attentive scribes. The geometrically designed marble floor offsets mosaic frescoes depicting Alexander’s heroic deeds. The shelves that lined the walls held over 25,000 different scrolls.

The Making of Alexander

COSTUMES The story of Alexander the Great encompasses many incredibly diverse ancient civilizations, captured over several decades, and Academy Award-winning costume designer Jenny Beavan was charged with creating more than 20,000 items of historically accurate dress for the ambitious production. Beavan consulted with historian Robin Lane Fox and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Doctor of Ancient History at Exeter University, who specializes in ancient costume. "There are an enormous number of vase paintings left from Greek civilization," notes Beavan, "and a certain amount of written material, so we knew how they wove their fabrics." Exquisite materials from the world over were fashioned to match the carefully researched styles of ancient Macedonia, Greece, Persia, Bactria, Sogdiana, Scythia and India. Beavan’s wedding costumes reflect the cultural mix of Alexander’s world, particularly Roxane’s magnificent and exotic bridal attire. "In my research, I found that Afghan techniques haven’t changed much in two thousand years," says Beavan. "They sewed gold into clothes, which we did both for Roxane and Alexander’s wedding costumes. I wanted Roxane to look sexy, and I often think that the less you see the more there is." Beavan and her crew were also responsible for the voluminous amounts of armor required to outfit Alexander’s army. "We researched the different wardrobe categories of the Macedonian army, with excellent input from our military consultant, Captain Dale Dye," says Beavan. "We constructed our initial armor in leather and brass, which were then replicated in lighter and more supple plastic."

ABOVE AND ABOVE RIGHT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias RIGHT: Rosario Dawson as Roxane OPPOSITE PAGE: The wedding of Roxane and Alexander

Beavan paid particularly close attention to the various suits of armor worn by Alexander and his generals, some of which weighed as much as 30 pounds. One of the most emblematic wardrobe pieces is Alexander’s double-plumed lion’s head helmet, and upwards of 10 duplicates were on hand at all times during filming. In the Battle of Gaugamela, the white cotton tunics and armor of the Macedonian and Greek soldiers are quite a contrast to the more ornate and colorful attire of their Persian enemies. "The Persians actually constructed clothing rather than just draping fabric like the Greeks," notes Beavan. "The Persians shaped cloth, made trousers, used belts and hooks and wore heavily decorated shoes. They gloried in their clothing, whereas the Greeks gloried in seeing the lines of their bodies." This kind of adornment reaches its height in the costumes that Beavan created for such Persian nobles as King Darius III and Prince Pharnakes, ablaze with exotic colors and accessories. Beavan also had her work cut out for her when outfitting the soldiers in the exotic attire required for the Indian army in the forest battle. "The costumes for the Indians are made from very bright colored silks, straight pieces of fabrics tied like dhotis.

The Making of Alexander

They wore highly decorated scarves, a huge amount of jewelry, and sometimes turbans. There was almost always a topknot of long hair. We know less about them because most of the sculpture of ancient India was done in sandstone that has perished over the years, whereas the Greek vases have remained."

The Making of Alexander

THE JOURNEY’S END At the end of 94 days of principal photography, the production of Alexander had echoed in more ways than one the intentions of its subject. "The whole movie kind of paralleled the story itself," says Jon Kilik. "It has been this melting pot of cultures and people - British, Irish, American, French, Moroccan, Thai - who all brought a different voice and style to the film." THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE: Oliver Stone directs Alexander

The final moments of shooting were emblematic of the spirit with which the entire film had been undertaken. "I’ll never forget my very last image of Colin," says Stone, "standing there on crutches, stage blood running all over his face, body and armor, with his broken ankle, that wonderful smile of his, and his mad, Irish eyes dancing. We had done it. We had made it to the end of one long, precipitous gamble - and Colin certainly looked like he was at the end of the line. It was a very special moment for both of us. And maybe it sounds portentous, but like Ptolemy at the end of the film, I feel like saying, ‘In his presence we were better than ourselves.’" With tremendous effort and skill on the part of the film’s massive cast and behind-the-scenes visionaries, Stone was able to finally realize his dream of capturing the vivid spectacle of Alexander the Great’s extraordinary life, from his earliest days to the time of his death, a life in which he traveled across a world that he first conquered, and ultimately united.

The Making of Alexander

ABOUT THE CAST COLIN FARRELL’s (Alexander) first starring role was in Deirdre Purcell’s miniseries Falling for a Dancer. He subsequently starred in the BBC series Ballykissangel and in Tim Roth’s directorial debut, The War Zone. He also had a small role in Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s Dublin gangster movie Ordinary Decent Criminal, opposite Kevin Spacey. Farrell recently wrapped filming A Home at the End of the World, based on the novel by Michael Cunningham (The Hours). His first U.S. film was Tigerland, directed by Joel Schumacher, and Farrell was next seen as Jesse James in American Outlaws. Other film credits include the World War II drama Hart’s War opposite Bruce Willis, co-starring with Tom Cruise in Steven Spielberg’s hit film Minority Report, starring opposite Ben Affleck in Daredevil, as well as co-starring with Al Pacino in The Recruit and Samuel L. Jackson in S.W.A.T. In addition, Farrell reunited with Joel Schumacher as the star in the hit thriller Phone Booth, and had a cameo role in the director’s Veronica Guerin. He can also be seen in the Irish film Intermission. Following the completion of his role in Alexander, Farrell traveled to South Africa to star for writer-director Robert Towne in Ask the Dust, based on the classic novel by John Fante, and then segued to Virginia and English locations to portray Captain John Smith in filmmaker Terrence Malick’s The New World, about early encounters between European and American Indian cultures. Academy Award and three time Golden Globe winner ANGELINA JOLIE (Olympias) recently starred in the thriller Taking Lives, and for the second time as the adventurous heroine in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life, following the romantic comedy Life or Something Like It and the drama Beyond Borders. She currently stars opposite Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow; provides one of the voices for DreamWorks’ animated film Shark Tale; and next year will star opposite Brad Pitt in Mr. and Mrs. Smith for director Doug Liman. In 2001 she starred as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider for director Simon West, and also starred in Original Sin opposite Antonio Banderas for Gia writer/director Michael Cristofer and producer Denise Di Novi. The previous year, Jolie was seen along with co-stars Nicolas Cage and Robert Duvall as car thieves committing their final heist in the smash hit Gone in 60 Seconds for producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Jolie’s portrayal of a mental patient in Girl, Interrupted garnered Jolie an Academy Award, her third Golden Globe Award, a Broadcast Film Critics Award, ShoWest Supporting Actress of the Year, and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1999. The film, based on the true story by Susanna Kayson, was directed by James Mangold and co-starred Winona Ryder. Prior to that, Jolie played a rookie police officer opposite Denzel Washington’s veteran detective in the thriller The Bone Collector, directed by Phillip Noyce. Jolie then co-starred in Mike Newell’s Pushing Tin, a black comedy about the rivalry between two air traffic controllers. The Miramax film Playing By Heart earned her the National Board of Review’s award for Breakthrough Performance. The HBO film Gia garnered Jolie critical praise as well as a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of the supermodel. Jolie also received an Emmy nomination for her role opposite Gary Sinise in director John Frankenheimer’s George Wallace, a period epic for TNT about the controversial governor from Alabama. The

The Making of Alexander

film earned Jolie her first Golden Globe Award and a CableACE nomination for her portrayal of George Wallace’s second wife, Cornelia. Jolie also co-starred in Playing God for Touchstone Pictures, and prior to that starred in the Hallmark Hall of Fame four-hour miniseries presentation True Women, directed by Karen Arthur and based on Janice Woods Windle’s best selling historical novel. In addition, she starred in Annette Haywood-Carter’s much acclaimed Foxfire for Samuel Goldwyn and Iain Softley’s Hackers. A member of the famed MET Theatre Ensemble Workshop, Jolie trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and has also studied with Jan Tarrant in New York and Silvana Gallardo in Los Angeles. VAL KILMER (Philip) is one of the most prolific actors of his generation. From his early work in Top Gun through his work with Oliver Stone in The Doors and Michael Mann in Heat, to his newest work as a career military officer in David Mamet’s Spartan, Kilmer has worked with many of film’s most respected directors and actors. The youngest student ever admitted to the drama department at Juilliard, Kilmer made his feature debut in the comedy Top Secret, which he followed up with Real Genius and his breakout role as the Iceman in Tony Scott’s Top Gun opposite Tom Cruise. Kilmer’s other memorable roles include Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors, the title character in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, Doc Holliday in Tombstone and Simon Templar in The Saint. His other starring roles include Michael Mann’s Heat with Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, True Romance, directed by Tony Scott, Ron Howard’s Willow, At First Sight and Thunderheart. He recently won the 2003 Prism Award for his work in The Salton Sea, and appeared in the 3-D epic Wings of Courage, as well as voicing the character of Moses in the animated film The Prince of Egypt. During the production of Wonderland, Kilmer began a photography project which has blossomed into a behind-the-scenes pictorial book. Released by Pocket Book, the photographs will also be exhibited in several cities in the United States. Kilmer’s films also include Renny Harlin’s Mindhunters, the animated feature Delgo, Ron Howard’s The Missing, Blind Horizon, Stateside, Wonderland and a role opposite Robert Downey, Jr. in the upcoming Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang. When Kilmer was at Juilliard, he co-wrote the play How It All Began, based on the true story of a West German radical. The play was directed by Des McAnuff and produced by Joseph Papp for the Public Theatre. He made his Broadway debut in the 1983 production of Slab Boys with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon. He also appeared in Papp’s Delacorte Theatre production of Henry IV: Part One, As You Like It, the title role of Hamlet and ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, also at Papp’s Public Theatre. On television, Kilmer starred in the critically acclaimed HBO Original Movie The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains, for which he received a CableACE nomination, and in Gore Vidal’s Billy the Kid, playing the title role. ANTHONY HOPKINS (Ptolemy) received an Academy Award for his performance in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), and was subsequently nominated in the same category for his performances in The Remains of the Day (1993) and Oliver Stone’s Nixon (1995). He was also presented with the Best Actor Award by the British Academy of Film & Television Arts for The

Remains of the Day. In 1993, he starred in Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands with Debra Winger, winning numerous critics awards in the U.S. and Britain. In 1998, he was nominated as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as John Quincy Adams in Steven Spielberg’s Amistad. Hopkins repeated his Oscar-winning role as Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter in both Ridley Scott’s blockbuster Hannibal and in Brett Ratner’s highly successful prequel Red Dragon, in which he starred with Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson. He also recorded the narration for the 2000 holiday season’s hit film Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In 1998, he starred in Meet Joe Black, directed by Martin Brest; Instinct, directed by Jon Turteltaub; and in Titus, Julie Taymor’s film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. In 1992, Hopkins appeared in Howard’s End and Bram Stoker’s Dracula before starring in Legends of the Fall and The Road to Wellville. He made his directorial debut in 1995 with August, an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya for which he composed the musical score as well as playing Vanya. He starred in the title role in Surviving Picasso and with Alec Baldwin in The Edge, a dramatic adventure written by David Mamet. The Mask of Zorro, directed by Martin Campbell and co-starring Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, was released in July 1998, and Amistad, directed by Steven Spielberg, was released in December 1997. Earlier films include 84 Charing Cross Road, The Elephant Man, Magic, The Bounty, Desperate Hours and A Bridge Too Far. In American television, he received two Emmy Awards for The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case (1976) in which he portrayed Bruno Hauptmann, and The Bunker (1981) in which he portrayed Adolf Hitler. In 1960, Hopkins was invited to audition for Sir Laurence Olivier, then director of the National Theatre at the Old Vic. Two years later, Hopkins was Olivier’s understudy in Strindberg’s Dance of Death. He made his film debut in 1968, playing Richard the Lionheart in The Lion in Winter, starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. He received a British Academy Award nomination and the film received an Academy Award as Best Picture. American television viewers discovered Hopkins in the 1973 ABC production of Leon Uris’ QBVII, the first U.S. mini-series, in which he played the knighted Polishborn British physician Adam Kelno. The following year, he starred on Broadway in the National Theatre production of Equus, and later mounted another production of the play in Los Angeles where he lived for 10 years, working extensively in American films and television. After starring as Captain Bligh in The Bounty (1984), he returned to England and the National Theatre in David Hare’s Pravda, for which he received the British Theatre Association’s Best Actor Award and The Observer Award for Outstanding Achievement at the 1985 Laurence Olivier Awards. During this time at the National he starred in Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear. Hopkins also appeared in the feature adaptation of Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis for director Scott Hicks, the action comedy Bad Company, co-starring Chris Rock, and in director Robert Benton’s adaptation of the Philip Roth novel The Human Stain, opposite Nicole Kidman. He will next be seen opposite Gweneth Paltrow in Proof and is currently in production on The World’s Fastest Indian for director Roger Donaldson.

ROSARIO DAWSON (Roxane) has emerged as one of the busiest leading ladies in Hollywood. Most recently, she starred opposite The Rock, Seann William Scott and Christopher Walken in The Rundown. Immediately following, she appeared in the drama Shattered Glass, and in This Girl’s Life, which has been making its run in the festivals this year. Up next for Dawson, she stars in the Robert Rodriguez/Frank Miller film noir drama Sin City. She will play the role of ‘Gail’ in the third and final installment of the film based on Miller’s graphic novel series, which also stars Benicio Del Toro, Clive Owen and Brittany Murphy. This film hits theatres on April 1st, 2005. Dawson was recently seen on the big screen starring in the critically acclaimed Spike Lee film 25th Hour, opposite Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Barry Pepper. She also starred opposite Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black II and in The Adventures of Pluto Nash, starring opposite Eddie Murphy. She also appeared in Chelsea Walls for director Ethan Hawke, which was based on the play of the same name. Dawson’s credits include Sidewalks of New York, a romantic comedy written, directed and starring Edward Burns. She also appears in The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest, written by Jon Favreau and directed by Mick Jackson, and in Burns’ more recent film Ash Wednesday. She can also be seen in the independent film Love in the Time of Money, written and directed by theatre director Peter Mattei, which premiered with high acclaim at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Dawson recently produced a 15-minute short entitled Bliss Virus, written and directed by Talia Lugacy. Dawson made her film debut in the controversial hit Kids. Directed by photographer Larry Clark, with a script

by Harmony Korine, Kids debuted with a surprise midnight screening at the Sundance Film Festival and had a spot in the main competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Dawson’s other film credits include Spike Lee’s He Got Game opposite Denzel Washington, Light It Up opposite Forest Whitaker, Down to You with Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Josie and the Pussycats with Rachael Leigh Cook and Tara Reid. Following his harrowing turn opposite Jennifer Connelly and Ellen Burstyn in Darren Aronofsky’s acclaimed Requiem for a Dream, JARED LETO (Hephaistion) starred alongside Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker and Dwight Yoakum in David Fincher’s thriller Panic Room. He will next be seen starring opposite Nicolas Cage and Ethan Hawke in Lord of War, as well as the psychological thriller Awake. Leto gained notoriety for fleshing out a wide range of supporting roles in several distinctive projects, including Prefontaine - a docudrama that chronicles the tragic life of Steve Prefontaine, an Olympic hopeful in longdistance running; David Fincher’s Fight Club with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, Mary Harron’s American Psycho with Christian Bale, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, and James Mangold’s Girl Interrupted with Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER (Aristotle), who has recently completed his Tony-nominated performance as King Lear in Sir Jonathan Miller’s much lauded production at Lincoln Center, has enjoyed 50 years as one of the English-speaking theatre’s most distinguished actors and as a veteran of international renown in over 100 motion pictures. It was in his hometown of Montreal that Plummer began

his professional career on stage and radio in both French and English. After Eva Le Gallienne gave him his New York debut (1954) he went on to star in many celebrated, prize-winning productions on Broadway and London’s West End including Elia Kazan’s production of Archibald MacLeish’s Pulitzer winning play J.B., and the title role in Anthony Burgess’ musical Cyrano for which Plummer won his first Tony. Apart from King Lear, his most recent Broadway success was as Barrymore for which he won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award, The Edwin Booth Award, the Boston Critic’s Award, Chicago’s Jefferson Award, and Los Angeles’ Ovation Award as best actor 1997-1998. He was also a leading member of Britain’s National Theatre under Sir Laurence Olivier, the Royal Shakespeare Company under Sir Peter Hall, and in its formative years, Canada’s Stratford Festival under Sir Tyrone Guthrie and Michael Langham. He has played most of the great roles in the classic repertoire. Plummer’s eclectic career on screen began when Sidney Lumet gave him his movie debut in Stage Struck. Since then he has appeared in a host of notable films which include the Academy Award-winning The Sound of Music, The Man Who Would Be King, The Battle of Britain, Waterloo, The Silent Partner, Dragnet, Daisy Clover, Star Trek IV, Malcolm X, Dolores Claibourne, Wolf, Twelve Monkeys, Murder by Decree, Somewhere in Time, and a host of others. Plummer’s latest successes are Michael Mann’s Oscar-nominated The Insider, playing television journalist Mike Wallace, for which he won the Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Las Vegas and the National Critic’s Awards, and Ron Howard’s Academy Award-winning A Beautiful Mind, as well as Etom Egoyan’s Ararat. His latest films are Blizzard, Devil’s Throat, Douglas McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby and National Treasure.

The Making of Alexander

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS OLIVER STONE (Writer/Director) has worked as a school teacher in Vietnam, a Merchant Marine sailor in the Pacific and Southeast Asia, a taxi driver, a messenger, a production assistant, and a sales representative for a sports film company, all of these in New York City. He served in the U.S. Army Infantry in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. He was wounded twice and decorated with the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning from Vietnam, he completed his undergraduate series at New York University Film School in 1971. Stone has been nominated for 11 Academy Awards as a screenwriter, director and producer. He has won Oscars for writing Midnight Express and as director for both Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon. He has also received three Golden Globes for directing (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK), one for writing (Midnight Express) and was nominated for Best Director for Natural Born Killers and co-writing for Nixon. Stone is a contributor of some 200 pages of essays on movies, culture, politics and history as published in the book Oliver Stone’s USA. His first novel was published in 1997 by St. Martin’s Press entitled A Child’s Night Dream, based on Stone’s experiences as a young man. His documentary film Persona non Grata, a series of conversations with current and past Israeli and Palestinian leaders and militants, debuted on HBO in the spring of 2003. Comandante was controversially shelved by the cable network, which then broadcast Stone’s second documentary about Castro, Looking for Fidel, in April 2004. Stone has directed the feature films Any Given Sunday (‘99), U-Turn (‘97), Nixon (‘95), Natural Born Killers (‘94), Heaven and Earth (‘93), JFK (‘91), The Doors (‘91), Born on the Fourth of July (‘89), Talk Radio (‘88), Wall Street (‘87), Platoon (‘86), Salvador (‘86), The Hand (‘81) and Seizure (‘73). His writing credits apart from his directed films include: Midnight Express, Scarface, Conan the Barbarian, Year of the Dragon and Evita. His producing credits are: The People vs. Larry Flynt, The Joy Luck Club, Reversal of Fortune, Savior, Freeway, South Central, Zebrahead, Blue Steel and the ABC miniseries Wild Palms. Apart from his directed films, as a producer Stone has won an Emmy for the HBO film Indictment: The McMartin Trial and was nominated for the documentary The Last Days of Kennedy and King.

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CHRISTOPHER KYLE’s (Screenwriter) other film credits include K19: The Widowmaker and The Weight of Water, both directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Currently he is adapting Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City for C/W Productions and Paramount. Mr. Kyle is also the author of several plays, most notably Plunge and The Monogamist, both of which premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. His most recent play, The Safety Net, will premiere in January 2005 at the Broken Watch Theatre in New York. A former Guggenheim Fellow in playwriting, Mr. Kyle has been commissioned by Amblin’/Dreamworks Entertainment and the Charles H. Revson Foundation and his plays have been honored with the Stanley Drama Award and the Morton R. Sarett Memorial Playwriting Award. Christopher Kyle is a native of Terre Haute, Indiana and is a graduate of Indiana State and Columbia Universities. He lives in Nyack, New York. LAETA KALOGRIDIS (screenwriter) is an established feature writer whose recent film work includes X-Men, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Scream 3. Kalogridis also created the television series Birds of Prey. She is currently writing the feature projects Wonder Woman, Pathfinder, and The Lone Ranger. THOMAS SCHÜHLY (Producer) was head of production for the major German production companies Rialto-Film (Berlin), Taurus-Film (Munich), Iduna-Film (Munich) and chief executive officer of Constantin Film Produktion. His credits as producer or executive producer have included such international productions as The

The Making of Alexander

Triumph of Love starring Mira Sorvino and Ben Kingsley; Der Totmacher; the two part La Revolution Francaise starring Peter Ustinov, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Sam Neill; Terry Gilliam’s critically acclaimed The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose starring Sean Connery; Carl Schenkel’s Out of Order (Abwarts); Gerard Oury’s Ace of Aces starring Jean-Paul Belmondo; Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss and Lola; Theater in Trance and Die Generalprobe. He also produced the landmark German mini-series Berlin Alexanderplatz as well as Via Mala, another mini-series. Among Schühly’s honors was a Fellini Award as European Producer of the Year, the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Veronika Voss, a German National Award for both Out of Order (Abwarts) and Der Totmacher, with the latter film also taking the Coppa Volpi at the Venice Film Festival. JON KILIK (Producer) has collaborated with a wide range of auteur directors to create a body of work with an emphasis on human values and social issues. In 1988, Kilik began his partnership with Spike Lee and has gone on to produce 11 of Lee’s films, including Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X, Crooklyn, Clockers, Girl 6, He Got Game, Summer of Sam, Bamboozled, and most recently, 25th Hour. Kilik produced Robert De Niro’s highly acclaimed directorial debut, A Bronx Tale, based on the play by Chazz Palminteri. In 1995, Kilik produced Tim Robbins’ Academy Award winner Dead Man Walking, based on Sister Helen Prejean’s account of her work with Louisiana death row inmates, starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. He also produced Julian Schnabel’s directorial debut, Basquiat, starring Jeffrey Wright as Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Bowie as Andy Warhol. Next, he teamed with Gary Ross and Steven Soderbergh to produce Ross’ directorial debut, Pleasantville, featuring Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon. He produced Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock, the sweeping account of the many worlds that collided in New York City in 1937 while Orson Welles mounted his most challenging Broadway production. In 2001 Kilik produced Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls, based on the autobiography of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, starring Javier Bardem, winner of the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Awards and the National Board of Review. Kilik also produced Ed Harris’ directorial debut, Pollock, starring Harris as American painter Jackson Pollock and Marcia Gay Harden, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as Lee Krasner. Kilik produced Skins, directed by noted Native American filmmaker Chris Eyre, starring Graham Greene and filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation. IAIN SMITH (Producer) was born in Glasgow in 1949 and graduated from the London Film School in 1971. He worked in London for several years before returning to his native Scotland to make My Childhood, for the British Film Institute, the first of the award-winning trilogy by the late Bill Douglas. He formed his own production company in partnership with Jon Schorstein and produced television commercials, documentaries, children’s feature films and low budget dramas, and in 1978 production managed Bertrand Tavernier’s Deathwatch. A year later he joined David Puttnam and Hugh Hudson to make the Academy Award-winning Chariots of Fire. He went on to line produce a variety of films for David Puttnam including Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero starring Peter Riegert and Burt Lancaster, Roland Joffe’s The Killing Fields starring Sam Waterston and Dr. Haing S. Ngor, and Joffe’s The Mission starring Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons. He also produced Brian Gilbert’s The Frog Prince. In 1987 Smith formed Applecross Productions and went on to co-produce Richard Marquand’s Hearts of Fire starring Bob Dylan, followed by Michael Austen’s Killing Dad. In 1991 he co-produced Roland Joffe’s City of Joy,

and in 1992, executive produced Ridley Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise. In 1994 Smith co-produced Stephen Frears’ Mary Reilly starring Julia Roberts, followed by Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element starring Bruce Willis in 1996, which was produced by his company Zaltman Films Ltd for Gaumont. He then produced Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet starring Brad Pitt for Columbia Pictures, followed by Jon Amiel’s Entrapment starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones for Twentieth Century Fox. Following this, Smith executive produced Spy Game for Beacon Communications and Universal Pictures, which starred Robert Redford and Brad Pitt and was directed by Tony Scott. He then executive produced Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain, starring Jude Law, Nicole Kidman and Renee Zellwegger. Smith will next produce Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain. Iain Smith is a board member of the UK Film Council and also of Scottish Screen, and serves as Vice President of the Production Guild of Great Britain. He has served on the Scottish Film Council, the Scottish Film Production Fund, the Scottish Film Training Trust and as a Governor of the National Film and Television School. He is currently Deputy Chairman of the British Film Advisory Group and is a director of the Children’s Film and Television Foundation. MORITZ BORMAN (Producer) is Chairman and CEO of Intermedia, one of the largest independent production and financing companies in the motion picture industry. Prior to joining Intermedia, Borman founded and ran Pacifica Film Development, Inc., an entertainment financing company backed by the German production fund IMF. In 2000, Borman merged Pacifica with Intermedia. Borman has executive produced numerous films including: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Basic, The Life of David Gale, Dark Blue, The Quiet American, K-19: The Widowmaker, The Wedding Planner, Nurse Betty and Where the Money Is, as well as the upcoming films Mindhunters and If Only. Between 1984 and 1989, Borman produced a number of features, including: John Huston’s Under the Volcano, which received two Academy Awards nominations; The Lightship starring Robert Duvall and Klaus-Maria Brandauer, Homer and Edie, starring Whoopie Goldberg and Jim Belushi, which won First Prize at the San Sebastian Film Festival; and Seven Minutes, starring Brian Dennehy and Klaus-Maria Brandauer, which was voted outstanding Film of the Year at the London Film Festival. Borman began his career in German television production in the 1970’s as a producer and director. In 1977 he moved to Los Angeles where he became a Directing Fellow at the American Film Institute and in the following years produced and directed numerous programs for European television as well as TV commercials for American and European ad agencies. MATTHIAS DEYLE (Executive Producer) started as a trainee at the ZDF (Second Channel of Germany). Since 1977, Deyle has been an advisor and consultant at IMF Media Fonds for film development and film selection. Deyle was an IMF producer for the box office hit Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, as well as The Quiet American. He was also an executive producer on Slap Her…She’s French and The Calling. In 1969, Deyle founded the German television company TNF - Tele Norm Film GmbH along with directors Fritz Umgelter and Rainer Söhnlein. As owner and producer of the company, Deyle has produced more than 500 hours of programming, including such international successes as The Red Zora, A Happy Family, Out of Blus and Force Majeure. In 1982, Deyle founded the movie company Mutoskop Film GmbH and produced several films, including Out of Order, Orpheus and Euridice, Pura Vida and Rosamunde. Recently, Deyle produced the film Dead Fish, directed by

Charley Stadler, and in cooperation with Orange Pictures GmbH & Co. KG. GIANNI NUNNARI (Co-Executive Producer) is a highly respected entertainment industry executive and veteran motion picture producer. In 1987, he established Cecchi Gori Pictures, the Los Angeles development and production subsidiary of Rome-based Cecchi Gori Group Fin. Ma. Vi. In the ensuing years, Nunnari has served as co-executive producer of House of Cards, Folks!, Man Trouble, and The Blackout, executive producer of David Fincher’s Seven and Bruno Barreto’s Romeo and Julliet Got Married, and producer of Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk ‘Till Dawn and its two sequels, From Dusk ‘Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money and From Dusk ‘Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter. In 1997 Nunnari formed Hollywood Gang Productions as a separate vehicle to develop, produce and co-finance three to five films per year, including bigbudget studio films with major stars and filmmakers attached as well as specialized lower budget independent films with international break out potential. FERNANDO SULICHIN (Co-Executive Producer) collaborates once again with Oliver Stone, having produced the filmmaker’s three recent documentaries, Persona Non Grata, Comandante and Looking for Fidel. Sulichin also produced the independent films Spun, Love Liza, Bully and The Addiction, as well as serving as associate producer of Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. He also produced Spike Lee’s last movie She Hate Me. Alexander marks RODRIGO PRIETO’s (Director of Photography) third collaboration with Oliver Stone following their work together on the HBO documentaries Persona Non Grata and Comandante. Prieto was director of photography on Julie Taymor’s Frida, the screen biography of legendary Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, starring Salma Hayek. For his work on the film, Prieto was honored with an American Society of Cinematographers Award nomination. Prieto also photographed Curtis Hanson’s critically acclaimed 8 Mile, starring controversial hip-hop artist Eminem and Kim Basinger, and Spike Lee’s 25th Hour. Most recently, Prieto reunited with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, following their earlier collaboration on the award-winning Amores Perros, on that filmmaker’s first English-language production, 21 Grams, starring Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. After completing his work on Alexander, Prieto next segued into photographing Ang Lee’s western Brokeback Mountain. Prieto was born in Mexico City, the son of a Mexican father and an American mother from Montana. He studied at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica (CCC), the premier Mexican film school. Beginning his career as a cinematographer of more than 500 commercials for major corporate clients, Prieto moved into features with Un Instante Para Morir, Dama de Noche, Perfume Efecto Immediato, Sobrenatural (All of Them Witches), Edipo Alcade, Fibra Optica and Un Embrujo (Under A Spell). Prieto’s first U.S. production, which followed Amores Perros, was Michael Cristofer’s period melodrama Original Sin, starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas. An innovative production designer, JAN ROELFS (Production Designer) has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Art Direction for his work on Gattaca and Orlando. Roelfs’ U.S. film credits also include Little Women, The Juror, Flawless, The Astronaut’s Wife and Simone. In addition to these titles, Roelfs has also worked on A Zed & Two Noughts, Drowning by Numbers, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books and The Baby of Macon. TOM NORDBERG (Chief Editor) collaborates with Oliver Stone for the sixth time on Alexander, having previously worked as chief film editor on Any Given Sunday, editor of U-Turn, associate editor of Nixon, first assistant editor of Natural Born Killers, and assistant editor of Heaven and Earth.

In 1985, Nordberg graduated with honors from film school at New York University. For a number of years he stayed in New York and worked in production on hundreds of television commercials and several feature films, including Angel Heart and Birdy. In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in feature film editing. Nordberg worked as an assistant editor for a variety of directors and was given his first shot at editing by Stone on Natural Born Killers. He has subsequently broadened his skills as a film editor on the features What Women Want, Scary Movie 2, Mnemosyne, and Holes. YANN HERVE (Film Editor) has edited several of France’s most popular films of the past few years, including Luc Besson’s productions of Yamakasi - Les samourai des temps modernes, Wasabi and Taxi 3. He also edited the feature La Sirene rouge and the short film Sang blanc. Herve began his career as a production assistant on Leon (aka The Professional), directed by Besson, graduating to assistant editor on the filmmaker’s The Fifth Element and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. JENNY BEAVAN (Costume Designer) is one of the world’s foremost designers of period costumes for motion pictures. She won the Academy Award for her work on A Room With A View, and received additional nominations for the films The Bostonians, Maurice, Howards End, The Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility, Anna and the King and Gosford Park. Beavan also won an Emmy Award for the mini-series Emma and was recently nominated for a Tony Award for the Broadway revival of Private Lives. Beavan was born in London, England and studied at London’s Central School of Art and Design. Her other feature costume designing credits have included Hullaballo Over George and Bonnie’s Pictures, Jane Austen in Manhattan, The Deceivers, A Summer Story, Mountains of the Moon, Swing Kids, Black Beauty, Jefferson in Paris, Jane Eyre, Metroland, Ever After: A Cinderella Story, Tea With Mussolini, Possession and Timeline. For television, she designed the costumes for the mini-series Lord Mountbatten: The Last Viceroy and the telefeatures The Blackheath Poisonings and The Gathering Storm. When Oliver Stone decided to make his film Alexander, based on the life of Alexander the Great, only one composer came to mind: VANGELIS. And for Vangelis, who has always been extremely selective about the projects he chooses, Stone’s Alexander seemed a natural. In November of 2004, moviegoers worldwide will have the chance to witness the results of this intriguing and inspired collaboration now in progress. Sony Classical will release the original soundtrack recording in October 2004, in its first collaboration with Vangelis since the 2001 multimedia premiere of his choral symphony Mythodea. Vangelis began his musical career in Athens, Greece, moving to Paris and London and recording what now totals over 40 highly acclaimed albums. But it was his 1981 Academy Award-winning, multi-platinum score for Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire that catapulted Vangelis to worldwide renown and helped turn the low-budget independent movie into a blockbuster. His subsequent score for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner has become, along with the film itself, an all-time classic. His score for Scott’s exquisite 1492 - Conquest of Paradise was certified gold and platinum in over 17 countries, its main theme becoming the biggest-selling single in Germany’s chart history. Vangelis also composed, produced and performed the scores for Costa-Gavras’s Missing, Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty, Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon and Iannis Smaragdis’s Cavafy. Even before these remarkable movies, Vangelis was already working with some of the world’s most respected filmmakers, most notably Frederick Rossif (L’Apocalypse des Animaux), Koreyoshi Kurahara (Antarctica), Jacques Cousteau (We Cannot Permit) and Carl Sagan (the Cosmos series for television). He has written original music for two Royal Ballet productions at London’s Covent Garden, four ancient classic Greek plays featuring

Irene Papas, Olympic events for both Australia and Greece, and the 1997 International Association of Athletics Federation’s Opening Ceremonies, which he also conceived and directed. His 2002 FIFA World Cup Anthem won the Recording Industry Association of Japan’s International Song of the Year Award. His 2001 choral symphony Mythodea, featuring Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, full orchestra and 120-voice choir, was aired by television stations around the world, while NASA chose the music to accompany its Mars Odyssey Mission. Sony Classical released the audio recording of Mythodea on CD and, on DVD, a film of the dramatic outdoor Athens concert at the Olympian Temple of Jupiter - the first major concert ever to take place on this hallowed site. In addition to winning an Oscar, Echo, Golden Lion, Max Steiner, Apollo, IFPI and other awards throughout his career, Vangelis has received the titles Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the title of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur of the French Republic. The International Astronomical Union named a small planet Vangelis in his honor. And NASA presented him with their 2003 Public Service Medal, one of the highest honors the space agency confers upon a non-government individual. GARY POWELL (Stunt Coordinator) began his career as a top stuntman on such films as 1492: Conquest of Paradise, Far and Away, Braveheart, First Knight, Michael Collins, Goldeneye, Mission: Impossible, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Powell has also worked as assistant stunt coordinator on 101 Dalmatians, Titanic, Lost in Space, Saving Private Ryan, The Mummy, The World is Not Enough and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Powell has earned the reputation of doing impossible stunts, most noticeably are the tank chase in GoldenEye, the barrel roll in the Q-boat in The World Is Not Enough and driving the crane in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. He later went on to coordinate main unit on The Mummy Returns, as well as the stunts for numerous commercials and music videos. Known for his enthusiasm and his imagination, Powell got his break as Stunt Coordinator on Oliver Stone’s Alexander. ROBIN LANE FOX (Historical Advisor) is the author of the international best-seller, Alexander the Great, published in English editions by Penguin since 1973 and the most widely-read history of the subject. Since 1977, he has taught Ancient History at Oxford University where he is a Fellow of New College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won major literary prizes for his book on Alexander. His other books include the widely-praised Pagans and Christians, published by Knopf and Penguin. Since 2002, Robin Lane Fox has worked very closely with director Oliver Stone as historical adviser to the script and the film. He has advised the Heads of Department on a wide range of historical and archaeological details, ranging from costumes to weaponry. He coordinated groups of experts from Oxford and the UK to give regular advice during pre-production. Robin Lane Fox has traveled far and wide on the route of Alexander the Great in the past thirty years, especially in Macedonia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Until filming, he had never visited the proposed sites of the great Gaugamela battle, but thanks to director Oliver Stone, he spent weeks on location at the film’s ‘Gaugamela’ battlefield in Morocco where he rode in the front rank of the film’s major cavalry charges before going on to Thailand to a final charge against war-elephants. He is the author of The Making of Alexander. It is the Official Guide to the film with a foreword by Director Oliver Stone and an exclusive array of the spectacular color stills taken by the production’s photographers during filming. It is also a unique historian’s view of a major epic movie. He "writes," says Oliver Stone in his foreword, "about the extraordinary details of film-making with an outsider’s humorous view of another species."

The Making of Alexander

AFTERWARD By Oliver Stone December 2006 Los Angeles I’ve learned much from the foregoing essays by this distinguished panel of historians, and it’s certainly exciting to feel Alexander once again breathe among us, to be analyzed and re-digested in ways peculiar to our present era. By example, when the film was released in 2004-05, I found very few film reviewers around the world were able to identify with Alexander’s concepts of war and conquest, largely because of the experiences we’ve suffered in the last century; and in this century, too many took the facile way out in condemning the film by negatively comparing Alexander to George Bush. On the other hand, there appeared a large and fresh body of internet users who seemed to be discovering Alexander for the first time and communicated their newfound enthusiasm for the classical world in “chat groups”, some even taking summer holidays together in Macedonia. Perhaps the movie failed in the English language countries, yet it was a success in the Spanish, German, French, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Swedish and Arab language countries, in many of them the top grossing film of that season. The film ended up in the top 20 films of the years in the foreign markets outside the United States, and ranked higher than 4 of the 5 Academy Award-nominated films, which tells us something really about the balance of power the English language has in depicting global reality. But I’d be at fault to claim relative success when the film continued to haunt me for two years after release. I needed that extra time, as I found out and will explain later, to sort out some of the unanswered questions I still had about this highly complicated man, questions which I failed to answer dramatically enough. I take humbly the criticisms of Professor Llewellyn-Jones, who was one of our consultants on Persian matters. I believe I did err fundamentally in my understanding of the Persian harem, allowing a cloud of Hollywood fantasy to obscure my realistic judgment as to what it was really like; I do wish Jeanne Moreau had done the movie and I had stuck by my original dialogue between Alexander and Sisygambis as it showed an overlooked aspect of Alexander. I also take to heart Elizabeth Carney’s “Olympias and Oliver” about my tendency toward sexual stereotyping. Hers is a tough piece, and yet I wonder if Prof. Carney’s feminist point of view has itself created a rather heartless abstract that sees life through the single prism of sexuality; important as gender may be, is it the determinant motive of history; are there not other factors? ABOVE: US DVD releases OPPOSITE PAGE: Artwork for Alexander Revisited - The Final Cut

The Making of Alexander

Is Olympias a stereotype? Is Angelina Jolie’s performance over the top? Some would scream ‘yes!”, but others might say,‘this person was so exaggerated, so outrageous, I can’t really relate to this person - but I certainly have known someone like this.’ Perhaps an eccentric aunt, a friend, an enemy, or someone you’ve only read about but allowed to enter your imagination. What I’m suggesting is that a stereotype can work - because of the fact that it is memorable and sometimes necessary, as in a satire like “Natural Born Killers” or melodrama like “Scarface” -- to bring the stereotype into an extreme close-up for the

eye once again to awaken and see. Angelina Jolie magnifies a fierce Medea-like apprehension of reality; she literally comes out of the screen with the guts of a Joan Crawford, Faye Dunaway, or Bette Davis, all of whom at times were considered stereotypical, over-the top-women in their films, but with time have grown more credible in our consciousness because they do, in fact, reflect a certain truth in life. Tucked away in our ancient memories are stereotypes of authoritative figures - dinosaurs, all manner of predatory animals, headmasters and teachers, cannibals, nun, business partners, mother and father, etc, all of whom, in some way, have become giant and determining close-ups in our lives. Is this a stereotype? No. I think this is a unique phenomenon, because I think the person who is larger than life, who is “in your face”, is achieving something very fresh to the eye in making sure you remember him or her. This is drama. And somehow we are mislabeling the uncomfortable, the alien, the other, as the stereotype because we are keeping it away from ourselves, outside our emotional comfort zone. I still wonder that historians have not raised the question of why Alexander, after conquering Babylon, would not see his mother for 11 years. There certainly seems to have been some sort of emotional conflict at its root. In the film, we show Alexander shocking the Greeks with his egalitarian treatment of Asian women (and men) - in his marriage to Roxanne and his treatment of Stateira. In the harem at Babylon, he pronounces all women and eunuchs free to go home forthwith, which provokes the first of the protests from his Greek companions. I wonder if Professor Carney, in referencing “domineering dowagers and scheming concubines”, smears rather than elucidates. Because her negativity disallows the director or the writer from pursuing a subject where a women is actually a devourer or a dominatrix. This is not to say that all women are, but certainly these are fascinating characters and it’s the right of a dramatist to bring out that character. To protest, in the name of feminism, against these womens’ existence is to distort history; as we know, there’ve been through time, many strong, original, independent women who have acted for benefit and destruction. Let us not spare one for the other. Perhaps Professor Carney could fault me for not having concentrated enough on the positive image, but then again she perceives the Vietnamese heroine, Le Ly Hayslip, from my film “Heaven and East” (1993), as a sexual victim, which I think is partly true, but fails to comprehend the greater significance of Le Ly overcoming her adversities and forgiving her persecutors. Perhaps the professor would deem this a stereotype as well, but if so, it was the prime conflict of Le Ly’s life. I also think the portrayal of strong, if conventional, married housewives in my last film,“World Trade Center” (2006) is positive and inspiring. I wonder finally at the balance of Prof. Carney’s argument, if she gives Alexander his due for the enormous respect he generally displayed for women, including his mother. This policy, atypically, extended to his own men when they committed sexual crimes against Asian women. Professor Thomas Harrison at Cambridge takes up the William Tarn vs. Ernest Badian debate, but I’m less interested in this heavily-trod aspect of the story as I don’t think it can be answered, nor need be.

The Making of Alexander

LEFT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias BELOW LEFT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias and Jessie Kamm as the Child Alexander

The response is in what Alexander did, and not his motives, which I suspect were something like most of ours: highly ambivalent, at times glorious, at times wretched. I sometimes feel professional historians, generally apart from the human give and take of the marketplace, expect too much from their leaders - requiring them to act from abstract principles in a world harsh with chaos, greed and infighting. We can certainly say in Alexander’s defense that he kept the expedition marching eastward for 7 more years after Babylon, with a greatness of vision that could motivate a 120,000-man army. By leading from the front and sharing the burdens of his men, he showed himself above the comfort lines of materialism, and as a known foe of official corruption, he set high standards by punishing those found guilty of stealing, raping, plundering (including his school friend Eumenes). From all accounts written of Alexander, we see time and again, his great passion, pain and self-torture in incidents such as the murder of Cleitus, the burning of Persepolis, the mutiny in India, the kissing of Bagoas in front of his men, and the bestowing of official acceptance on Asian men and womenfolk. There is no ancient ruler, outside of legend, that I have ever heard commit such potentially self-incriminating actions. This is, of course, one of the reasons his name continues to endure - who was ever remotely like him? ‘In the doing, always in the doing’, Alexander. Conquest is also a form of evolution. If Alexander had a smaller vision, he would’ve retreated long before to Babylon and consolidated his empire. He would’ve brought his mother, his sister and his entourage to the Persian Court. He would’ve made a stronger, more patient effort to combine Macedonian and Persian custom. This unification of cultures would’ve been the lifetime challenge for any emperor, and would’ve certainly changed the course of history. Why did he not? I see Alexander more as explorer, like many others of such a nature, not quite knowing what’s going to come up on the horizon, yet boldly reaching for the new electrical charge of change. He stayed in motion until the end, and never returned to his Rome, London, Paris, Berlin, or Mongolia, as other conquerors have. He comes across in many ways as a man who was making it up as he went along - from Babylon through Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and back to Babylon - where in the end, he remained unsatisfied, dreaming of his expedition to the West. I would call him not an imperialist as present fashion would have it, but rather a ‘proto-man’, an enlightened monarch naturally in search of one land, one world - the unity, so to speak, of the womb. Given that Alexander might’ve had a longer lifetime to develop this experiment, his empire might’ve yielded perhaps six or seven centers - such as Babylon, Alexandria, Athens, Carthage, Rome, South Spain, a world with nerve centers that supposes, to a surprising degree, the global world centers we have today - but with one world government, centered on enlightened monarchy, or, barring that, some form of governing body. In unconsciously pursuing this ‘one world’ concept, under the guise of a personal quest, the Alexander of the drama we created would have to be a man who believed he was the right force to bring the world into a greater sense of unification and prosperity, that he was a step in the evolutionary process. And given the cataclysms possible, I do think Alexander ruled extraordinarily well for 12 years over men, both noble and bestial, in a social fabric that not only maintained itself, but

The Making of Alexander

greatly expanded in terms of culture, scientific discovery, and economic progress. It’s so easy to dismiss this great effort, I think too easy, to declare it broken after 12 years of rule. But can we say it really broke apart? Even if dissolved in four parts, the basic communal energies remained in place, and his creation culminated shortly, within 150 years, in the burgeoning Roman Empire. These and other points in the essays are fascinating to debate, but I cannot address them here in greater detail, nor can I re-shoot, yet I am unable to let the film go from my consciousness. As a result, I’ve worked this past period to complete a third version of “Alexander” comprised of 2 acts and 1 intermission, which will be released worldwide on digital video in mid-2007 at a three and a half hour length. This version is not meant for theatrical projection, under which model at best two shows a day could be seated, which means less turnover and less ancillary sales to theater exhibitors, which makes this running time economically unfeasible for the present system. The film represents my final version, as it will contain all the essential footage we shot. I don’t know how many filmmakers have been given the opportunity to make three versions of the same film, partly, no doubt, because of the success of video and DVD sales in the

world. But I felt if I didn’t do it now, with the energy and memory I still have for the subject, it would never quite be the same again. For me, this is the complete “Alexander”, and even if I am 2 years late in delivering it, it’s not really a question of right or wrong, but as in any experiment with the unknown, one of trial and error. Flaws and all, I’ve arrived at the clearest interpretation I can offer. We begin the film now with a radical structure change, adhering to an earlier draft of the script, with Alexander’s death leading to Ptolemy’s memories, leading directly to the Battle of Gaugamela, which now kicks off the film in the first 10 minutes. This battle between East and West was epic in determining the course of history, and shows Alexander at his best. The earlier version - showing the young boy’s growth, sowing the seeds of the man before we’d ever seen him - I found too conventional in hindsight. These same scenes take on a heightened meaning when seen on the backside of his victory at Gaugamela with moments such as Olympias teaching her child the ways of the snake and the overcoming of fear.

ABOVE: US HD releases LEFT: Young Alexander Connor Paolo with Angelina Jolie (Olympias)

The Making of Alexander

LEFT: Angelina Jolie as Olympias BELOW LEFT: Young Alexander Connor Paolo with Angelina Jolie (Olympias) OPPOSITE PAGE: Angelina Jolie as Olympias and Colin Farrell as Alexander

These boyhood themes climax in the underground cave at Pella when Alexander tells his father, Philip (Val Kilmer), that one day he too will exist alongside the mythic heroes drawn on the cave walls. At which point, we return to the present-time narrative with Alexander at 25 emperor of the greatest empire yet seen - entering the gates of Babylon. From there, we plunge on into the darker sides of his human nature. Dr. Verity Platt, abetted by Professor Nikoloutsos and Dr. Joanna Paul, describes the film’s psychological heart as a family tragedy, which adheres to the classical Greek drama of Aeschylus and Sophocles. Dr. Platt points to the ‘id’ of Alexander in the scene with the young boy and his one-eyed father in the cave scene. As Robin Lane Fox pointed out, there is no evidence whatever for the existence of these caves - they are a dramatist’s imagination - although they’re not inconceivable. The scene was cut several different ways, painfully, to conform to a theatrical length of three hours, but by so doing, a certain rhythm and background to the film was lost. I think this was a crucial misdirection on my part, as these ancient myths are little known to most modern folk - so in the upcoming version, the caves play out in the order in which they were written; and in allowing the scene to run its natural length I believe a greater realization comes to us of how Alexander was built from equal parts of Achilles, Oedipus, Herakles, Jason, Prometheus, - and that chilling mother for all time, Medea, an unfair caricature to some, but nonetheless, an enduring one. In expressing to his father his desire to be remembered on cave walls like these, Alexander continues the quest of the royal Macedonian boy carrying in his genes the glory and torture of the heroes he cannot yet understand, and to which end he becomes one of the greatest Greek tragic heroes of all. To this day, few scholars have truly given Alexander the full credit of his imaginative achievement - that he outperformed his favored hero, Achilles, and in eerie similarity, by following Hephaistion to an early grave, as Achilles did Patroclus, gave up long life for great glory, . Yet we somehow accept Achilles more readily, as he comes from an older time and through the mythical voice of Homer. One of the realities in front of us which we so often fail to see, blinded as we are by our limitations of time and place, and quick in our pride to condemn the overachiever who challenges preconceptions of mind, body and time, is that Alexander acted out the similar effects of all these myths in his own life! And in doing so, in a realistic and non-mythic narrative, Alexander stands alone; no other man of historical action - Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Eisenhower, Hitler, Stalin, Mao - comes close to Alexander in either their glory or failure. With his bloody murders and tragedies, not only does Alexander give us great history, he gives us great drama, as well as everlasting mystery. Why in these two and half thousand years have so few tried, much less succeeded, in making this dramatic tale workable in a 3-5 act structure? Certainly many of the included Professors have acknowledged the complexity of dramatizing this life. Dr. Paul perhaps goes to the nut of it in my mind by reminding us of Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’, which calls not for the single hero, but the single action to unite the drama of disparate themes (murder, revenge, victory, love, loss, etc). I’m hoping this third version of the film finally finds that focus. In any case, allow me on paper to follow the lead given by Dr. Paul.

The Making of Alexander

OPPOSITE PAGE TOP: Angelina Jolie as Olympias, Colin Farrell as Alexander and Val Kilmer as King Philip OPPOSITE PAGE BOTTOM: Elliot Cowan as Ptolemy, Jared Leto as Hephaistion and Denis Conway as Nearchus - crowning King Alexander (Colin Farrell)

In that cave in Pella, Philip brings the full weight of his Greek classical pessimism to bear on his son’s idealism (…“No man or woman can grow too powerful or beautiful without disaster befalling”). This oneeyed cyclops brings us back to the archaic age of Titans and Olympians when fathers ate their sons, and sons murdered their fathers, and committed incest with their mothers. In the new version, Philip has the time to tell the full story of the Titans’ ashes mixed with human dust by Zeus in some version of cosmic black humor. He implies that the human race, akin to Garden of Eden tales, is cursed from its inception. The father, in Dr. Platt’s analogy, becomes the great ‘No’, who slams the door on Alexander’s fate. This becomes increasingly manifest when Olympias later warns Alexander, at 19, of the risks presented him by Philip’s newborn son by another wife, and that it’s Alexander’s fate to become another Parmenion to his emperor father. Thus in the cave, the primal conflict of Alexander’s life is set in motion - the war with his father, which as Dr. Platt points out, plays out even after Philip’s murder in the patricidal conscience of Alexander when he sees the ghost of his wronged father before he murders Cleitus. Befitting the power of his father, young Alexander is introduced in the cave to the eagle of Zeus, who signifies divine favor, and in the picking out of Prometheus’ liver, divine punishment - both of which Alexander will duly suffer. As we see that eagle come and go through the film, it will become, like his father, a motif of Alexander’s destiny working itself out. Fear will be the enemy in Alexander’s life. The wooden image of Phobus is what he prays to on the eve of Gaugamela - “Conquer your fear and you will conquer death”, he tells his assembled troops before the battle. To the end of his life, Alexander strived greatly to overcome these fears, including the one Greek tragedy is generally based on - father and mother. In the cave then, we discover what is subconscious to Philip and unconscious to Alexander. In this ancient mix of the dust of titan and human lies the madness at the heart of the human DNA - something left over from our reptile brain, frozen in such fear that it’s no wonder Philip drank a strong Greek wine to drive these furies from his mind. How condescending of modern critics to refer to Philip as a drunkard. Who wouldn’t drink surrounded by such fears! What are modern tranquilizers but similar bulwarks against the modern furies? Alexander is the one who will ride out these fears to find the ‘new man’ Philip hints at. In sharp contrast to this world, there is an enlightened Greek classical look to Ptolemy’s Alexandria 60 years later, with its clean architectural lines, numerous scrolls, wellproportioned statues of Olympian gods; this entire ‘modern’ interlude, following upon the cave scene, signals reason, intellect, and culture. Ptolemy thus takes us in another direction, into the future, to ponder a subtheme - the meaning and sanctity of history. This confused many people who wanted a clean narrative line, but in the end, this subtheme ties very much into the single action proposed by Aristotle (i.e. was Alexander corrupted by his action or not?). Ptolemy raises for me the issue of what is history - oral, mythological? Because Ptolemy dictates his vision to his scribes, are we to believe it’s more real because it’s written? The question grows

The Making of Alexander

on us as Ptolemy himself, in the last scene, undermines his own version of Alexander’s history. Professor Solomon points to this in his understanding of the importance of Ptolemy and the role he plays as a potential co-conspirator in Alexander’s death. To complete the idea, we now acknowledge at the end of the film - something from which I retreated in the original editing - the disappearance of Ptolemy’s memoirs in the great fires that destroyed the Library. Part of the effort in this third version is an expansion, rather than reduction, of the muchcriticized prologue and epilogue of the older Ptolemy. Sometimes more is better, as there is a rhythm in the clean narrative line of a story that when truncated loses its full coherence. Allowing Anthony Hopkins’ sonorous voice to work its way into our mind is a key to understanding this story. And he is a mellifluous actor, sublime in his older man’s relaxation in the role; in his expanded form, he frames and unites the new structure. It’s old Ptolemy who understands the true significance of Alexander’s ring, which, as a younger man, he witnesses in the opening scene of the film, falling from the king’s dying hand. Now aged, Ptolemy stares at the same cracked ring on his finger, and muses on the fact that it belongs to “the true heir to the Empire”, Alexander and Roxane’s 13 year-old son, who was murdered by Cassander, and thus robbed unfairly by history. And it’s with a similar but hardened regret that Ptolemy now wears this ring, perhaps troubled by the feeling he’s betrayed Alexander’s legitimacy and contributed to the fracturing of his empire - for which he is now making amends in writing his forgiving history. Among possible crimes of self-interest, Ptolemy could be accused of seizing Egypt, the empire’s richest province, for himself, hijacking the body of Alexander to Alexandria, legitimizing his own rule as pharaoh, and as chief of Alexander’s bodyguard at the time of his death, would be complicit as much, if not more, as Alexander in Philip’s murder. If I’d pushed this parallel more dramatically (by showing Ptolemy actually plotting the murder with others), it would’ve resonated more strongly with the audience, but at the same time it would’ve been the lesser history. In Professor Nikoloustsos’s empathetic essay on Alexander’s emotional relationships to Hephaistion, Bagoas and Roxane, the ring, as given him on Roxane’s wedding night in Bactria by a besotted Hephaistion (‘I’ll always think of you as the sun, Alexander… And I pray your dream will shine on all men”), becomes a symbol of homoerotic idealism and platonic love between men that Aristotle earlier described as the basis of the city-state. Given our modern obsession with sex, the true beauty of this passage of the ring was misunderstood as a token only of a homosexual liaison - a pity, as small minds do not seek to understand the largeness of Alexander and Hephaistion, whose vision came to be united as one. In fact, I never thought of Alexander and Hephaistion as carnal lovers after adolescence. There is a fictionalized scene at the edge of Alexander’s tent on the eve of the battle of Gaugamela, when Hephaistion subtly seeks entry, but Alexander refuses, needing solitude. Later in Babylon, when a befuddled and weary Alexander asks Hephaistion to “stay with me tonight”, I never thought of it as more than a nostalgia to be in each other’s arms again, to succor the confused morale of Alexander after reading his mother’s letter.

The Making of Alexander

OPPOSITE PAGE: Colin Farrell as Alexander

Alexander is, indeed, lost in Babylon. His dream is now clouded by Darius’ escape to the Northeast, as well as his army’s growing rapaciousness to plunder and loot the East, and return to Macedonia. Which is precisely what Alexander will not do - in contradiction to his father’s plans of revenge on the Persians. Revenge was never motive enough for Alexander. With his fiercely original mindset, the enemy was there to learn from and grow with, to build upon, and win over; and in so doing, to change - or let’s say, for those who prefer Persian to Greek rule, ‘improve upon’ -- an empire built on a corruption and cruelty repellent to most Greeks. Yet now on this balcony in Babylon the new “Emperor of Asia’ sharing his vision with Hephaistion, has presumably achieved all the glory he dreamt of on those cave walls of Pella. Yet Alexander remains deeply unsatisfied (“…I see the future, Hephaistion…These people need, want, to be freed…”). It is a Promethean fate to realize one’s dream so young, and then again to find the dream is never static, but ephemeral and ongoing. Cannot even Alexander’s worst detractors give the man credit for this astounding energy and purpose? The man did not loot the East, but sought to create something, and in the nature of his improvised actions, seemed to be building towards a goal of binding East and West together; the man himself was in the end married to three Eastern princesses, and in promoting such marriages among his own generals and soldiers, seemed to understand that through generosity, more breeds more, and less, less.

When Hephaistion dies, he reminds Alexander unselfishly, given his own dire state - “You won men’s hearts… But how beautiful a myth it was, Alexander.…They all did [reach and fall] --Achilles, Prometheus - in whose company you now stand and shine, Alexander”, which is all, in truth, what Alexander wanted as a youth. How true to life that now Alexander can no longer recognize himself or set a limit to his inexorable ambitions - to explore Arabia, North Africa, Italy, the Gates of Gibraltar. He cannot, tragically, garner satisfaction from his feats because he must go on. And thus, sadly, he can only feel the brokenness of his dream, his sense that he’s closer to the end than the beginning. When Hephaistion dies, as with Patroclus and Achilles, the wheels are clearly set in motion for Alexander’s own death within eight months.

He didn’t need to state there could be a unified world - as Professor Harrison might have wanted for the record - because the action lay in the doing, not the saying. It was always in this realm that Alexander functioned best. True, there were Phoenician sailors, traders, and hardy travelers of all ilks who wandered the world before Alexander, but they were hardly Microsofts or General Electrics or Toyotas, who could lead the way. Alexander became, by accretion, the first multinationalist . His was an idea so vast and unknown in its time, that given the enormous diversity of the present world, his could only have existed at the beginning of recorded time.

In the new version of Alexander’s death, I’ve included a scene between Bagoas and Alexander, alone at night where we hear their simple, final expressions of devotion to each other. Bagoas appeals to Alexander in another light, that really of a third species, the transsexual, which Alexander, ever curious, explored and came to love. There was also an introductory scene with Bagoas at the harem, which I cut from the film for fear of alienating masculine audiences. I was clearly pushing the mass audience’s tolerance for Hephaistion as it was, but with Bagoas, we risked turning the entire film into a debacle.

This idealism naturally requires an heir to succeed Alexander in order for empire to become dynasty; it’s fatally ironic that Roxane, mistaking the ring’s significance and reducing it to an item of Hephaistion’s lust, throws it violently out of their wedding bed.

A large part of this has to do with the tremendous amount of hostility the eunuch received at the early screenings we held for Warner Brothers’ personnel. Having been attacked, not necessarily justly, for so many excesses in the past, I stuttered in my path; I think I lost heart. But as I don’t see this issue as either victory or loss, but more as a function of time and fate, I am happy to have the chance to restore it in this third pass. Allowing Bagoas to play himself out, even in its most awkward moments, some may understand Bagoas truly loved Alexander; their last scene together chills me when Bagoas cries, as it shows how deeply Alexander was loved by Bagoas - as much as any woman could’ve loved him. It shows Alexander as he was - ‘loved by all’. At the same time, I believe Hephaistion was Alexander’s true soulmate, as evidenced by his monumental funeral games, which I very much wanted to shoot, but which we could not afford.

Hephaistion is far more accepting of Roxane than she of Hephaistion, who she sees in an illogical, archaic way as a biological threat to her and her son’s supremacy. There is an additional adversarial scene between Roxane and Hephaistion in the new version, but it is the ring scene in the wedding chamber at Bactria that seals Hephaistion’s fate at the hands of Roxane. Of course, this is my conjecture as a dramatist, perhaps as irrelevant as my harem fantasies, but let us not forget that Hephaistion died young, as suddenly and mysteriously as Alexander; nor should we underrate him as one of Alexander’s best and most trusted generals, sent on numerous missions of import. It’d only be human nature to expect that in a closed society of 48

The Making of Alexander

ambitious Macedonian generals, combining large amounts of testosterone and wealth, that Hephaistion’s insider status would be envied and hated by those who’d want either to take his power, or dissuade Alexander from further expeditions, in order for them to actually enjoy their wealth. If there was conspiracy behind Hephaistion’s death - and subsequently Alexander’s - logic points to these generals, among them Cassander, Pediccas, Ptolemy, Craterus, Antigonous and the absent Antipater and Cassander. And certainly Roxane had supporters among these factions, and from the ruthless manner in which she disposed of Stateira and her unborn heir after Alexander’s death, we can only surmise that Roxane had become a strong and willful woman, such as Olympias. She cannot be dismissed as a suspect without motive in the death of Hephaistion.

In his last moments on earth, Alexander reaches up to embrace the eagle of Zeus flying out of the Persian fan above his bed; in truth, the tiny fly-like image on the fan is the faravahar that represented the divinity of the Zoroastrian god of light, Ahura Mazda.

The Making of Alexander

THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE PAGE: Colin Farrell as Alexander

In Alexander’s fevered imagination, the faravahar blends with Zeus’ eagle - both divine symbols of Eastern and Western religions that merge into the Alexandrine One - and as he dies, the ring he’s offering up to his divine ideal crashes to the floor, broken like his empire, into pieces. As Prometheus did, Alexander has ascended to the lofty heights between man and the gods, and with his tortured (poisoned?) Promethean death, he passes on the gift of ‘fire’ (civilization) to the next generation. Thus, to repeat, the ring is representative of more than this ‘heir’ Ptolemy speaks of, and more than the love between Alexander and Hephaistion (no rosebud here). The ring for me is the eternal symbol of that beautiful Greek ideal the ‘love of man’ - the unity of that man, the dream of One World, which is and has been repeatedly shattered. Alexander’s dream, as Prometheus’, will live on in other forms, including our movie in the early 21st Century - and beyond - but for now, as with all men, it seems Alexander has reached the end. As Ptolemy concludes,“all men reach and fall…reach and fall”. Yet viewing Alexander’s life through a more optimistic prism, I feel he died a tired, but content man. Dr. Paul, in pointing to Aristotle ‘s ‘single action’, has opened my eyes to what I missed at the time. It was there certainly in my subconscious from the beginning, struggling to be heard, but its implications frightened me. The theme, the main action of this piece, was always murder - the murder of Philip - and whether Alexander was involved or not. But, in hindsight, I think I subconsciously avoided going to the bottom of this murky pond because I was scarred from the numerous personal attacks on me as a conspiracy theorist in “JFK” and “Nixon”. If I had admitted this was a movie about Alexander’s possible conspiratorial involvement in that murder, it would’ve been at great risk to the fortunes of an expensive movie. I truly feared the movie would’ve been murdered in its cradle, as had a previous project of mine on Martin Luther King, where I was trying to illustrate a man’s character under pressure rather than the possibility of a conspiracy in the murder.

The Making of Alexander

THIS PAGE AND OPPOSITE PAGE: Colin Farrell as Alexander

If Alexander did knowingly murder his father - which I doubt - he is despicable, and I have far less respect for this character, and have done history a disservice in misinterpreting him. But there still remains the strong possibility that Alexander did know of the murder through his mother. And even if he did not know of it, he was, as I tried to show in their final scene together, sorely compromised by blood. After this meeting with Olympias, he never saw her again. Was this because she was in some way involved? Certainly her public behavior was remarked upon by many when she flaunted her husband’s death - reason in my mind for her not to have been involved. But certainly, bearing in perspective that the crime of patricide is one of the most heinous and condemned in Greek tragedies, Alexander assumed the throne, not unlike most Macedonian kings, under a suspicious and much contested light. It’s certainly possible that Pausanius did murder Philip, who had many enemies in the clan-based society of Macedonia. He also had fierce foes in Greece, and it’s quite logical that Darius, with Persian gold, contributed to his death in some way to abort Philip’s planned invasion. Furthermore, it’s possible Olympias was involved with either Greek or Persian factions, or both. For her, much was at stake a new son and heir had just been born of pure Macedonian blood; she was still an outsider to the local power base of nobles, and Alexander was only half-Macedonian, and indeed, if he was the son of Zeus as she claimed, then he was not Macedonian at all! Nor did Olympias waste time disposing of Eurydice and the newborn heir after the assassination. Her ruthlessness is evident, but did she actually involve herself in the murder of Philip? The behavior of Alexander in their bedroom scenes makes it clear he’s riddled with this doubt. At the least, he must wonder how can she gloat so openly over his father’s death. The essence of it is that Alexander is ascending to an ambivalent throne - but one which he wants badly, as his mother makes see. We have here the potential for a startlingly original Greek tragedy mother kills father; son, loving both, assumes throne in bad conscience, which haunts him till he redeems his honor late in life. Unlike Oedipus, the protagonist in the end may be ambushed by the past, but he overcomes it. I don’t know offhand of any parallel Greek play with this storyline, and this is what infused me with the passion to try for these parameters. Thus all Alexander’s actions, as played out by Colin Farrell, are based on this profound insecurity over his throne. In the campaign tent scene before Gaugamela, there is a discussion among the generals wherein Parmenion questions whether Persian gold did actually pay for Philip’s death. Watch closely Alexander’s face in reaction to this and you’ll see that insecurity. (I’ve read accounts to the effect that in his first great Persian battle at Issus, Alexander blundered in his tactics, somewhat like George Bush Jr. trying to show up his father in modern Iraq, by overestimating the power of his cavalry to turn the tide of battle, and it was Parmenion’s sturdiness that saved the day.) We see this insecurity again in Alexander’s reaction to his mother’s letter on the balcony at Babylon with Hephaistion (… “My father thought me weak, my mother divine - which am I, Hephaistion? Weak or divine?”). This is a key question. Certainly the Greek concept of birth was opaque, allowing Alexander, who had such little physical resemblance to his father, to wonder. This all comes to a culmination

The Making of Alexander

when Alexander faces the elephants in India. Movie audiences take forgranted far too easily heroism in film - and thus in history. They expect it, which is a shame, as we repeatedly undercut its true meaning. In this climactic scene, we have Alexander, practically alone in the heart of the battle, taking on the Indian king astride an elephant twice the size of his great horse, Bucephalus. Alexander’s action is a classic heroic sacrifice, meant to motivate his lagging men into action - as was historically true at the battle of Multan, when this suicidal heroism in fact turned the tide of battle in favor of the Greeks, but led to Alexander’s most grievous wound. We should remember that Alexander prided himself on never having been defeated in battle, and for this record of invincibility, he seemed to be willing to die. Yet there seems even more at stake to me. It’s an amazing moment in the film as he transcends the normal limits of life, and with an arrow piercing his lung, what is the last thing, the very last thing, that crosses his dying mind? In dramatic terms, we suggest it’s his last moments in Pella, years before, with his mother arguing the assassination of his father, and whether he is or is not complicit because of his mother’s hate? Can he bring her to justice, as Orestes did his mother? What a horrible fate twist of fate to choose from - matricide or patricide. The answer is never made clear. And yet when she says “Great power, wealth, conquest - all your desires - the world is yours! Take it!”, he does. And because of this dishonorable desire in himself for power at any price, we’re suggesting Alexander will always feel complicit. Recovering with great willpower from his near-fatal wound in India, he gives in to his army’s wishes and returns to Babylon. Yet as the

The Making of Alexander

ashen Alexander is put on a horse for all his men to behold, he sees the pale, fleshy shade of his father, Philip, staring down at him from a cliff of cheering soldiers. The ghost nods to him, as if with final approval of his kingship. It is as Philip promised long ago in the cave in Pella - “a King is not born, Alexander, he’s made - by steel and suffering!”. Alexander has truly ascended to his father’s station and become the true king. It is then, after long absence, the eagle of Zeus returns to the sky above. Alexander, who has nearly died in this battle, shines again though briefly. I’d like to believe that the violation (murder?) of Philip is expiated from Alexander’s soul. And as a man now wholly free of the fear (of father and mother) that has governed his long journey from home, Alexander returns to his death (foretold) in Babylon. I began my own journey on this long ago when I first read Mary Renault’s version of Alexander, and it brings me to very a special place in my life. It’s going to be very hard to repeat that feeling each one of us on the film shared of being in the presence of such a great person for such a long time. He made us better than ourselves. I hope this film can, in some way, be a memorial to the memory and greatness of his achievement. I don’t think this film will ever fit any single category of film made in Hollywood. It ends with so many ambiguities, and it was so long ago. It still leaves my mind excited with that sensation of a past lived by people like us, who passed on a fire of memory of a time when young men could dream of taking and holding power, and truly changing the course of the world! ‘In the doing, always in the doing’ will ring for me as Alexander’s theme, his ‘cri de coeur’. And if he leaves us in the end with more questions than answers, his are grand questions well worth asking - and his achievements glorious ideals to live by.

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References http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346491/ http://www.dertrojanischekrieg.de/alexander/index.html www.alexander-the-great.co.uk www.warriorsinc.com

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