Audience learns how ‘Rome’ was built

Countless works of art are produced every year that revisit and rehash our historical past, both immediate and ancient. What is it about these histories that proves to be so consistently compelling to us? The story of ancient Rome, in particular, demonstrates again and again that it is endlessly fascinating to us, the hundreds of years separating that empire and the modern day notwithstanding. But why? A lecture in the D. E. Axinn ’51 Center for Literary and Cultural Studies on Saturday, Nov. 14, co-sponsored by the Classics department and Ross Commons, concerning HBO’s “Rome” series, attempted to answer this question. The lecture featured Steve Shill, director of several episodes of the show; Jonathan Stamp, a historical consultant for the series; and Michael Nardone, an actor who portrayed the fictional character Mascius on the program.

Director Shill focused primarily on portraying the behind-the-scenes workings of the filming of “Rome,” with an emphasis on the enormous effort and resources poured into giving it a visual historical authenticity, as well as replicating the sense of glory and grandeur that we associate with the classic stories of Rome. As a director, Shill — who has also directed episodes of other acclaimed HBO programs (“The Wire”, “Deadwood” and “The Sopranos,” for example) and major cable and network programs (“Dexter”, “Law & Order,” “ER,” “The West Wing,” and more) — seems especially concerned with giving his work a sense of powerful, wide-screen effect, particularly in an extravagantly expensive series like “Rome,” where such effect is so important. And there’s no doubt that he’s quite talented at producing work with this quality. He mentioned several times his disinterest in telling actors how to act, and in the sizzle reel for his upcoming “Ben Hur” miniseries (due to air on ABC in 2010), it seemed that rich, grand visuals would play as important a role as in “Rome.”

In addition to “Ben Hur,” the entirety of which Shill directed, he and Stamp will be involved in an upcoming HBO series focusing on the city of Pompeii between the earth’s first tremors in A.D. 62 and the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, with the grand finale potentially being released as a feature film. Despite the fact that “Rome” is regarded as one of the most expensive television shows ever produced (understandable for the level of detail that Shill showed going into its creation), the program was successful in ratings and reasonably well-reviewed, and its cancellation is often thought of as a mistake. It looks as if HBO wishes to reverse that mistake by airing this new series.

The segment delivered by historical consultant Jon Stamp — which, like Shill’s talk, was interspersed with hilarious anecdotes from the series’ production — focused more on answering the questions that Associate Professor of Classics and Faculty Co-Head of Ross Commons Pavlos Sfyroeras raised in his introduction to the lecture. He stressed the importance of retaining our sense of history, and in the context of “Rome,” commented that its history/myth is such a powerful one that every generation since the empire’s fall has held the myth up to itself as a mirror and seen something powerful and important there. He noted that this may be caused by the powerful contradiction that Rome embodies (and which makes it so similar to modern Western, and particularly American society); it combines the notions of fantastic excess associated with figures like Nero and Caligula with the “Republican,” populist ideal that distrusts wealth and fame (and upon which our country was founded). Finally, he emphasized the fascinating aura of a pre-Judeo-Christian West that the program tried to recreate. Not only was this set of values upon which Western society is now founded the Roman empire’s most important legacy, claimed Stamp, but this ideology now so powerfully pervades Western society as we know it that getting a look inside a Western civilization based around different values could be one of the most rewarding aspects of “Rome.”

Stamp also made sure to include a pitch that classical scholarship can lead one down many unexpected paths, including one that leads to verifying the historical authenticity of actress Polly Walker’s bikini wax in her trailer. Anecdotes like this one — Stamp’s story of how he lost the faith of the British bird-watching community by selecting a South American parrot as a set-piece, or Nardone’s hilarious impression of Ray Winstone playing a Roman official with an inexplicable Cockney accent — accounted for a great deal of the lecture, and the attendees couldn’t get enough of them. Discussing the importance of history and collective myth is certainly fascinating, but glimpsing the inner workings of the dazzling world of an extravagant television series is no less important to us plebeians, and Saturday’s three guests brought this world to life with a great deal of wit and insight.