The production was plagued by delays due to disagreements between Brass and Donati over Brass not using Donati's completed sets, as well as Brass and Guccione disagreeing over the sexual content of the film. This resulted in significant script changes, with Brass and the actors improvising scenes written to take place in entirely different locations, and sometimes shooting entirely new scenes (such as the frolicking scene that opens the film) in order to show progress while the incomplete or redone sets were unavailable. Donati had to scrap some of his more elaborate original ideas for the sets and replace them with such surreal imagery as bizarre matte paintings, blacked-out areas, silk backdrops and curtains.
It was soon apparent to the filmmakers that the aggressive shooting schedule developed by the inexperienced Rossellini and Guccione was unrealistic for a film of such scope. Uncomfortable with the sex and nudity in the script, the female lead Schneider quickly resigned from the film, to be replaced with Teresa as said earlier. Guccione was forced to side with Brass (whom he called "a megalomaniac") because "Gore's work was basically done and Tinto's work was about to begin."Ĭasting and logistical issues were problems. According to Guccione, an enraged Brass responded to Vidal's comments by throwing Vidal out of the studio. According to Guccione in a 1980 Penthouse magazine interview, Vidal (whom Guccione called a "prodigious talent") started trouble with a Time magazine interview in which he called directors parasites living off writers, and that the director need only follow the directions as provided by the author of the screenplay. Shooting commenced in September 1976 in Dear Studios, Rome with plans for a 1977 release.įrom the start, Caligula was plagued by difficulties. After Guccione was unable to come to an agreement with more established directors John Huston and Lina Wertmuller, Tinto Brass, a relatively young Italian director who directed an artsy big budget progenitor to the Nazisploitation genre called Salon Kitty that Guccione had taken a shine to was made the head instead. Maria Schneider was originally cast as Caligula's doomed sister Drusilla, but later dropped out and was replaced by Teresa Ann Savoy. Renowned acting talent, including Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, Peter O'Toole and Sir John Gielgud, was cast. During the rewrites, Vidal's screenplay was rewritten to tone down the homosexual content, at Guccione's insistence.įederico Fellini's art director Danilo Donati was hired to build the expensive and complex sets and costumes.
Guccione agreed to finance Caligula on two conditions: 1) that it would be tarted up into a lavish, flamboyant spectacle akin to the Sword and Sandal epics of the 50s and 2) that sex would be incorporated to promote the magazine. And it's actually not his first film, either Guccione previously produced Chinatown. Though Vidal and Franco Rossellini (Roberto's nephew) originally only intended for it to be a modestly-budgeted historical drama, they were unable to attain funding for it and sought help from none other than the founder of Penthouse magazine, Bob Guccione. It all began with Gore Vidal writing a screenplay about the life of the infamous Roman Emperor Caligula, based on an unproduced television mini-series by Roberto Rossellini. And never, in the history of this website, will there ever be a movie more difficult than Caligula to describe.
Never, in the history of the world, will there ever be another movie like Caligula.
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