You can tell a lot about a script by the paper it’s printed on.
The epic action movie “Gladiator” had so many revisions while filming that it was a challenge to keep everyone on the same page — literally.
“Gladiator” and “Gladiator II” production designer Arthur Max has revealed to The Post that during the filming of the 2001 Oscar-winning film, production staff ran out of paper in enough different colors to denote which draft of the screenplay was the most up to date.
On any given film or TV series, when changes are made to the script, the revised copy is printed on paper that is a different color from the previous draft’s paper. And there is a set color order that provides everyone involved in a project a shorthand to know what draft they are reading.
That color code system, set by the Writers Guild (WGA), has nine colors, which proceed in the following order: white (the unrevised/initial draft), blue, pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, buff, salmon and cherry.
For those wondering, goldenrod is a yellowish gold color and buff is a light brownish yellow.
Many of these colors are never used, as most productions don’t rack up nine revised scripts.
That was not the case with “Gladiator.”
“It was daily rewrites and new pages under your door at night,” Max told The Post, referring to late-night script revisions that are slid under the cast and crew’s hotel room doors.
“It was evolving continuously,” he said, noting that director Sir Ridley Scott “had a lot to do with that.”
Scott — who began filming with only 20 or so pages — would change the script “anytime he came across a good idea,” Max explained.
“Half the time what we got under the door at night was different in the morning,” he continued. “You know, it was in constant transition.”
The transition was so constant that the Russell Crowe historical drama broke the color coding system.
“They ran out of different colored papers because they always issued new pages with different colored paper,” Max recalled.
Having run through all the colors in the writing rainbow, production staff had to come up with a creative solve to make sure revised scripts could continue to be sent out.
“They started putting colored stripes on the reused colors to distinguish them from the previous use of color,” Max added.
“And it was one stripe; then it was two stripes; then it was three stripes. It never stopped changing,” he remembered with a laugh.
As for how far the striping went, Max said, “I think three stripes. Three stripes and you’re out.”
Crowe has also commented on just how chaotic the script situation was during the filming of “Gladiator.”
“When we actually started that film, we had 21 pages of the script that we agreed on,” Crowe told Vanity Fair in 2023. “A script is usually between 103 or 104, 110 pages, something like that, so we had a long way to go, and we basically used up those pages in the first section of the movie. So, by the time we got to our second location, which was Morocco, we were sort of catching up.”
Scott even had to give crew members extra days off because the pages for the next scene had either not been written or locked in. Crowe reportedly walked off set at least twice over revisions that he hated.
“Gladiator” is currently available to stream on Hulu, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Pluto TV and the Roku Channel.
“Gladiator II,” starring Paul Mescal, Pedro Pascal and Denzel Washington, is in theaters now.
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