There is an obvious connection, on the declining Roman empire's bread and circuses model, between political enthusiasm for public spectacles and the periods when we are least able to pay for them.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
People like reality; I think it's always happened from the Roman times, when people used to go to a coliseum and watch people compete against each other. I think networks and cable channels find it an easier way of producing and putting things together, because people will watch it and it's cheaper.
There's a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.
The Roman Empire was very, very much like us. They lost their moral core, their sense of values in terms of who they were. And after all of those things converged together, they just went right down the tubes very quickly.
Rome is magic, it's like being in Hollywood. But the difference between Hollywood and Rome is that here you don't have just the movie business. The movie business is so little, so you also have the choice to hang out with people who do different kinds of business.
The success of 'Rome' was in making the history accessible and giving viewers everyman characters through which they can connect to historical figures. It stops the story from being too remote.
Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody's done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.
We were asked to believe that the variety and the novelty of even the crude films of the early days would provide a means of entertainment which would cut out the stage.
In our early period we pretty much survived or perished on our capacity to reach people, and on getting into the pattern of having no money and playing lots of shows.
Except here it's more power, more energy, younger and also in Europe it's still not only entertainment. Theater or films are looked at as a moral institution. That's why maybe they're so poetic. Here it's clear entertainment.