Smack The Belgian

Hi Brandon, Scott & al, a Farnham yokel (ex-Gladiator & Gladiatress) has just discovered IMDb. I can't contain my excitement. Honest.
If you google-search 'gladiatress' you'll find a Belgian dvd-sales-site which appears to have Gladiatress available, but doesn't cover the uk. I think the customer feedback showed three people had watched it, and gave it an average of a half out of ten. Maybe they can't speak English, or they only vote for their nearest mainland neighbours like in Eurovision Song Contests. Anyway, I'd heard a rumour it had been quite well-received at one of the French film festivals last year, but the Singapore Film Festival-goers' reviews I've seen weren't at all complimentary. There's also a Dutch website with some viewers' comments on, but it might as well be double-Dutch to me.
So unless the Belgians are being presumptious or misleading....hmmm...we should be put out of our misery pretty soon. Perhaps we should resign ourselves to remembering it for the fun we had on set- chanting "wife-slapper" at the big bald German (SchlaffWaffe); the surreal evening we spent filming the Irish dancing in the arena, chatting with the girls; the naked Swedish guys; throwing spears at Phillippe the Frenchman and Crispian (directing of the last day at Frensham). Those Europeans are a strange lot, you know. I've seen them.

Chasing the girls through the woods at night was fun, the first few times; and how often in a lifetime do you get paid to pose as a French builder in tight yellow leather trousers (with a big hammer), standing atop an arena, or tumble bare-legged through heather and gorse to avoid invisible magic bees?
For me, the oddest thing about being an extra was suddenly becoming expendable. I learned how to stop a horse and cart by standing in it's way, for instance. Running around with spears and deliberately falling over each other was pretty silly, too. So we did it again. If I remember correctly, Gordon (then a fellow Roman) had been wearing his World War 2 handbag for the first take, hoping no-one would notice. Incidentally, I think Gordon's re-enactment group managed to get the Arena relocated to Chester racecourse, in which case all is forgiven, we have a future shrine.

Re-reading some of the script (which is split up so no individual gets to laugh too much in advance), I reckon Gladiatress could 'go down well' with the drunken ladette market (secretly, isn't that what we all want?) so there's still hope that we might at least achieve superstar status in Essex. Who cares what the Belgians, Dutch and Singaporters say about us, we Brits still love our 'Smack' girls.
Still, can't help thinking that when we stuck Brian Grant in the iron body shackles we should never have let him out.