Just heard from a friend from the set of the new Warner Bros. epic Alexander and boy does he paint a brilliant picture. Here is what we got out of our little chat:
“We had our first full day of shooting yesterday and it was hella long, plus the moccasins we wear for our costumes are not Nike Airs so our feet hurt like a motha. It is cool but no joke, we worked 20 hours yesterday.”
“We left the hotel at 3:45 am for the set and right before we left Colin [Farrell] rolled in with a few buddies and one of them had a beer bottle in his hand, definitely coming in from the night before.” As for Colin’s part in the filming; he was spotted with two others riding horseback just coming up to see what was going on but he did not shoot.
As far as what they were shooting we got word that it was four separate scenes. Shooting is taking place in a jungle like setting in the Udon Thani province in Thailand. The ground is covered in leaves and the cast and ground is consistently sprayed down with a fire house to create that “tropical” effect. Also amidst the forest are several fog machines and a drummer some 50 yards away beating a large drum every 5-10 seconds.
The first scene “was of all of us [Alexander’s army] lined up in army formation on a hill that was slowly rising up behind us, and our commander was in front and was pacing back and forth and said, ‘you will hit them with your left…and then hit them with your right,’ in a very deep Irish accent.”
A second scene was very similar to the first but covering the left flank of the formation, and the third scene is a little more intense as it focuses on what are called choppers, and the head commander yells out, “Bring the assault teams forward!” Then the battle captain yells, “Choppers, prepare your blades. Follow me!”
Our insider reports that, “The choppers are an assault team that attacks elephants. Each elephant has a guard at each leg to keep him from being attacked, so the first four guys in the assault team are to attack these four guys and the second four guys have no shields but have long hooked blade weapons tied to their hamstrings and they gut the elephant.”
He described it as “fog everywhere, a creepy battle drum, and a US Marine Corp. captain yelling orders to an army of guys with medieval weapons. No joke, Oliver [Stone] hired a USMC advisor to run the extras and be the military advisor.”
The fourth scene they shot “was when our battalion is ordered to lower our spears then a horn sounds signaling our troops that we are being attacked from behind, half the troops steady and half turn to fight.”
As for what they are wearing he said, “I am wearing a burlap sac with arm and head holes cut in it along with a burlap pair of undies. I have an arched short sword and a big silver shield. Most of us have to wear hair pieces so that we have locks hanging out our helmets, mostly black but with blonde streaks, they also made us shave our legs.”
The piece of land they are shooting on is reportedly 20-30 acres and they will stay there until approximately the 31st when they will move about 5 hours northwest to continue the shoot. The scenes are supposedly the battles that went on in India and so far the only warriors shot have been the Macedonians.
