Search Results
6/12/2025, 1:28:15 PM
>>211374337
Yeah it's extremely homoerotic which makes it fucking great and funny
>According to Gore Vidal, while working on the screenplay for William Wyler’s 1959 multiple Oscar-winning epic Ben-Hur, he inserted a romantic / sexual subtext into the “brotherly” friendship between Heston’s Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd’s Messala. That would help to explain the jilted Messala’s viciousness later in the story. Vidal added that Stephen Boyd was in on it, but Wyler admonished the screenwriter “Don’t ever tell Chuck what it’s all about or he’ll fall apart.”
>In the scene when they’re about to throw spears together, they say "Down Eros, Up Mars", which at first glance could simply mean love is nothing, and war everything, indicative of how their friendship is likely to fall apart. As far as it goes in the book, Messala is quite upfront about his intentions, leaving Judah to choose between a future for their love, or a potential free one for his people. Here in the following scene, things are pretty much the same, on the surface at least. Yet if you pay close attention to the positioning of certain elements, the spears high up there on that cross/crucifix, and the two of them holding hands beneath it, you’ll begin to see the clever choice made to suggest this is a lover’s quarrel, for up there reigns Mars, and Eros is down where they are.
Yeah it's extremely homoerotic which makes it fucking great and funny
>According to Gore Vidal, while working on the screenplay for William Wyler’s 1959 multiple Oscar-winning epic Ben-Hur, he inserted a romantic / sexual subtext into the “brotherly” friendship between Heston’s Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd’s Messala. That would help to explain the jilted Messala’s viciousness later in the story. Vidal added that Stephen Boyd was in on it, but Wyler admonished the screenwriter “Don’t ever tell Chuck what it’s all about or he’ll fall apart.”
>In the scene when they’re about to throw spears together, they say "Down Eros, Up Mars", which at first glance could simply mean love is nothing, and war everything, indicative of how their friendship is likely to fall apart. As far as it goes in the book, Messala is quite upfront about his intentions, leaving Judah to choose between a future for their love, or a potential free one for his people. Here in the following scene, things are pretty much the same, on the surface at least. Yet if you pay close attention to the positioning of certain elements, the spears high up there on that cross/crucifix, and the two of them holding hands beneath it, you’ll begin to see the clever choice made to suggest this is a lover’s quarrel, for up there reigns Mars, and Eros is down where they are.
Page 1