“You can see pictures of my innards”: the movie that hospitalised Russell Crowe
From his measured performance in the beloved neo-noir LA Confidential to his rousing outing in Gladiator, Russell Crowe has easily moved across several genres throughout his time as a movie star. Be it subtle dramatic performances or physically demanding parts in action flicks, Crowe has proved in the past that he could handle almost anything thrown his way.
One example of this is his Oscar-nominated portrayal of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, which showed that he was perfectly capable of handly delicate character treatments. However, it’s often the combination of physicality and dramatic nuance that is evident in his works like Cinderella Man, which transformed him into a global star.
Although he is an industry veteran who is used to the physical challenges that are associated with such parts, one project put him under severe stress when he injured himself seriously due to a mishap during the production process. The movie in question was Flora Plum, a drama about a poor girl in the 1930s who develops a unique relationship with a circus freak.
During a conversation with Rolling Stone, the actor revealed how much shame he experienced due to the injury, which put everything on hold and derailed the production completely. In fact, it actually might have shelved the plans forever.
Crowe explained: “I was training to do a movie [Flora Plum] about a circus performer and learning this thing called the Spanish Web. It consists of two pieces of material hanging from the ceiling, and you climb up them like a rope and knot them around your ankles and fall backwards. And I tore the labrum tissue off the bone inside my shoulder, five meters above the ground with no safety ropes… There’s no words to describe how embarrassed, humiliated, bereft I feel.”
He added: “I was in a massive amount of pain. I’ve never had any surgery before, and if you go to russellcrowe.com, you can see pictures of my innards. I was sitting in a Melbourne hotel room, not allowed to move very much. So I put it up on the Internet. What else am I gonna do? The great irony, I thought, was putting it on with the headline The Inside Story. In the first week, it had 130,000 hits!”
Set to be directed by Jodie Foster, Flora Plum could have been an interesting addition to Crowe’s filmography, but the accident made everyone involved move on to other projects. It doesn’t look like it will ever get picked up by Foster and Crowe again, especially considering Crowe is now only interested in movies that revolve around exorcisms. His latest feature is Joshua John Miller’s The Exorcism, following last year’s hilariously bad The Pope’s Exorcist.
