Blind Men And Ostriches

One of the combat sports which thrilled the crowds in the circuses of Ancient Rome was the pitting of blind men against ostriches. A savage and ugly spectacle, no doubt, and one quite out of keeping with our modern sensibilities, to say nothing of health and safety legislation. Yet I can’t help feeling that it would make a tremendous subject for a Gladiator-style movie blockbuster. The Antipodean player Russell Crowe – or, as I prefer to think of him, the Artist Formerly Known As Bouffanted Rockabilly Star Russ Le Roq – is so talented an actor one can imagine him playing either a blind man or, caked in prosthetics, an ostrich. What with the computer generated wizardry available to today’s film-makers, he could appear on our screens as both antagonists, and indeed, his image multiplied a thousandfold, as the baying blood-crazed crowd.

I may put my mind to drafting a screenplay, in which our hero is, let’s say, an Ancient Roman haruspex who is blinded when a struggling chicken whose entrails he is attempting to rip out pokes its taloned feet into his eyes. From there it is a short and sorry journey to the Colosseum, where an enraged and starving ostrich awaits. It strikes me that, if there is a need to do the film on the cheap, a high-tech ostrich outfit could be dispensed with. Russell Crowe is, famously, a knitting enthusiast, and given the right wool he could knit his own ostrich costume.

Add a musical soundtrack of bumptious ditties by Randy Newman, and I suspect this could be a surefire hit.

5 thoughts on “Blind Men And Ostriches

  1. I pointed this entry to a friend of mine and he responded thus…

    “Reminds me of an incident from some years ago…
    Between Woking and Ottershaw there used to be an Ostrich farm, where the TAG-McLaren hi tech design place is now, back when there was a vogue for such things, although I didn’t know it at the time…
    One fine spring morning, while driving to work, I passed said farm, just as a herd of what I initially thought to be velociraptors crested the hill- I put my foot down and made like a tree and left. Later, I found out the truth- I’m glad I didn’t rush into my place of employment shouting ‘DINOSAURS!!!’ at the top of my voice…”

  2. Yelling ‘DINOSAURS!!’ in the work place sounds like a great way to perk up the office on a dull afternoon… I may have to try this.

    On the subject of men and needle pursuits, it now seems obvious to me that crochet is more macho. This must be what’s meant by the phrase, ‘He has a mean right hook.’

  3. Let’s flash forward 2000 years…
    The human population (all 6 of them) of earth are huddled round the glowing embers of a fire in a municipal waste chute…
    They are tut-tutting at the remains of a tattered pamphlet the soul topic of which is a discourse on the game shows of the early 21st©…
    All generally agree that Celebrity Hole-In-The-Wall is an example of how cruel, barbaric and backward the society of that time was…
    Suddenly Lord U.S.B. Fridge-Magnet stands up, points to the horizon and shouts…
    ‘DINOSAURS….!’

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.