Heh. Poor Charlton! That's actually a great bit of advice for the role of Messala, though.

Strange, isn't it, that they could put out a film like "Ben-Hur", and also "Spartacus", all those years ago, with such blatantly obvious subtext; and yet there's nothing at all like that now. Nowadays fandom has to read between the lines, and write the subtext itself.