Steven Spielberg is a big fan of Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick‘s Spartacus (’60), and in this AFI interview clip (which appears to be 20 or 25 years old) he shares two or three things that he likes in particular.

One is the duel to the death between Kirk Douglas‘s Spartacus and Woody Strode‘s Draba — short sword vs. three-pronged trident and net. Except starting at 1:28, Spielberg’s memory fails him. This isn’t a felony (we all misremember stuff) but I’m amazed that the AFI crew didn’t stop him and suggest a re-take.

Spielberg recalls that Spartacus and John Ireland‘s Crixus had become friendly, which is true, but they don’t fight each other– Spartacus and Draba do. Spielberg nonetheless recalls that in the dark holding pen adjacent to the gladiator arena, Douglas is sitting across from Crixus…wrong. Douglas and Strode share the pen while Ireland and another guy are fighting. Ireland winds up killing his opponent, and then staggers away, exhausted.

The power of the sequence is that Draba, who has stoically kept his feelings to himself, had told Spartacus that “gladiators can’t make friends…I might have to kill you.” But when Draba has gained the upper hand in the arena and is one trident thrust away from killing Douglas, he instead tosses the trident at the Romans who’ve been watching them from above (Laurence Olivier‘s Crassus, John Dall‘s Glabrus, Nina Foch‘s Helena Glabrus, Joanna Barnes‘ Claudia Marius).