There are a lot of ways to recognize an important life event such as getting a divorce. Some people go on a vacation, or throw a party — or if you’re Russell Crowe and you’re on the hook for a rumored $20 million settlement, you hold an auction to make some extra cash.
Crowe, arguably the most famous person from New Zealand, finalized his divorce from his wife of nine years last December. Now, he plans to auction off a bunch of his belongings. The auction which is titled Russell Crowe: The Art of Divorce is being managed by Sotheby’s auction house in Sydney, Australia. If you have an extra $2,000, you can get your hands on some essentials like a life-size horse prop from Gladiator or some jewelry that was presumably bought for Crowe’s ex-wife, Danielle Spencer.
While there was nothing too shocking up for sale, like the stolen dinosaur skull that Nic Cage bought at auction, there was one… curious item. Along with several props and costumes from some of the more than 40 films Crowe has appeared in is a pair of Dr. Martens, from the 1992 film Romper Stomper.
The film is one of Crowe’s lesser-known roles. In it he portrays Hando, the leader of a neo-Nazi gang that terrorizes a group of Vietnamese-Australians. The movie has an unfortunate tie to Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black people in a Charleston church. Roof had an image of Russell Crowe as Hando on the homepage of his website. As one of the more mainstream depictions of skinheads in cinema, Hando is admired for other reasons — on this post from r/Skinhead, members ask where they can get a coat that looks just like his.
Recently, the auction of a portrait of Adolf Hitler’s lover Charlotte Lobjoie, a Mercedes-Benz that belonged to Hitler himself, and Nazi memorabilia have sparked outrage. While Russell Crowe’s boots are not exactly connected to Nazi ideologies, it’s still a weird association. According to the description on Sotheby’s site, the boots still have some sand in them from the final scene of the film, when Crowe’s character is stabbed and killed by his friend on the beach. Coincidentally, a screencap of this particular scene is the one that sat on Roof’s website where he posted his manifesto explaining why he carried out the Charleston shooting.
The boots start at $10,000, so we’ll see if they sell. Not all celebrity auctions are successful.
