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Movies
The Kind One (2012) (in production)
Untitled Alien Prequel #2 (2012) (announced)
Untitled Alien Prequel #1 (2011) (announced)
The A-Team (2010) (producer)
Robin Hood (2010)
The Real Robin Hood (2010) (TV)
Body of Lies (2008)
American Gangster (2007)
A Good Year (2006)
Numb3rs (executive producer) (116 episodes, 2005-2010)
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Matchstick Men (2003)
Black Hawk Down (2001)
Hannibal (2001)
Gladiator (2000)
G.I. Jane (1997)
White Squall (1996)
1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992)
Thelma & Louise (1991)
Black Rain (1989)
Someone to Watch Over Me (1987)
Legend (1985)
Blade Runner (1982)
Alien (1979)
The Duellists (1977)
Boy and Bicycle (1965)
Biography
Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer known for his stylish visuals and an obsession for detail. His films include The Duellists (1977), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Legend (1985), Thelma & Louise (1991), Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), Hannibal (2001), Kingdom of Heaven (2005), American Gangster (2007), and Robin Hood (2010). His younger brother is a fellow film director Tony Scott.
Born in South Shields, in Tyne and Wear, England, Ridley Scott grew up in an Army family, meaning that for most of his early life, his father — an officer in the Royal Engineers — was absent. Ridley’s older brother, Frank, joined the Merchant Navy when he was still young and the pair had little contact. During this time the family moved around, living in (among other areas) Cumbria, Wales and Germany. After the Second World War, the Scott family moved back to their native north-east England, eventually settling in Teesside (whose industrial landscape would later inspire similar scenes in Blade Runner). He enjoyed watching films, and his favourites include Lawrence of Arabia, Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai. Scott studied in Teesside from 1954 to 1958, at Grangefield Grammar School and later in West Hartlepool College of Art, graduating with a Diploma in Design. He progressed to an M.A. in graphic design at the Royal College of Art from 1960 to 1962.
At the RCA he contributed to the college magazine, ARK and helped to establish its film department. For his final show, he made a black and white short film, Boy and Bicycle, starring his younger brother, Tony Scott, and his father. The film’s main visual elements would become features of Scott’s later work; it was issued on the ‘Extras’ section of The Duellists DVD. After graduation in 1963, he secured a job as a trainee set designer with the BBC, leading to work on the popular television police series Z-Cars and the science fiction series Out of the Unknown. Scott was an admirer of Stanley Kubrick early in his development as a director. For his entry to the BBC traineeship, Scott remade Paths of Glory as a short film.
He was assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the famous alien creatures. However, shortly before he was due to start work, a schedule conflict meant that he was replaced on the serial by Raymond Cusick. At the BBC, Scott was placed into a director training programme and, before he left the corporation, had directed episodes of Z-Cars, its spin-off, Softly, Softly, and adventure series Adam Adamant Lives!.
In 1968, Ridley Scott and his brother Tony Scott founded Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a film and commercial production company. Five members of the Scott family are directors, all working for RSA. Brother Tony has been a successful film director for more than two decades; sons, Jake and Luke are both acclaimed commercials directors as is his daughter, Jordan Scott. Jake and Jordan both work from Los Angeles and Luke is based in London.
In 1995, Shepperton Studios was purchased by a consortium headed by Ridley and Tony Scott, which extensively renovated the studios while also expanding and improving its grounds.
Early Career
Scott left the BBC in 1968 and established a production company, Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), working with Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Hugh Johnson and employing his younger brother, Tony. After making television commercials in the UK during the 1970s, including most notably the 1974 Hovis advert, “Bike Round” (New World Symphony), which was filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset, he moved to Hollywood, where he produced and directed a number of top box office films.
Major Works
The Duellists
The Duellists of 1977 was Ridley Scott’s first feature film. It was produced in Europe and won a Best Debut Film medal at the Cannes Film Festival but made limited commercial impact in the US. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, it featured two French Hussar officers, D’Hubert and Feraud (played by Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel). Their quarrel over an initially minor incident turns into a bitter, long-drawn out feud over the following fifteen years, interwoven with the larger conflict that provides its backdrop. The film is lauded for its historically authentic portrayal of Napoleonic uniforms and military conduct, as well as its accurate early-19th-century fencing techniques recreated by fight choreographer William Hobbs.
Alien
Scott’s box office disappointment with The Duellists was compounded by the success being enjoyed by Alan Parker with American-backed films — Scott admitted he was “ill for a week” with envy. Scott had originally planned to next adapt a version of, Tristan and Iseult, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He therefore accepted the job of directing Alien, the ground-breaking 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would give him international recognition. The film was mostly shot in 1978, but Scott’s production design and atmospheric visuals, and the film’s emphasis on realism over movie heroics have given Alien almost ageless appeal.
While Scott would not direct the three Alien sequels, the female action hero Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), introduced in the first film, would become a cinematic icon. Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the film including media interviews for its promotion. At this time Scott indicated that he had been in discussions to make the fifth and final film in the Alien franchise. However, in a 2006 interview, the director remarked that he had been unhappy about Alien: The Director’s Cut, feeling that the original was “pretty flawless” and that the additions were merely a marketing tool.
Blade Runner
After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, and following the sudden death of his brother Frank, Scott signed to direct the film version of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Starring Harrison Ford and featuring an acclaimed soundtrack by Vangelis, Blade Runner was a disappointment in theatres in 1982 and was pulled shortly thereafter. Scott’s notes were used by Warner Brothers to create a rushed director’s cut in 1991 which removed the voiceovers and modified the ending. Scott personally supervised a digital restoration of Blade Runner and approved the Final Cut. This version was released in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto cinemas on 5 October 2007, and as an elaborate DVD release on 18 December 2007. Today Blade Runner is often ranked by critics as one of the most important science fiction films of the 20th century and is usually discussed along with William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer as initiating the cyberpunk genre. Scott regards Blade Runner as his “most complete and personal film”.
“1984″ Apple Macintosh commercial
In 1984 Scott directed the television commercial 1984, written by Steve Hayden and Lee Clow, produced by Chiat/Day, and starring Anya Major as the unnamed heroine and David Graham as “Big Brother”. It was released for a single airing in the United States on 22 January 1984 during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. It introduced the Macintosh for the first time and is now considered a “watershed event” and a “masterpiece”.
1984 used the unnamed heroine to represent the coming of the Macintosh (indicated by her white tank top with a Picasso-style picture of Apple’s Macintosh computer on it) as a means of saving humanity from “conformity” (Big Brother).
These images were an allusion to George Orwell’s noted novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future ruled by a fictional “Big Brother”.
Legend
In 1985 Scott directed Legend, a fantasy film produced by Arnon Milchan. Having not tackled the fairy tale genre, Scott decided to create a “once upon a time” film set in a world of fairies, princesses, and goblins. Scott cast Tom Cruise as the film’s hero, Jack, Mia Sara as Princess Lily, and Tim Curry as the Satan-like Lord of Darkness. But a series of problems with both principal photography, including the destruction of the forest set by fire, and post-production (including heavy editing and substitution of Jerry Goldsmith’s original score with a score by Tangerine Dream) hampered the film’s release and as a result Legend received scathing reviews. Following a DVD release, it has since become a cult classic.
1987–92
Desiring a box office hit and respect from the press, who considered him a commercial filmmaker devoted to fantastic visuals with little substance, Scott decided to postpone further science fiction and fantasy work to avoid being typecast. Instead, he began to focus on down-to-earth, mature, suspense thrillers.
Among them came Someone to Watch Over Me, a romantic police drama starring Tom Berenger, Lorraine Bracco and Mimi Rogers in 1987, and Black Rain, a 1989 cop drama starring Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, shot partially in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan. Both achieved mild success at the box office.
Again, Scott received praise for lavish visuals, but was still criticised for films that were little more than extended versions of his glossy TV commercials.
Thelma & Louise (1991) starring Geena Davis as Thelma, and Susan Sarandon as Louise, was successful, and revived Scott’s reputation. However, his next project—an independent movie, 1492: Conquest of Paradise—was less successful. It is a visually striking film telling the story of Christopher Columbus. However, it was a box office failure, and Scott did not release another film for four years.
Recent Career
In 1995, with his brother Tony, Scott formed the film and television production company, Scott Free Productions in Los Angeles. All his subsequent feature films, starting with White Squall and G.I. Jane, starring Demi Moore and Viggo Mortensen, were produced under the Scott Free banner. Also in 1995 the two brothers purchased controlling interest in Shepperton Studios, which later merged with Pinewood Studios. Scott and his brother have produced, since 2005, the CBS series Numb3rs, a crime drama about a genius mathematician who helps the FBI solve crimes.
Gladiator and subsequent works
The huge success of Scott’s film Gladiator (2000) has been credited with reviving the nearly defunct “sword and sandal” historical genre. Scott then turned to Hannibal, the sequel to Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs. In 2001, Scott released the war film, Black Hawk Down (2001), which further established his position as a critically and financially successful film maker. The film won two Oscars.
In 2003 Scott directed Matchstick Men, adapted from the novel by Eric Garcia and starring Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and Alison Lohman. It received mostly positive reviews and performed moderately at the box office. In 2005 he made the internationally successful Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the Crusades which consciously sought to connect history to current events. The Moroccan government sent the Moroccan cavalry as extras in the epic battle scenes.
Unhappy with the theatrical version of the film (which he blamed on paying too much attention to the opinions of preview audiences), Scott supervised a director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven, which was released on DVD in 2006. In an interview to promote the latter, when asked if he was against previewing in general, Scott stated: “It depends who’s in the driving seat. If you’ve got a lunatic doing my job, then you need to preview. But a good director should be experienced enough to judge what he thinks is the correct version to go out into the cinema.”
A Good Year, American Gangster and Body of Lies
Scott teamed up again with actor Russell Crowe, directing the movie A Good Year, based on the best-selling book. The film was released on 10 November 2006, with a score by Marc Streitenfeld. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp and Subsidiary studio 20th Century Fox (who backed the film) dismissed A Good Year as “a flop” at a shareholders’ meeting only a few days after the film’s release.
Scott’s next directorial work was on American Gangster, the story of real-life drug kingpin Frank Lucas. He was the third director to attempt the project after Antoine Fuqua and Terry George. Denzel Washington and Benicio del Toro had been cast in the initial Steven Zaillian-scripted project under the working title Tru Blu, both actors having been paid salaries of $20 m and $15 m respectively without doing any production on the film. Following George’s departure, Scott took over the project in early 2006. He had Zaillian rewrite the script to focus on the dynamic between Frank Lucas and Richie Roberts. Washington signed back on to the project as Lucas, and Crowe signed on to play Roberts. The film finally premiered in November 2007 to positive reviews and good box office. In late 2008 Scott released the espionage thriller Body of Lies again starring Crowe, and Leonardo DiCaprio and which opened to luke-warm ticket-sales and mixed reviews.
Planned projects
Scott directed an adaptation of Robin Hood titled Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe as Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian released on 14 May 2010.
In October 2007, it was announced that Scott would be directing Blood Meridian, a movie adaptation of the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy. It was later announced in 2008 that Todd Field had taken over the position.
In April 2008, Scott announced his new project, The Kind One, a period drama set for release in 2010. The film will star recent Academy Award nominee Casey Affleck. Also, he will be making his first science fiction movie since Blade Runner, an adaptation of the novel The Forever War, which he has been trying to pursue the rights for since the early 1980s.
On 12 October 2008, Ridley Scott confirmed that after a 25 year wait for the rights to become available, he is making a return to science fiction with a film adaptation of the book The Forever War by Joe Haldeman. He was looking for a script writer.
In March 2009, Scott confirmed that the film would be in 3D citing James Cameron’s Avatar as an inspiration for doing so. “I’m filming a book by Joe Haldeman called Forever War. I’ve got a good writer doing it. I’ve seen some of James Cameron’s work, and I’ve got to go 3D. It’s going to be phenomenal.”
Another science fiction project to which Scott has been attached is an adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, with DiCaprio also attached.
Ridley Scott and his brother Tony produced the film adaptation of the 1980s TV cult classic The A-Team, directed by Joe Carnahan, which is set for release on 11 June 2010.
On 31 July 2009, news of a prequel to Alien surfaced, with Ridley attached to direct. The film is being developed by 20th Century Fox.
Scott announced on 15 October 2009 that he will direct a film adaptation of the Red Riding trilogy.
Approach and Style
Scott was not initially considered an actors’ director, but has become more receptive to ideas from his cast as his career has developed. Examples include Susan Sarandon’s suggestions that the character of Louise pack shoes in plastic bags in one scene of Thelma & Louise, and another where her character exchanges jewellery for a hat and other items— and Tim Robbins’ collaboration with Scott and Susan Sarandon to rework the final scene with a more upbeat ending. Russell Crowe commented, “I like being on Ridley’s set because actors can perform [...] and the focus is on the performers.” Paul M. Sammon, in his book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, commented in an interview with Brmovie.com that Scott’s relationship with his actors has improved considerably over the years.
On the other hand, he can be a demanding and difficult director to work for. He was nicknamed “Guvnor” in the Blade Runner production. Several crew members wore protest t-shirts with slogans such as “Yes Guvnor, my ass” and “Will Rogers never met Ridley Scott” in reference to Will Rogers’ most famous quotation, “I never met a man I didn’t like”. This was mainly in response to the way that Scott directed his first American crew, which some considered too harsh.
His striking visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been influential on a subsequent generation of filmmakers — many of whom have imitated his style. Scott commonly uses slow pacing until the action sequences, which are characterised by frequent, rapid edits. Examples include Alien and Blade Runner; the LA Times critic Sheila Benson, for example, would call the latter “Blade Crawler” “because it’s so damn slow”. Another technique he employs is use of sound or music to build tension, as heard in Alien, with hissing steam, beeping computers and the noise of the machinery in the space ship.
Scott has developed a method for filming intricate shots as swiftly as possible:
“I like working, always, with a minimum of three cameras. [...] So those 50 set-ups [a day] might only be 25 set-ups except I’m covering in the set-up. So you’re finished. I mean, if you take a little bit more time to prep on three cameras, or if it’s a big stunt, eleven cameras, and — whilst it may take 45 minutes to set up — then when you’re ready you say ‘Action!’, and you do three takes, two takes and is everybody happy? You say, ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ So you move on.”
Although Scott is often known for his painterly directorial style, other techniques and elements include:
Strong female characters.
Some of his movies feature strong conflicts between father and son that usually end with the latter killing the former (Blade Runner, Gladiator) or witnessing the event (Kingdom of Heaven). The Lord of Darkness in Legend also mentions his “father” on a few occasions. As part of the conflict between father and son there are some repetitive scenes: in Gladiator, the son hugs the father seemingly as an expression of love but this embrace turns into the suffocation and death of the father. There is a similar sequence in Blade Runner.
Scott utilizes cityscapes as an emphasis to his storytelling (i.e., a futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner, Tokyo in Black Rain, Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven).
In Gladiator, Blade Runner and Kingdom of Heaven, a son gets to know his father when he is grown up. Other common elements are that the mother is not seen, and that the son or father is seen performing his last actions. For example, Roy Batty is dying when he saves Deckard, Maximus dies after killing Commodus and Godfrey of Ibelin kills some enemies after he has been mortally wounded by an arrow. In addition, the hero is saved from death before attaining his greatest deeds: Deckard is saved by Rachel, Maximus is saved by a slave and Balian is saved by a Muslim enemy. Similar situations can be seen in Tony Scott’s Man on Fire.
Military and officer classes as characters reflecting his father’s career, such as in G.I. Jane and Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven.
Storyboarding his films extensively. These illustrations, when made by himself, have been referred to as “Ridleygrams” in DVD releases.
Like Stanley Kubrick, Scott was once known for requesting a great many takes. This was evident on Blade Runner: the crew nicknamed the movie “Blood Runner” because of this.
He often makes use of classical music (the Hovis advertisements, Someone to Watch Over Me).
Extensive use of smoke and other atmospheres (in Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain), plus fans and fan-like objects (Blade Runner, Black Rain and the large Boeing jet engines in the 1984 TV advertisement). Fans are also used in Hannibal, for symbolic purposes.
Consistency in his choice of composers, using Jerry Goldsmith (Alien and Legend), Vangelis (Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise) or Hans Zimmer (Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down and Matchstick Men). Scott has also twice used songs by Sting during the film credits (“Valparaiso” for White Squall and “Someone to Watch Over Me” for the movie of the same title).
Trivia
Education: West Hartlepool College of Art; Royal College of Art in London, England (Graduated with a B.A. from the Film Arts school); London International Film School (Graduated from the one year master’s program where two of his short films won awards).
Family: Brother of director Tony Scott; Father of music video director Jake Scott; Son of Elizabeth Jean Scott; Father of actress Jordan Scott.
Whilst working as a set designer at the BBC, Scott was assigned to design the Daleks for the popular BBC TV serial “Doctor Who” (1963). Scott passed the work on to his friend Raymond Cusick, as he was unable to attend the filming at Ealing.
Owns the visual effects company Mill Film, based in London. They did the majority of the effects work on Gladiator (2000).
2001: Ranked #31 in Entertainment Weekly’s Power List.
1986: Enya’s recording “Aldebaran” is dedicated to him.
1990s: He was developing a film adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel, “I Am Legend”. This project was never finished.
Owns Shepperton Studios in the UK with his brother Tony Scott.
Estimated in an interview that he operated on roughly 2,700 commercials.
2003: Ranked #25 in Premiere’s annual Power 100 List. Had ranked #30 in 2002.
Black Hawk Down (2001) is dedicated to his mother, who died in 2001.
Directed a Maxwell House coffee commercial that starred Shakira Caine. Michael Caine saw the commercial and was so taken by her beauty, he desperately searched for her. They have been married 30 years.
He cast his partner in life, Giannina Facio, in all of his films since Gladiator (2000).
Of all the professional actors he has hired / worked with for his films, over 50% come from elite drama schools and the theatre, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford Upon Avon, The Globe Theatre, The Old Vic and the National Theatre in London, which he feels brings as large a presence to the screen as the actors do to the stage.
Is the only director, other than George Lucas, who has directed both Harrison Ford and Ewan McGregor in a movie.
He and Michael Mann have both directed a Hannibal Lecter film. They have also both worked frequently with an actor who has played Jack Crawford. Mann directed Dennis Farina’s first film, Thief (1981), and he also used him on “Miami Vice” (1984). Scott cast Harvey Keitel in The Duellists (1977) and Thelma & Louise (1991). Keitel went on to play Jack Crawford in Red Dragon (2002).
April 2005: The most successful British director in Hollywood in terms of box office to date.
Has worked with three Aragorns. His first theatrical film, The Duellists (1977), featured Sir Robert Stephens, who played Aragorn in the BBC radio adaptation. His breakthrough film, Alien (1979), featured John Hurt, who voiced the character in the Ralph Bakshi animated film The Lord of the Rings (1978). G.I. Jane (1997) featured Viggo Mortensen, who played the part in Peter Jackson’s live-action adaptation.
His first feature film, The Duellists (1977) is based on a Joseph Conrad story. In his next film, Alien (1979), the spaceship was known as the Nostromo and its escape ship as the Narcissus. Both are names taken from Conrad stories.
2005: Ranked #5 in Empire (UK) magazine’s “The Greatest directors ever!”.
2005: Ranked #28 on Premiere’s Power 50 List. Had ranked #32 in 2004.
While in college at the Royal College of Art, he was a contributor to the college magazine ARK. He also helped establish a film studies department at the school.
In 1994, he was slated to direct “Hot Zone” from a screenplay by James V. Hart based on the 1992 New Yorker article “Crisis in the Hot Zone” by Richard Preston. The film was to star Robert Redford and Jodie Foster and was based on the true story of the discovery of the deadly Ebola virus. Various factors, including the development of the similarly-plotted Outbreak (1995), led to the project being cancelled.
Suffers from claustrophobia, a condition he actively sought to instill in his Alien (1979) cast by making their Nostromo living quarters as cramped as possible.
Coming from an army and fine arts background, he is an inveterate stickler for detail who tackles each movie project with the vehemence of a general with a battle plan. His persistent scrutiny of minutiae on the Alien (1979) shoot prompted Sigourney Weaver to complain that he cared more about his props and sets than he did about his cast.
Divides his time among his homes in Hampstead (UK), France and Los Angeles.
Like his brother Tony Scott, he is an avid smoker of Montecristo Cuban cigars.
In late 2005, he was preparing to direct “The Invisible World” from a screenplay by Dana Stevens based on a treatment by Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius. The film was to star Angelina Jolie, and was based on the abduction of a female journalist in Iraq. However, Jolie’s pregnancy at the time halted production, putting off the project altogether. This sudden opening in Ridley Scott’s schedule allowed him to direct American Gangster (2007) the following year.
Ranked #35 in the 2008 Telegraph’s list “the 100 most powerful people in British culture”.
Directed 5 actors in Oscar nominated performances: Geena Davis, Susan Sarandon, Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix and Ruby Dee. Crowe is the only one to win an Oscar for a performance directed by Scott.
He was awarded Knight Bachelor of the Order of the British Empire in the 2003 Queen’s New Years Honors List for his services to the Film Industry.
The famous Superbowl TV ad “1984″ Scott directed for the launch of Apple’s Macintosh was filmed on Stage H at Shepperton Studios where Scott had earlier filmed his exterior landscapes for Alien (1979). Apple paid an estimated $1m for the one-off telecast of the ad during Superbowl XVIII where the Los Angeles Raiders defeated the Washington Redskins 38-9. Scott estimated a budget of approximately $350,000 for the commercial.
The 2009 Sunday Times List estimated his net worth at $172 million.
Personal Quotes
[On why his movies don't have sex scenes] Sex is boring unless you’re doing it.
I’m a moviemaker, not a documentarian. I try to hit the truth.
A friend of mine says, “Art’s like a shark. You’ve got to keep swimming, or else you drown.” Keep bouncing around. People always ask me, “What’s the plan?” There is no plan. I go to what fascinates me next.
When I first said I wanted to make a film about Rome and cast Russell Crowe, everyone had a good old snigger. I thought, “You wait.” They’ve done the same with Kingdom of Heaven (2005) and Orlando Bloom. I now say, “Take a look at this”.
Balian [Orlando Bloom's character in Kingdom of Heaven (2005)] is an agnostic, just like me. I am not fighting another holy war here, I am trying to get across the fact that not everyone in the West is a good guy, and not all Muslims are bad. The tragedy is that we still have a lack of understanding between us, and it is 900 years since the Crusades. We have never truly resolved our differences.
Audiences are less intrigued, honestly, by battle. They’re more intrigued by human relations. If you’re making a film about the trappings of the period, and you’re forgetting that human relationships are the most engaging part of the storytelling process, then you’re in trouble.
[August 2005] We’re suffering from saturation, overkill. The marketplace is flooded by demand, and there are too many films, so everything gets watered down. Demand is the boss and everything bends to that will. Bigger and not necessarily better shows seem to be the order of the day. I can’t watch most of them.
The digital and theatrical markets are two different marketplaces. I think the digital marketplace – thank God for it! – is like having a book on the shelf: so you can actually go to that book and if it’s four hours long, you can put it on pause, you can have a beer – no one’s counting.
[October 2006] [William Monahan] is maybe one of the two best writers I have ever worked with and I am developing something with him now that will take us back to Muslim countries next year. It’s called “Tripoli”, is set in 1805 and is about the bad behavior of Pasha of Tripoli, who was kidnapping ships, particularly American ships, and demanding ransoms while Jefferson was broke, having emptied his coffers of $11 million to complete the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, who needed the money to feed his army. It is a fascinating period.
The fundamental of anything as a director is material, material, material – script, script, script – once you have the script everything else is straightforward.
The person that probably stopped me in my tracks as a child – because I used to love to go to the cinema – was David Lean with Great Expectations (1946). I thought everything was somehow better than most of the other movies in terms of the way it looked – the way it was dramatized and the way it was photographed. In fact, he was detailed from corner to corner and that is what I picked up with John Ford and then Kurosawa [Akira Kurosawa], then Carol Reed, Michael Powell – those were all the fundamental characters at that time – and Orson Welles, of course. There are Frenchmen, too, of course, who will be remembered as well, but I wasn’t open to the French cinema at that point, so it was American and English film directors. So those were the influences.
I think it’s remarkable that people will give you $10 million to go and get your rocks off.
Never let yourself be seen in public unless they pay for it.
I think movies are getting dumber, actually. Where it used to be 50/50, now it’s 3% good, 97% stupid.
I’m not criticizing Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there. But I’m saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it’s not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line. But in a way it’s sad when you get a remake, isn’t it?
I think I have less patience, mainly because I’m so experienced. Because I’m so experienced I need the very best people around me. Because people say, “Well you don’t need a terribly good camera” or, “You can go and do this,” and I say, “No, no, no, no, you don’t understand. I want the Earth. And I want the Earth in 10 minutes.”
I think Russell [Crowe] did brilliantly in A Good Year (2006). He and I loved that film and Fox loved it and then they didn’t know what to do and we got beaten up. Russell got beaten up mercilessly, which I thought was disgraceful because I genuinely thought we had done a good movie about a man in transition which is also quite funny. And what’s really irritating and annoying is that I kept getting told later by actors, journalists, people outside of the industry, how much they enjoyed it. So anyway, fuck ‘em. It was a good film.
I used to agonize over what to do next, but now I make a movie a year.
On recreation of the trench sequence in Paths of Glory: Yes, I made this…this was in the 60s with the BBC. Of course it was never aired, Kubrick would sue me, but I’ve always had tremendous respect for him.
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