Tony Scott (1944-2012)

[mfunk9786]

Jeez. Well, time for people who've never experienced chemical sensations of misery to post on the IMDB forums that Scott is 'selfish.' What a shame. Had he completed any other films, or is Unstoppable his last?

[Professor Wagstaff]

Shit, that's a real tragedy and my heart goes out to his family. True Romance has always been one of my go-to movies, for me the perfect little exploitation film that's strangely meant more to me in the passing years than the other Tarantino-scripted films.

[knives]

Jeez. Well, time for people who've never experienced chemical sensations of misery to post on the IMDB forums that Scott is 'selfish.' What a shame. Had he completed any other films, or is Unstoppable his last?

He was working on Emma's War I believe having had shot some. Otherwise, yes Unstoppable is the last thing he shot. At least it was a great one to go out on.

[hearthesilence]

Jesus. Just last month, someone I worked with on a freelance gig back in November jumped off the George Washington bridge, and he also left behind a wife and child. Very nice, completely professional and totally level-headed guy, I would never have guessed something was wrong. Anyway, the experience/reaction to that is still fresh in my memory. (I just talked to another colleague from the same gig on Friday - we hadn't seen each other since, and he brought up the topic.)

[mfunk9786]

I still need to see a lot of his work from the last 10 years. I know that Deja Vu was on Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's Sight and Sound shortlist. I think the last film of his I saw was the unfairly maligned Domino.

[Oedipax]

I liked Deja Vu a lot.

[tarpilot]

Regaring his work in the last decade, I wasn't much a fan of the Pelham remake, but I loved Unstoppable and have been meaning to revisit Man on Fire for some time. This is horrible news.

[flyonthewall2983]

Shit, that's a real tragedy and my heart goes out to his family. True Romance has always been one of my go-to movies, for me the perfect little exploitation film that's strangely meant more to me in the passing years than the other Tarantino-scripted films.

It's an earnest love story. Tony wanted the happy ending, not because he wanted the easy Hollywood route but because he wanted those two kids to live.

It was also Ridley's favorite movie of his brother's. This has to be especially tough on him, since he'd lost one to cancer at a fairly young age.

[knives]

My personal favorite of his recent work is Man on Fire which absolutely destroys the Washington persona by making his every action useless. Unstoppable was pretty amazing too. I think with it he tried a visual equivalent to von Sternberg's train acting. His two shorts for Amazon and BMW are pretty stellar if sometimes silly also.

[Professor Wagstaff]

His editing and style changed so much over the years since Man on Fire and I would count myself among those somewhat turned off by the approach, but his talents as far as pulpy, muscular storytelling remained just as strong as his finer films. I also have a bit of a soft spot for Domino.

[warren oates]

Horrible news about Tony Scott. In addition to making some of the better and more underrated action movies of the the last few decades, he was one of the few directors of such giant manly-man action spectacles who genuinely wasn't an asshole on set or in person. In fact, it was the opposite. I know a number of people who worked closely with him on many productions and to a one they all loved him. Nothing I've ever heard about him leads me to believe he would have done something like this if there were any way out of whatever problem he were facing. We shouldn't speculate, but I can't help thinking he must have had an inoperable terminal disease and probably exhausted all of his treatment options.

[Forrest Taft]

Deja Vu was my fave too. After the excess of Domino, Bruckheimer managed to reign him in a bit. It was a Tony Scott movie all the way through though, with a ridicilous and ingenious plot, but what surprised me was the underlying melancholy.

[knives]

Many of his films have an underlying melancholy if you think about it. His films often show a fear and embrace of death where people knowingly bring themselves into suicidal situations. So I guess this shouldn't have been as shocking as it is. I hate that it happened all the same though.

[warren oates]

Well, let's not let this one as of yet undefined event retroactively color the interpretations of all his films and his life. People living on the edge is a common staple of the kind of adrenaline cinema he spent his time making. But you could say the same about dozens of other directors' work too. It's not the melancholy that I connect with in his films so much as the sincere humanism. An interest in his characters that was real and somewhat anomalous for a working action director in Hollywood today. Everybody I know who worked with him talked constantly about his energy, his zest for life, his humor and his thoroughgoing professionalism, niceness and normality. This wasn't a man prone to dark moods or erratic behavior.

[knives]

Well, let's not let this one as of yet undefined event retroactively color the interpretations of all his films and his life. People living on the edge is a common staple of the kind of adrenaline cinema he spent his time making. But you could say the same about dozens of other directors' work too. It's not the melancholy that I connect with in his films so much as the sincere humanism. An interest in his characters that was real and somewhat anomalous for a working action director in Hollywood today. Everybody I know who worked with him talked constantly about his energy, his zest for life, his humor and his thoroughgoing professionalism, niceness and normality. This wasn't a man prone to dark moods or erratic behavior.

He didn't exclusively make action movies. If anything what I was talking about is most clear in his first feature Loving Memory. I didn't say that he nor his movies were those of dark or erratic moods, but that part of his romance is about escaping death and that if die make it matter. I see his view of things to be positive in looking at life with death as an explanation of it.

[HistoryProf]

His editing and style changed so much over the years since Man on Fire and I would count myself among those somewhat turned off by the approach, but his talents as far as pulpy, muscular storytelling remained just as strong as his finer films. I also have a bit of a soft spot for Domino.

Personally, I despised Man on Fire and Scott's descent into stylistic madness - but was glad to see Unstoppable represent somewhat of a return to form for him. For a while he was vying for the title of Hollywood's greatest shaky cam villain who seemed intent on making action movies totally unwatchable.

Nevertheless, this news is stunning, tragic, and altogether extremely sad. I feel tremendously for his family. I've certainly had my own struggles with depression - as a lot of people have - but I've never been able to comprehend how it can get this bad. and to do it in such a blatantly public fashion is just bizarre. Just terribly sad, and my heart goes out to his loved ones.

[knives]

To be fair I don't think his goal with that was a typical action scene goal. In a lot of ways he reminds me of Brakhage.

[lacritfan]

For me Crimson Tide will always be his best film - no flash, totally lean, tension-filled throughout.

[Noiradelic]

JHad he completed any other films, or is Unstoppable his last?

LA Times: 'At the time of his death, he had recently completed filming on "Out of the Furnace," a drama he was producing about an ex-con starring Christian Bale. The movie is set to come out next year.

Scott was also preparing to produce a science-fiction drama called "Ion" and had served as executive producer on "Stoker," set to come out next March.'

[flyonthewall2983]

Someone on Twitter said he scouted that bridge some years ago in prep for his remake of The Warriors.

[bamwc2]

Well, let's not let this one as of yet undefined event retroactively color the interpretations of all his films and his life. People living on the edge is a common staple of the kind of adrenaline cinema he spent his time making. But you could say the same about dozens of other directors' work too. It's not the melancholy that I connect with in his films so much as the sincere humanism. An interest in his characters that was real and somewhat anomalous for a working action director in Hollywood today. Everybody I know who worked with him talked constantly about his energy, his zest for life, his humor and his thoroughgoing professionalism, niceness and normality. This wasn't a man prone to dark moods or erratic behavior.

He didn't exclusively make action movies. If anything what I was talking about is most clear in his first feature Loving Memory. I didn't say that he nor his movies were those of dark or erratic moods, but that part of his romance is about escaping death and that if die make it matter. I see his view of things to be positive in looking at life with death as an explanation of it.

You're certainly right about Loving Memory. It manages to be both undeniably sweet and disturbing at the same time. I've only liked a handful of Scott's films (none of his action films, though I have nothing against the genre), but his first feature stand head and shoulders above the rest. The BFI did a tremendous job on restoring it a few years back. If you haven't seen it yet, then do yourself a favor and check it out.

[colinr0380]

You know, I think my favourite moment from a Tony Scott film is still the extremely funny sequence from The Hunger where the vampire played by David Bowie spends so long in a hospital waiting room waiting for Susan Sarandon to finish up so that he can give her an important piece of advice that he turns into an old man and ends up running out on her without speaking when she finally does arrive!

That's a great use of a horror metaphor to get at the truth of having to wait your life away while waiting to talk to doctors about medical problems!

Wasn't there some talk about Enemy of the State being a kind of homage to The Conversation, or was that purely down to the presence of Gene Hackman?

[flyonthewall2983]

I always thought Criterion would have been better off giving Crimson Tide or Enemy Of The State spines than the two Bay films. Tony laid the groundwork for what Michael is doing, and did it infinitely better.

[flyonthewall2983]

I'm bad at copying stuff from Twitter, but Joe Carnahan in particular has been telling some nice stories about working with Tony. David Krumholtz and Richard Kelly, too.

[Mr Sausage]

I've never been a Tony Scott fan, but I did like the jarring, elliptical, discontinuous editing style he had developed. Especially when he pushed it to extremes like in Domino, the one film of his I like unequivocally and would happily watch again. I can't think of any other established blockbuster director doing such brazen formal experimentation in commercial films. I haven't seen his last three, tho'.

I can't think of a way to say I am sad without sounding cliched or maudlin, so I guess I'll just say I am sad and leave it there.