Tony Scott, 1944-2012

The Hunger, 1982, with Ann Magnuson and David Bowie.

I can't pin down just when the rather obnoxious mythical litmus test about politicians in a race, that is, "which candidate would you rather have a beer with?" came into being, but I can say I'm glad it hasn't made its way too far into the realms of aesthetic/critical discussion; it did however, spring to mind a few hours into thinking about the late Tony Scott, who took his own life yesterday at the age of 68. Scott's movies tend to resist, almost violently, the notion of sentimentalizing the man who made them; on the other hand, quite a few of them are movies of a guy that a certain kind of movie-loving guy might actually LOVE to have a beer with, or, more to the point, go ATV racing across the Baja desert while carrying a kilo of cocaine and trying to shake off a squadron of speeding law-enforcement officials AND the posse of the mobster you stole the cocaine from in the first place. His best, most effective movies were not just about the adrenaline rush and physical excitement of the action itself but also about the kickiness of doing the wrong thing (albeit maybe for the right reasons) and better still, getting away with it. The opening scene of his 1983 feature The Hunger, for all its spooky portent and jarring cuts, fairly revels in the fact that everyone in it—vampire David Bowie, victim Ann Magnuson, imperious rock singer Peter Murphy of Bauhaus, et. al.—is getting off. There will be consequences, of course; we shan't see Ms. Magnuson for the remainder of the movie, for instance; but in the heat of the moment the dangerous play is the thing. 

Scott's technical facility and specific cinematic aesthetic was of course often put to use in the service of evil, or, as some once called it, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. As someone who began in advertising, Scott was accustomed to selling, and in my own more concern-trollish day, I found it pernicious that Top Gun so convincingly sold its melange of jingoism, macho, inverted misogyny, militarism, and so on. As Quentin Tarantino's analysis of the movie demonstrated, those qualities were arguably oversold in the movie, which makes it in a sense laughable, and in a sense kind of deep. When the selling is less successful, as in Days of Thunder, the result diminishes in enjoyable absurdity and increases in hatefulness. Sometimes there would be a seemingly odd match that turned out to be utterly apposite. I'm not sure what a Tarantino-directed True Romance might have been like, but I have an idea of what a Roger Avary-directed True Romance would have been like; it's called Killing Zoe, and, for whatever other virtues it has, it makes the conceit of the gorgeous hooker who falls in love with the geeky screenwriter stand-in look as ridiculous as it is; in True Romance Scott makes it work, just as he makes work the notion of that dreadlocked drug pusher played by Gary Oldman. Scott's energy and technical virtuosity makes ALL of the multiple geek wish-fulfillments of True Romance register like direct injections to one's pleasure centers. 

Some might argue that Scott was more effective, more engaging, more involving, when working with scenarios that were less outlandish; that the tense standoff between two different kinds of military personnel in Crimson Tide is more nominally convincing than a professional football player pulling out a revolver and actually shooting an opposing player in the middle of a game in The Last Boy Scout. But is one REALLY more plausible than the other? I'll let you decide. But where I finally came down on Scott was that he was a supreme kinetic fantasist with an ostentatious, nose-thumbing love of a form of vulgar philistinism. Which facilities and inclinations enabled him, say, to overheat the winking comic-book pyrotechnics of the arguably meretricious scenario of Domino with a straight face. 

In other words, he was a formidable cinematic showman, regardless of how gratuitous/redundant any given project of his might have seemed. And as such he was able to earn some critical respect; the Times' Manohla Dargis was never shy about her enjoyment of his vision, and the Scott respect in more hermetic corners of cinephilia is exemplified, alas, by this sentence from a review of Unstoppable by "The Ferroni Brigade:" " 'Oh yeah, Tony Scott—he's good,' says even Lav Diaz, currently residing in Vienna's Ferronian headquarters [...]" The thinking behind that "even" could fill volumes, but too bad the Ferronians would never be caught dead in a Hooters, as they really can't appreciate the Hollywood idealization of the joint that Scott hilariously commits in his variant of the train movie, the last film of his to see release. 

The blithe exuberance of this and so many other Scott touches seems to fly rather directly in the face of his suicide yesterday. I don't have any more information about the end of Scott's life than you do, and even if I did I'm no kind of diagnostician. All I know is that, like so much else, it's pretty terribly sad. 

Comments

[David Ehrenstein]

RIP to the director of the best lesbian vampire movie ever made

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4MmatVblDk

[Paul Duane]

The armed quarterback opening scene of The Last Boy Scout is pretty much my definition of overblown, ridiculous, brilliant action cinema (and stands up against its Asian contemporaries better than anything else from the era's Hollywood output I can think of except maybe Deran Sarafian's hilariously great Terminal Velocity). It also has only the tiniest connection to the rest of the story - Scott's cropduster scene, maybe? Most of my conversations about him were of the 'which Scott brother is better' variety and I was always a lonely defender of Tony. Those conversations now seem pathetic and a bit distasteful. He'll be missed - is there any other blockbuster director left with Scott's distaste for CGI?

[Zach]

This is just such a miserable thing, as it always is. Glenn, thanks for a thoughtful and warm piece. I was always pretty disdainful of Tony's stuff, but there's no doubt that it could have some kind of crazy charm. He did, at least, seem to be the less uptight and self-serious of the two brothers.

[Bettencourt]

If memory serves, the gun-toting quarterback opening scene was always in Shane Black's LAST BOY SCOUT script, long before Scott was attached, and always had virtually no connection to the story (apart from being the kind of grabber opening that helps a spec script sell for $1.75 million).

I remember Scott in an interview once saying something about how Shane's BOY SCOUT and Tarantino's TRUE ROMANCE scripts were better than the films he made from them, which suggests a humility virtually unparalleled in the annals of Hollywood directors.

I wasn't a fan of his work overall, but I remember getting a lot of enjoyment from THE HUNGER, CRIMSON TIDE and the underrated DEJA VU.

[J. Priest]

Apparently, he had inoperable brain cancer: http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/top-gun-director-tony-scott-inoprable-brain-cancer/story?id=17039434#.UDJ2R2NYv5m

[Robert Cashill]

Well, as lesbian vampire movies go, Harry Kumel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS is a lot better than THE HUNGER, but it's pretty good.

[David Ehrenstein]

Kumel had Delphone Seyrig.

Scott and Catherine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon, David Bowie and Delibes.

Call ita draw if you like but I'm sticking with "Lakme."

[bill]

I know the lion's share of the credit for this goes to Tarantino, Dennis Hopper, and Christopher Walken, but the scene -- THE SCENE -- from TRUE ROMANCE was, I always thought, very well shot. Not very humbly, Tarantino said that the scene is so good that it was impossible for the rest of the film to live up to it. I do believe he was right.

And I would very much like to watch CRIMSON TIDE again. That's just a flat out good movie.

[Dan Coyle]

Not a fan of much of Scott's oveure, but True Romance and Crimson Tide? Those are terrific movies.

[TroncJag]

Maybe I've heard it quoted by one too many asshole frat boys but I've always found The Scene from TRUE ROMANCE patently offensive, great acting/direction/writing notwithstanding.

[TroncJag]

But... (and I can't go back to edit my comment, so forgive the double post) ... I really think Scott (as he grew) was one of the more experimental main line/blockbuster directors. UNSTOPPABLE is an amazingly shot film and deserves favorable (visual) comparison with something like James Benning's RR. I know he gets written off as too Michael Bay-ish, but I think there's a lot more method to Scott's frenetic pyrotechnics.

[David Ehrenstein]

Five noted directors who have committed suicide

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-five-noted-directors-who-committed-suicide-20120820,0,2183125.story

[Richard Porton]

I was recently in Zurich for a few days and resided a few blocks from a Hooters in a charming 19th-century building. I assume that there are also Hooters branches in Germany and/or Austria where the Ferronis reside. And knowing them a bit, I don't think they'd mind being caught alive, if not dead, in one of them.

[Gordon Cameron]

>UNSTOPPABLE is an amazingly shot film and deserves favorable (visual) comparison with something like James Benning's RR. I know he gets written off as too Michael Bay-ish, but I think there's a lot more method to Scott's frenetic pyrotechnics.

Agreed. Scott's visual approach isn't altogether to my taste, but I was interested in where he was going with it, and IMO he brought far greater technical precision & aesthetic skill to it than Bay ever did. I'd go so far as to say that UNSTOPPABLE was my favorite Scott film, and was curious to see what he would do next.

[Jeff McMahon]

Scott's visual approach generally seemed kind of insincere to me, like a stylistic affectation rather than a genuine visionary impulse. But at least it was present enough to set his films apart from the likes of Bay/Wiseman/McG/Liman/BartkowiakRob Cohen.

I didn't like most of his movies, but Scott did give us Deneuve getting it on with Sarandon and Brigitte Nielsen waving around a giant gun. RIP.

[LondonLee]

I always thought THE scene in TRUE ROMANCE was the one with James Gadolfini and Patricia Arquette in the motel room. My jaw was on the floor when that bit ended.