Monday, August 20, 2012

Tribute: Tony Scott (1944 - 2012)


Another terrible loss to report on this gloomy Monday: director Tony Scott (1944 – 2012).

Mr. Scott helmed some of the most iconic and popular films of my generation, and of the decade of the 1980s, including the stylish horror effort starring David Bowie, The Hunger (1983), the pop-culture phenomenon Top Gun (1986) -- which cemented Tom Cruise’s status as a movie star -- and the blockbuster sequel, Beverly Hills Cop II (1987).

Tony Scott’s directorial efforts in the 1990s were also remarkable, from the vastly-underrated action film, The Last Boy Scout (1991), to one of my personal favorites, Revenge (1990), starring Kevin Costner and Madeleine Stowe. 

Mr. Scott also made the pulse-pounding “Interloper”-styled horror film, The Fan (1996), starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes, and it’s a movie that, even today, packs a gut punch.   

The 1990s also brought us Tony Scott’s ultra-violent ultra-romantic True Romance (1994) and Crimson Tide (1995).

In 2010, Scott directed Unstoppable, an action thriller I thoroughly enjoyed, and reviewed here.

Mr. Scott's great gift as a filmmaker involves his unwavering ability to tap into our emotions, and then to exploit those emotions to generate strong fear, dread, or even shock.  When a Tony Scott film fires on all cylinders, the montage of sound and visuals proves totally immersing, nay overwhelming, and we get swept up in the pace, the excitement, and the action.

Today, everyone in the movie world is united in sorrow over the loss of this talent.  As I often write in these tributes, we are truly blessed to live in a time when the work of artists like Mr. Scott is recorded for posterity, and available to be enjoyed, again and again.  .

In this way, no director or actor ever truly dies, instead leaving for us a rich legacy and catalog of work that we can re-visit, examine, and appreciate.  

Mr. Scott will be deeply missed, and my heart goes out to his family and loved ones.

11 comments:

  1. Truly sad and terrible news, John. Any fan of film is mourning his loss. May he rest in peace.

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    1. Indeed. May he rest in peace. Such a terrible loss...

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  2. Anonymous10:48 AM

    Sad news the loss of Tony Scott. It always impressed me that Tony and his brother Ridley Scott were both successful directors.

    SGB

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    1. Anonymous11:33 AM

      Tragically it states he committed suicide.
      SGB

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    2. Hi SGB,

      I also read reports that he had had been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer.

      My father-in-law died from that, and it was a horrible experience. My mentor, Johnny Byrne, also died from that ailment, and it was terrible.

      I know some people don't approve of suicide, and it's an extremely personal choice, but I can find no malice or anger in my heart over Mr. Scott's choice, having witnessed two people I cared about waste away and suffer from the disease.

      In many ways, I find his decision extremely brave and, in a way, even, life-affirming. He defied the disease. He knew it was going to get much, much worse, and spared himself and his family incredible pain.

      I respect him greatly, and cherish his films and his life.

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    3. Anonymous11:38 AM

      John, I did not know that Tony Scott had been diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. I am also familiar with this horrible cancer. I am truly sorry to hear about you father-in-law and Space:1999’s John Byrne. I agree with your thoughts regarding his suicide. It should be an option especially in this situation.

      SGB

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    4. Hi SGB,

      Now, I read this morning, that he may not have received that particular diagnosis. The news source is walking it back, so we may not yet (or ever) know the truth.

      I just hope his family is at peace, no matter what was the cause.

      Thank you, SGB, for your condolences and thoughts. You are a good and true friend.

      Best,
      John

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  3. A text message from my brother woke me up this morning: "Have you heard about Tony Scott?" My heart sank. There's no way a text message like this at 5:00 in the morning is going to be good news. Damn.

    Tony Scott was probably the first director I ever got excited about due to his visual sense. I just loved the "look" and innovative editing style. For my money he was, from a composition and visual aesthetic perspective at least, more interesting than his brother. He took a lot of flak as a "mere action director" (as if that were somehow unworthy or something ANYONE could do well), but there was so much more ART in his films than anyone gave him credit for. He took subjects most critics consider "pulp" and gave them a beauty and grandeur that few others would even consider attempting. And, yes, he could direct an action sequence like nobody's business.

    Jesus. What else can you say but that he will be missed? There's no way to know what he might have been struggling with. We can only hope that, after all, he's found peace.

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    1. Count Zero,

      I am so glad that on this sad day, you are reminding us all of Tony Scott's creative gifts, and his incredible artistry. His work has been imitated often, but he was a master in the art of crafting visuals. Thank you for your comment.

      best,
      John

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  4. No bones about it: Tony Scott was an auteur, a master of pop-artistry and one of my favorite directors. He was an experimentalist, increasingly so in the latter stage of his career.

    I’ve always loved his work, stretching back to the heydays of his dreamy pink-hued films like Days of Thunder and the operatic Revenge; The Last Boy Scout, with its jumbo-screen sports mayhem, and the cocaine-Elvis fantasy that was True Romance. But ever since Enemy of the State his filmography became all the more evident of possessing the mad artist’s touch.

    Other filmmakers have long since barrowed from Scott’s pioneering directorial style partially and generically to such an extent that the style itself is regarded unfairly as something derogative and often associative with the current popular rant against all things “shaky cam”. The problem is that most critics are holistically challenged. Lacking in sensitivity, they generalize over a handful of familiar camera techniques without any understanding, let alone appreciation, for the potential artistic context of the film as a whole. In so doing, whatever similarities are superficial at most.

    Scott’s visual fragmentation and editorial kinetics was by far the best of its kind because it had evolved organically from the beginning of his career, thus rendering a shot-flow signature that connected to his very nervous system as a commercialist storyteller. Others replicated it (badly) for stock effect, but only Scott felt it intuitively, resulting in a visual language that maintained a more artful and thematic relevance to whatever the subject, be it the acid-trip POVs of Domino or the multiversing imagery in Déjà Vu.

    Domino, in fact, just might be my favorite from Scott’s filmography. It’s trashy, low-rent, fucked up. It’s a comedy, an absurdist piece. For that matter, Déjà Vu is achieves its own kind of brilliance as well. You should definitely do a review for that one, John. The way the storied technology is visualized, and the way it’s used to visualize shifting character perspectives, is really quite clever. Plus, it features one of the most inventive car chases ever committed to the medium.

    I’m thoroughly entertained by all of Scott’s films, but my top 5 are as follows:

    5. True Romance
    4. Déjà Vu
    3. Unstoppable
    2. Revenge
    1. Domino

    In no way do I mean to make light of Scott’s apparent suicide. I’m certainly as shocked and saddened by the news as anyone else. Yet I can’t help find something tragically poetic about his choice of departure. Scott’s films (directly or indirectly) reflected a uniquely aestheticized form of Hollywood hyper-reality. Particularly with True Romance and Domino, Los Angeles -- the beautifully degenerate edge of the world that is Southern California, with its traffic jams, hazy sunsets and palm tree silhouettes -- is a strangely fatalistic place where people venture, live fast and die blazingly.

    That Scott was a close friend with the real Domino Harvey is a haunting echo of his own demise, or vice versa. I won’t speculate as to why exactly he took his own life, but that he threw himself from the Vincent Thomas Bridge was a pretty epic way to sing off form the City of Angels. Call me sick, but I can almost see the event the way Scott would have filmed it.

    RIP Mr. Pink Hat.

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    1. Cannon,

      I agree with absolutely every word you wrote. I have not seen Domino, though J.D. at Radiator Heaven wrote an excellent review of it recently that really made me want to see it. Now, I think, would be an excellent time to do so...

      Thank you for your excellent comment, and for a reminder of Mr. Scott's great talent and artistry, and for the great films he gave us over the years.

      best,
      John

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