RIDLEY SCOTT: FROM BLADE RUNNER TO BLADE STUNNER

By Mike Reynolds
Photos by Jaap Buitendijk

Director Ridley Scott (T-shirt) discusses a Gladiator scene with Russell Crowe. (©2000 DreamWorks LLC)

One of the main prerequisites for being a director has to be an inbred ability to focus and concentrate, yet Ridley Scott admits, "I had no level of concentration at school [he went to ten junior schools]. I was quite bewildered when I got to the senior schools; I was kind of lost. We traveled a lot [his father was in the Army] and I think travel became the education because I didn't get good grades." His saving grace was art. "I drew well and I went to art school and my tutor told me to go into commercial art because there was no money in teaching. I went to art college for four years, then did three at the Royal College of Art, where one of my classmates was David Hockney."

There was no studying at film school for Scott when he was trying to get started - there was no film school, period. "You could only get a union card if you worked and only work if you had a union card. You gradually find the work. I never went to drama school, either. I was an art director one day, next day somebody gave me a secretary, an office and casting book and said ‘OK, you're directing.' So, suddenly I wasn't talking to furniture, I was talking to people and I've learned while I've been doing it. That was at the BBC. I did a three-month director's course at the BBC and discovered I wanted to work on celluloid. That meant commercials, so I drifted into commercials. They were like little pocket editions in storytelling and visuals. I loved it. I did it for ten years, which went by in a blink before I even thought about movies."

Directing commercials was really a refining process for Scott. "It's one way of making movies. They wouldn't look at my show reel when I first came to Hollywood," he reveals, "as commercials were not considered legitimate filmmaking.

"Everyone finds their own route as to how to direct," Scott says. "I started looking at it from the point of view of ‘If I were an actor, what kind of information would I want?' Hopefully, if I were a good actor, I'd think about what kind of input I wanted that would either be useful, constructive, or would become an irritant. I sometimes think actors are regarded as people you tell to come in, give 'em a chalk mark and tell 'em ‘Action!' ‘Do this.' ‘Do that.'

"I don't work that way and I don't cast that way. I cast with people who are going to bring a lot to the table, which means they're going to bring their brain and bring creativity to the process. One thing I always want an actor to do is to surprise me. As a director it's my job to look for actors who go through the envelope, who have the film in their head.

"One is always viewing things in a slightly different way to make it look more interesting," he says. "I have it really planned in my own head and try to make it look like improv."

Making a film, for Scott, "is like buying a painting. I walk in a gallery. I walk around the gallery and I go ‘Wow! I really like that. I wish I could have that.' It's an emotional response to a piece of material. There is no pattern to my choices. I just look for things that interest me."

It's his background in art that frequently sparks film ideas. "I'll often sit down with a pad and know exactly how I'm going to do it but feel it's not interesting enough. So I'll start to scribble. When you start to scribble it's exactly like writing, it generates ideas. I create worlds. It's the most attractive thing about filmmaking for me. It's a sifting process. I think I'm a vacuum." 

To date Scott has sifted through nearly 20 movies and thousands of commercials as a director and/or producer. His latest, Gladiator, is a return to days of yore with modern computer graphics assistance. Producer Walter Parkes drew Scott to the project by showing him a painting of a gladiator by Jean-Leon Gerome. "The glory of the Empire was in that painting," says Scott.

David Franzoni's initial script provided the basis. While many felt the script needed work, Gladiator had a very specific start date that could not be delayed. "We had to add a whole middle section to the script. We first brought in John Logan, then William Nicholson. While it doesn't sound like a good idea [to start without a completed script] there was the predetermined start date," Scott says. "We always had the first part of the script in place, but the second was brand new. And we continued struggling with the third section which was miles away [from being complete]. I wouldn't advocate it to anyone else but surprisingly, it went smoothly."

What helped Scott overcome this obstacle was an accomplished and experienced crew. It also helped that he steeped himself in research, covering every aspect - costume design, where Romans bathed, ate, how they heated houses, etc. "I started to get a smell of the place, related to how we live today against living in a stone dwelling. You start to smell it; that's what I try to do. I try to put that in the film." He also gained inspiration from the paintings of Georges de La Tour, "one of the great painters of light. Though from the 1500s he is way out of this period but it could also be Roman."

However, the greatest test for Scott was something a director never wants to anticipate and will never lay out on a storyboard - the death of an actor before all scenes are completed.

It's somewhat ironic that for his first film, The Duellists, Scott wanted to use actor Oliver Reed but he wasn't available. "I'd first asked him to play the good guy against Michael York, as a bad guy, but that fell through." Now, more than 20 years later, "I was thinking, I need a Robert Shaw type. And if Richard (Harris) hadn't already been employed on the film I would have used him. I thought, ‘Who the hell is there? Who has that formidable presence?'"

He immediately turned to Reed and a meeting was arranged. "I hadn't seen him in 21 years. He came in from Ireland, said ‘How are you?' as if it had been yesterday, rather than 21 years since we last spoke. He was right for the part - a man for all seasons. A bit of a rascal and more sympathetic than villainous. When he died I realized how much we had gotten to know and like him. It was terribly sad, a great loss and he had delivered some great stuff." 

But scenes with Reed at the end of the film remained to be shot. A reshoot with another actor was out of the question. "We had to revise the jigsaw puzzle," Scott explains. "We had three different scenes of Reed left to shoot. For one we used a body double who walked and looked like Ollie and did the dialog scene with Russell at the jail. Then, for the others, I took three headshots of Ollie, from other sequences in the film, and reused them for the missing scenes. I also reused words from a different scene. Just before he's assassinated by the Praetorians he shouts out, ‘Shadows and dust.' He had said that in the arena when he shouted up to Russell before the tiger fight. So I managed to piece together this jigsaw puzzle and to graft it with very good CGI." 

Scott suggests that Gladiator is "probably the biggest (in scope) film I've done since Blade Runner, which, while large logistically, was all on a back lot, making it easier." 

Ridley Scott fires up his young extras before shooting a Gladiator scene . (©2000 DreamWorks LLC)

Locations and sets were other crucial parts of the filmmaking puzzle. Scott had previously shot in Malta and returned for Gladiator. "I saw this ruin from the crusade period, ancient ruins leading to more sophisticated ruins from the English army in the 1800s. I remembered the giant parade ground. It was very Romanesque. I said to (production designer) Arthur Max, ‘We have to go to Malta with a tape measure.' Walls were maybe 40-feet thick and 60-feet high with giant vaulted ceilings inside, while cannon emplacements surrounded the parade ground. These walls became cafes, parts of streets and we dropped our sets into existing buildings. Because of that, the view of Rome seems to be more realistic. We had a $7 million–$8 million head start because of that. We got the city to give us plans of the whole place, then built what we needed in Shepperton."

Scott also found inspiration from a more recent historical event for the opening Roman battle sequence. "I remember watching coverage of the Gulf War and I'll never forget the shots of the American correspondent with all those fiery streamers behind him - visually beautiful like a science fiction war going on. So we invented the trench for the archers scene where they light the arrows."

The use of CG in most movies requires actors to pretend an interaction with someone or something else, but in Gladiator that was mostly not the case. "When they walk into the arena for the first time, I had a steadicam move 360–400 degrees, all in one take. We had built artifacts before, a three-stories-tall Colosseum, 80 feet to the back wall. I wanted to take it up another 100 feet, so I could pan with the changing perspective because the cameraman is moving all the time." 

His actors didn't need to "pretend" for that sequence but when it came to other scenes, such as those with the tigers… "Tigers don't always do as they are told," he reveals, "very often they sit on the ground and scratch. You have to get them wound up for them to do their thing. We had to have the tigers do various charges and swipes at the camera then CGI them into the appropriate shots." However, there were times when animal and actor had to be together for the camera. "Sometimes they got as close as four feet. One morning a tiger clipped an actor's rear end. Thankfully, the tiger had been de-clawed, but they all had teeth!"

Animals were not the only subjects to receive CG attention, the first battle sequence showing the Roman army in the valley included only 800 real extras playing the combatants; the rest were CGI copies. Technology also enhanced the fireballs and added flaming arrow traces - those pinpoints of light from the 400 archers. The long trajectory of the arrows was also enhanced in the same manner. The aerial shot over Rome and the Colosseum, and the city seen from afar by the travelers was also the work of CGI artists. One of the most intricate and effective CGI sequences is of a robin, so realistic many viewers have been surprised to learn that the bird was not real. 

Though the film is around two and a half hours long, Scott reveals, "I've removed about 20 minutes, including a great execution scene. But on the DVD I'll pop in the 20 minutes I removed. I'll do a commentary on it because a lot of people want to see how movies are made and a lot of secrets are out now."

While Scott was filming Gladiator in Malta he was approached by producer Dino De Laurentiis (who was there for the shooting of Jonathan Mostow's U-571) to direct Hannibal, the sequel to Jonathan Demme's film of The Silence of the Lambs.

"I'm doing a Roman epic now, so I don't want to follow it up by doing elephants over the Alps," responded Scott. The inimitable De Laurentiis came straight back, "No! Hannibal LEC-TER." 

Scott read the book. "It was one you couldn't put down," he says. Scott agreed to do the film. The decision may surprise some, after all Scott didn't direct the sequel to his hit film Alien, so why should he direct the sequel to a film he had nothing to do with? "The problem with Alien, is that I wouldn't have known where to go next," he says. "We got the beast right, so to show it again, for me, it was no longer as powerful. These are the first requirements, to be so viscerally different. Hannibal is a characterization. This is a dark story, a continuation and expansion on the affection between he and Starling."

Scott, was in production on the $80 million Hannibal when we spoke, spending the last of five weeks filming in Italy, hardly able to spend time reflecting on the achievement of Gladiator at the box office. The final week (night shooting) would comprise a three and a half -minute "opera" sequence. "It's the centerpiece of the movie, taken from a Dante sonnet put to score music. It's turning out so well," says Scott, hastening to add, "But we're not making an art movie. It may be operatic, but it's not getting in the way."

As for future projects, Scott admits, "Directing still gives me a buzz. The last one woke me up. I guess I would like to do science fiction, but there can't be any repetition. There can't be space ships." Alexander the Great is another project he's been associated with and that's not ruled out as yet. "It's a fantastic story, but you have to bring it down to a central character - to a certain extent take liberties. Once you decide to do something historical you're stuck with the facts. However, audiences don't necessarily want accurate history." 

Over the years Scott has often said he would love to do a comedy, "I got the taste on Thelma & Louise. Comedy is all right, if it's funny. Comedy isn't easy to do, therefore, it had better be on paper and you probably have to work fast. I do like it and am focusing on a comedy piece that could be next."

Whatever is next, one thing is certain, having directed 12 films over 23 years, Scott admits he doesn't want to takes his, "eyes off the ball. I'm trying to crank up the volume. I've been trying to do away with the two-year lapse [between movies I've made] ever since Thelma & Louise. If you have a two-year gap, you lose people. In the old days directors could look back on 80 films or more in a career. I think we should be able to manage one a year. It's frustrating if you're not really directing - you're not really functioning. Talking, budgeting, preparing and thinking are important but it's not actually doing it. Actually making the movie is practicing your craft, which is why I hang on to advertising, because I get to practice my craft and I enjoy it and like filming. Not directing is like being an actor and not acting, just talking about it."

Scott is a great believer in teamwork. "Film, in general, is all about the team of people you work with," he offers. He advocates it whether via his 37-year-old commercials production company, his Scott Free film and television production entity or the Shepperton Film studio complex in England. "I would never have considered Shepperton if it didn't have a good team there," he states, preferring to play down his (and brother Tony's) involvement by suggesting, "We just came in and found more money for them to work with." The teamwork principle even extends to actors. Just after completing Thelma & Louise Scott said he felt frustrated. "I wish I'd done 25 films, I'd love to have my ‘club' of performers. I'd love to go back and work with them but things take so long to come round it's frustrating."

Ridley Scott behind the camera. (©2000 DreamWorks LLC)

Other important members of the team are a production designer and composer. "I've learned over the years to have a very precise dialog with musicians," he admits and claims to shoot many scenes with music in mind. His frequent musical collaborator is composer Hans Zimmer, who has provided music for many of Scott's movies, as he did for Gladiator and will again for Hannibal. The production designer is "a very important part of how I work. He is really an extension of me and of what I want. Therefore, there's endless talks and endless work going on before the film crew goes in." 

Where he once would sneak off to direct a commercial spot whenever he could, Scott hasn't done a commercial since just before starting Gladiator. On that spot he used John Mathieson as his cinematographer, and it worked so well he used him on Gladiator and now on Hannibal.

Another important member of Scott's team is his DGA membership. Scott joined when he was making a push into the New York commercials' world. "I joined immediately when I went to New York in the early '70s." So he paid his $2,500, "a lot of money in those days," and has welcomed and embraced the decision ever since. "I found an incredibly protective attitude. I once needed help on a movie and they corrected the problem instantly. We do need that as directors; we're fragile as we have our heads in creativity."

The future, as in the past, seems exceptionally busy for Scott but he knows that while technology may have helped him on Gladiator, in the future he and every other director will have to move away from the traditional techniques, in order to capture stories in pictures. "It's inevitable that it will be electronic delivery, George Lucas is doing it already, it's easier to work with and register a digital camera. There are no rushes; it's just piped into an edit room so the editor starts as you shoot it. Theatres going digital is the only thing slowing the process at the moment. Of course, the price comes into play," he acknowledges. Theatre owners have paid out so much to update and upgrade already. Someone has to come up with a satisfactory way of projecting it; "meanwhile they will have to keep traditional projectors until digital totally takes over."

While some may suggest that there's nothing like film to capture the nuances of texture and light, Scott suggests the answer is, "a good lighting cameraman and director. It's all to do with lighting for the subtle differences. You can even make it look grainy."

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