Since his first film was released in 1977, Sir Ridley Scott has created some of the most visually stunning movies in the history of cinema. His filmography stretches from the 1979 science fiction horror film, "Alien" to the 1992 female buddy road movie, "Thelma & Louise" to the 2000 historical epic, "Gladiator." And in much the same way that his films are so different, Scott is quite different from his fellow filmmakers.
"He's not interested in his own mythology, he's not interested in revealing himself," film critic Ian Nathan, author of "Ridley Scott: A Retrospective", told WPR's "BETA."
Nathan said you have to be on your game when you sit down for an interview with Scott, as he has done on several occasions.
Scott has this trick he plays where he tests your knowledge of film history by pretending to forget something. For example, he once asked Nathan who directed "The Third Man" as if he'd forgotten, and he waited for Nathan to fill the gap. Fortunately, Nathan remembered the film was directed by Carol Reed.
"So if you fail at that, he'll despair of you," Nathan said. "But I love it because it's a very dry sense of humor that sort of underpins his kind of view of the world."
Before Scott started making films, he set up his own advertising company, Ridley Scott Associates, and made commercials, including the iconic "1984", which introduced Apple's Macintosh personal computer.
Scott's commercial work is probably the most important part of his training because he never went to film school, Nathan explained.
"All of his worlds in feature films have a kind of desirability written into their DNA, even something like 'Alien' or 'Blade Runner,' which is a dystopia," said Nathan. "You kind of want to be there, there's something romantic as well about it. But it's ruined future. There's something kind of rather lovely about it at the same time and this comes with that kind of advertising look that he has. It's sort of an instinct for him."
"Alien" was Scott's breakthrough feature film.
Nathan describes it as "a triumph of minimalism" because there's not much there in terms of scale and scope. There are only three different locations: the commercial spaceship Nostromo; the moon called Acheron (officially known as LV-426) which orbits the planet Calpamos; and the derelict alien spacecraft that Kane (John Hurt's character) enters and discovers several objects that appear to be eggs.
"And in terms of actually what the plot is, it is simply: pilots of a spacecraft follow a distress beacon; find this alien egg, it stows away within one of them, it breaks out on the spaceship. Will they survive? It's a B movie. And Scott said so. He said it's a B movie with an A creature."
Originally, the protagonist, Ripley, was going to be a man. But the role eventually went to Sigourney Weaver, launching a successful film career in the process.
Nathan describes switching Ripley's gender as "a feminist statement. It is radical for its time. It reinvented the idea of heroes in science fiction. I think it had a huge effect on cinema and portrayal of women in cinema, certainly in terms of genre. The ripples outwards from 'Alien' are massive."
In 1992, Scott released "Thelma & Louise" starring Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The film seemed like a bit of a departure for Scott. He was originally the producer of the film and was excited about Callie Khouri's screenplay, Nathan explained. At one point, Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer were going to play the title characters. Pfeiffer told Ridley he had to direct the film because of the passion he showed for it.
Michael Madsen, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis talk through a scene with Ridley Scott on the set of "Thelma & Louise". Scott enjoyed every minute of the shoot, describing it as a holiday. Photo courtesy of Palazzo Publishers
"Of course, if you look at 'Thelma & Louise', it has that advertiser's glint to it, that kind of glamour even though it's kind of showing ordinary places or the dust in the air," Nathan said. "It becomes far more of a Western. We end up in Utah, in John Ford country, the kind of world around them becomes more mythological as they become more outlaw, as they take on this kind of mantle of the couple on the lam."
"It starts to draw on classic movie tropes as it goes along," Nathan said. "And this represents their awakening, their sense of sort of coming together and who they are. And that sense, this is this trip of no return that once they cross that line, they've gone into this world, they're not coming back from it."