Yahoo Lifestyle Ridley Scott recalls an exec asked why he can't make films about 'normal people': 'What the f--- does that mean?'
"No one's normal unless you're totally boring, right?" the 'Blade Runner' director said.
It's hard to believe now, but Ridley Scott's early films weren't seen as particularly stellar in their time, despite the fact that the period included Alien and Blade Runner, both of which are considered classics today. Fortunately, Scott had enough good sense to trust his instincts in the face of corrective feedback that now sounds horribly misguided.
"There's only one film worked out of all of that lot," Scott said of his early feature output during a recent interview with Alien: Romulus writer-director Fede Alvarez on the Director's Guild of America's The Director's Cut podcast.
"But they're a pretty good first four movies. So I knew I'm on the right track. But somebody at one of the studios said to me, 'Why don't you do a film about normal people?' I went, 'What the f--- does that mean?' Because no one's normal unless you're totally boring, right?"
Scott directed his first film, the Joseph Conrad short story adaptation The Duellists, at 38. He'd enjoyed a long run as a successful commercial director, which means he entered the movie business with a bit more confidence and a lot more technical competence than many others. But in the interview, he details the wobbly road toward the glowing recognition he's accorded today.
"I was 38, realized I hadn't done a movie, so I had enough money to build a finer writer, pay him, pay for the book, et cetera. And so from that, we got a prize at Cannes, where the first film went. Pretty good. But the studio here made seven prints. so my producer is [David Puttnam]. I said, 'Is this normal?' He said, 'No, it's not.'"
Scott knew he had a fine film on his hands with The Duellists, but he felt the studio didn't go nearly far enough in helping the film reach audiences.
Alien did well, but with Blade Runner, "She destroyed me." "She" being Pauline Kael, the legendary film critic whose withering review of the edgy sci-fi fantasia "destroyed Blade Runner in four pages. I didn't even meet her. To me, it almost walked in the column of industrial espionage, because you're destroying a product before it's out."
It's difficult to measure the impact of single critic's opinion on a film's financial success, but Blade Runner certainly enjoys more fans in retrospect than it garnered during its release. As for his fourth film, the swashbuckling goblins and unicorns fantasy flick Legend, "It didn't work either."
But that didn't bother Scott then, and he's only been vindicated with the passing of time, as Alien, Blade Runner, and even Legend have enjoyed broad critical reappraisals.
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"These are all good movies, so there's something deeply wrong with the audience or marketing," Scott reasons. "But you know, I'm not bitter. I'm very happy where I am. It is the best attitude that one can have. I think, you know, that's the best attitude that one can have, to just love all of your movies, trust, and keep going."
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Scott's latest film, Gladiator II, is a sequel to his 2000 box office hit Gladiator. The sequel is currently contending with two other commercial heavyweights at the box office, Moana 2 and Wicked, but is holding its own.
