-
Click here to listen to this article - Share via
See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Set us as preferred
- In a wide-ranging conversation, Ridley Scott, 88, the director of ‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ and ‘Gladiator,’ turns his eye toward AI, global warming and kindness.
- Scott ventures into sci-fi once more with ‘The Dog Stars,’ a postapocalyptic thriller that trades zombies for pandemics and asks whether hope can outlast catastrophe.
- As he storyboards a new version of ‘Treasure Island’ and preps several projects, this fall’s honorary Oscar recipient insists he’s nowhere near finished.
Ridley Scott keeps looking down while we’re talking, a thick marker in his hand. Earlier in our conversation, which veers rapidly across his prolific career, he held up a series of storyboards scrawled on white paper. Long known in Hollywood as “Ridleygrams,” they’re for his next project, an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” Now, it appears the filmmaker has been drawing for almost the entire hour of our Zoom call.
“I’m not bored,” he says, a smile on his face. But Scott, speaking from his home in the French countryside, has the sheepish look of a kid who’s been caught not paying attention in class. “I’m just always working on this,” he says.
It’s not news that Scott, 88, is an exceptional visual director. It seems obvious that someone who creates films would be interested in pictures. But since Scott’s early features, including his 1977 debut “The Duellists,” a historical drama about rival officers during the Napoleonic Wars, and his groundbreaking 1979 space horror film “Alien,” Scott has allowed his stories to speak through evocative, immersive images rather than unnecessary exposition.
The British director says it’s because he got his start in advertising after attending the Royal College of Art in London. After 1982’s neon-coated sci-fi thriller “Blade Runner,” Scott notably made the iconic Apple Macintosh computer ad “1984,” a memorable Orwellian-themed clip that contained suggestions of the dystopias that would continue to fascinate Scott in his filmmaking.
“Advertising in England at that point became a competitive art form,” he says, pointing to the notorious “Adland Five,” a group of directors that included Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Scott and his brother Tony. “I’ve got a show reel which is 50 years old which would entertain the s— out you. Hasn’t aged at all. Our visual drive changed the face of how films looked.”
That’s apparent in Scott’s latest, “The Dog Stars” (in theaters Friday), a film about survival after the end of the world. It’s based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel and set in Colorado 10 years in the future after an aggressive flu has decimated much of the population. Those remaining alive use any means necessary to stay that way, resulting in instability, brutality and, more hopefully, connection.
It follows Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his dog Jasper, who have formed an odd-couple friendship with Bangley (Josh Brolin) at an isolated airstrip. Hig flies old Cessna planes into Denver for supplies and makes occasional deliveries to a local Mennonite community led by Aaron (Benedict Wong). After hearing a mysterious radio transmission, Hig becomes fixated on seeking more survivors and sets out on a mission that allies him with Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father (Guy Pearce).
These days, Scott develops movies with his production company, Scott Free, which he founded with his late brother Tony in 1995. Before that he says he struggled to find good scripts. And rarely has someone handed one to him.
“I’ve only ever had three films land on my desk,” he says. “One was ‘Alien,’ which I was fifth choice for after Robert Altman.” He makes a face. “Can you imagine offering Robert Altman ‘Alien’? How stupid can you get?”
Another was 2015 space adventure “The Martian,” which Scott says had been sitting on a shelf for two years before it was sent to him. Scott’s grounded, semi-comedic take on Andy Weir’s novel resulted in seven Oscar nominations. The third screenplay to materialize was “The Dog Stars.” “I read it and I was blown away,” Scott says.
Scott’s career has swept the breadth of genres. Although he established himself with futuristic films like “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” he showed a knack for emotional drama with 1991’s “Thelma & Louise” and for historical epics like 2000’s “Gladiator.” He’s never settled into a particular genre and, perhaps due to that wide-ranging restlessness, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be awarding him an honorary Oscar in November.
The director is known for films like ‘Alien’ and ‘Gladiator.’ But these seven movies — and his new ‘The Dog Stars’ — show what he can do in an intimate register.
Throughout his films, the director has always asked big questions: Who are we? What drives us? What pushes us to survive? It’s the last query that re-emerges in “The Dog Stars,” although Scott says the postapocalyptic setting initially discouraged him.
“We don’t realize how this exact thing is happening in so many Third World countries right now,” he says. “There are no zombies in my film. I don’t want to make the film with a political agenda, but more or less what I was working around was the logistics of what’s actually happening in the world. And if you don’t watch out, it’ll be on your doorstep.”
Did he want the film to feel dire or hopeful?
“I think this film is hopeful,” he says. He looks up at the camera. “Did you get that?”
I did, I tell him, but I’m worried we’re not too far off from a decimated world.
“Me too,” he says. “My concern is I might live until I’m 105, so I better have enough rifles and weapons to defend the realm. I am concerned about my children’s children because I think we are that close to passing the point of no return. Tornadoes and hurricanes where they shouldn’t be. Global warming reaching three figures. What the f— is the matter with us?”
When the downfall of society occurs, though, Scott is of two minds. He isn’t joking about the guns (“I can hit a can with a pistol down the length of a football field,” he says), but he’s also interested in those who will prevail with kindness.
“There’s always going to be a help group,” he says. “I would join those who are there to survive and make things better and rein in the bad stuff.”
He pauses, reflecting. “I think what’s happening in the world is people are afraid to make that choice because they’re not big enough to say ‘Stop.’ Politicians are big enough to say ‘Stop’ and to make adjustments. But if they do, they’re going to lose their job.” His voice goes dark as he considers what’s next. “They should have stopped it.”
Scott didn’t finish “The Duellists” until he was nearly 40. “The Dog Stars” is his 30th movie and he’s still going strong. At any given moment, Scott Free has upward of 40 projects in development, although Scott says some of those eventually dissipate. He tries to limit his personal focus to four or five at a time, although he admittedly has a lot on the horizon.
“Treasure Island,” written by “Adolescence” screenwriter Jack Thorne and starring Hugh Jackman, will begin filming in November. He has an adaptation of John Harris’ World War I novel “Covenant With Death” upcoming. He’s interested in a script he was recently sent that’s set in Africa and is “about how we’re punishing the planet.” And he’s hopeful that his long-delayed Bee Gees biopic, set for production at Paramount, will go ahead.
“We wrote it,” Scott says. “I met with Barry [Gibb]. But right now I don’t know where we are with it. I hope it comes together and Barry does as well.” Also in the works is the third “Alien” prequel, which fans have been anticipating since “Alien: Covenant” was released in 2017. Scott says it will pick up with David (Michael Fassbender) creating a “brave new world for himself.” Scott is fascinated by the character, a malfunctioning AI.
“AIs can go off,” Scott says. “And if they do, it’s like a bomb.”
The director made several films about AI long before artificial intelligence was a concern in Hollywood. In the “Alien” series and in “Blade Runner,” robots look and act almost human. But Scott says he prefers to make films about AI rather than use it himself.
“The uneasy question is: Can the AI only be as good as the information fed into it?” Scott says. “If I say ‘Here’s a blank canvas, write me such and such,’ would that just be a melange of millions of other scripts? Probably. But the danger is it’ll pass that point and become smarter than we are.”
So far, Scott says he hasn’t implemented AI technologies into his filmmaking. He holds up his “Treasure Island” Ridleygrams and shakes them at the camera. “I can compete with an AI without any problem making images,” he says. “But it’s coming, inevitably.”
Scott was not involved in the forthcoming Prime Video series “Blade Runner 2099,” out in November. “I can’t blame my lawyers and my agents at that time, but somehow we let ‘Blade Runner’ go,” he says. “And when you’re not the author of the actual written word, you don’t have a piece.” (He was more involved in Noah Hawley’s recent “Alien: Earth” series, which he calls “pretty damn good.”)
As a filmmaker, Scott has gaps to fill. He wants to make a western. He’s also interested in directing a musical in the vein of Bob Fosse.
“I like ‘Cabaret’ because you have a musical built into a political agenda,” Scott says. “And right now, I’m thinking about turning one of [my past] films into a musical. I can’t tell you which one because they’re being difficult.”
He grins. “So you can agonize over that. I wouldn’t dare say which one.” (Scott is presumably not talking about “Thelma & Louise: A New Musical,” which will premiere at London’s New Vic on Sept. 3.)
Scott interjects stories from his career throughout our conversation, reflecting as far back as his first short film, “Boy and Bicycle,” which he made with his brother in 1965. But he says he doesn’t think about the recurring themes in his work.
“I don’t go that deep,” he says, brushing it aside when asked whether there are certain questions he’s trying to answer about being human. He quickly reconsiders. “Instinctually, maybe I do. I don’t know. I don’t question it. I don’t dwell on it.”
He also doesn’t care what people think about his films. He tells the now-infamous story about the New Yorker critic Pauline Kael panning “Blade Runner” in a four-page review.
“What I learned from that is you can only be your own critic,” he says. “Honestly, I think all my films are pretty good. I’ve got two in the Library of Congress. I’ve got three commercials in the Museum of Modern Art. So I’m doing fine.”
Does that mean he thinks about his legacy as a filmmaker? He does, but not often. “When you think of your legacy, you’re too near the end,” Scott says. “I’m not near the end.”
He looks up from his drawings. “I’ve had a riotous time,” he says. He corrects himself: “I’m having a riotous time.”
