Ridley Scott Breaks Down His Most Iconic Films

[Interviewer] Ridley Scott breakdown iconic movies.

They're all iconographic.

[Interviewer] Of course they are.

[crew member laughs]

[upbeat music]

Do not be troubled,

for you are in Elysium and you're already dead.

[horse neighing]

[soldiers laughing]

[fire crackling]

[Interviewer] Can you describe how you executed

that huge opening battle?

I'm trying to think where I really started

the many multi-camera thing,

but I stepped up and thought, I can't do the one-on-one.

It'll take me forever. I'll still be shooting it today.

I said, I'm going to step up to I think eight cameras.

It's simple, actually

because if you've got 1,000 extras there

and you've got Marcus Aurelius on the hill

and you've got Russell Crowe down below

amongst the catapults and the cannons,

why not put cameras in all those position?

Action.

And it all happens together in one big scene.

So I'm now in my wigwam or tent

watching eight cameras going, boom, boom.

And because I'm an operator, I said,

Boom, you missed a change of lens.

You are slow. Let's go again.

But we do all of that establishing shot in two takes.

And I said, As opposed to shoot it all bloody day

or two-day shoot, you do it in a day or less.

And remembering, I'm blessed with, I've got a very good eye.

I'm just blessed. I've got a great eye.

I can set up here in three seconds in a boring room.

[metal clanging]

[crowd cheering]

[tiger growls]

You know, Russell said, The tiger's this close.

I said, I was standing there as well, dude.

He's on a chain.

He said, It just missed me.

But that was a real tiger, 11-foot Bengal.

But the guy, the trainer, if you watch closely,

as he hits the ground, the tiger is on him,

he's putting something his mouth,

he's feeding him saying Thank you.

That means, Get off me.

Because if he hits the red zone,

he's going eat you.

He hits it and he does that and it's new cut.

[upbeat music]

Strength and honor.

Paul Mescal was kind of stunned at the scale.

And mind you, I was saying, Calm. Nice and calm.

You're fine.

I said, Don't worry about it. It's only a day job.

Forget you've got all this stuff around you.

You are in your own arena.

I think he got to it pretty quick.

[Interviewer] He told me that you slapped him on the back

and said, I have no time for nerves.

Exactly. [laughs]

[exciting music]

I need a ramp.

Somebody said, Do they really have water

in the Colosseum?

I said, Of course, you can't

build a Colosseum without water, moron.

They have, don't you know what these water trucks,

they have water running into the Colosseum.

Their technology, they still made cement

better than our cement today, you know that?

They can't work out what the mix is.

But the Roman road in, right now,

the Appian Way in Rome hasn't moved.

Column's a thousand years old.

I said, Can you get a shark?

And I said, If you can build the Colosseum,

you can get a shark in there, dude.

Not a 20-footer,

but you get a six-foot, that'll kill you.

They're a bit bigger than that.

[suspenseful music]

The Gods have spoken.

I said, You're the Sex Pistols

if you don't want to be Tony Rotten.

Was it Johnny Rotten, the Sex Pistols? I think so.

But he had this awful blonde hair.

So I said, We're going to go red.

It's because you're twins.

The only thing you look alike

is because you've got the similar hair.

We had a scene which I regret not doing,

which is kind of funny

because they're constantly bickering

about who is conceived first

because who is conceived first is more of an emperor

than the other one.

So then this detailed conversation about how.

He said, Well, if I was out last, I was conceived first.

Think that out.

[upbeat music]

[crickets chirping]

[man screaming]

[chimes ringing]

Because of my art background,

I was a kind of comic strip aficionado.

I can really draw, I can draw comic strips really well.

And so I read the script and knew exactly what to do.

because it read to me like a comic, a dark comic.

And so before I went, I drew some storyboards

of the first 20 minutes of the movie.

And I went out there to Hollywood,

first time in Hollywood really as a person

to potentially direct a movie.

The budget would be 4.2.

I had no idea, it was four times what the dues cost.

I took the boards out and showed them the boards.

The budget went from 4.2 to 8.4.

So the value of a vision is everything.

It went woomph like that.

I was a very good camera operator because of

a thousand commercials operate on all of them,

so I was the only cameraman.

Then Alien.

I did right through to Thelma & Louise as an operator,

so I'm really good operator.

A lot of it's handheld.

And so I knew it had to be viscerally and creepy

and be constantly on the move.

So you do things like overlap dialogue,

and I'm standing there and there's a scene

between Sigourney and whoever.

And I'm always slightly moving like this.

So you're always feeling a little bit uncomfortable.

Why is it moving?

So it drove the editor crazy, but it really worked.

[suspenseful music]

Don't forget, we have no digital effects

in those days.

Nothing.

And so backdrops have to be painted

and I have to find a very tall, thin man

to squeeze into a rubber suit.

And therefore, when you do that,

you know you can shoot very little,

show as little as possible

because it doesn't really hold up.

And so by being subliminal and minimal, it works very well.

I think the creature was unique and you have to believe.

It doesn't matter how good my cast was.

Cast was fantastic.

But without that beast, it wouldn't have been the same.

I can't lie to you about your chances,

but,

you have my sympathies.

I was worried that we were actually kind of,

we might run out of scares

and creepy things in the corridor.

So the new thing would suddenly come in,

Ash would object to something,

and then would actually have a bad turn as a AI.

AI.

And Yaphet Kotto had to take the fire extinguisher

and knock him around the head probably knocked his head off,

so now we see a wires and metal

organic AI, as he is AI.

The first time was Stanley Kubrick where he invented Hal.

Hal emerged as a computer, which no one knew

what a computer was in those days.

The computer knows from the corporation that the journey's

success is more important than the crew.

So we borrowed that and made that into Ash

where he was the company man.

Of course, if you're going to make a company man,

you don't want a black box.

You want somebody who's going to consort, meet, chat,

drink coffee with and be with the people.

They will not know he's a company man

because he's kind of more human than human.

[upbeat music]

He say you Blade Runner.

Tell him I'm eating.

On Blade Runner, I was inventing a new world

and I spent five months with a very good writer

called Hampton Fancher who'd really written a play

adapted from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

And so I read the book and felt

there were 90 stories in the first 20 pages,

so I thought it's too complex.

But I sat with Hampton, I said,

You've written this beautiful story

that takes place in an apartment.

It's an internal story where a hunter

falls in love with his quarry.

Love your cadence, love the rhythm of your dialogue,

love your dialogue, love the idea.

I want to see what happened when he goes out the door.

And from that moment on, we just went boom.

[gunshot fires]

[glass shatters]

Harrison Ford was not a star yet.

He had just finished flying the Millennium Falcon

in Star Wars.

I remember my financer saying,

Who the fuck is Harrison Ford?

I said, You're going to find out.

So Harry became my leading man and I couldn't find the girl.

And I looked and looked and looked.

I was looking for Vivian Lee kind of thing,

this dark beauty.

And I finally found this girl who was 18,

hadn't done a film before.

That was her first movie.

[dramatic techno music]

The reason for the pyramid,

the pyramid was I think the true Tyrell was dead

inside a sarcophagus in the middle of the pyramid

because he knew he was dying.

Whatever the age and the time,

there would always be some industrial disease

that we haven't actually dealt with.

But he'd also, here's the trick, does Putin have six clones?

So Terrell had made several lookalikes of himself

so he could be anywhere.

You wouldn't know where the real one was.

So the Tyrell we were talking to

was probably not the real Tyrell,

but was a, fundamentally, replication of himself.

So that's how complex it gets.

That's how we ended up with the pyramid.

It never got to do the scene where they go

to the sarcophagus and see he's dead.

I think he died in the sarcophagus, and some...

I took it from, there's a massive power breakdown

on the East Coast of America.

One powerhouse in one of the states. It was crazy.

All the three states switched off for 22 hours.

So I think I went from that idea.

When it went down,

Tyrell may have died in the deep freeze.

[upbeat music]

[suit beeping]

[Operator] Oxygen level.

[Mark panting]

[metal clangs]

[Mark shouts]

That script landed my desk.

It was a very good novel, very good adaptation.

And so I read it and said it's comedy.

And they said, A comedy?

I said Yes, comedy.

How could it not be a comedy when you survive

by eating food grown from your own dump?

Come on.

So all of that that you see can happen is true.

And so I got to know NASA pretty well.

And so even the thing, that triangle that he goes off

and finds it from an old mission is true.

They send it up there and they leave that stuff behind.

They always make a replica, a identical at home.

So they can say, Open up, top left hand corner,

there's three screws, one is red, one is green,

one is pink.

It's that literal.

So there's an exact copy a fool could follow.

And that's what happened.

We took that so then he could suddenly see Earth,

turn it and got connection,

so that's how he made connection.

I am alive.

[suspenseful music]

I still ask the question, we haven't sorted this out yet.

So why are we going off-world?

No one can live there.

No one can live on the moon,

and Mars is your threshold of deep space

where you're suddenly into,

the next planet

is a short distance of one and a half light years.

You ain't going to get there.

But what you'll find on Mars and Moon

is massive mineral wealth.

That's why in Alien,

you got the Nostromo coming in from mining expedition.

It's dead through this massive mineral wealth

on the Moon and on Mars.

But we'll have to ship it back.

But you can be in Mars now with this engine today

in about seven months.

In the Moon, you'll be there in four days.

It's only 250,000 miles.

[Interviewer] Relatively quick. Would you go?

No, absolutely not. Why?

Are you kidding? I'm not crazy.

[upbeat music]

Let's keep going.

What do you mean?

Go.

[car engine revving]

That was brought to my company, Scott Free,

not for me to direct but for me to produce and Callie Khouri

who actually was a receptionist I think

in David Fincher's company.

And he never read the script and I did.

I think one day, she said,

David, I've had the script read.

Who, Ridley? Oh, fuck, okay.

So I offered it to five people who'd said,

Nah, nah, nah, not for me, not for me.

I got a problem with the women.

That's the whole point.

Having a problem with the women shouldn't be a problem.

You should get it.

One, I was interviewing Michelle Pfeiffer, I think it was.

She said, Listen, I can't do this, but I like the script.

Why don't you come to your senses and you do it?

So I said, Okay, I'll do it.

[gunshots firing]

[man shouts] [truck exploding]

I was wrecking and I was coming through Arkansas,

which is kind of my buddy is, the production designer,

is Chinese-Jamaican with dreadlocks.

You don't go through Arkansas

with Chinese-Jamaican with dreadlocks.

So we stopped in Mont Park Kittle's Garage

who got a rifle out and put it on the counter and said,

When are you boys out of town?

I said, Ah, we're just going to get some

cigarettes and we're going to move on.

While Norris is doing that, I'm outside filling up

and there's a giant cement mixer

and there's two women with T-shirts and muscles,

and they got Marlboros rolled up in the sleeve.

I said, Do you mind if I record you?

And so I recorded the two women talking.

I said, Can I have your hat? And you have mine.

And so we swapped and that hat went on Thelma in the film.

You sir. Yeah, you do the honors.

Take that cash and put in that bag right there.

You got amazing story to tell your friends.

If not, you got a tag on your toe. You decide.

I lost the Brad I cast for about 10 days out.

He took another film as his,

oh dear, what a terrible mistake.

And so I had to look fast.

I looked fast, I got two guys, Brad and another guy.

Equally kind of attractive.

And I said to Geena, I've got two guys, okay,

you're going to read with both and after we'll discuss it.

She said, This guy, Brad Pitt, and that's it.

She thinks she cast him.

She didn't. I already cast him.

[upbeat music]

Hey, there's a Black Hawk down.

Twombly, Nelson, you're going to stay here.

You're going to hold this corner

and then exit with the humvees.

I had to get the King of Morocco,

whom I got to know because of Kingdom of Heaven.

And Kingdom of Heaven,

they love the Kingdom of Heaven

because in deep respect for the Muslim culture.

So he was charming and said, So now on Black Hawk,

I can say I want to bring in four Black Hawks

and four Night Birds.

But to do that, I've got to bring 125 rangers.

You know what a ranger is?

It's heavy duty, real thing

because they'll be the insurance on the Black Hawk

and I can't have my actors fast roping down,

that's got to be a ranger

because if somebody falls, I'm in trouble.

And he says, I'll do that,

but you have to get the Pentagon

to write me a note inviting us to send to me

because I welcome the American army and their devices.

So he did that.

He wrote in to the Pentagon,

the Pentagon goes, Okay, we're on.

So he sent in four Black Hawks, four Night Birds,

and 2,505 rangers.

I am working in a village near Rabat,

which used to be called the robbery coast

where all the pirates were.

I took over the village, it's a town,

but in the town,

I said, We're going to be up

and down all your streets.

So I employed 1,500 people in the town every day for like

three months, four months, and they loved it

and every one of them could use handler weapon

or could sprint in flip flops.

And they could run in ragged clothing and shoot.

From Sierra Leone, Congo, everything.

Fantastic.

[Interviewer] What did that film teach you about war?

No one wins. Everyone dies.

Everyone gets hurt.

[upbeat music]

We shall prevail.

[screen explodes]

[Narrator] On January 24th, Apple Computer

will introduce Macintosh,

and you'll see why 1984 won't be like 1984.

We're basically going to be controlled by 1984

by a hierarchy.

And I think the hierarchy is this.

This is genius and a fucking disaster.

Get your kid to go climb a tree and leave this at home,

all right?

So I didn't meet Steve Jobs,

I think I met Wozniak and I drew my board

and they went, Oh, that's cool.

Here's this silly thing. I said, What's it for?

He said, A computer.

But it doesn't mention computer. No.

It doesn't mention the price. Well, how much is it?

Two and a half thousand. That's expensive.

How wrong I was, I should have bought stock then.

Secure from the pests are very contradictory.

[Interviewer] And why the woman in the red and white?

Well, she was a great looking athlete.

Why not? Jesus Christ, okay?

She was good.

And I liked that we invented the hammer,

like the hammer and sickle and all that

so we're underscoring the possibility

of oppression from there.

So the guy on screen, we shot him in that morning,

ranting because he wasn't crew, we just got him to rant

and she destroyed this oppression.

And I had 200 skinheads there

because I couldn't afford to shave a woman's head,

so I told the skinheads, I said,

Listen, you get breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I'm going to throw this thing at the screen.

I'm going to then blow you, cover with talcum powder,

and I want you all to go, 'Oh.'

And they did. [laughs]

[upbeat music]

But you are advising me.

I just need you to be sure that you're locked in

because I don't know,

maybe I should tell you what Mickey Rourke told

what's-his-face?

That's my recommendation anyway, counselor. Don't do it.

The Counselor I've been beaten up for,

but actually he's the best dialoguist in the business,

Cormac McCarthy.

I'd already had his Blood Meridian.

And then he sent me, he'd written the screenplay

and the dialogue was the best dialogue I ever read.

I fell in love with the dialogue.

I got Brad Pitt, all those people

in four days.

They said, I'll do it.

So we were able to make that film for nothing.

Made that film for a lower price for us.

Then would be about 32 million.

For that film with that cast, everybody, Penelope Cruz,

Michael Fassbender, Cameron Diaz.

[upbeat music]

[Interviewer] And how did you approach the scene

with Cameron having sex with the car?

Yes, I said,

How do you feel about climbing out the car

and making love to this Ferrari?

She said, No problem.

[Interviewer] Box splits.

Yeah, that's not her.

That's somebody else who did the splits.

[upbeat music]

[suspenseful music]

La.

La.

[metal clangs]

[soldier screams]

Kill it.

[soldier screams]

I was fairly well to do because of advertising

and when I was 38, I realized, my god,

I'm never going to make a movie.

And so I started reading.

I've always been economic, public domain.

And we read a 100-page novela called The Duellists.

Joseph Conrad would be his large sketch idea

for his kind of War and Peace.

So I've got it free.

And I found a very good writer called Gerry Vaughn-Hughes,

who's probably one of the best writers

I've come across in the industry.

He's sadly passed.

But I got this beautiful script from him.

And from that, did the journey

because I could afford to fly and travel.

And I flew to Canada to see Hallmark Hall of Fame

because they said they'd seen and knew I was doing this.

When I got there they said, Well, this is more of a movie.

I said, Why didn't you say that before I left?

So then, so I went to Hollywood, shopped it round,

didn't get it going, came back to England

and finally called up David Puttnam, now Lord Putnam,

who said, This is a good script.

I said, I know.

And he said, We can probably get this together.

So he introduced me to Paramount.

In so doing, we got it going.

[swords clanging]

The opening line of meeting Harvey in New York.

He said, You want me to play a Hussar?

You got to be out your fucking mind.

And he said, I've never handled a sword before

and I don't get on horses.

So I said, That's exactly what I want,

because Harvey would take two hands to a saber

and use it like an alley cat fight.

I wanted an alley cat fight, none of this elegant nonsense.

So Harvey would spit and come at him with a saber.

But Harvey was great because he was the opposite.

Napoleon was very smart.

He realized very quickly the new guard,

I say the working class guys who became officers,

he realized he needed the old guard as well.

So you had to start it very quickly

to graft the two together.

So that's what it was all also about,

which is very smart.

[upbeat music]

Nothing is more magical

[horse neighs]

As long as they roam the earth,

evil can never harm the pure of heart.

Legend was a fairy story

written by guy who's a cowboy

from way north above Montana.

William Hjortsberg who'd written two great books

called Symbiography and Falling Angel

that Alan Parker had made into a film called Angel Heart.

And I called him up and said,

Can you come and meet me? I want you to do a fairy story.

He said, Okay.

So he gets in the car and he arrives and we have breakfast

in the Beverly Hills Hotel.

I show him Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.

He said, What's it about?

I said, in a word,

I said, About the fastest steed alive, a unicorn.

Okay.

Opens his wallet,

and inside he had a piece of origami, which is a unicorn.

What a weird coincidence

because it would be about a unicorn.

But I used the same unicorn in Blade Runner,

but from it, I needed the devil.

And I was so blown away with Tim Curry

and he came in and said, Yes, I'll do it.

He was so much fun playing the devil.

[devil laughs]

We are all animals, my lady. [laughs]

But in this, Mia Sara and Tom Cruise is 21.

Tom is 21.

The film's great.