Ridley Scott: A Biography

PROLOGUE

March 25, 2001: Oscar night in Hollywood. Gladiator had twelve nominations. Ridley Scott walked from his limo to the red carpet and then to his seat in Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium. Scott had never won the Oscar for Best Director—would this be his night?

Ridley Scott has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director three times. First, in 1992, he was chosen for Thelma & Louise. Scott’s third nomination was in 2002 for Black Hawk Down, but it was Scott’s second nomination, for Gladiator in 2001, that seemed destined to bring home the coveted gold-plated statue. His competition that night was Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Steven Soderbergh, double-nominated for Traffic and Erin Brockovich, and Lasse Hallström for Chocolat.

As Scott waited during the lengthy and often tedious internationally broadcast ceremony, he watched as Gladiator, a film about warriors, a theme he would revisit many times, lauded critically and at the box office, won Oscars for Costume Design, Visual Effects, Sound, Best Actor in a leading role, and finally Hollywood’s Holy Grail—Best Picture, but when the name was called for Best Director, it was Steven Soderbergh for Traffic—not Ridley Scott. Ridley Scott must have been incensed that night. Much later, in 2014, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, "I remember one year when E.T. got best film and Steven Spielberg didn’t get best director. I said, ‘What? Where did they think he was?’ … You can’t separate best film from best director, that’s crazy."

Ridley Scott seems headed for one of three Oscar destinies. First, the Scorsese syndrome, in which a passed-over director finally wins a Best Director Oscar for a film that may not be as good as those overlooked in the past. Second, he could be a member of the Alfred Hitchcock group and never win the competitive Best Director award. Finally, he could receive a special Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, as was the Academy’s acknowledgment to directors Orson Welles, Sidney Lumet, and Robert Altman.

Oscars are symbolically important in the motion picture industry; they also can be a source of pride, accomplishment, and recognition for the recipients. It can be assumed that Scott would appreciate such recognition, but regardless of Ridley Scott’s Oscar destiny, the director’s body of work will continue to speak for itself.

INTRODUCTION

In film, it’s very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

Ridley Scott

I don’t ever blink. Honestly.

Ridley Scott

The problem about making movies is, when you go away, your life stands still.

Ridley Scott

All film directors have a bit of the businessperson in them—after all, it is called the film business—but Ridley Scott truly is a businessman as well as a filmmaker. At 6:00 each morning he is on the phone to one or more of his offices: London, New York, Los Angeles, or Hong Kong. He talks for one to two hours. He makes the calls from a chauffeur-driven car designed to replicate an executive suite with all the accoutrements. If he is shooting a film, he puts pencil to paper wherever he is—at home, in the car, on the set—and when he wraps for the night, Ridley Scott is back in the car on the phone, often in conversation with his Los Angeles company. When he arrives home he eats dinner, watches a film other than one of his, sketches out plans for the days to come on the work in progress, and retires by 10:00, so he can be up the next day at 5:30 a.m. to start all over again.

Ridley Scott lords over Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), which creates countless commercials, music videos, TV series, and movies and employs as many as sixty directors at any one time. He also rules over Scott Free, a production company reserved for his personal feature film directing projects. Scott is a top shareholder in a consortium that owns Pinewood and Shepperton Studios and The Mill. He has had success in television as an executive producer of numerous shows, including the long-running hit legal drama series The Good Wife. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool businessman, he told Tim Walker.¹ He claims that if he were not a filmmaker, he would be Lord Alan Sugar, the billionaire British magnate, media and political adviser, and host of the BBC’s The Apprentice.

Scott has directed both large and small movies. His choice of project varies, as does his method of choosing; sometimes he receives an offer to direct a film, other times he adapts a book or an original script, sometimes he looks for a particular subject or genre. He has been a director-for-hire, but rarely, if ever, does he make a selection solely based on market demands. Given his track record, body of work, and the enormous amounts of money his films have yielded to a wide range of backers and distributors in the studio system, he seldom struggles to get a film made or to attract investors. There are not many British or American film directors at eighty-one years old who are still steadily plying their trade. Scott’s power as a filmmaker lies in his incredible stamina, his ability to make one film after another while overseeing his business ventures and developing series and special projects for television. He makes the movies he wants and has myriad projects ahead of him and in development ready to convert into the next Ridley Scott project. This assures him that he will always have the next venture on tap—no unimportant feat in itself.

Ridley Scott is both an auteur and a visualist. Andrew Sarris, a key American advocate of the auteur theory, states that a film director is the author of a film through the force of a consistent creative vision. Critics rarely attempt to evaluate Ridley Scott as an auteur because they can’t seem to hunt down recurring themes or a consistent style in his films. This book will identify and explore these themes and analyze the style of Ridley Scott’s movies. Scott has rightly been labeled a visualist, and some critics infer a negative connotation to the work of directors identified as such. But Ridley’s work as a visualist is not necessarily accomplished at the price of content, story, and character development. Critics claim he is not an actor’s director; nevertheless, in his work with major stars, character actors, and masses of extras, he is regularly praised by performers who believe he trusts their talent and contribution.

British film critic John Grierson summed up the industry’s attitude toward visualists in 1932 when he wrote, When a director dies, he becomes a photographer. The criticism suggests that if a director pays extreme attention to the camera and lighting, he or she is akin to a photographer, not a moviemaker. Nevertheless, Ridley Scott is in good company with renowned visualists Josef von Sternberg (the classic director of The Scarlet Empress [1934] and The Shanghai Gesture [1941] known for his elaborate lighting and camerawork), Stanley Kubrick, and Andrei Tarkovsky. In fact, the components embraced by the visualist are there for all film directors, but it is the emphasis on pure visual storytelling, and the artistry and intensity with which this is applied, that separates the visualist from those practicing a generalized cinematic storytelling model.

By observation and his own acknowledgment, Scott is a film director obsessed with light. It is light that illuminates both the screen and the story being told. Combined with location and production design, light creates the mood and atmosphere in which Scott’s film narratives live and breathe. The quality of light in a film is often taken for granted, but there is no seeing without light. The visualist paints with light while others present a wash with an occasional dramatic shading. Ridley Scott has talked about being a student of light, a study he conducts endlessly whether making a movie, walking outside, or simply sitting in a room in his home.

Still photography came before cinematography. Light striking a plate, film, or digital component produces an image. Of the many arts within this magic box are two critical aspects: angle and size are essential aspects of composition. Where a figure, object, or land or water mass is placed is the art of composition. The visualist painstakingly composes shot after shot complementing and contrasting them to visually tell a specific story. The angle is the way the subject is approached. Whether it be from the right or left, side view, or other, the angle sends a dramatic message of how the shot should be read—for power or weakness, distinction, or for another way of seeing what has been shown. Movies are about time and space—how long a shot is held and the varying of size work with the story to visually comment on the narrative and the people in the narrative.

And before still photography, of course, there was art. The first painters to work in a square or rectangular format, regardless of the length and width, were leading the way for filmmakers. Early in his career Ridley Scott worked as a production designer and expanded his visualist skills which, because he was a student of art, included painting. A visualist must select the palette of the film, the colors and shades of colors that will have an emotional and psychological impact on the audience. Ridley Scott’s continual practice of painting sharpens his eye for painting each shot with the proper hue and tone.

In her book If It’s Purple, Someone’s Gonna Die: The Power of Color in Visual Storytelling, Patti Bellantoni shares her deep understanding of the narrative and emotional meaning put forth by color in a motion picture. Red can be powerful, lusty, and defiant. Yellow can be obsessive, daring, and exuberant. Blue can be cerebral and powerless, and purple could be mystical, ominous, and ethereal. As examples she cites Blade Runner and its use of blood-red and orange to depict the polluted air to demonstrate the degradation of the environment of Los Angeles. In Gladiator purple is used to convey an ominous sense, a growing threat from a corrupt and evil leader.

Ridley Scott is a workaholic who rarely socializes. Writer Lynn Barber of the Guardian suggested to the director that perhaps he has not won an Oscar for Best Director because he’s admired but not liked in Hollywood, to which he replied, Possibly, but that puts me on the cutting edge, which is useful!²

Ridley Scott is a man whose life is dominated by the creation of moving images in long and short form. Ridley Scott: A Biography investigates the man and his films, revealing the intersection of his personal life and his tenacious work ethic, with the intention of balancing the criticisms of his work with his decades of success. Recognizing that Scott’s oeuvre is not without failures, this biography’s objective is to celebrate the overarching career of one of cinema’s shining talents.

In this book I will crosscut between the biographical facts of Ridley Scott’s life and times and his work life as a director and producer of short films; television commercials; TV series, movies, and miniseries; and feature film motion pictures. I will also explore Ridley Scott as media businessman, son, brother, husband, father, painter, production designer, drawer of Ridleygrams, and total filmmaker. My goal is to establish a connection between the aesthetics, intellect, and emotions that drive Ridley Scott’s film obsession and make them work.

As of 2018, Scott has directed twenty-five films covering many genres: historical/period, film noir, science fiction, horror, dramedy, comedy, and religious epics. In his feature film work Ridley Scott continually returns to war as his content. The Duellists, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, G.I. Jane, Gladiator, Robin Hood, and Body of Lies are all about some aspect of the military and war. As a boy in England, Scott witnessed the terror of World War II as he experienced the Blitz. The darkness produced by war can be found not only in the films mentioned above but in the dark countenance of nonwar Ridley Scott films such as Alien, Hannibal, and Black Rain.

Ridley Scott is both a cinematic storyteller and a visualist. All film directors tell stories visually in the motion picture medium, but some put greater emphasis on the script and performers, while others are more likely to use elements of the film crafts including cinematography, production design, sound, costumes, editing, and music. Ridley Scott: A Biography will identify and trace those elements that form each Scott film and examine the personal characteristics of the man who made them.

A critical biography of a filmmaker follows the artist’s life and the art he or she practices. It is my hope that by the end of this journey, the reader will understand the yin and yang of the exceptional entirety of Ridley Scott as man and as director, including his misunderstood and underappreciated motion pictures, and will value the depth of Ridley Scott’s accomplishments.

1

MOTHER’S MILK

The Early Life of Ridley Scott

A work of art is the result of a unique temperament.

Oscar Wilde

Ridley Scott was born on November 30, 1937, in South Shields in Northumberland, northeast England, to Elizabeth and Francis Percy Scott. His mother was born in 1906, an under-five-foot dynamo and a miner’s daughter. She had an iron will and a love for the cinema that she shared with her son. During the 1930s Ridley’s father, known in the family as Frank, was a partner in a successful commercial shipping business based in Newcastle. The onset of World War II and the threat of a German U-boat presence put a halt to the company. Frank Scott entered the military, where he was one of those responsible for the Mulberry Harbour operation—part of the intricate planning of the Normandy invasions. Because of his knowledge of shipping and transportation, Frank rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was a member of the Royal Engineers, a corps of the British Army tracing back to the time of William the Conqueror that provided military engineering and other technical support to the British armed forces.

Ridley Scott believes he was influenced by his father’s nature. He told Steve Szkotak of the Associated Press, His whole mindset on simplicity and order and reliability, I guess set into me. It’s part of my upbringing, part of my schooling.¹

In postwar defeated Germany, Colonel Scott was part of the Allied Control Council; therefore Ridley spent his early school years in Germany. After experiencing years of food rationing during the war, with no access to produce and other foods, the young Ridley found the US supermarket on the military base a special place. I fuckin’ loved that place: polished apples, gleaming fruit, bananas. We hadn’t seen that in England for years, Scott told John Patterson of the Guardian. Three smells always remind me of America: Juicy Fruit gum, Coca-Cola and raspberry milkshakes. They defined that time. And then it was back to Stockton-on-Tees for the next 13 years.²

While in Germany, Ridley Scott avoided taking the eleven-plus exam required in England to determine the secondary school he’d attend. A mediocre student, Scott thought he would not have passed. His father’s status allowed the family to bypass many of the class strictures that could have constrained his future plans.

As Ridley Scott told Paul M. Sammon, author of the indispensable Ridley Scott, Close Up, So Dad got a job in the Army and became a commissioned officer … during the last two years of World War II he was attached to the War Office, and associated with Churchill.³

Because of his father’s assignments, Ridley attended ten schools before he was ready for college. He was enrolled in a school for expatriate children nestled in a former U-boat barrack. I walked to school past 100 U-boats every morning, Scott explained to John Patterson. They were still cocooned in plastic because they didn’t know what to do with them.⁴

Like many an English schoolboy, Ridley played conkers, a game in which a hole is drilled into a large horse chestnut then threaded with a large piece of string knotted at one or both ends to secure the conker. It is a two-person game. Each player takes turns hitting the other’s conker. One player lets the conker hang from the full length of string while the opponent swings at it, taking turns until one breaks the other’s conker to score a point. Ridley Scott’s competitive spirit began early, as he explained to the Guardian in 2005. I’m afraid I was quite competitive and used to cheat by baking my chestnut in the oven until it was very hard, then polishing it with bootblack so it looked shiny and new. Then I’d have this lethal missile like granite on a string.⁵

Ridley’s older brother, Frank Scott, born in 1934, became a shipping captain. Frank was in the merchant navy from a young age, and he and Ridley didn’t see each other much while Ridley was growing up.

Scott was just a tyke during the horrendous Nazi bombing blitz. We were living in Ealing and they were bombing the streets, Scott told the Hollywood Reporter’s Stephen Galloway. I was 2, 2½, 3 and we hid behind the stairs. I remember I had a little lamp, and we’d sing songs while we heard the bombs.⁶

Studies point to the monumental effects the war had on children, although the complete emotional impact and aftereffects can’t be quantified. Statistics from 1940–1941 reveal that during the Blitz approximately one in ten children were killed by deadly air attacks. The lives of those who survived were drastically changed. Birthday and Christmas presents were sparse. Food was rationed. Recreational trips were limited. The warning sirens were loud and blaring. The threat from the skies made going to bed especially frightening. The overall stress lasted for years and took a toll on everyone, but most especially on the little ones.

Anthony David Scott, Ridley’s younger brother, was born on June 21, 1944, in Stockton-on-Tees, England. For the majority of his life he was known as Tony. In the same Hollywood Reporter article by Stephen Galloway, Tony Scott recalled, We had a brilliant upbringing and we never wanted for anything. Dad was a gentle sweet man. Mum was the matriarch and the patriarch of the family. She ran the roost with a steel fist, but at the same time there was respect and love for her. The driving force Ridley and I have comes from Mum, but they were chalk and cheese. There was a real big, sweet heart to her and at the same time a determination and toughness … like Ridley. We were a very, very tight family.

In an interview with Kenneth Turan in 2010, Ridley Scott confessed to secret thoughts about being a film director as a boy watching films in the local cinema. He kept his dreams quiet, however, because in the North of England, the part of the woods where I came from, that would be unthinkable. The film industry and all that stuff was the other side of the moon. He also thought about acting but reflected, That was too silly for words, I wouldn’t dare. But at school, even like 7 or 8 years old, if there was some kind of play, like a nativity play, I’d always get involved. And though I totally enjoyed it, I never really thought there was any road ahead.⁷

Scott explained to Kenneth Turan his belief that his ability to handle high levels of stress came from his mother, describing her as the master stresser. As to his own reputation as master and commander, as Turan describes him, this can also be traced to his mother. Producer Brian Grazer, with whom Scott has worked twice, says definitively, Nothing stops him, nothing. Paradoxically, Ridley Scott has been described as reflective and low-key in conversation, but on the set and whenever he is working he has a strong, relentless leadership presence.

Ridley Scott and his family spoke in the Geordie accent characteristic of people from the larger Tyneside region of northeast England. Geordie speech evolved from the Old English spoken by the Anglo-Saxon settlers of the region, together with Scottish and Irish influences. (Musicians Sting and Mark Knopfler are also Geordies.) At this point, with so much exposure to American accents, Scott’s speech has been described as a blend of Geordie and the sound of the West Coast; the Telegraph’s Mark Monahan noted, His Geordie accent remains, beneath a drizzle of California. During the making of Exodus: Gods and Kings, actor Joel Edgerton observed that Ridley Scott’s heritage helped shape his demeanor: He’s a Geordie, so he’s not a big man for compliments—very dry.

The origin of Ridley Scott’s surname is likely traceable to the Boernician clans of the Scottish-English border region. The Boernicians were one of the ancient tribes from which many Scottish names are derived. The first family of Scotts on record was found in Brabourne during the fourteenth century. The name means painted warrior in Celtic.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Ridley’s great-uncle Dixon Scott started building a cinema theater empire. Dixon Scott strove to educate his audiences by presenting local stories and newsreels from global sources. His immediate family worked with him to bring moving pictures to Newcastle and the surrounding areas. Dixon Scott believed he had created a business that represented the lower classes rather than the wealthy and snobbish. Dixon Scott died in 1939 when Ridley Scott was only two years old, and Tony Scott was not yet born. It’s uncertain what precisely the boys knew firsthand about their late great-uncle and his empire, but it is perhaps more than a coincidence that both Ridley and Tony became moviemakers who created films for the masses. It was in movie theaters that Ridley Scott learned about the cinemas of America and Europe, and they fueled his passion to make films of his own.

South Shields is a cold and harsh place where the people are tough, industrious, and taciturn. It is a coastal area where the river Tyne meets the North Sea. The children of South Shields, like Ridley Scott, learn to be sturdy and self-reliant.

During the Victorian era, there was a coal-mining boom in South Shields. The population grew from twelve thousand in 1801 to seventy-five thousand in the 1860s. In the 1850s shipbuilding was a leading industry. During World War II repeated Nazi air raids caused destruction and loss of life in the area.

Ridley Scott inherited a quality bred in most British men of his era: the well-known stiff upper lip, referring to an individual who displays strength and fortitude in adversity. Brits with this trait are considered unemotional. As Scott matured he developed a reserve often associated with this British characteristic. He was frequently perceived as taciturn, cool in nature, and even enigmatic. Actors and crews accustomed to working for outgoing, loquacious, and personable directors found Scott a bit mysterious—a man who kept his state of mind hidden. He could talk, discuss, and interact with others; still, the overall impression was that his thoughts and sentiments were tightly held. In discussion with Lynn Barber for the Guardian he said, As an Englishman, I’m aghast at emotional intensity.⁸

Ridley Scott’s passion for art and drawing came early. At age six he was drawing ships and horses. At nineteen, however, he wanted to follow his father’s track and join the military. Frank persuaded his son to go to art school instead. Frank himself was a talented artist in pen and ink. Scott believes his father may have influenced his own deep love of drawing and painting. Ridley had a particular interest in comic strips. He studied the compositions in the panels and how the characters were placed and related to their environment. His favorites were those that dealt with the dark side of life, like Little Orphan Annie, a perspective he would explore in many of his films. My safety valve was art, Ridley Scott told the Hollywood Reporter. My parents thought I was a bit strange because when someone else would have gone dancing, I was always painting…. I never thought about the future at all.⁹

At this time Ridley Scott was very shy and had no involvement with girls. Tony Scott reflects on his brother’s early drive and talent in the BBC documentary about Ridley Scott, Eye of the Storm: He was the older brother; I always looked up to my older brother. He was tough; he always seemed to have a fire, a focus on where he wanted his life to go at a very early age. I didn’t. I was always sort of scrambling a little bit. Rid was constantly drawing and when everyone else was watching television, he sat off in the other room doing beautiful little drawings; he had as a child a photographic memory which he could transfer down to his fingers and did these great very real reproductions of life. At his age it was amazing that he had that skill.¹⁰

My one real talent from a very early age was that I was able to draw pretty well, that was a constant, Ridley Scott explained to Kenneth Turan. I was doing oils by the time I was like 8 or 9. I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, ‘Why don’t you go to the dance with the boys?’ And I’m going, ‘no, I’m perfectly happy.’ I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.

Scott’s early school career was not successful; he did poorly in most classes due to lack of interest. One teacher, Mr. Cleeland, told the boy that he should go to art school—that was what Ridley did best. That was the best advice I ever got in my life, as soon as I entered art school, it was like the sun rose, Scott told Turan.

Elizabeth and Francis Scott were loving parents who wholeheartedly accepted Ridley’s desire to go to art school and supported the decision completely. They knew they had a talented, artistic boy and they wanted him to develop those interests and abilities.

The very first film Ridley Scott remembers seeing was the pirate movie The Black Swan starring Tyrone Power and Maureen O’Hara, directed by Henry King and written by Ben Hecht. It was released in 1942 when Scott was five years old. The film was in Technicolor, and the bright, heavily saturated colors caught Ridley’s nascent artist’s eye. Scott talks about being gonged by Rita Hayworth in Gilda (1946). Although as an adult he knew he’d been too young to see this sophisticated and very sexy film, his reaction seemed to lie between a cinematic one and that of a very young male. When she sang, ‘Put the Blame on Mame,’ something funny happened to me. I think I was about 7, but I definitely got the urge. I realized there was something special about Rita, he told Kenneth Turan.

Scott has strong memories of his mother taking him to see the Orson Welles masterpiece Citizen Kane. As a boy he didn’t totally comprehend the plot, but he perceived there was a conscious artistic mind behind the film. He told Lynn Barber for the Guardian, Everything in the screen from left to right, and right to left was considered.

Later he would go to the cinema every week—alone, because he didn’t want any distractions. He stayed to watch the A and B pictures over and over, starting at 2:00 in the afternoon. He’d finally leave for home at 10:00 at night. He always read the credits carefully, noting that the job of art director might be something he could do.

Ridley Scott studied graphic design and painting at the West Hartlepool College of Art at West Hartlepool in Stockton-on-Tees, Teesside, from 1954 to 1958. He received a BA diploma in design. Stephen Crowther, a teacher at the West Hartlepool College, thought Ridley Scott was talented, deeming his work comparable to the best American illustrators. Some on the school’s staff thought his work was slick and not really appropriate for painting.

After graduation, Scott decided to enter national service as a marine for two years. He was at a crossroads in his life. Art was in his blood, but so was the military, which had been a tremendous influence in his life through his father’s service and his brother Frank’s career in the merchant navy. Below the surface young Ridley Scott was attracted to self-discipline and organization. The inner workings of war fascinated and obsessed him and would surface in two major ways during his career. In terms of content, he would make at least seven films and produce other projects that were solely or partly about war. His directing style, while not militaristic in the fullest sense, is based on high organization, orderly planning, and disciplined execution.

His father talked him out of joining the marines, convincing him instead to continue to study art. There were no film schools in England at the time. The Royal College of Art (RCA) in London accepted him in 1958, offering him a liberal scholarship. The Royal College of Art was a public research university that specialized in art and design. The college’s objective was to advance learning, knowledge, and professionalism in art and design and to create a standard compatible