A Fallen Hero: Appreciating Tony Scott, by Chris Derrick – Sympathy for the Devil #24 | @MDWorld

Director Ron Howard tweeted “No more Tony Scott movies” upon hearing the news, and as someone who didn’t know the man, only his inspiring and expansive work, that is truly sad. He will be missed and my heart and sympathies go out to his only surviving brother, Ridley, his wife, Donna, and Tony’s two children.

Ever since THE LAST BOY SCOUT was released about 22 years ago, I’ve eagerly anticipated every single film project that Tony directed – whether it was the best Quinten Tarantino-scripted film TRUE ROMANCE, the first Denzel Washington collaboration CRIMSON TIDE (there would be four more) or the quixotic DOMINO – even the extended narrative commercials like the muscular BMW FILM: Beat The Devil or the sublimeAgent Orange for Amazon Theater, I was in line to buy a ticket opening weekend for all of them (or getting the mini-film download for the web projects; speaking of which, go hunt down the commercial spot he directed starring Marlon Brando).

When THE HUNGER was released on DVD, I picked that up early, too… it was compelling on so many visual levels, which belie its initial commercial and critical response; there was always something extra vibrant and charged in his films… like the world didn’t have time to stand still, so neither did his camera, the characters and the plot.

As an actual fine artist, Tony brought a painterly point of entry to the color and compositional elements to his films that elevated the so-called fluff to cinematic equivalent of cocaine bump… I don’t know if or how he was influenced by Jackson Pollack, but the power and potency of Pollack’s work seeped into Tony’s films and commercials with élan and manic energy that every action director wanted a piece of. Tony never received the critical acclaim that Ridley did, choosing to be the popcorn movie master, but I almost feel like if Tony was painting and creating more personal piece of art that he could completely control, then why bump heads with the commercial monster of Hollywood – embrace its demands… and, boy, did he!

His collaborations with Denzel Washington are some of my favorite Denzel performances; they are nuanced explorations of Denzel’s personality writ large on a massive stage that crackles with nitroglycerin-infused unstable energy. MAN ON FIRE is a masterpiece, easily one of the top films of the 2000s to come out of Hollywood… a redemption story to end all redemption stories; skip the fact that it was a remake of a 80s film based on a pulp fiction/crackerjack novel, Tony infused it with a level of pathos that similar, yet lesser films stridently yearned for (and Marvel’s PUNISHER films could still take a lesson from), and Tony utilized a visual language (that hand-cranked camera? The hypnotic and ethereal multiple exposures? What studio film has been so bold before or since?) that is diamond-perfect for that tale.

I quote and reference that film and its magnetic storytelling all the time, as a Hero’s Journey tale it’s one of the best without being clichéd or repeatable. The Baroque stylings of the entire film seethe with a type of addictive adrenaline rush that is the high watermark for any and all action dramas. The jump from SPY GAME to MAN ON FIRE was unexpectedly fresh and appropriately bombastic for a genre that has trouble being compelling, interesting and vital (it’s SO easy to fall into the same old tropes with action films… leave the real, not manufactured, drama out and you have the crap that nearly bankrupted the genre after the 90s spate).

Maybe he pushed it too far in DOMINO, but that’s the kind of experimental failure you want to have, and in ratcheting it back for DÉJÀ VU and UNSTOPPABLE, Tony demonstrated that he was still a tenured professor in the powerhouse school of modern action. In his mids60s, to crank out a runaway train project (which, on the surface seemed like an odd choice) is nothing short of jaw-dropping. My hat was always off to Tony.

As a filmmaker myself, I’ve boosted stylistic flourishes from his work (as Picasso said, “If there’s something to steal, I steal”) to enhance my own work. Who better to learn from? Who better to expropriate pieces of the fringe of cinematic grammar for my own cinematic sentences?

His cinematic art will live on (that’s the beauty of movies, isn’t it?) and so will his legacy (which is by no means tainted in light of how he passed), and is something that we can continue to cherish, remember, respect and learn from. I’ll be having a Tony Scott marathon over the next few weeks.

I wonder if he was buried with his weather-beaten, faded pink hat? That’s how I will remember him – a man neck-deep in the most macho of cinema, off-setting the testosterone and chaotic mayhem with that comical hat; surely that was part of the dichotomy that made him special and that we will never get to experience anew.

Rest In Peace, Tony… you deserve it.

— A man’s character is his fate (Heraclitus)
— Execution is the detailed proof of a concept