RIP Tony Scott (the director)

http://www.dailybreeze.com/latestnews/ci_21349685/breaking-man-who-jumped-from-vincent-thomas-bridge

what the

wow!
RIP

insanity

so, so bizarre

two young kids...

Good GRIEF. Gonna file this under 'WTF'

Vincent Thomas Bridge is a v well known landmark -- a good friend grew up nearby, will have to ask her if there's been a history of suicides from it.

"Scott and his older brother, producer Ridley Scott"

The bridge had a featured role in the film Head, featuring rock group The Monkees, released in 1968. The first scene of the film features a dedication ceremony for the bridge, which is interrupted by the group members, who commit suicide by running into the middle of the ceremony and jumping off the bridge.

He and Ridley seemed to be producing more and more (The Good Wife et al). A few years back, there was talk of them buying MGM. RIP.

Holy shit

He was sometimes awesome as a director and sometimes awful, the latter in at least interesting ways.

And for a decent length of time he was making better movies than his bro.

Love so many of his movies.

RIP

yeah, will rep for The Hunger and Deja Vu. a real shame.

Whoa what the shit, this is awful

wowwww

unbelievable. RIP.

tonys art is death... he just painted his masterpiece

Just woke up to this. Just wow, wtf. It's difficult to imagine that someone so successful and well liked could be in so much pain and see this as a solution.

So utterly sad. Leaving behind his wife and kids. Depression can happen to everyone. So so sad. RIP.

I'm completely flummoxed at this... I'm not the only person who thought that for awhile he had a better run of movies that Ridley did.

Just woke up jetlagged to see this on the bbc news, and really couldn't believe it for a couple of minutes. Deja Vu is really one of my favorite movies from the last decade, and I enjoyed everything of his that I've seen. RIP.

Deja Vu really is awesome. For a while I thought me thinking that was challops. Glad to see others loved it too.

He and his brother were working on a film adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s book “Killing Lincoln” set to be released next year.

tonys art is death... he just painted his masterpiece

― WheatusVEVO (Hungry4Ass), Monday, August 20, 2012 1:38 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

guilty lols

Pretty incredible. I'd interviewed him once or twice, and he seemed such a bright, perceptive, nice person. One of the rare guys who left his cell phone number and said just to call any time.

I'm completely flummoxed at this... I'm not the only person who thought that for awhile he had a better run of movies that Ridley did.

― Elvis Telecom, Monday, August 20, 2012 3:49 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yup.

http://cinema-scope.com/cinema-scope-online/world-out-of-order-tony-scotts-vertigo/

my wife loves all the tony/denzel movies so much

http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/08/20/tony-scott-david-krumholtz-numb3rs/

numb3rs is aw3some btw

Now that I've time to (literally) sleep on all this, I almost wonder a bit if there was...not a manic/depressive split per se, but definitely complementary halves between a gregarious workaholic and something only the close family ever saw, if they ever did. Maybe he always had a black dog that just finally caught him.

The fact about the contact list and the note seems like extreme deliberation -- but then again he could have just easily written that up earlier that morning.

The only one of his films I could watch again is Spy Games, which was okay in a look-at-these-star-turns sort of way. Maybe Crimson Tide holds up too, I dunno.

*Spy Game obv

I know plenty of goths who will be busting out The Hunger at least.

I feel bad thinking of all the riffs on this. Like, the words of the suicide note flying across the screen as disjointed hypertext. Or Denzel suiting up to avenge the mysterious death of his friend. But the fact that there are Tony Scott tropes to riff on at all is what distinguished him from hacks like Michael Bay or Brett Ratner, who have no traits at all other than inanity and a similar love of filters.

His Tarantino stuff, Crimson Tide and True Romance, are both pretty good. Lots of people love The Last Boy Scout and Revenge (the latter of which features a Tarantino commentary track on DVD).

The Last Boy Scout is awesome. I give Shane Black the credit though

Worth a read -- some extended snippets from an interview around when his Pelham remake was released, along with a link to the full interview:

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Remembering-Tony-Scott-His-Own-Words-32561.html

this stuck out in one of the obits:

"The biggest edge I live on is directing. That's the most scary, dangerous thing you can do in your life," Scott said in an interview for his 1995 naval adventure "Crimson Tide." "The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through."

But the fact that there are Tony Scott tropes to riff on at all is what distinguished him from hacks like Michael Bay or Brett Ratner, who have no traits at all other than inanity and a similar love of filters.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 20, 2012 9:54 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

unfair to bay - his style is super distinct, nobody else on the planet makes movies like him (thank g_d)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/tony-scott-in-his-memory-a-tribute-to-top-gun/2012/08/20/128347de-ead0-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_blog.html

Nice writeup from Glenn Kenny.

inoperable brain cancer http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/top-gun-director-tony-scott-inoprable-brain-cancer/story?id=17039434#.UDJgO2NYtRc

I loved True Romance and maybe I'm the only one but I really dug Domino at the time.

Inoperable brain cancer? fffuuuu

that i guess makes this all slightly less bizarre and difficult to understand. such an over the top dramatic way to choose to go in that context, but then when you consider who we're talking about...

i wonder what's more painful: a loved one jumping to his death from a bridge, or watching him slowly dying of inoperable brain cancer. probably the latter...

My uncle died from brain cancer, he went through a lot of slow, prolonged suffering.

it's pretty terrible in any circumstance imo to just leave your family behind with nothing but a note. but i suppose you can't really have a conversation about how you plan to commit suicide and expect them to just be like "ok, bye" and let you go for it.

I liked to loved all of his movies that I saw - Enemy of the States is totes underrated, fucking love the shit out of Man on Fire/Domino/Deja Vu. Trite, I guess, but he seemed like a director who loved making movies. They're never ponderous and even at their most over-blown his movies weren't a filmed videogame like most action movies.

he seemed like a director who loved making movies

As good an assessment as any.

sorry this happened to him.

As for the films: __________.

let me amend that; I can somewhat dirtily confess to having liked The Last Boy Scout.

That Cinemablend interview was great; love how candid he was.

Watching clips from True Romance and remembering how that kinda changed my life a bit in college. I must have watched it a good 3 or 4 times in the theater.

I always get Last Boy Scout confused with Last Action Hero and jump to say 'He killed Mozart!' :/

last boy scout is a good movie, no shame

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/rip-tony-scott

most of his movies are straight garbage though

I suppose it means something to be a step up from Michael Bay's pay grade

the only one I straight up HATED was Deja Vu. that was some timey-wimey bullshit

His best IMO.

I can't even

why

sorry this happened to him.

As for the films: __________.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 20, 2012 9:14 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

ladies and gentlemen, the classiest Dr Morbius post you will ever see on an RIP thread

xpost http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/reverses-2-love-folds-space-and-time

forgot this existed even though I still have the DVD with all the short films on it -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qQvXawnmjk

Clive Owen, James Brown, Gary Oldman at his most Oldmany, Danny Trejo and a Marilyn Manson cameo.

Now that I've time to (literally) sleep on all this, I almost wonder a bit if there was...not a manic/depressive split per se, but definitely complementary halves between a gregarious workaholic and something only the close family ever saw, if they ever did. Maybe he always had a black dog that just finally caught him.

I think the cancer diagnosis was probably enough tbh

Last Boy Scout is a big noisy shambles, but if I see the start on TV I'll always wait for Damon Wayans' using "yeea, I'll bitchslap 'em" as a sweet making of woo, before switching off

The cancer news came after I posted that, but now there's a report going around that he wasn't suffering from that so who knows. Wait on the autopsy I guess.

ah, I'd read about the cancer yesterday

it's not a tumor

The family is now denying the cancer report. So hm.

From Mahnola Dargis's remembrance:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/08/21/arts/DARGIS-jp3/DARGIS-jp3-popup.jpg

Nice handwriting.

Top Gun notwithstanding, handwriting analysis confirms his heterosexuality.

Maybe it's time I finally watched Top Gun.

It's really not as salacious as its reputation suggests. It's like watching a Sunkist commercial scored by Kenny Loggins.

Well I've always been a fan of good action movies so am not against it in theory. Just kind of never got round to it, and I feel I've learned the plot by osmosis. Also I am a massive Tom Cruise hater.

tbh they use Cruise's hatability very well in Top Gun

and Val Kilmer's likability

some parts of it are very dated; victim of the processes it unleashed maybe. (or cnn in gulf war 1) (SAME THING lol morbs)

military pseudo-realism is well advanced in movies now; some of the missile-tracking shots etc in TG are hilariously simple looking to see them again

has Armond White written an obit yet

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/smearing-the-senses-tony-scott-action-painter

He wasn't a stealth intellectual. He wasn't subversive. No amount of minute subtextual analysis is going to turn him into Paul Verhoeven. Scott's work took every macho cliche about professionalism and danger at face value; this includes the tried-and-trued chestnut about death being the ultimate test of man's character.

Hey Eric, you're a climber aren't you? I didn't know about this side to him...

http://www.rockandice.com/news/2179-tnb-epitaph-and-cenotaph-tony-scott-was-a-fighter-and-a-climber

I heard he was a climber. Didn't know he was a spider!

nice mubi arty

enemy of the state and unbreakable were enjoyable trash. days of thunder was just garbage. haven't seen any of his other movies.

unstoppable, i mean!

M. Night Scott. Twist at the end of Top Gun = Iceman is Maverick twenty years from the future.

Sad to hear about this.

I never saw Top Gun. It seemed worse than decadent to make that movie in the shadow of what the U.S. was doing in Central America, and it's alienating now to read people talk about '80s jingoism as something quaint and harmless. But that Tarantino speech in Sleep with Me was cultural progress of a kind, and I always wondered if it helped talk him into an association with Tony Scott.

Either way, I love Crimson Tide, many corny notches above The Caine Mutiny, and wonder if the Tarantino doctoring extended into that great exchange about the real enemy in nuclear war. Enemy of the State is great fun too, one of the best Will Smith vehicles, with a jokey nod to The Conversation. And I love Deja Vu as well, in part for putting eyes on New Orleans after Katrina. I think there's a lot more mystery to the "enjoyable" half of "enjoyable trash" than usually gets credit, especially when most movies are trash, most art is bad, and most of both aren't that enjoyable.

excellent post, especially the last sentence

The Pelham 1-2-3 remake was a good Netflix stream. Clearly Scott put a lot of work into thinking through a plausible 21st-century subway hostage situation, and Denzel is interestingly frumpy.

Hmmm:

http://gawker.com/5937685/no-motive-found-in-tony-scotts-suicide-note

looks I need to watch Deja Vu.

don't you mean... re-screen it

i think its just screen, the first time u watch it

no because deja vu

Deja view it

this guy gets it

Initial coroner's report sheds no light:

The L.A. County coroner's report said Scott appeared to have had no major health problems, and coroner's officials said interviews with family members and friends did not reveal a possible motive.

The coroner's office determined that the 68-year-old died of multiple blunt-force injuries after leaping from the Vincent Thomas Bridge on Aug. 19. The director had therapeutic levels of the sleep aid Lunestra and the anti-depressant Mirtazipine, also known as Remeron, in his system, toxicology tests showed.

Chief coroner's investigator Craig Harvey said there was no indication of pre-existing conditions in Scott, based on both the autopsy and medical records.

"There was no evidence of neoplasia — cancer — identified," Harvey said.

After Scott's death, some media reports quoted an anonymous source suggesting that Scott had a brain tumor. His family vehemently denied those reports.

Several of Scott's associates told The Times that the director had mentioned back or hip problems in the months before his death, but many said they had no indication it was anything other than business as normal for the director-producer.

Revenge is some kind of masterpiece; unbelievably brutal and completely gorgeous. The fact that it never quite gets to where it’s meant to be going and seems to be pulling in 2 or 3 different directions, somehow makes me love it all the more. It was in Rolling Stone’s 10 Worst list of that year, which is reason enough to watch it at all speed.