Why Tony Scott?

As to the whys that may be explained in the letter left in his home, I can’t help but feel abnormally saddened by Tony’s suicide. Being a hollywood figure with any level of prominence is a dream that many wish to attain, so why? I may never understand nor do I need to. However, I must try to reason why it’s affecting me.

Directors are often overlooked when friends gather round. If the discussion goes beyond acting or plot, they are usually brought up in a snotty way “David Mamet is so much better than Nolan.” Only the great ones are known (Spielberg, Nolan, Scorsese…) or the very bad ones (Michael Bay). The average are hardly talked about at the casual level. Tony Scott was far from average reaching consistent box office success since Top Gun and recently with Unstoppable. Hey if Denzel insisted on working with Tony then Tony must be pretty good.

Ridley got most of the critical attention with the epic worlds he created in Gladiator, Alien and Blade Runner. Tony stayed here on Earth, present day, for the most part with a frenetic and kinetic style of editing that is copied too often with too little credit. I admire Tony’s conistency, I never doubted that I’d like an upcoming movie of his. I couldn’t say the same for his brother as a few were complete messes. The theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven was so bad I couldn’t help but feel trepidation for Prometheus.

This wasn’t meant to be a debate or a comparison. Just a reminder that Tony was a great director and I will be missing his work.

2010 Unstoppable

2009 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

2007 Numb3rs (TV series)

– Trust Metric (2007)

2006 Deja Vu

2005 Domino

2004 Agent Orange (short)

2004 Man on Fire

2002 Beat the Devil (short)

2001 Spy Game

1997-1999 The Hunger (TV series)