NEW YORK (AP) â An inevitable fact of interviewing is that, whatever movie heâs about to release, youâll find him already knee-deep in his next project.
Scott, Hollywoodâs perpetual rolling stone even at age 86, may be one of his biggest epics yet, but at the moment heâs got the Bee Gees on the brain. Scott is developing a biopic on the Gibb brothers. On a recent Zoom call from his office in Los Angeles, he was surrounded by meticulously plotted storyboards.
Scott is enthusiastic about the project. âI think the word is beyond talented. They were gifted,â he says â even if the Bee Gees brand of music seems quite distant from the no-nonsense British director.
âIâm not a disco guy,â Scott says. âI dance like a (expletive) plowman.â
Scott is on more familiar turf in âGladiator II,â which Paramount Pictures will release Nov. 22. He's back in ancient Rome, among sandals, swords and glistening biceps, for a sequel to his best picture-winning âGladiator,â with Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix. âGladiator IIâ is set a couple decades after that film. It focuses on the grandson of former emperor Marcus Aurelius â a minor character in âGladiatorâ now played by Paul Mescal â whoâs mentored as a gladiator by a former slave with aspirations of seizing Rome, Macrinus (Denzel Washington). Pedro Pascal co-stars as the Roman general Marcus Acacius.
âSequels are always kind of suspect,â says Scott. âBut to begin with, we had a good logical stepping stone into who next, who survived and where did he go.â
Aside from numerous âAlienâ films, Scott has largely eschewed sequels throughout his career. âGladiator IIâ had been in development, off and on, for two decades, though. And it ultimately swelled to one of Scottâs most massive projects â which is saying something for a filmmaker who just released of Some reports have pegged the budget for âGladiator IIâ
But Scott believes in the movie so much that heâs called it his best. Why?
âItâs to frighten the others,â he says, chuckling. âAnd I think I might be right. I donât want to count my chickens. But itâs pretty (expletive) good.â
Part of Scottâs confidence comes from his belief in his cast, particularly Mescal, the Irish actor who broke out on the series âNormal Peopleâ before starring in acclaimed films like and
âEighteen months ago I found a show, âNormal People.â I think for me it looks a bit suburban, et cetera, et cetera. I watch one, then I watch another. I say, âWho is this guy?â Both the guy and the girl were absolutely interesting. From that, I cast Paul Mescal,â Scott says. âYou know, Paul has got that harsh profile with the nose. And then a little bit of Thereâs a bit of Finney about him.â
Scott, who paints as a hobbyist, has seemingly been drawn to bigger and bigger canvases as heâs grown older. âNapoleon,â he says, required 900 personnel; âGladiator IIâ took 1,200. He is, himself, a commander of armies. In Malta, Scott and his regular production designer, Arthur Max, erected enormous sets.
âWe built Rome,â says Scott. âI discovered that you can have a lot of access, nice costumes and all blue screen. But in every shot you take â whether itâs (Scott holds his hands up for wide shots, over-shoulder shots and close-ups) youâre investing money on the blue. Itâs more expensive to do that than to build it. So I built the Colosseum 40% full scale. It was cheaper to do that than blue screen.â
Far smaller productions have worn down other filmmakers who donât match half the pace of Scott. But Scott, a self-described âwar babyâ born in 1937 whose father was a senior officer in the Royal Engineers, has showed no signs of slowing down, nor of fading ambition. Asked where he gets his drive, Scott responds: âDNA.â
âMy mum was ferocious,â Scott says. âYou have to stay kind of fit. And I embrace stress. If you donât embrace stress, do not do the job. People get very stressed and frightened and I donât. Iâve grown to it over the years to just embrace it and walk in and say, âRight, everybody over here. Weâre going to do this.â And they listen. Bearing in mind that Iâm artistically driven and Iâm blessed with a very good eye, the decision is everything. Make the bloody decision. Do not discuss it with everybody including the window cleaner where youâre going to put the camera.â
To Scott, his most formative training came in commercials. He and his brother, Tony Scott, started out with their film and commercial production company Ridley Scott Associates. Particularly in television, Scott got accustomed to shooting with multiple cameras rolling simultaneously. He didnât make his first feature, 1977âs âThe Duelist,â until he was 40. Now, on movies like âGladiator,â Scott might have eight or 10 cameras rolling for a single scene.
âSo I got used to scale,â says Scott. âBy that time I had probably done 2,500 commercials. And when youâre doing a commercial for yourself, the company, youâre on your own clock. After 5 oâclock, you pay. So youâre constantly against time. I learned that better than any film school could teach you. On every second hand is a dollar sign.â
That kind of scale also comes with risk, of course. âGladiator IIâ will open in theaters against Universal Picturesâ âWicked,â another highly anticipated movie although one, like with different and possibly complementary target audiences. Mescal has teased the moviegoing weekend as âGlicked.â
Scott remains optimistic about the movie business â even if his main concern is what it'll mean for the next mammoth project he undertakes.
âThere have been a few combustions of big box office this year that gives a certain kind of movie a promise for financial return,â Scott says. âBut the financial return â au courage dâautres â encourages the others. Because greed will always be in the front, right? Maybe the investors will say, âMaybe it can me.â Thatâs what we always hope for because I just love making movies. And the bigger the better.â
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
