Tony Scott has a new movie called "DéjàVu" coming out in a few weeks that stars Denzel Washington and Val Kilmer as two ATF agents who travel back in time to prevent a murder in the American southland. If you aren't psyched for this movie, well then, brother, I don't know what to tell you.
In anticipation of this seismic cinematic event, I have decided to dedicate this week's column to explaining exactly why I am so in love with Tony Scott and why you should be as well. I do not anticipate that this will be an easy attraction to explain, but then again, true love never is.
To me, the definitive Tony Scott moment — the moment that convinced me he's the premiere rococo stylist of our generation — occurs not in "Top Gun," "Man on Fire" or "True Romance," but rather, in "Revenge," Scott's brilliantly realized and delightfully insane film noir throwback starring Kevin Costner and Anthony Quinn. To get into the plot of "Revenge" would take up more space than I want to devote to this point, but suffice it to say, it is a movie that makes it clear that you're deluding yourself if you think you can get away with stealing Anthony Quinn's woman — no matter how old he may be.
Early in the film, Costner and Quinn play a spirited game of tennis, after which an exhausted Quinn stops at a refreshment table and sticks his sweaty, sausage-like fingers into a bowl of caviar and commences shoveling handfuls of the fish eggs into his mouth at a rate that could best be described as heart-busting. Over the next 60 seconds, a series of petty disturbances occur, weighing on Quinn's character to the point that he feels compelled to jump out of his chair, grab his pet Doberman by the neck, lift the canine off the ground and hurl him like a javelin into a swimming pool — all in one sustained movement. Later, we are treated to a shot of a flustered pool boy trying to skim the dog out of the pool, without a great degree of success.
Scenes like the one I just described are the reason why I love Tony Scott and also the reason a whole lot of people could never consider loving him. In any other movie, they would stop the narrative cold, whereas Scott presents them as almost an afterthought. I am not suggesting that Scott is the only director who would dare show such behavior, but he's the only director who goes one step further and makes this behavior seem not only normal but logical within the schema of the film. Somehow, when the exchange between Costner and Quinn is finished, the viewer is left feeling that wolfing down caviar and shot-putting your dog into the pool are both rational solutions to life's minor problems.
The obvious criticism of this scene — and pretty much every other scene in every other movie Tony Scott has ever made — is that it is crude, mean-spirited and obvious. Well, duh. This strikes me as a particularly odd argument to make. There is a reason that these kinds of movies are tagged exploitation movies.
What separates Scott from pretty much every other director with a modicum of success in Hollywood is that he has never shown any signs of wanting to have his movies legitimized. He is the last unabashed B-moviemaker left working. His work comes fast and furious in a variety of genres generally seen as intellectually inferior: the submarine movie ("Crimson Tide"), the revenge movie ("Man on Fire" and, um, "Revenge"), the vampire movie ("The Hunger"), the air force movie ("Top Gun") and, of course, the Robert De Niro-as-a-deranged stalker movie ("The Fan"). Now, we can add to that list the time-traveling detective movie. Scott would be at home working for Roger Corman in the 1950s.
Indeed, whenever I find myself talking about Scott with my film-savvy friends — which happens more often than you would think, since I tend to cite "True Romance" in conversation at least five times a day — the argument they invariably make is that Scott is a genre filmmaker, which should disqualify him from being counted among our important directors. This has always struck me as an incredibly elitist sentiment, yet I find myself at a loss for how to respond. Technically, they are right. I am tempted to make one of those anti-intellectualism arguments that seem so popular on Fox News in order to say that Scott's movies should be taken seriously because they are popular; but really, I don't buy that. Just because something is popular, does not mean it's good, contrary to what the new army of anti-intellectualist philosophers might have you believe. How about this: Tony Scott is important because his movies are really, really good.
I realize saying something is "really, really good" may seem like a vague thesis to hang one's hat on, but isn't that the general principle of film criticism? You like things that are good and dislike things that are bad. Sometimes, it feels to me like we're making things too complicated for ourselves. Movies, at their core, are emotional experiences, which is something Scott has never forgotten. I am not saying all of his movies are great, or even very good. Indeed, "Domino" is a mess, unless you happen to be watching it while on highly concentrated amphetamines. I'm also not a fan of "Crimson Tide," if only because I have an irrational dislike of submarine movies, since they all seem to feature the same scenes of khaki-uniformed men screaming at one another in front of sonar screens. And the paranoia-fueled duo of "Spy Game" and "Enemy of the State" also leaves me cold, because if there's one thing I dislike more than a submarine movie, it's a spy movie.
The good outnumbers the bad, and when Scott is good, he's very good. And in his best work, there is a kind of unexpected heart and gravitas that hangs around long after the film is done. In "Man On Fire," we may remember the scenes of Denzel Washington breaking the fingers of an assassin while listening to a Spanish language version of "Hey Mickey," but really, the quiet scenes between Washington and Dakota Fanning give the movie it's soul. After 15 years, "True Romance" is probably best remembered for Christopher Walken's showdown with Dennis Hopper and Brad Pitt's decision to channel his inner stoner in a performance that seems increasingly hilarious (perhaps not intentionally so) with each passing year. Still, Scott is smart enough to let his two star-crossed lovers — played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette — ground the movie. The truth is, these are the reasons we come back to Tony Scott. The ultimate revelation, looking back over Scott's career, is that the best stylist of his generation is really just a closeted humanist. He remembers what is important in his movies, even as everybody else around him seems to have forgotten.
Tony Scott has never won an Academy Award, and I feel fairly comfortable saying he never will. He does not have a particularly large cult following, with the possible exception of his frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino. He isn't even like Brian De Palma, who is maligned by pretty much everybody who matters, yet still manages to convince the likes of Cahiers de Cinéma that he's some kind of American genius. Tony Scott has none of this, nor do I get the sense he particularly wants any of it, which I'm pretty sure makes me love him even more. Remember in "The Breakfast Club" when Anthony Michael Hall is talking about messing up his shop class project, and Judd Nelson starts laughing at him, which causes Hall to ask, "So I'm a fucking idiot because I can't make a lamp?" Nelson looks at him for a second and replies, "No, you're a fucking genius because you can't make a lamp." That's Tony Scott for me in a nutshell — he's a genius because he can't make traditional movies and seems to have little interest in doing so. He's killing his art in order to save it, and we're all witnesses to his own personal revolution, even if we don't quite realize it. Tony Scott doesn't make lamps — he makes movies. And he's pretty good at it.
Ray Gustini is a sophomore majoring in English and journalism. Do you think Tony Scott is really, really good at his job? Let Ray know. E-mail him at [email protected].
