Ridley Scott turned Alien, Blade Runner and Thelma & Louise into pop cultural phenomena. With his new romantic sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator, he's made the movie all Young Hollywood wanted to be in and now wants to see.
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Ever since making his visually ravishing directorial debut with The Duellists in 1977, Ridley Scott has been known for stylish, visceral movies that other film-makers admire, study and steal from. He's also been known for his ability to single out Young Hollywood hopefuls the camera is destined to love--Sigourney Weaver (in Alien), Daryl Hannah and Sean Young (in Blade Runner), Tom Cruise (in Legend), Brad Pitt (in Thelma & Louise) and Ryan Phillippe (in White Squall), to name a few.
I meet Scott one mid-morning in the Beverly Hills offices that house just some of the film and TV commercial enterprises he undertakes for the company he runs with his younger brother, the director Tony Scott. Those enterprises have included not just the films he and his brother have directed, but also several films he has produced, including the wry Clay Pigeons featuring Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix, and HBO's award-winning RKO 281. As one might expect from a director who, in the mid-'60s, worked as a set designer for the 8BC television network and whose movies are famous for striking, visionary design, Scott's lair is a spacious, high-ceilinged, self-designed confluence of exposed wood and classic dark furniture that blends groovy modern with Arts and Crafts. As I'm shown into a large conference room opening on a courtyard, the cigar-puffing Scott grins as he quietly finishes up a phone conversation with producer Dino De Laurentiis about which of two composers might be better to score Hannibal, the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, which Scott is about to begin shooting with Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. He has already put the finishing touches on the film I'm here to discuss with him, the massively anticipated pre-summer epic Gladiator. The fate of this film, in which Russell Crowe plays a Roman general exiled and sold into slavery by a demonically cruel emperor circa A.D. 180, is now largely out of his hands. The Industry buzz has it high on everyone else's must-see list, though. Beginning with the early teaser commercial shown during the Super Bowl, Gladiator has loomed like the huge, rousing hit that'll whet the moviegoing appetite for everything to follow from Memorial Day on.
STEPHEN REBELLO: Why do you chink Gladiator carries such a big want-to-see factor, especially among people under 30?
RIDLEY SCOTT: I'm definitely aware of that. We've previewed it three times. Before I'd even gotten home from two of them, "reviews" were posted on the Internet, and, fortunately, they were terrific. But you can't count on that necessarily meaning you've got a hit on your hands. The audience will judge. The under-30 audience wasn't something we consciously went after--we had no specific plan in choosing the subject, especially in regard to whether it adds appeal to moviegoers of a certain age. It just seems the time is right for this film.
Q: I understand Gladiator came to you through producer Walter Parkes, who was involved with other huge under-30 movies, like Deep Impact and Men in Black.
A: That's right. He came in with a huge reproduction of a 19th century French romantic painting of a gladiator looking up to the emperor for permission to kill, with a simple legend on it that read: "Those who are about to die salute you." It just felt like the right thing to do right now.
Q: Does "the right thing right now" mean it has something in common with such movies as Fight Club and Any Given Sunday, which unapologetically reclaim male aggression and love of bone-crunching?
A: Honestly, I think it's more that we're in a movie era where we're reexamining everything that's come before. Gladiator is a great adventure story done in pure epic scale. Years ago, when I got s thrashing for Blade Runner, audiences were baffled about the most basic things: "Why was it always night?" "Why was it always raining?" It irritated them. But what I was doing was exploring urban drama. To me, Blade Runner was a kind of medieval drama done in the style of a dark, heavy metal comic strip. I'd discovered humanoid comics, the world of Moebius and the like, during my research for Alien, and it inspired me. Now mainstream movies are reexamining more traditional subjects and the great stylists in that tradition, like David Lean. Lean knew that entertainment is our prime function in doing mainstream movies and he showed in many, many films exactly how to do it. His people were heroes, always larger than life. I think there's a move back to that, even in an era when leisure is a giant industry and an entire generation has been brought up with television, video games and a fascination with the Internet.
Q: You helped launch the careers of Sigourney Weaver in Alien, Daryl Hannah and Sean Young in Blade Runner and Brad Pitt in Thelma & Louise. What can you say about casting from the crop of newer young actors today, many of whom you reportedly saw for Gladiator?
A: It changes and shifts. There are rhythms. Right now the younger generation presents a very interesting bunch of actors. Television no longer stigmatizes one. Instead it's a showcase for interesting talent, a repertory company, almost, that trains people to cross into films. When someone does something extraordinary, it encourages the others because they're all competitive.
Q: But didn't you, as I've heard, have some difficulty casting really good actors who could be convincing in period and look like they could kick butt?
A: [Laughs] I did. Russell [Crowe] was always in the cards, even in our first discussions about the project. We all thought it was a good idea, though he didn't get asked until much later. He has that macho, aggressive masculinity. Could he be a leader? When people see the film, the answer is yes, definitely. He was always our target. If there hadn't been him, there could probably only have been Mel [Gibson]. But Mel had done Braveheart and didn't want to go down that road again. Beyond Russell and Mel, that was it, really.
Q: It's interesting how Australian-bred actors seem to supply qualities we miss in a lot of American actors.
A: They don't do things in half- measures. They're nearly always binge drinkers, big on sport. They look like they've been around and been knocked around. That's pan of the Australian character.
Q: What about those who say that Russell Crowe is a brawler and tough to deal with?
A: He's all chat, but he's worth it. Russell is very experienced. He's done a lot of plays and I think this is about his 20th movie. I've really liked him since Romper Stomper, which is where I first took notice. Very often what you see on-screen is who they are, fundamentally.
Q: I wouldn't mistake him for someone who suffers fools.
A: Right. He's very informed and smart. He doesn't tolerate any daft questions or decisions. You have a lot of... um... open discussions with him. [Laughs] But at the end, the film is better for it. There's a danger some-times in having a very good relationship with actors--when you see the work in the end, you often think, "Well, that's awfully passive." Whereas if it's a constant negotiation, at the end of the day everything is usually better. All in all, Russell and I got on pretty well. He's there.
Q: What inspired you to cast Joaquin Phoenix as your cruel emperor, Commodus?
A: I'd seen Joaquin in a picture that I'd produced called Clay Pigeons and thought he had an interesting face. Then I was shocked by what he pulled off in Return to Paradise--I thought that was as good as it gets. That did it for me. I had a feeling in my bones about him, an intuition, and I couldn't shake it, so I had no other really serious contenders for our prince of darkness. Historically, Commodus was a very physical type. He was something of a loony who, in later years, thought himself the reincarnation of Hercules. He'd sport a lion's head as a helmet with the lion's skin draped down his back. He had 315 camels in the arena with gladiators to slay them. He had thousands of exotic animals slain in the arena. He was a crack shot with a bow and had special arrows built with a fork-like head and, as target practice, he would decapitate ostriches. You name it, he did it. We didn't want to go that exotic with him but, dramatically, we made him a very interesting character. He'd grown up a disappointed and dysfunctional child, and there's nothing more interesting than a sympathetic bad guy.
Q: I'm waiting to hear what's sympathetic about him.
A: Sympathetic in the sense that he's a wounded character. In the beginning of the film, you're com about feeling sympathetically toward him until he starts to show his bad side. When I called Joaquin about wanting him to do it, he thought I was out of my mind. So I asked him if he didn't mind testing. He shouldn't have to test, of course, but if actors aren't sure about something, they should test because they have to know for themselves and have the right to say, "I don't think I'm going to be right for this." He tested and I really respected that he wanted to do that.
Q: Were any of the men nervous about having to expose so much flesh?
A: Russell isn't tall but he's a big guy, a natural sportsman. He's in pretty good shape anyway but it was tricky because he'd just put on about 50 pounds to play a middle-aged man in The Insider. When we met, he was always parting his tummy going, "Don't worry, this will come off." As with all films now, we brought in a guy to assist him not just with pumping iron but also with diet, controlled exercise and moderation so that you don't push it coo far too fast. We got him up to a level where it was real without being over the cop. If someone is in good shape, you're picking up where they left off and it takes about a month to achieve the best stage. With Demi [Moore] in G.I. Jane, for instance, she's only five-feet-two-inches or something, though she'd insist five-three or five-four, and weighed about 105 pounds naturally, but she worked so hard she was up to 136 pounds of muscle and was able to do 15 one-arm push-ups on each side right on camera.
Q: How did you come to choose the virtually unknown Connie Nielsen for the female lead in Gladiator?
A: At the moment there are a lot of very good young actresses appearing in films. I've been in situations where you only see a couple of women who stand out, but right now there are a dozen or more in the race. We looked at about 20 women for this part, but I kept coming back to Connie. For this role, I needed someone with a certain maturity, someone who was regal and could have been a queen. That narrowed it down to three or four. Connie was clearly it. The role is not just "the woman who would have been king," she's got many strengths and interesting qualities. Her real-life counterpart was a woman of authority, the daughter of a king who was rather a fascist. Her character has a past relationship with the lead character, and there's a very powerful relationship between her and her brother, the emperor, who's actually in love with her--which is his problem. [Laughs] But we resisted going too deeply down that path.
Q: You also have Djimon Hounsou and the six-foot-six German actor and former Mr. Universe Ralf Moeller in the cast. Were any of these guys thrown by the number of wild animals they had to work with?
A: [Laughs] We had great handlers, but, I mean, eventually Russell had to stand in the arena with six Bengal tigers. The real danger is that you for-get, when a tiger is lying on the ground licking its paws, how wild it is. The Bengal is the most dangerous because it's a big, beautiful pussycat who makes you want to go over and give it a hug, but they're actually very tricky bone-crushers. We always had four or five people surrounding each animal who would never let you for-get that if you go too close to a tiger, you'll be knocked down and that once you're down, that's it.
Q: In previous movies like this, the dialogue, particularly the way actors delivered it, was often unintentionally hilarious. How did you handle that?
A: I avoided period vernacular. And we left out the "my lords" and other English theatrical versions of the Roman Empire. What we've come up with can be called just good plain Anglo-Saxon.
Q: Do you have any concerns that today's audiences may not know any-thing about the Roman Empire?
A: One of the comments we got in previews was from a 32-year-old woman who said she hated to admit it but she knew nothing about the Roman Empire, hardly knew it existed. That's shocking but it's a fact of life, so you'd better fix it. That's where a preview can be useful. We put a simple legend at the opening of the movie to explain who was who and outline some of the events of the time.
Q: In this movie, you've re-created things like the Forum, the Senate steps and the Colosseum, and everything looks as detailed, precise and lived-in as the environments in Alien and Blade Runner.
A: One of the things I'm very attracted to, as a director, is to create a world. Creating a world on film gives me more to do than just say "action" and "cut." With my art director and various production designers, I wound up building a whole world. It was a huge research job, just in the process of design and construction. I find that utterly fascinating because you find out the way everything was. That's one way the movie feels more real to me, as well as to the actors and, hopefully, to the audience.
Q: Having been a painter and illustrator yourself, what were your visual influences here?
A: The 19th century painter Alma-Tadema, whose subjects were Greek, Roman or Egyptian. He was almost a pre-Raphaelite and sometimes too pretty, almost chocolate boxy but perfect, beautiful. He painted marble better than anyone. When you look into his paintings, you see his imagination running wild because he'd thought such a great deal about how these people lived. I'd just look into the corners of his work and they'd always trigger some logic.
Q: Several of your movies, particularly Alien and Blade Runner, made such an impact in part because of what came to be called the sense of a "used future," which was such an interesting change from the gleaming, shiny world we'd seen in so many science fiction movies.
A: It's a matter of keeping your eyes open today and applying contemporary logic to the past. When I was planning Alien, I was flying often on transatlantic flights. Over time, I noticed that those planes were get-ting scruffy and rundown and I applied that logic to the ship and the crew in Alien.
Q: How much help did your script give you?
A: Walter Parkes came in with a script by David Franzoni, which was a really good idea--three acts, all there. The only thing we felt we needed to change was that the central act used up the experience of Rome and the gladiator arena too quickly. So, we went through a draft with John Logan, with whom I'd worked on RKO 281. After John, we worked with William Nicholson, who wrote Shadowlands. The whole script effort was a very civilized series of discussions. We all wanted to make it so badly that it was like "All hands on deck" to get this script up to where it needed to be.
Q: In the '50s and '60s, big-budget ancient historical epics like The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, Ben-Hur and others spawned cheesy gladiator movies that show up on TV all the time. Did any of those make you think twice about doing this movie?
A: Oh, yeah. I realized something, though. That Charlton Heston was really brave. He made one of the greatest of those movies, Ben-Hur. But he also did every other conceivable kind of world. He had his eye on the ball. He did Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man--which I nearly remade with Universal and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sometimes he had great success, sometimes less, but Heston was an inspiration here. It was like, be brave and go for it.
Q: What's involved with updating movies like this?
A: The audience tolerance level in terms of reality is making it tougher and tougher. War films are now expected to be like Private Ryan, meaning the reality level has gotten to the point of being almost 100 percent. When you're doing a period movie there are no excuses anymore. You've got to get it right. I think we got it right.
Q: Hasn't the financial and critical mauling you took on Blade Runner eased a bit now that the film has been vindicated as one of the most influential of the last 20 years?
A: Revenge isn't really sweet when it comes too many years later. As you mature, you realize all the more that the key audience member you must make truly happy is yourself. I'm always sufficiently pragmatic now by the end of a film to sit back, stare at it and go, "That works" or "Not a bad patch-up, despite a few errors here and there." Beyond that, you need luck in everything. Why do people go for a film in a huge way when you look at it and go, "Well, it's OK but it doesn't warrant this giant reaction." Certain movies just color peoples imaginations and you can't predict that.
Q: So, from your dispassionate point of view, how is the movie?
A: I think it's really good. [Laugh] I'm happier with this than I have been with anything for a long time.
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Stephen Rebello interviewed Leelee Sobieski for the March issue of Movieline.