Ridley Scott recalls an exec asked why he can’t make films about ‘normal people’: ‘What the f— does that mean?’
https://ew.com/ridley-scott-recalls-an-exec-asked-why-he-doesnt-make-films-about-normal-people-8753630
Ridley Scott recalls an exec asked why he can’t make films about ‘normal people’: ‘What the f— does that mean?’
https://ew.com/ridley-scott-recalls-an-exec-asked-why-he-doesnt-make-films-about-normal-people-8753630
14 comments
>It’s hard to believe now, but Ridley Scott’s early films weren’t seen as particularly stellar in their time, despite the fact that the period included Alien and Blade Runner, both of which are considered classics today. Fortunately, Scott had enough good sense to trust his instincts in the face of corrective feedback that now sounds horribly misguided.
>”There’s only one film worked out of all of that lot,” Scott said of his early feature output during a recent interview with Alien: Romulus writer-director Fede Alvarez on the Director’s Guild of America’s The Director’s Cut podcast.
>”But they’re a pretty good first four movies. So I knew I’m on the right track. But somebody at one of the studios said to me, ‘Why don’t you do a film about normal people?’ I went, ‘What the f— does that mean?’ Because no one’s normal unless you’re totally boring, right?”
His direction is great his contributions to xeno lore is dog 💩
lo well can’t disagree with his reaction
Maybe the executive meant non historical and non futuristic people.
I get it. The article says it was during his first four films. One took place 200 years in the past, one 40 years in the future, one 100+ years in the future and in a different solar system, and one is about goblins killing unicorns for their horns. Those are all plenty of things, but none of them are normal.
Here’s the pitch:
Normal Guy
Alarm goes off at 6:00. Let dog out. Let dog in. Feed dog. Eat breakfast (toast and coffee). Shi*, Shower, shave.
Drive to work.
Push paper for 8 hours.
Drive home.
Let dog out, let dog in, feed dog.
Eat.
Veg for a few hours.
Walk dog.
Sleep.
(I had to give this normal person a dog to make it interesting!)
That’s more Robert Redford’s thing.
Because he kills them off. See: Elizabeth Shaw in *Prometheus.*
Dude loves his androids .
It means you don’t do slice of life movies.
Meme template
Exec: Why can’t you just make movies about normal people?
RS: WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN!?
He set the bar for 80s accelerationist cyberpunk.
Back then we never asked – what if TVs were flat? But answered what if we just did now, but in the future?
(It’s a VanDerHoovian thing, too. Robocop was the answer to what if we did cyberpunk, but now, but now is the future. As if the 1980s tech would just not evolve and we’d chop up people without anesthesia and add robot parts.)
And he didn’t need CGI to realize Xenomorphs.
If I wanted to see normal people doing normal things, I’d sit on a park bench.
The Normal Life of Ted Bundy.
A normal contractor buries bodies in his house.
At what exact point did Ridley’s dgaf cantankerousness become more amusing than his actual films? (Yes I like Last Duel a great deal)
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