Tony Scott on why Quentin Tarantino is a “rare animal”
Directors who operated largely within the action genre in the 1980s and 1990s were very rarely singled out as being auteurs with an easily recognisable and identifiable style, but there was never any doubt in anybody’s mind when they were watching a Tony Scott movie.
The filmmaker’s kinetic approach to staging set pieces and letting the camera cut loose among the carnage quickly became his hallmarks, marking him out as unique in an era where the majority of Hollywood’s mainstream actioners could have realistically been directed by just about anybody, considering the severe dearth of ownership or authorship placed upon them by their directors.
Striking gold with his second feature Top Gun, Scott quickly became the go-to guy whenever major studios or powerhouse producers were seeking a pair of hands that were as safe as they were stylish, leading to a golden period that yielded Beverly Hills Cop II, Days of Thunder, The Last Boy Scout, True Romance, and Crimson Tide within the space of just nine years.
The latter two projects put him in the path of a young upstart named Quentin Tarantino, who penned the screenplay for the former and performed uncredited rewrites on the latter. Scott initially wanted to helm Reservoir Dogs when he discovered the would-be director’s scripts, but after discovering that the financing was already in place for what became Tarantino’s first feature, he made do with True Romance.
There were disagreements between the two over telling the story chronologically and changing the ending from how it had been on the page, but in the early 1990s, it would be an understatement to say Scott had a great deal more sway and authority than Tarantino did, so he didn’t have to fight too hard to get his way.
The mutual appreciation society had been formed either way, with Scott commenting on Tarantino’s innate ability to balance the light and dark sides of the human condition, which soon became his stock in trade. “Quentin is a very rare animal,” he said. “What he does, is he brings a reality to these people with a sense of humour, and it’s very difficult to find a writer who can give you darkness and humour together.”
Continuing, Scott shared that in his experience, “you only get one or the other,” which put Tarantino in rare company. “There are very few writers in the world today who have the ability to give you both things at once,” and it was an approach that would be as close to perfected as it gets when Reservoir Dogs and True Romance were swiftly followed by Pulp Fiction.
“I loved his shit,” was how Tarantino surmised Scott to Jeff Goldsmith. “He’s like Douglas Sirk, he never got respect, was too commercial, people put him down. Now they teach classes about him.” He’s right, and he’ll always have True Romance to look back on as a phenomenal representation of their respective skillsets.
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