Tony Scott is a director who regularly appalls critics and equally regularly delights audiences. To the high-brow culture-vultures he’s a vulgar purveyor of not much more than exploding buildings and headache inducing editing. But in fact Scott’s movies are more diverse than they ever give him credit for, from the Gothic eroticism of his first (and criminally underrated) vampire flick The Hunger through the glossy 80s excesses of Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II to tightly wound thrillers such as Crimson Tide and the hip 90s irony of True Romance (Tarantino remains a devoted fan) he has always been a director unafraid of a challenge or of taking a new direction. His latest is another departure, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a remake (his first) of the classic 1974 heist movie. In the original the late, great Walter Matthau played a New York Metro controller trying to negotiate with a violent hijacker. Scott’s regular collaborator Denzel Washington takes the role this time around, while John Travolta chews the scenery as the bad guy. RT sat down with the master of mayhem to talk turkey.
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Tony Scott: I’ve never been tempted by anything before. But Brian Helgeland called me and said he had an idea of doing a remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. He’s part of the family here really [screenwriter Helgeland also scripted Man On Fire as well as Ridley Scott‘s Robin Hood, currently in production], and I’ll always look at anything he brings me. He told me it’s very different; it’s not the movie you remember. Actually I couldn’t recall too much about the original film and so I watched it again. Frankly I couldn’t really get through it. So it’s not a straight remake – I just wouldn’t be interested in doing that.
TS: I took a look at Dog Day Afternoon – which I remembered really liking. And of course it’s set in New York as well. I had really liked that when I first saw it, but I’m afraid to say that I don’t think that it’s worn too well. It’s paled a little.
John Travolta in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.
TS: He’s a handful, but he’s brilliant. He’s really insecure, which perhaps you don’t expect. He’s all about making the performance better and better. It’s always a constructive process and he always delivers for me. He’s always been fantastic.
TS: Not head-to-head arguments. I always get everyone prepared so there aren’t so many arguments on set. I have a policy that the first thing I do in the morning is go over to the trailers and discuss exactly what we’re shooting that day. It’s time-consuming but it reduces the chances of ‘misunderstandings’ on set. [Laughs] And I always get role models, people from real life who’ve lived the lives of the characters, and talk it through together, me, them and the actor, a lot. That helps. We certainly have our disagreements. But in the end we trust each other. We wouldn’t have done all these movies together if we didn’t.
Continue as Scott talks about his trademark style, being a British director in America and his upcoming remake of The Warriors.
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TS: Yeah. I can’t work any other way – I have to be totally prepared. Ridley can wing it if he has to, but I just can’t. I freeze up.
TS: Yeah, and I think maybe that’s getting greater over the years. Maybe it’s because I storyboard everything and close-ups are easier to draw! [Laughs] I think it’s just because I’m trying to use the camera to get into people’s heads. I think that’s why. I use camera techniques like that a lot – to articulate character.
TS: My movie career has really always been [in the US]. It was very hard breaking into the film industry in Britain. I had been to art school and I was painting and doing commercials. And I did some of the very first rock videos. Then I did something for the BBC, the Henry James thing [a European TV series of Henry James short-story adaptations, coincidentally broadcast the same year as the release of the original Pelham One Two Three]. That was the first long-form thing I did. But then I went off back to do commercials. And I loved them. It was hard trying to break back in to movies. But I used to come here to California to shoot adverts and had meetings with the studios at the same time. That’s really how it all came about.
Denzel Washington in The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3.
TS: Yeah! I really like that film, but again I’m not going to do a straight remake. I love the original Warriors and I’m using the same basic story. It’s really still 10 guys stuck at point B and they need to get back to point A. But I’m going to set it in Los Angeles, which is the city which is horizontal if you know what I mean. New York is vertical, all skyscrapers. It’s also going to be a kind of study of gang culture in LA today. I’ve been meeting the various gangs as part of the research. I never meet the gang leader, always his second-in-command. I have to do this little tap-dance and sell the film. I’m hoping to get a hundred thousand real gang-members standing on the Vincent Thomas Bridge for one shot. I’ve met them all, Crips, Bloods, The 18th Street Gang, The Vietnamese and so on. They all love The Warriors. So it was, “yeah, fuck yeah we’ll be in that!”
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is released in the US next week. It arrives in UK cinemas on July 24th.
