As I wrote in my recent review of “All The Money In The World,” 80-year-old filmmaker Ridley Scott just doesn’t give any f*cks. The director is brutally frank, politically correct or not, he shoots like a boss that doesn’t bother with more than a few takes and Scott generally has a ballsy mien that you can feel in everything he does, most recently illustrated in his bold, 11th hour decision to reshoot all of Kevin Spacey’s role in “All The Money In The World,” and replace him with Christopher Plummer instead. And Scott shot the entire thing in 9 days. Additionally, brazen, “All The Money In The World,” while a thriller superficially, it really a stark look at a completely unsympathetic monster, audiences be damned.
Vulture just ran an interview with Scott about “All The Money In The World,” his run-and-gun shooting style and Netflix (he loves it: “I’d love to do a ten-hour mini-series myself, personally. [David] Fincher’s got the best show [‘Mindhunter’] on the air right now,” among other things. It’s a must-read interview and you should dive into it, but perhaps what’s most telling and eye-brow raising is Scott’s candid comments about “Blade Runner 2049,” a movie he developed, executive produced and helped get the original story on its legs.
Well, for Scott, who tried to hold his tongue, it sounded like a kind of butt-numb-a-thon. “[Whispers] I have to be careful what I say. I have to be careful what I say. It was fucking way too long. Fuck me! And most of that script’s mine.”
Scott isn’t credited with writing the screenplay or even the story—which is credited to original “Blade Runner” scribe Hampton Fancher—but explained, “I sit with writers for an inordinate amount of time and I will not take credit, because it means I’ve got to sit there with a tape recorder while we talk. I can’t do that to a good writer. But I have to, because to prove I’m part of the actual process, I have to then have an endless amount [of proof], and I can’t be bothered.”
Uhh, ok then. Spoilers for “Blade Runner 2049” are ahead, be forewarned. Scott says that much of the key, elemental parts of ‘2049’ are his. He describes the first movie as artificial intelligence androids falling in love and consummating that relationship with a baby, but says ‘2049’ is about who is that baby?
“The mother has to inexplicably die four months after she breastfeeds,” he explained. “The bones are found in the box at the foot of the tree — that’s all me. And the digital girlfriend is me.” Scott goes on to say about talking out of his mouth about the film he helped bring to life: “I shouldn’t talk. I’m being a bitch.”
Asked about “Star Wars,” Scott couldn’t resist the urge to throw a little shade at their revolving chair of directors and in their reshoots. Asked if Lucasfilm had approached him to direct a “Star Wars” film yet he says no because he’d be “too dangerous.”
“Because I know what I’m doing. [Laughs.] I think they like to be in control, and I like to be in control myself. When you get a guy who’s done a low-budget movie and you suddenly give him $180 million, it makes no sense whatsoever. It’s fuckin’ stupid. You know what the reshoots cost? Millions”
Lastly, Scott, who directed two films that were released in 2017—“Alien: Covenant,” and “All The Money In The World” recently said he was offered to replace another director on a third film without naming names. Vulture asks, hmmm, could it have been taking over Bryan Singer’s role on “Bohemian Rhapsody”? “I can’t answer that,” is his terse reply. Asked if his blunt, most non-response is an answer in of itself, all Scott does is quietly grin.
Well, that likely answers that. “All The Money In The World” is in theaters now. Do read this full Vulture interview to get the full “bitch”iness of Ridley Scott.