THE BRILLIANT STORY OF THE
TONYSCOTT
And why it's an absolutely incredible gem :)
An Evening at the Gaumont
People ask me: That is the film that made me wonder if I wanted to get pregnant. A film that terrified me. That shook me to the core and left me there, breathless, walking out of the Gaumont on Rue de la Gaité, one hand clutching my crumpled ticket, the other clutching my gut. I was in sixth grade. I still had freckles on my nose, scraped knees, and vague dreams of kisses on the lips. And yet, that night, in that dark theater filled with the smell of stale popcorn and teenage sweat, I understood that one day, perhaps, I would have to choose: to live like them, or to pretend.
They were those characters scorched by the California sun, those star-crossed lovers, those anti-heroes with itchy trigger fingers and hearts bleeding great spurts of hemoglobin. Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner. Ridley Scott was the meticulous architect, the sculptor of neon, the detail-obsessed maniac who invented universes where every pixel smelled of rain and damp concrete. It was grandiose, cerebral, clinical.
« True Romance. That film that cracked my skull open like a tin can. »
But for me, what tore me from the ground, what made me want to scream, to bite, to love, wasn't Ridley. It was his brother. Tony. Tony Scott, the bad boy. The one who filmed like he was shooting up adrenaline, camera slung over his shoulder, a little shaky, sweat on his brow, discount-store hard rock in his ears. It was Top Gun and its fighter jets swirling through the sky. It was True Romance, above all. True Romance. That film that cracked my skull open like a tin can.
The blood, the laughs, the flirtation with death, the stolen kisses in the back seats of a Cadillac that reeks of red leather and fairy dust. Patricia Arquette as Alabama, incandescent, taking out her attackers like a warrior flipping the bird to all the orcs. Christian Slater selling comics and turning into a gunfighter by chance and for love. Dennis Hopper smoking his last cigarette before taking a bullet from Christopher Walken, who has better things to do than listen to a racist speech about the origins of Sicilians.
« This TonyScott is a tribute. A cry from within. »
Tony Scott wasn’t really cinema. Sometimes it was just advertising. But every now and then, once in every two or three tries, he’d manage to pull out a crazy gem. Or at least something that drove me wild. And over time, I noticed that his brother Ridley had borrowed his flashy, slightly dated directorial style, though with less panache and precision.
So this shoe, this TonyScott, is a tribute. A cry from the inside. A way of saying that sometimes you have to love hard and fast, and too bad if it leaves scars, as Francis Lalanne would have sung so well. It’s for all those who live intensely, who kiss too hard, who run red lights in the middle of the desert, and who scream their desire into the night, heads full of hair rollers. It’s for those who know that love is a gun loaded with blanks. And that you have to take the shot to know if you stand a chance.
