Sir Ridley Scott, who recently celebrated his 84th birthday, has had a very busy year, bringing two major motion pictures into the world while also saying exactly what’s on his mind during their at-times porous press tours. With House of Gucci officially in the mix for the Oscars after Lady Gaga’s recent best actress win with the New York Film Critics Circle, and The Last Duel a fave with critics and tastemakers even if it collapsed at the box office, the British auteur seems more primed than ever to not-give-an-f-stop while speaking on the record.
Indeed, Last Duel’s financial failure inspired one of the first Ridley-isms out of the gate this fall when he appeared on WTF with Marc Maron.
“No. Disney did a fantastic promotion job,” he told Marc Maron when asked if he felt the marketing for the Matt Damon vs. Adam Driver medieval drama (co-starring Jodie Comer and Ben Affleck) was soft. “I think what it boils down to,” he said, “what we’ve got today [are] the audiences who were brought up on these fucking cell phones. The millennian do not ever want to be taught anything unless you are told it on the cell phone.” He added, “This is a broad stroke, but I think we’re dealing with it right now with Facebook. There is a misdirection that has happened where it’s given the wrong kind of confidence to this latest generation, I think.”
On the one hand, this argument is a bit “these damn kids today!” But you want to argue against the director of Alien and Blade Runner? And someone who coins term “millennian”?
Just days earlier, Scott had poked the bear of superhero movie stans during an interview with Deadline, in which he said the popular films were “fucking boring as shit” and “their scripts are not any fucking good.” He elaborated “they’re mostly saved by special effects, and that’s becoming boring for everyone who works with special effects, if you’ve got the money.”
More recently, members of the Gucci family (who have no connection to the current Gucci brand, and you can watch House of Gucci to learn why!) issued a statement that called the film “anything but accurate.”
“The film’s production did not bother to consult the heirs,” the family charged, and added that they may still “take any action necessary to protect the name, image and dignity of themselves and their loved ones.”
This came on the heels of comments Scott had made about previous, similar charges the Gucci family made. “I don’t engage with that,” Scott told the BBC’s Today radio show. “You have to remember that one Gucci was murdered and another went to jail for tax evasion so you can’t be talking to me about making a profit. As soon as you do that you become part of the public domain.”
In an interview with Total Film’s podcast, he added that the Gucci family were “alarmingly insulting” pertaining to the film’s casting.
According to Scott, the Gucci family felt that Al Pacino did not represent Aldo Gucci “in any shape or form,” to which Scott told his interviewers “frankly, how could they be better represented than by Al Pacino? Excuse me! You probably have the best actors in the world, you should be so fucking lucky.”
With House of Gucci doing well in its current theatrical run, the Blu-ray and VOD release of The Last Duel has had a bit of an additional press push, which offers additional Ridley Scott highlights.
Here the director finds himself “bloody amazed” to learn about audience members missing the fairly obvious point of Damon, Affleck, and Nicole Holofcener‘s The Last Duel script.
And saving the best for last, here’s how Sir Ridley deals with backhanded compliments of Last Duel’s realism, as compared to some of his earlier work like Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood. Bonus points to Jodie Comer for the ever-so-slight chuckle here.
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