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Ridley Scott keeps looking down while we’re talking, a thick marker in his hand. Earlier in our conversation, which veers rapidly across his prolific career, he held up a series of storyboards scrawled on white paper. Long known in Hollywood as “Ridleygrams,” they’re for his next project, an adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island.” Now, it appears the filmmaker has been drawing for almost the entire hour of our Zoom call.
“I’m not bored,” he says, a smile on his face. But Scott, speaking from his home in the French countryside, has the sheepish look of a kid who’s been caught not paying attention in class. “I’m just always working on this,” he says.
It’s not news that Scott, 88, is an exceptional visual director. It seems obvious that someone who creates films would be interested in pictures. But since Scott’s early features, including his 1977 debut “The Duellists,” a historical drama about rival officers during the Napoleonic Wars, and his groundbreaking 1979 space horror film “Alien,” Scott has allowed his stories to speak through evocative, immersive images rather than unnecessary exposition.
The British director says it’s because he got his start in advertising after attending the Royal College of Art in London. After 1982’s neon-coated sci-fi thriller “Blade Runner,” Scott notably made the iconic Apple Macintosh computer ad “1984,” a memorable Orwellian-themed clip that contained suggestions of the dystopias that would continue to fascinate Scott in his filmmaking.
“Advertising in England at that point became a competitive art form,” he says, pointing to the notorious “Adland Five,” a group of directors that included Hugh Hudson, Adrian Lyne, Alan Parker, Scott and his brother Tony. “I’ve got a show reel which is 50 years old which would entertain the s— out you. Hasn’t aged at all. Our visual drive changed the face of how films looked.”
That’s apparent in Scott’s latest, “The Dog Stars” (in theaters Friday), a film about survival after the end of the world. It’s based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel and set in Colorado 10 years in the future after an aggressive flu has decimated much of the population. Those remaining alive use any means necessary to stay that way, resulting in instability, brutality and, more hopefully, connection.
It follows Hig (Jacob Elordi) and his dog Jasper, who have formed an odd-couple friendship with Bangley (Josh Brolin) at an isolated airstrip. Hig flies old Cessna planes into Denver for supplies and makes occasional deliveries to a local Mennonite community led by Aaron (Benedict Wong). After hearing a mysterious radio transmission, Hig becomes fixated on seeking more survivors and sets out on a mission that allies him with Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her father (Guy Pearce).
These days, Scott develops movies with his production company, Scott Free, which he founded with his late brother Tony in 1995. Before that he says he struggled to find good scripts. And rarely has someone handed one to him.
“I’ve only ever had three films land on my desk,” he says. “One was ‘Alien,’ which I was fifth choice for after Robert Altman.” He makes a face. “Can you imagine offering Robert Altman ‘Alien’? How stupid can you get?”
Another was 2015 space adventure “The Martian,” which Scott says had been sitting on a shelf for two years before it was sent to him. Scott’s grounded, semi-comedic take on Andy Weir’s novel resulted in seven Oscar nominations. The third screenplay to materialize was “The Dog Stars.” “I read it and I was blown away,” Scott says.
Scott’s career has swept the breadth of genres. Although he established himself with futuristic films like “Alien” and “Blade Runner,” he showed a knack for emotional drama with 1991’s “Thelma & Louise” and for historical epics like 2000’s “Gladiator.” He’s never settled into a particular genre and, perhaps due to that wide-ranging restlessness, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will be awarding him an honorary Oscar in November.
The director is known for films like ‘Alien’ and ‘Gladiator.’ But these seven movies — and his new ‘The Dog Stars’ — show what he can do in an intimate register.
Throughout his films, the director has always asked big questions: Who are we? What drives us? What pushes us to survive? It’s the last query that re-emerges in “The Dog Stars,” although Scott says the postapocalyptic setting initially discouraged him.
