Tony Scott Quotations

The true excitement comes from the actors - that gives you the true drama - and whatever I can do with the camera, that's icing on the cake.

My stories are pretty simplistic, but the characters are always complex and always right, and that comes from the script and my research and reverse-engineering what I find in the real world.

I'm a plagiarist - I always look back at other movies, and I steal, but I steal well, and I reinvent.

A lot of actors talk about doing their homework, but very few of them do it.

There's one great script that hit my desk that I didn't change at all, and that was True Romance.

All my movies, like Revenge, are under two hours.

Ridley and I talk every day. Our family is very close because we're from North England.

GM is a highly collaborative organization; we rely on a whole tier of suppliers for everything that we do.

I like changing the pace of my life, changing my discipline. It gives me ideas for how to see the world differently,

I think we're lucky because there are very few people in life who get to do what we're doing.

I've had a love affair with every movie I've ever done.

The scariest thing in my life is the first morning of production on all my movies. It's the fear of failing, the loss of face and a sense of guilt that everybody puts their faith in you and not coming through.

We think of enterprise architecture as the process we use for fully describing and mapping business functionality and business requirements and relating them to information systems requirements.

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.

The real world has always been far more exciting and funny and dangerous to me than anything somebody could conjure up sitting in front of a computer.

Making a movie is like a marathon, and commercials are like sprints - they're equally satisfying, but in different ways.

Out of the total of 11 movies, I got slammed.

The biggest edge I live on is directing. That's the most scary, dangerous thing you can do in your life,

We come from a tough, working class background, so we're very tight.

We don't ever want IT to be the thing that holds GM back.

We had a brilliant upbringing, and we never wanted for anything, even though we went through highs and lows of finances.

An established film director can just pick up the phone and say to a star, 'Hey, are you interested in doing a commercial?'

I can't sit on my bum very long in a movie theater seat, and when I'm directing, I always want to move the camera or edit.

I make a movie because it's something that inspires me.

What always leads me in terms of my movies are characters.

This project has now been with me for 12 years.

So I sort of thought, 'OK, well, seeing as we're not completely telling her story, it gives me a sort of freedom to actually do what I want.' 

I'm always dictated to be what I want to do, and I have a love affair with every movie I've done, and some of them have turned out good, and some of them have turned out not so good. But regardless, the making of them, or that love affair, has always been a great experience.

Here's someone who loves touching the dark side.

I was always criticized for style and content, but I enjoy trying to tell stories a different way, particularly with this movie, Man On Fire.

I think these films are little creative diamonds that give directors a chance at fleshing out story, characters and visuals in a short form.

Regardless of what the press said, she never saw the finished product because she died before. But she saw more than half the movie and she said she loved it.

At one time, I would actually ride around to movie theaters to check the lines.

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.

There was a lot of talk about moving the release up because it was suddenly current. I didn't like that at all. It felt like I was capitalizing off of someone's misfortune. So I had a talk with them, and they backed off.

It's a great start to what will be an amazing line-up, intended to keep the focus on fun, whilst providing everyone with quality entertainment.

It's pretty special coming back here - there is a strong family tradition - and to be honest, I'm a little overwhelmed at the attention,

Dad was a very gentle, sweet man. Mum was the matriarch and the patriarch of the family. She ran the roost with a steel fist, but at the same time there was respect and love for her.

Dad never understood why Ridley wanted to go to art school, and then I came along six years later and wanted to do the same thing.

Domino never failed to surprise or inspire me over the last 12 years, ... She was a free spirit like no other I have ever known.

I wake up every morning bolt upright, whether it's a commercial, not that that's a good thing or a bad thing, because I shoot commercials in between movies. But whether it's a commercial or a movie where I'm shooting a major train wreck, the thing that worries me most is when I'm doing a performance thing.

It was just a different way of doing things, and I'm often criticized for attempting difference, which is misinterpreted as style over content.

I never make a movie for my career.

If you look at my body of work, there's always a dark side to my characters. They've always got a skeleton in the closet; they've always got a subtext.

In the biopic scripts, we did address heroin, which was part of her life. To tell you the honest truth, those scripts didn't work.

Its very hard trying to talk to an actor about how they should deliver lines, or cut their hair, unless it comes from a place of a strong point of view.

Shooting in real-life situations helps actors because they're competing against the noise and the wind. Out of that comes things that shift and change, in terms of tone, but not in terms of re-honing the whole sequence.

Research is what drives me. When I get a script, I go to the real world and touch the real people.

With every movie I do and every day I go to work, my goal is not just to reach for difference, but also figure out how to look at world and characters in a different way.

I think the guiding principle for me is working with people, because I don't know how long it's going to last, I want to seize the moment and work with people I want to work with.

The hardest scene for me is always the scene when I'm dealing with performances, when I'm actually looking at the guys and hoping that I'm covering it in the right way and that I'm handling it in the right way.

I have a short attention span.

I love shooting with real things in the real world. I think it gives a level of drama, performance, and everything seems to rise to the occasion.

Mum was the matriarch and the patriarch of the family.

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.

The world is sick of big IT things that don't work.

I thought that subtitles are boring because they're there generally to serve us with information to make you understand what people are saying in a different language.

The real world is where I get to educate and entertain myself. I go and touch the real world and touch real people. That's my way into movies.

I'm trying to use the camera to get into people's heads. I use camera techniques a lot to articulate character.

Ridley and I talk every day. Our family is very close because were from North England.