News is circulating tonight that director and producer Tony Scott has ended his life by jumping from a bridge in Los Angeles. He left a suicide note in his office, but there is currently no reliable news on the note’s details as of this posting.
Scott will be remembered for Top Gun in mainstream press, but around this blog he’ll be deeply thanked forever for directing True Romance and one of the most formative early films for my own personal sex and relationship fantasies, The Hunger.
The Hunger’s opening sequence above shows much to this effect – and in addition to my personal love for it, the opening sequence is still considered by many to be one of the most memorable opening sequences in modern film history. it is NSFW and I expect it will get yanked from YouTube for its content, but I wanted to share it with you tonight. I will ever be grateful for having my mind blown with this sequence and all the choices made to execute it.
After their opening kills, as they shower together Bowie dreamily tells Deneuve, “We will be together forever and ever…”
A friend took me to see a midnight showing of The Hunger on Friday night, in homage to Tony Scott. I’m not very familiar with his work, but I think I’m about to be.
Deeply engaging cinema, especially good at midnight, shown on crackling, scratched film. I still have cigarette burns in my peripheral vision.
I teach an excerpt from Peter Greenaway’s “The Pillow Book” in my Video 1 class (focusing on the formalist cinematography design…)
now, thanks to VB, I’m remembering exactly what’s next for my Video 2 class. thanks! <3
I just read that he had inoperable brain cancer:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/top-gun-director-tony-scott-inoprable-brain-cancer/story?id=17039434
This hits a little too close to home for me. I lost a very close friend a few years back when she’d decided she had enough with battling brain cancer. I miss her every day.
I’m still close with her sibling, but I apparently look so much like her that it’s somewhat challenging when I see her family.
I honestly don’t recall if this or Henry & June was the first *erotic* movie I saw. I had seen movies including sex, but none really felt hot to me until these two. Sad news, and I feel for his family and wish them well.
Wow – sad news indeed.
The Hunger is certainly one of my personal landmark films, one that pushed me toward goth after I was done with punk, and also on my short list of great film opening sequences.
Interestingly, I never even knew who directed it until now, and I’m enough of a film buff to usually care about such things. I had no idea he was Ridley Scott’s brother, but it fits. Blade Runner, the other great landmark film of the 80s, was less than a year before. Both were very stylish updates of earlier genres and really left their mark on the whole look of the ’80s, though unlike so much else from the ’80s, manages to look fresh today, rather than completely dated. (Compare “To Live and Die in LA” for a good example of the latter.)
According to Wikipedia, “Witnesses said he did not hesitate before jumping off the bridge.” No idea what demons drove him to that point. At least he’s left the world a film for the ages, far more than most of us will ever leave for posterity.