Quentin Tarantino Slammed Haters Who Claimed Late Top Gun Director Tony Scott Ruined His Script and “Made it too pretty”
Tony Scott, the legendary director best known for helming films like Top Gun, True Romance, Days of Thunder, Enemy of the State, etc., and a mentor to acclaimed filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, passed suddenly in 2012 at the age of 68. He was well recognized for his very frantic shooting style, which he had described as being about energy and velocity in a 2009 interview.
True Romance, a well-known American romantic crime film released in 1993, was co-written and co-directed by the late filmmaker Quentin Tarantino. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette starred in the film, which was a box office flop but quickly earned favorable reviews from critics and developed a cult following of its own. Today, True Romance is regarded as one of Tony Scott’s finest films.
Quentin Tarantino says changes by Tony Scott made True Romance work
Back in 2012, after Tony Scott’s unfortunate passing, Jeff Goldsmith had arranged a double feature screening of Tony Scott’s True Romance and Domino at the LA Film School in Hollywood and was joined by Quentin Tarantino and Richard Kelly for a quick question & answer session.
During the conversation with the audience members, the director-writer shared that he does not agree with people saying that the late director-producer glossed up his True Romance script and “made it too pretty, too vivid.” He added that the changes he made at the time of filming are what makes the movie work so well and the casting and the performances he got from them were top-notch.
Tony Scott made a few changes in the original script of the movie, transforming an experimental story to a much more traditional narrative. Tarantino shared with Film Comment back in 2012,
“True Romance wasn’t written in a linear fashion originally. It started off with the same first scene of Clarence talking about Elvis, then the next scene was Drexel killing all his cronies and the third scene was Clarence and Alabama at Clarence’s father’s house. And then you learn how he got what he got.”
The director-writer said at the time that the now-late director made it all linear and it worked that way.
Read this: Margot Robbie Doesn’t Feel “Weird” About Fans’ Quentin Tarantino-Like Obsession With Her Feet
“Mine would have been more cynical” Quentin Tarantino on True Romance’s narrative
Tarantino, during a conversation with Indie Wire, had noted that his version of the movie would have been more cynical, adding;
“I wanted to make you fall in love with Clarence and blow his f***ing head off, I wanted to do that to you. Tony didn’t want to do that. Clarence was me, I could blow my own head off, a punk rock move.”
Tony Scott’s version of the movie was sweeter because he loved the characters so much and knew that the audience would love them too so he let those characters float in a cloud of ignorant bliss and that’s why the movie stays true to its name. Tarantino recalled what the late director had told him about the characters;
“Let’s just fall in love with them and stay there. I’m not doing it to be a commercial f***. I’m doing it because I love these f***ing kids, they f***ing deserve it. I can’t f***ing kill them.”
It was revealed that it was Roger Avary who had penned the changes in the end but it was Scott who had the last call on it.
Why did Quentin Tarantino not direct True Romance?
At the Independent’s 25th anniversary feature on True Romance, Quentin Tarantino was asked about how Tony Scott landed on his project, to which he mentioned that at the time, Tony Scott was on a panache of his filmmaking career with the success of Top Gun.
With a help of a friend, Tarantino managed to pass on the two scripts the director wrote; True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. Scott agreed to give them a read. He loved both of them and wanted to direct both of them, but Tarantino gave him the choice for one because he wanted to direct the other one and after his movie Grindhouse flopped, Tarantino called up Scott to tell him that he was feeling bad after tasting his first flop.
The director recalled the late director telling him that he would learn how to get over it and to remember that he would go ahead and do another movie that would do fairly better and he would appreciate it more. Tarantino said he felt so much better when the late director made him realize that he was lucky that he was able to make movies the way he wanted to make them.
Source: IndieWire
