Tony Scott Quotes

I have a short attention span.

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

New York is vertical - all skyscrapers.

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“Dad was a very gentle, sweet man.”

— Tony Scott

Mum was the matriarch and the patriarch of the family.

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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.

— Tony Scott

“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.”

— Tony Scott

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

— Tony Scott

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.

— Tony Scott