Ridley Scott quotes:

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  • The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnostic. You're kind of in-between, or you're on the fence.

  • Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

  • On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he'd obviously had a good dinner.

  • Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

  • Churchill strikes a note in my life because my father worked on Mulberry Harbour, which was the code name for the temporary concrete harbours which were towed across the Channel to make the D-day landings in France possible.

  • In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

  • I like a film such as 'American Beauty,' and I like 'Spider-Man.'

  • When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

  • I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

  • The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

  • I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

  • I'm agnostic because I went through the usual process of parents insisting you go to church, and yet they didn't. So there's me, sitting in the chairs, thinking, 'Jeez, why am I here? I'd rather be playing tennis, seriously.'

  • People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

  • The great attraction to 'American Gangster' is these two great characters who are absolute paradoxes within their own sphere.

  • Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.

  • If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

  • Perhaps because of my background as a graphic designer, I'm drawn to rich and beautiful colors.

  • Alien' is a landmark. One of the really good science-fiction films.

  • Prometheus' was a great experience for me.

  • Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

  • The story of 'Prometheus' is the idea that if you're given a gift from the gods, do not abuse it, and do not think you can compete.

  • I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

  • If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

  • If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.

  • When you think about it, 'Avatar' is almost completely an animated movie.

  • I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.

  • There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

  • If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

  • When you're at a certain point in your time - age, that is, when you're older - you start to realize that, actually, what you leave behind you does count, and so you start to become fundamentally aware of your own destiny, which sounds very grand. It's not grand at all, actually.

  • MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

  • In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown.

  • And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

  • The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

  • By going to a preview, a director becomes insidiously infected by the process, so by the end of it, you're thinking, 'It may be a bit too long.'

  • Yes, obviously, there's this degree of wanting people to accept other people faiths and philosophies.

  • For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

  • Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

  • Everyone is tearing each other apart in the name of their personal god. And the irony is, by definition, they're probably worshiping the same god.

  • I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

  • I made the mistake of saying I was an atheist at one point, when I was doing 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

  • On 'Black Hawk Down,' I was employing 1,000 Muslims. 'Kingdom of Heaven,' same deal except bigger, probably 1,500 Muslims.

  • Dad entered the Second World War like any other man, trying to do the right thing.

  • Do what you haven't done is the key, I think.

  • Far from being dead, physical media has years of life left and must be preserved because there is no better alternative.

  • Some people like to do everything always the same thing. That's another way: To do the same thing.

  • Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

  • I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

  • I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

  • I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

  • As soon as you're at the higher levels of budgeting, you've got to get the film made, and the only way to support the film is to have actors who can support the budget.

  • Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.

  • Egypt was - as it is now - a confluence of cultures, as a result of being a crossroads geographically between Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

  • I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.

  • You don't really know what you're going to get until you're actually in Abbey Road. That's where I did all the music, in The Beatles' place.

  • It's the best of the best. No film can hope to top it(Kubrick's 2001).

  • Blade Runner was the godfather of all these fantastic movies that occur today. What's frustrating is that we're short of really great writing and great ideas. Blade Runner was full of them.

  • I don't ever blink, honestly.

  • I'm just trying to think what other sequels there were. There was the James Bond movies and not many. I think sequels have become a recent idea of franchising.

  • And I maintain good relationships with all the studios so I've never been bullied into any cut, frankly.

  • I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.

  • There's great wine from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Chile and, of course, California. But there's nothing like a really great French wine, they're so well balanced. The better the wine, the less you feel the effects I think.

  • That's part of the policy: To keep switching gears.

  • I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can inert and study your navel and gradually you'll fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

  • Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.

  • I'm not criticizing Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there. But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line. But in a way it's sad when you get a remake, isn't it?

  • Everyone sniggered because I was going to do a sandal and toga movie. But I knew exactly how to do it and I know how to make Robin Hood.

  • I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

  • I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.

  • The word 'comedy' implies slapstick.

  • I had been very impressed with the voiceover of 'Apocalypse Now,' with Martin Sheen's voice. That was a great voiceover; it really internalized the Martin Sheen character, who was essentially fairly low key and didn't say a lot during the whole movie. But he thought a lot, so I always thought that was really great.

  • In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

  • I want to return to the epic idea of the grand, big Western, in the sense that 'The Searchers' was.

  • Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

  • I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

  • A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.

  • I'm fundamentally a positive person. Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing some of the insane movies that I do.

  • I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.

  • I had a quite unconventional childhood, in the sense that I traveled a lot and I went to 10 or 11 schools. I was completely confused academically, but wherever I went, I could paint. I painted an inordinate amount.

  • Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.

  • The Gulf of Mexico, they believe, is a huge asteroid. That was an impact zone, you know that? Yeah, for that big a thing to actually hit our globe, it would have had to adjusted the spin, the axis.

  • When you're doing a big movie, you're gone for 10 months to a year.

  • What's interesting to me about Moses isn't the big stuff that everybody knows.

  • Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

  • 'Blade Runner' was a comic strip. It was a comic strip! It was a very dark comic strip. Comic metaphorically.

  • I think over time I've learned to stop being a screamer and get interactive; otherwise, you get killed in Hollywood. I stopped being a screamer shortly after 'Blade Runner,' kicking doors and things like that, because I wasn't actually getting anywhere.

  • If you circle above Central Park at night in a helicopter, you're looking down at the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the American Monopoly board.

  • I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.

  • The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.

  • The Man In High Castle' is one of Dick's most imaginative and captivating works, and certainly one of my favorites.

  • I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can be inert and study your navel, and gradually fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

  • How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?

  • The key thing is you can be the only person, your own critic.

  • Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.

  • 'Alien' is a landmark. One of the really good science-fiction films.

  • Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today's 3D movies.

  • I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.

  • I watch a lot of 'National Geographic.'

  • Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

  • History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

  • I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

  • One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

  • Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

  • I don't go to the cinema often anymore - I'd rather just pop in a disk and get the biggest monitor you've got, and if the quality is superb, I can watch a film, and if I don't like it I can pop it out.

  • But Gladiator is one of my favourite adventures because I really loved going into the world. I loved creating the world to the degree where you could almost smell it.

  • It's very difficult to find good scripts in Hollywood any more.

  • The very first film I ever saw was a pirate movie called 'The Black Swan' with Tyrone Power. And I thought that was great stuff. Of course, in those days, Technicolor was really Technicolor; there was no such thing as desaturation. Everybody looked super suntanned.

  • I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

  • The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

  • I think there are a lot of men who feel they're being emasculated by having the woman be in charge; I've never had that problem.

  • I have a healthy competitive nature.

  • I'm a very practical person.

  • I think sci-fi can easily be PG.

  • Sci-fi films are as dead as westerns.

  • If you believe, you believe; if you're faithful, you're faithful. I don't care what your religion is. The same if you're agnostic. That should be accepted, too.

  • My career seems to be a career of non-specific subjects which are all over the place.

  • What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.

  • Any period is fascinating: the more ancient, the better.

  • I started late. I didn't make my first movie until I was 40.

  • A good year for me is when me and my family are in good health. I'm just lucky to have good years doing something I like to do.

  • A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.

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