He ended up in 'movie jail' after his first feature flopped, but 10 years on, Jake Scott – the son of Ridley – is making a comeback. TARA BRADYreports
JAKE SCOTT doesn't remember a time when he wasn't immersed in the movies. The son of director Ridley and nephew of director Tony – not to mention brother of film-makers Luke and Jordan – spent his school holidays making himself useful as an astronaut in Alienor hanging around the editing suite with Stanley Kubrick.
"He was working on The Shiningat the same time my dad was working on Bladerunner," says the thoroughly pedigree film-maker. "It was rarefied air, I know, but my brother and I were working. We got the bus every day and ran errands. My dad is a very disciplined person with a strong work ethic. He never wanted us to have any kind of sense of entitlement. We were kept away from Hollywood. He's from the north of England so there's always been the idea that you get nothing for nowt."
The youngster wasn’t keen on following the elder Scotts into the family business. He had hoped to do something in fine art or fashion design. But his love of music and movies finally got the better of him. By the 1980s he was a pioneering talent in the music video sector creating promos for Soundgarden, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, U2 and Pink.
When his much admired film for REM's Everybody Hurtscleaned up at the 1994 MTV Video Awards, the kid who had been kept away from Hollywood found that Hollywood had come knocking just the same.
“The phone started ringing,” says Scott the Younger. “I got a call from Steven Spielberg’s office and I went in and sat down for an hour.
“He was really interested in our process and he said ‘I look at videos sometimes and they’re so innovative they make us film-makers look backward’. And that was amazing because there had almost been a shame or stigma attached to videos at that point. But you look at people like Mark Romanek or Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze and their place in the film-making world now.”
Scott was one of the first to graduate to feature films. His precocious debut, however, was not an easy experience. Plunkett & Macleane, a swashbuckling yarn about two 18th-century highwaymen, played by Robert Carlyle and Jonny Lee Miller premiered in 1999 to mostly savage notices. Critics loathed its MTV excesses and wealth of movie references.
“I wasn’t ready,” he says. “We spent so long in the editing room fixating on individual scenes and attempting all sorts of things in terms of referencing other works and genres and periods, that I had no idea about overall tone. I just watched it again for the first time since it came out. I couldn’t stomach it before. And there are bits I really like in between all the parts that don’t work.” Vicious reviews left him in a depression and, worse, out in the cold.
“I had completely fucked myself up. I was in what Americans call ‘movie jail’. I couldn’t get a film made afterwards. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I had to roll up my sleeves and think about what I really wanted to do as a film-maker.”
Deciding that the films he loved were smaller and character driven, he quickly got to work. He came close to making an adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire's play Kimberly Akimbofor Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks but after four years, the plug was pulled at the last moment. Then Ken Hixon's screenplay for Welcome to the Rileyscame along.
"The worst thing about Plunkett & Macleanewas that I wasn't making the kind of film I wanted to see. I've always liked films that are small and character driven. The films I love right now are films by Lynne Ramsay and Andrea Arnold and Steve McQueen. So after 10 years this script came along and I knew it was the one. I loved those characters. I felt protective toward them. And I made a promise to myself to restrain myself visually, not to be perverse or flashy and to be honest about my decisions. I'm definitely one of these people who fall in love with good ideas and then get blinded by them."
Armed with a new resolve and a beautifully-crafted screenplay, Scott secured the services of James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart. "I went to see Into the Wildwith my daughter and we were blown away by her performance. The minute she walked in the room for the audition I knew she was right. The first Twilightfilm hadn't come out at that point. And to be honest, I hadn't even heard of it."
In Welcome to the RileysGandolfini and Leo play bereaved parents whose marriage has fallen apart since the death of their daughter years before. In the throes of a midlife crisis, Gandolfini meets a 16-year-old stripper (Stewart) who becomes a wayward surrogate child in a makeshift family unit. "It's a more mature and, shall we say, directed film than the last one," says Scott. "I'm a dad now and a totally different person so I'm a different film-maker."
Unsurprisingly, the reviews for Scott’s poignant drama have been kinder this time around. But a low-profile American release means that quality hasn’t necessarily translated into box office.
“We got some nice reviews. We did Sundance and a few other festivals. I wasn’t expecting a huge release but I do think the marketing could have been handled better. More and more the industry is all about films based on video games and superheroes. It’s all about targeting younger audiences. That’s a shame because I can’t make those films. I don’t want to make those films. So we have a sugar-addicted audience who want simplistic character development and dialogue that’s easy to understand. “But there’s still a more discerning audience out there. And they’re not being drawn to the cinemas because the studios just aren’t interested.”
You have to admire Scott’s tenacity. He could easily have looked to dad for a dig out but has instead chosen the road less travelled. Still, one does wonder where smaller personal films fit within the grandeur of the Scott family canon.
“They’re very powerful forces those two men,” he says of his father and uncle. “Their films don’t always work – they’ve both made fantastic films and they’ve both made mistakes. But when I sit down to watch their films I see them.
“Tony is all about adventure and dad is all about creating worlds. I can see the sincerity. Those are their personal films. I always leave the cinema thinking ‘that’s so dad’ or ‘that’s so Tony’.”
The next generation of Scotts haven’t exactly been idle this past decade. Black Dog Films, the music video subdivision of Ridley Scott Associates, is still open for business. We wonder, though, if MTV’s endless parade of reality shows isn’t a bit like watching a wrecking ball hit an art gallery for someone who was working in that sector during the golden years?
“We did think about shutting up shop. But we think we’ve turned a corner. There’s something of a renaissance going on. A lot of younger directors are coming along and they’re one-man bands – they write, shoot and edit on micro-budgets. There’s an idea out there that with digital technology anyone can make a film. And it’s just not true. You still have to train. You still have to know what you’re doing. And suddenly, there are people who know what to do. So I really think something exciting is going to happen in response to all those big marquee films.
"Look at Monstersand Bombay Beachrecently. These are completely self-sufficient films. Something amazing is happening out there. I'm glad to be around to see it."
