This image is one of the most indelible movie openings in modern history, the intro to TOP GUN. If Tony Scott had wanted to rest on his laurels, he could have after this movie. But in fact it was just the beginning of an amazing career filled with everybody from Quentin Tarantino to Denzel Washington, a lifetime of both feature and TV success of which any Hollywood player would be jealous.
The man died last night after jumping off a 150 foot bridge connecting Long Beach to San Pedro. Everybody's reporting he had an inoperable brain tumor and as such there's nothing to begrudge the man. As humans there's really only one thing that we're born with - our lives. And often in life it can feel like outside factors are colluding to rob us of that one great possession, to take away our freedoms, to make our lives no longer our own. That is to say, often we feel like we no longer control our own lives. Certainly nothing does this with a more resounding thud than terminal disease. Even imprisonment not only allows one to continue breathing, thinking, processing (albeit in a much more confined space), often it can end with the prisoner re-emerging into the freedom of the outside world. But a terminal, untreatable disease leaves no option but to suffer through the final stages of your body rotting from the inside. Your loved ones will see you in horrible pain, loss of bodily control, bowels and such. I always like to save one last bite for the end of every meal. For example, I get a steak dinner, I eat everything else before I go out with one last delicious bite of steak. The last bite's what you're left with when you leave the table. So why do we as a society begrudge a person deciding his last bite shouldn't have to be a vomit-filled rotting? Along those lines, Scott went for a last moment full of the drama - and, having driven on that bridge, surely a nice view - and as such there should be no judging of this as anything less than the final act of a man who knows dinner is over and just wants to go out with one last bite of steak.
That off my chest, we need to honor this man who made a career off celebrating the strong, the tough, and the hard.
Seriously, TOP GUN followed by DAYS OF THUNDER, CRIMSON TIDE, Bruce Willis' THE LAST BOYSCOUT (with its epic scene of a football player running downfield capping motherfuckers) to the first script turned into a big Hollywood movie written by a fan-geek named Quentin Tarantino (TRUE ROMANCE) to Denzel's tour de force MAN ON FIRE and the "finally showing Keira Knightley getting down" bounty hunter flick DOMINO, not to mention producing ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD and TV series THE GOOD WIFE and the mini-series PILLARS OF THE EARTH and most recently even the special-effects achievement PROMETHEUS (as directed by his luminary brother Ridley).
All of these movies are about doing the right thing though it's hard, though it hurts, though it might even kill you. It's about being a man both through your greatest hours and through your decrepitude. About not taking shit off nobody and reaching, striving, for greatness. As such Tony Scott is in many ways an oracle and a role model for a man's ambition.
And as such, we owe him a debt of gratitude for all the brilliant stories he brought us about what it means to be tough in a world that's growing increasingly tougher. And like all great men, his legacy will live on far past his flesh.
- Ryan
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