What are the contents of the audio cassette interview with Ridley Scott from the European Press kit?
Thanks to Kristin Hiers we now know that there
was an audio cassette interview with Ridley Scott that was
included with the European Press kit.
She not only shared the cassette so we could create an MP3
version of it, she also provided the following transcript.
Listen
to the audio which is 4 minutes and 42 seconds long.
Note: The audio on the cassette only contains Ridley Scott's
answers, along with dead air so that someone who was
"interviewing" him could insert their questions. Kristin has
taken an educated guess at what those provided questions were.
Ridley Scott: I think people will understand this better in
markets around the rest of the world, especially in Europe. It’s
a fairy story. It’s as near to a classical fairy story as I dare
go. You know, you could take this script and do it two different
ways. I could make it a very Celtic treatment, which would be
very dark, and rather somber and rather spooky. But I’ve chosen
not to do that. I’ve chosen, I think, a slightly easier route, a
more acceptable route to a more general audience in that it has
more light, more of a light side to it.
Interviewer: What can you tell me about the story of the film?
Ridley Scott: Story wise, we’re told at the beginning of the
film by this voice, the voice of doom, the voice of Darkness,
that the only way to trap the thing that he seeks most, which in
fact is the alicorns of the unicorns, the only way to trap these
creatures is to follow innocence. And so we go and we find
innocence, and we see innocence, and we see Mia Sara. We
discover that Mia Sara is like all adolescents--she’ll likely
object to that. She’s, you know, more mature than adolescent--is
in search of her, a character in the forest that she has a
relationship with. We don’t know who this character is. And then
we discover that we find, we find this boy in the forest,
Cruise, who if you like is, in theatrical broad strokes, you
know that you, that one would think of Puck initially. But then
I think Puck is far too theatrical a character to, you know, to
play a lead. To be a lead focus, right? So therefore I rather
like to think of Tom more as being fairy land’s answer to
Tarzan. So we meet this wild boy who lives in the forest, and in
a sense is almost a lord of the forest. And they have this
relationship. And so in fact what we find are two innocents.
Interviewer: What were you looking for when casting the actors?
Ridley Scott: Well, Tim, Tom Cruise I think I was looking for a
character who was a hero figure, but at the same time carried a
degree of innocence, carried innocence, and I wanted that
ingenuous quality which I think Tom has. And Tim Curry, really
in a funny kind of way was influenced by when I decided I didn’t
want the usual rotting dreadful beast that would represent
Darkness and/or the Devil. In fact, I don’t believe the Devil is
like that, you know, and I’ve always got a feeling that, you
know, evil has a better time than good, right. And therefore
I've always felt that evil may be as healthy and certainly as an
attractive a character as good may be, if there’s a balance to
the universe, right? And therefore that’s what I was looking for
in Curry. I wanted, I found, I wanted to find a theatrical
performance, a big performance actually, but a big physical
performance with a very, very, very, you know, but a capability
of controlling that. Mia Sara, I was looking for an unknown
because this character had to personify innocence. And that’s
what she does.
Interviewer: What do you think audiences will feel when they
watch this movie?
Ridley Scott: I think to feel that they have escaped for two
hours into a fantasy world, which I think is fast disappearing
in terms of both from, you know, a literature point of view and
also from a film point of view. Because I think these films are
going to get more and more difficult to make. In a sense, it is
kind of a theatrical experience, and I think one has to go into
it with that in mind. Thank you.
This page was last updated on November 14th, 2021.
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