Old Dominion University ODU Digital Commons Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Communication & Theatre Arts Publications 2015 Understanding Tony Scott: Authorship and Post- Classical Hollywood Robert Arnett Old Dominion University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/communication_fac_pubs Part of the Film Production Commons Repository Citation Arnett, Robert, "Understanding Tony Scott: Authorship and Post-Classical Hollywood" (2015). Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications. 20. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/communication_fac_pubs/20 Original Publication Citation Arnett, R. (2015). Understanding Tony Scott: Authorship and Post-Classical Hollywood. Film Criticism, 39(3), 48-67. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Communication & Theatre Arts at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Understanding Tony Scott: Authorship and Post-Classical Hollywood Robert Arnett Few directors represent post-classical Hollywood cinema better than Tony Scott. His Hollywood career arcs from the 1980s and the iconic Top Gun (1984) to 2010, with the underrated Unstoppable. Scott’s films innovated the fragmentation and excessiveness of the post-classical Hollywood films, including the ability to overwhelm to an extent that negates for many critics and academics the possibility of any substance. Of Tony Scott, David Thomson, in his massive The New Biographical Dictionary o f Film (2003), managed about 100— dismissive—words, issuing, in effect, a challenge: those that see something in Tony Scott have “the advantage over me” (794).1 What Thomson and others fail to see in Tony Scott’s all-too-short career is a Hollywood director with a distinct authorship in the post-classical context.