Well this is unexpected and tragic. Tony Scott, the director of loud, sometimes-great but usually generic, green-tinted big budget action movies like Top Gun (pretty good) Beverly Hills Cop II (bleh)  Days of Thunder (actually not as bad as you remember), Crimson Tide (quite good), Domino (fun) and those Denzel Washington pieces of nothing that he's been churning out over the past decade or so committed suicide yesterday by jumping off the  Vincent Thomas Bridge in Los Angeles while swarms of people watched. I'll bet more people saw this event then that new Ben Stiller movie The Watch. 

From ABC News.

"Tony Scott had inoperable brain cancer, a source close to him told ABC News.

Police said they received a 911 call at about 12:30 p.m. that an individual had jumped off the Vincent Thomas Bridge. The body was recovered around 3 p.m., when it was identified by authorities as Scott, according to Lt. Joseph Bale of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. An autopsy is scheduled to be performed today.

The Coroner's Office found several notes to loved ones in Scott's car, a spokesman told The Associated Press. A suicide note was later found at his office, according to the AP."

Tony will always have a place in my dark, mean, soul for directing that cinematic brain frying thrill ride True Romance in 1993. I've often said that when I saw Pulp Fiction in 1994 that I had witnessed the rebirth of cinema - well True Romance was the son (or baby) of Pulp Fiction.  The rulebook for action movies was thrown out and the genre was reinvented, re-imagined and reinvigorated for Romance.  That movie (with The Fugitive and Jurassic Park) made the summer of 1993 actually fun for movie lovers once again. Just try naming a memorable action movie from 1992 or 1991? Can't do it can you? You know why? Because their weren't any, (okay - except for Terminator 2 in '91. I'll give you that.)  Whenever a script was shit, Tony at least made a movie look good. It's obvious in his later years he opted for that 90's Oliver Stone-ish, puke color tinted, jerky, MTV quick cutting style that you don't see a lot of anymore. David Fincher used to do this but not so much these days. In fact most of Tony's movies over the past decade  look similar in style to Fincher's Fight Club from 1999.  The one instance where Tony made this hyper-kenetic style worked was in Domino (2005.)

Tony was the brother of Academy Award winning director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator) and the both formed Scott/Free productions which produces movies and such television shows such as the fantastic The Good Wife. Ridley and tony have quite often used composer Hans Zimmer to score their movies which resulted in many great collaborative scores such as Black Rain, Days Of Thunder, Thelma & Louise, True Romance, Crimson Tide and Gladiator.

Time to upgrade my True Romance DVD to Blu. That movie died at the box office in September of '93 for some stupid reason. But I've never met a person who's seen it and never loved it right then and there.  Thank you for True Romance Mr. Scott.

And it may or may not have been Tony Scott's idea to have Archie Panjabi wear those knee high leather boots and short skirts on every episode of The Good Wife, but I thank you Tony for that too.