As we all come to grips with the loss of one of Hollywood’s most esteemed directors, Tony Scott, there has been an outpouring of tributes to the man and his films. This 1965 short film, BOY AND BICYCLE, directed by Tony’s brother, Ridley Scott, features a young Tony (roughly 21 years old) exploring the streets and outskirts of England, played to Hans Zimmer’s score for Tony’s 1993 film, TRUE ROMANCE. It’s a touching picture of youth, freedom, and spirit, at a time before the great rollercoaster of life took hold and sent both brothers into a tailspin of success in Hollywood.
What I love, particularly, is the innocence of it all. There is almost always a time, long before the world really gets its hands on you, that you are free of the burdens and tribulations that will affect your life in such significant ways, and it’s something that you can rarely get back once it’s gone. To see Tony before his rise and fall; happy, eager, and ready for the world, is a moving image, compounded even more so by the fact that his own brother captured it.
In an unpublished interview with The Hollywood Reporter from April of this year, Tony said of Ridley: “We are very close; he is my best friend. It’s been a brother-mentor relationship. But Rid and I are as tight as it can get. We are very tight and have had a brilliant relationship.”
Here’s Tony: