For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

Ridley Scott

Space You Who

Life isn't black and white. It's a million gray areas, don't you find?

Ridley Scott

Life You White

I think, at the end of the day, filmmaking is a team, but eventually there's got to be a captain.

Ridley Scott

Vent Think Thin

In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.

Ridley Scott

Great Wit Way

How can you look at the galaxy and not feel insignificant?

Ridley Scott

You T Significant

When you're in the editing room, the dangerous thing is that it becomes like telling a joke again and again and again. Eventually, the joke starts to not be funny. So you have to be careful that you're not throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Ridley Scott

Funny Car Art

In science fiction, we're always searching for new frontiers. We're drawn to the unknown.

Ridley Scott

Science Ways Way

That's part of the policy: To keep switching gears.

Ridley Scott

Art Witch Wit

In film, it's very important to not allow yourself to get sentimental, which, being British, I try to avoid. People sometimes regard sentimentality as emotion. It is not. Sentimentality is unearned emotion.

Ridley Scott

Time Men Yourself

On rare occasions, Dad used to reminisce about when he met Eisenhower and how Churchill would pop in, in the late hours of the evening or night, carrying a cigar, when he'd obviously had a good dinner.

Ridley Scott

Good Car Yin

A hit for me is if I enjoy the movie, if I personally enjoy the movie.

Ridley Scott

Movies T Son

I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

Ridley Scott

Age You Ya

I always shoot my movies with score as certainly part of the dialogue. Music is dialogue. People don't think about it that way, but music is actually dialogue. And sometimes music is the final, finished, additional dialogue. Music can be one of the final characters in the film.

Ridley Scott

Time Music Movies

The word 'religion' is only a label. What lies behind that, the most important thing of all, is the word 'faith'. You either have faith, or you don't have faith, or you have degrees of faith - and if you have degrees of faith, then you become agnostic. You're kind of in-between, or you're on the fence.

Ridley Scott

Religion Faith You

People say I pay too much attention to the look of a movie but for God's sake, I'm not producing a Radio 4 Play for Today, I'm making a movie that people are going to look at.

Ridley Scott

God Too Much Too

Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

Ridley Scott

T Sing Sin

Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.

Ridley Scott

Men Home You

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

Ridley Scott

History Try Tory

The great film editor is not a cutter, he's a storyteller, right?

Ridley Scott

Great Utter Tory

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

Ridley Scott

You Ways Way

Fire is our first form of technology.

Ridley Scott

Technology Techno Tech

I think one of the successes of Gladiator is how we manage to turn on a dime the character from one thing to another where you believe he is one thing and he is something very different.

Ridley Scott

Because I was a kid from north of England, the only films I had access to was not alternative cinema, which in those days would be foreign cinema; I would be looking at all the Hollywood movies that arrived at my High Street.

Ridley Scott

As a filmmaker, deep blacks are essential, and in my experience, no technology captures those attributes as well as Plasma.

Ridley Scott

If I have to, I'll go and direct theater and talk till the cows come home.

Ridley Scott

It doesn't matter how much faith you have or don't have. I just don't buy the idea that we're alone. There's got to be some form of life out there.

Ridley Scott

There's a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there's a big Muslim community in Paris.

Ridley Scott

I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

Ridley Scott

Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.

Ridley Scott

One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

Ridley Scott

I think there's nothing worse than inertia. You can be inert and study your navel, and gradually fall off the chair. I think the key is to keep flying.

Ridley Scott

If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

Ridley Scott

Try writing a book, dude. That's difficult.

Ridley Scott

I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.

Ridley Scott

'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.

Ridley Scott

I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

Ridley Scott

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

Ridley Scott

I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.

Ridley Scott

The best stories come out of the truth.

Ridley Scott

And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

Ridley Scott

Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.

Ridley Scott

Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

Ridley Scott

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

Ridley Scott

MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

Ridley Scott

I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

Ridley Scott

I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.

Ridley Scott

People have no idea how physically tough doing a film is.

Ridley Scott

I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

Ridley Scott

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

Ridley Scott

For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

Ridley Scott

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

Ridley Scott