Sir Ridley Scott, the man who gave us “Alien” (1979), “Bladerunner” (1982), the landmark “1984”, “Thelma and Louise” (1991), “Gladiator” (2000), “Black Hawk Down” (2001), and “The Martian” (2015), is now promoting his 30th film, “The Dog Stars.” The movie is based on a 2012 post-apocalyptic fiction novel by Thomas Heller.
It is set in the aftermath of a flu pandemic which has wiped out 99 percent of the world’s population. Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin play a pilot and mechanic named Hig, and a farmer turned security specialist named Bangley — two survivors who live in an abandoned airport in Eerie, Colorado. Director Scott refers to them as “The Odd Couple.”
In a virtual press conference out of London, he clarifies it’s “The Odd Couple” with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, where Matthau said, “If you clean the ashtray one more time, I’ll brain you with it.”
The film was initially supposed to shoot in Calgary. However, Scott explains, “Canada is majestic, you get out of the car for a pee and walk through the forest for five minutes, you turn around and suddenly you don’t know where you are, and you die there. There are wolves and bears.” He found it intimidating. They eventually opted for the Dolomites in Italy.
Apart from Scott saying the food in Italy was a bonus, Elordi added, “They have a rich cinematic history in Italy, and it’s everywhere, especially in Cinecittà, they’ve still got (Federico) Fellini’s props just scattered around the place, and you know what he shot on which sound stage.”
The dog in “The Dog Stars” happens to be a Belgian Malinois named Jasper. Elordi says he liked working with such talented dogs (there were three Jaspers) and when asked if the experience of working with them was unpredictable, he said it was “no more unpredictable than working with Josh or Guy.” Of course, Josh Brolin and Guy Pearce were right there beside him at the press conference.
Scott considers himself a “news hound,” admitting to a habit of watching the global news twice a day. He mentions a lot of the events and problems surrounding the world of “The Dog Stars” are happening in some form right now — climate change, “chaos in certain territories.” He goes further to talk about the “financial abyss” people around the world faced in 2008, the pandemic, recent outbreaks of Ebola. “You want me to go on? It gets depressing.”
While this film is about survival, it also says something about hanging on to humanity. There are parts where it goes from scenes of calm and vast, uninhabited nature to moments of attacks from savage and brutal reavers, and then back to some stillness. It’s in the moments of stillness where “The Dog Stars” takes on a poetic quality.
Scott attributes this to the “beauty of the photography” (the cinematographer is Erik Messerschmidt). “You see the incredible beauty of the landscape. I put all the birds in... there’s a pelican sitting on a dumpster, and then three flying over his head as he (Hig) walks up to his home. The photography is the poetry of any film, whether it’s a horror movie or a comedy.”
Scott, 88, is set to work on an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, “Treasure Island” with Hugh Jackman as Long John Silver.
Brolin says this of Scott: “Normal people age, he doesn’t.”
The movie also stars Margaret Qualley, Benedict Wong and Allison Janney. It is currently out in cinemas and Imax theaters.
