Just a few days ago, “Gladiator II” cinematographer John Mathieson’s comments, criticizing Ridley Scott as “lazy” and having “changed” as a filmmaker, went viral and sparked much conversation about Scott’s last few films (“Napoleon,” “Gladiator II,” “House of Gucci”).
Well, not surprising, Mathieson is now trying to walk back those comments by going to the go-to trade for damage control narrative engineering, Deadline. Mathieson is telling them that his criticism was taken out of context, and that he wasn’t referring to Scott, but rather the industry as a whole:
I said, the industry, it’s really lazy. Lazy and sloppy are not two words I would ever put with this gentleman of a certain age and genius. But if you slide out — and you can hear it — you slide out a paragraph and put it right next to, oh, let’s talk about Rid and multi cameras. And he edits the piece down to 30 minutes…I could hear the blip of the sound. I said, well, that wasn’t said against that. That was probably said maybe 20 minutes later. However, this is what has risen to the surface. And I’m deeply regretful of that.”
Mathieson can spin this all he wants, but I just re-listened to portions of the interview and he is very clearly talking about Scott. He says “he” multiple times and even tries to make his point by referring to Scott’s behavior on “Gladiator II” and “Robin Hood.” Hell, even if you take out the “lazy” quote, Mathieson is still quite critical of Scott throughout the chat.
“He is quite impatient so he likes to get as much as he can at once,” Mathieson said of Scott’s use of multiple cameras. “It’s not very good for cinematography,” he explained, saying it means you “can only light from one angle”.
He added: “Look at his older films and getting depth into things was very much part of lighting. You can’t do that with a lot of cameras but he just wants to get it all done.”
“Having lots of cameras I don’t think has made the films any better…It’s a bit rush, rush, rush. That’s changed in him. But that’s the way he wants to do it and I don’t like it and I don’t think many people do, but people love his films and he’s Ridley Scott and can do what he wants,” Mathieson continued.
Mathieson has worked as Scott’s cinematographer on six films, including “Gladiator,” “Matchstick Men” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” Despite walking back on his previous criticism, there’s a good chance they won’t ever collaborate again after this.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.