Ridley Scott: A couch potato's best friend

Ridley Scott has been directing landmark films ever since I was born, and his latest movie, "Body of Lies," will be released on Friday. His first big splash on the international scene, "Alien," hit theaters three months after I was born in 1979, and it loomed large over my childhood. I had known of it from a very early age as the movie that made my mom leave the room whenever my dad was watching it. (We had a Betamax and a library of movies that I'm pretty sure weren't actually available on the market ... but enough about that.) By the time I saw actually saw it, James Cameron's far more spectacular sequel had pretty much killed it for me -- why watch a movie with one alien when you can watch a movie with many "Aliens"?

My opinion of "Alien" is much higher today, of course, and Scott is one of those directors whose films I will always pay to see. (The others are Spielberg, P.T. Anderson, Fincher, Zemeckis, Nolan and, begrudgingly, Burton.) In the last 26 years, Scott has given us acclaimed films like "Blade Runner," "Thelma & Louise," "Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down" and "American Gangster," underrated gems like "Matchstick Men," "A Good Year" and "G.I. Jane," and misunderstood epics like "Hannibal" and "Kingdom of Heaven."

But as a film buff and a couch potato, I mostly love Ridley Scott for his DVDs. If you ever wanted a film school in a box, you should buy one of these.

Scott, who will turn 71 on Nov. 30, practically invented the director's cut when he released a version of "Blade Runner" without Harrison Ford's lifeless narration to the VHS market, and he embraces DVD as a medium where he can give fans of his work pretty much everything they could ever want. The latest incarnation of "Blade Runner," for instance, is available in a giant metal suitcase containing four different complete versions of the film and a ridiculously detailed documentary, "Dangerous Days," that is both longer and, in my opinion, more interesting than the movie itself.

DVD has even allowed Scott to salvage one of his box office bombs. "Kingdom of Heaven" landed with a thud at the box office in 2005, and played like an overlong, underwritten action movie with Orlando Bloom coming off as a bit of a stiff. The director's cut DVD reveals a much different movie neutered by a studio that thought it would be better to cut all the substance out and leave the Maximus-sized spectacle. The documentary -- another behemoth longer than the movie itself -- is very candid about this, as all of Scott's documentaries are, and gives us a peek at a project he has since abandoned.

Scott fiddles with formula, as well; "Matchstick Men," the underrated con-man comedy with Nicolas Cage, gives us a fly-on-the-wall doc instead of the talking-heads norm. A few years later, Scott's light and airy "A Good Year" presented the film and the documentary as one continuous feature, breaking away from its quaint tale of the French countryside for set visits with Russell Crowe and the rest of the cast. This technique is particularly effective for a movie as breezy and insignificant as "A Good Year," and makes it worth a second rental.

But my favorite Ridley DVD must be "Hannibal." In the doc, all the principle players are upfront and honest about the absence of Jodie Foster and Jonathan Demme for the wacky sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," and producer Martha DeLaurentiis even names the actresses, besides Julianne Moore, who they considered for the part of Clarice Starling. There's an extended sit-down with Scott's favorite composer, Hans Zimmer, as he puts the finishing touches on the operatic piece he and Patrick Cassady wrote for the film. Best of all is the closing segment, where Scott plants a camera at the back of the auditorium for the film's Los Angeles premiere, capturing a room full of industry stiffs' reactions to Ray Liotta eating his own brain. That's the kind of thing you never get to see, and shows Scott and his DVD producer, Charles de Lauzirika, have a great sense for what will make their product stand out.

I have yet to see last year's "American Gangster" on DVD, where Scott has, of course, added 18 minutes of footage and undoubtedly included another in-depth documentary. Maybe I need to update my Netflix list, too; all movie fans can learn a lot by watching one of Ridley's DVDs.