DP and Gladiator II podcaster apologize to Ridley Scott

EXCLUSIVE: A serious case of Thanksgiving indigestion was caused yesterday by snarky comments attributed to Gladiator II cinematographer John Matheson versus film director Ridley Scott Documentary storytelling podcast DocFix. Both the DP and the podcaster are eating a piece of crow today here on Deadline. Matheson regrets an interview about his illustrious career last March, after editing which he appeared to savagely criticize his director when the two-hour interview was cut to 30 minutes. It sounded like Matheson was making disparaging comments about Scott when he was actually talking about the industry as a whole, but it sounded like he was saying the director took a “lazy” approach to the epic sequel they made together, which was met with critically acclaimed and a success. has now grossed over $300 million worldwide and may finally earn Scott the elusive Oscar for Best Director.

Matheson was Scott’s cameraman on the first stage. Gladiatorand also Hannibal And Kingdom of Heaven. It was Scott’s Alien that scared DP and inspired his career. Anyone who’s ever spent time with Scott would never use the word “lazy” to describe the director and his complex process, which involves storyboarding scenes from every angle. The podcaster said the negative effects of the editing were not intentional, but confusion is likely since Scott often shoots in economy takes, even on large sets using up to 11 cameras. Let them explain. You can find disparaging material all over the Internet, so don’t get bogged down in false stuff here.

Firstly, it’s from podcaster Nigel Levy, who is a filmmaker himself. He said his podcast is aimed at filmmakers making documentaries, which both he and Matheson have done. They sat down when Matheson had just returned from filming. Gladiator IIbut the interview was not about this film.

“We covered a lot of ground, including all the documentary and filmmaking tips that I know my listeners would like to hear,” Levy told Deadline. “We mentioned his time in the new Gladiator film since he had just returned from the set, but that wasn’t what we were talking about. After we talked about how he filmed GladiatorWe then moved on to talk about how the industry has changed—not always for the better. The transition from digital to film, camera techniques, multi-camera versus single-camera, like different lighting for each, blocking, and so on. All this happened in almost two hours. Then I had to whittle them down to about 30. I mainly focused on discussing filmmaking techniques, since that was the most interesting to me and my listeners. I want to give people practical support and advice. During the editing process, of course, everything was compressed, and this is where the problems arose.

“One thing I was sure of was that John never intended to criticize Ridley,” Levy said. “It does seem that the convergence of individual comments could make the situation ambiguous if people decided to take things out of context, which is what they did. I wish John and I had had the opportunity to go through this after I was laid off. After all, some people decided to listen to it and imply that John definitely never meant it… I apologize for any problems this caused John, the film, and Ridley Scott. After all, he is clearly a brilliant director.”

Said Matheson: “The article was about me. We talked about how things have changed in the digital age. And I talked about the downside of the digital age. We must do more. We have to take more shots, we have to shoot more every day, we have to light and think about many cameras at the same time. And I said, you ask any DP, they don’t really like doing this. And we were talking about this, and I said that people just come in the morning, turn on the coffee machine, turn on the cameras and ask: what are we doing? Because digital things don’t cost anything, but you shoot a lot. And I said it was, and I said it was a quote. I said, industryit’s very lazy. Lazy and careless are not two words I would describe to this gentleman of a certain age and genius. But if you pull out—and you hear it—you pull out a paragraph and put it next to, “Oh, let’s talk about Reed and multicams.” And he edits the play to 30 minutes… I heard an intermittent sound. I said, well, it wasn’t said against it. This was probably said maybe 20 minutes later. However, this is what surfaced. And I deeply regret that.”

He forgot about the interview until Scott’s camp told him it had gone viral yesterday after it was first published by a British tabloid, and online media followed it without attempting to clarify. “I said, oh God, well, that wasn’t very good. But I didn’t really feel… that we offended him in any way. But News Corp comes in, especially The Telegraph, and they splice things together and distort what was said. And here we are. These two parts imply that we were talking about him at the same time, which was not the case. I was talking about the industry as a whole.”

Then Matheson had to call the director. “I said, ‘Well, it happened,’ and he said, ‘Oh God, what the hell?’ He said you need to be careful. I said, “I know.” I’m really sorry you got involved in this, it’s very embarrassing and very hurtful.”

Scott’s birthday is tomorrow, and let’s hope this clarification puts that behind us. After all, the director, who will soon turn 87 years old, will have a return match with Paul Mescal. Dog starsWith Bee Geesanother Gladiator and who knows what’s even further down the road.