Director Tony Scott Dead At 68

Film director Tony Scott, whose credits include Top Gun, Days of Thunder, True Romance, Man on Fire and most recently the runaway train movie Unstoppable has died in an apparent suicide in California.

Eyewitnesses in the Los Angeles area reported watching Scott get out of his car on the Vincent Thomas bridge in Long Beach, CA during the overnight hours of August 19-20 and scale the guard rail before jumping to his death. The Los Angeles Port Police recovered his body from the water the following day.

Early media reports attributed Scott's suicide to an inoperable brain tumor, but his family immediately denied those reports. Although the 68 year old British-born director had left behind a note, investigators say it contains no apparent motive for his suicide.

Tony Scott was also the younger brother of fellow director Ridley Scott of Alien and Blade Runner fame. While growing up in England, the two brothers would sometimes appear in each other's film school projects. While the two brothers had started out filming commercials, they both began gravitating towards motion pictures in the late 1970s and early 80s.


Although Scott's first feature-length Hollywood film, The Hunger, did poorly at the box office in 1983, it gained a cult following a few decades later and introduced Willem DaFoe in a minor role. At the time, the younger Scott brother thought he was unemployable due to the poor box office of The Hunger, but within two years he was approached by producer Jerry Bruckheimer to direct Top Gun. Scott's earlier directing of an ad for Swedish automaker Saab depicting a Saab 900 Turbo racing a Saab Viggen-37 single-seat jet fighter had reportedly factored into the decision to hire Top Gun director.

Patricia Arquette as ex-prostitute Alabama Worley on the lam in Tony Scott's 1993 film True Romance. A number of critics rate this noir road movie as the most memorable films of the 1990s. The film was also one of the first scripts successfully shopped by then-writer Quentin Tarantino. Image courtesey of Warner Brothers studios

On a personal note, my introduction to Tony Scott was actually 1993's True Romance. The noir, blood-spattered road movie about a mild-mannered Detroit comic book store clerk and his ex-prostitute wife Alabama on the lam after killing Alabama's pimp and stealing a suitcase full of uncut cocaine featured an ensemble cast of Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Brad Pitt, Val Kilmer, Samuel L Jackson and James Gandolfini. The film was also the first script that writer-director Quentin Tarantino had successfully optioned.

Through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, Scott would go on to direct a number of films including Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State, Spy Game, Man on Fire and the 2009 remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.

Scott's most recent project to hit theaters was 2010's Unstoppable- starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine and Rosario Dawson in a fictionalized version of a 2001 runaway train incident in Ohio where crews were able to catch up and board the train to stop in manually, but only after another set of locomotives had coupled onto the rear to slow it down considerably.

For this project, Tony Scott's timing was impeccable. The nation's economy was still staggering from the effects of the Great Recession, which meant that traffic levels were down on railroads throughout the nation. Locations and venues that would've interrupted revenue freight operations for a number of railroads suddenly became available for filming. Scott and his production crew spread the filming out between Ohio, Western Pennsylvania and the southern tier of New York. Among the real-life railroads that hosted the filming were the Nittany and Bald Eagle, Western New York & Pennsylvania, Buffalo & Pittsburgh and Wheeling & Lake Erie.

Since CSX had no desire to revisit the 2001 Ohio runaway train incident, Scott and his writers created the fictional Allegheny & West Virginia railroad and changed the setting to Western Pennsylvania. In a nod to the real-life runaway train, the film's main antagonist is AWVR #777- a six-axle 4400 HP Canadian Pacific General Electric locomotive that the production crew was able to borrow for the months-long shoot. A number of other locomotives- mostly 3000 HP EMD SD40-2s from Larry's Truck & Electric in nearby McDonald, OH were hastily adorned with markings for the fictitious Allegheny & West Virginia and pressed into service on the set, including the locomotive the protagonists use to try and bring the runaway to a halt.

'Allgheny & West Virginia' AC4400W's roll across the Ohio River at Bellaire, OH in November 2009 for filming of Unstoppable- what turned out to be director Tony Scott's final film. Tom Habak photo

For the early scenes of the movie, Scott closely consulted with Wheeling & Lake Erie foreman Steve Stertzbach of Tuscarawas Township, OH. Scott was reportedly so impressed with Stertzbach's work in the early filming of Unstoppable that he requested that the foreman stay on and consult with the lead actors on operating the actual locomotive as well as a mockup that was rigged to accommodate cameras.

For five months, Stertzbach got to live the dream while still receiving his Wheeling and Lake Erie salary as well as overtime, per-diem and expenses while Scott's production company provided the foreman with meals, lodging and a 2010 Chevy Equinox. Stertzbach also recalled that Scott welcomed his family to the set and even cast his eldest son in a small part. When the movie was released in November 2010, Scott sent the Ohio rail worker who had consulted with him an ornately decorated leather-bound edition of the script signed by him for Christmas a month later.

Just weeks before his death, Scott was reportedly scouting out locations for a rumored sequel to Top Gun and was also slated to direct a remake of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. According to colleagues, Scott seemed particularly enthusiastic about the Top Gun remake which only deepens the mystery behind a possible motive for Scott's suicide.

A private memorial for family and colleagues was held on Friday afternoon at the Hollywood Forever cemetary, which is also the final resting place of actors and directors such as Cecil DeMille, Doug Fairbanks and Jayne Mansfield.

NY Mayor Bloomberg Donates $150,000 to Pro Gun Control Virginia Politicians- After NYPD Cops Nabbed In Gunrunning Sting

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has opened up his checkbook for six Democrats running for the state office in Virginia ahead of Old Dominion's November 8th elections for state Senate and House of Delegates.

Bloomberg has donated $25,000 apiece to the campaigns of six Democratic candidates for the Virginia state Senate who share his strict beliefs on gun control, officials told the Daily News Friday.

The deep-pocketed mayor, who drew the ire of the Virginia attorney general when he ran gun stings there five years ago, will travel to Old Dominion to campaign for the candidates next week, the officials said.

What happens in the Virginia Legislature will directly affect the public safety of New Yorkers, said John Feinblatt, the mayor s Criminal Justice Coordinator.

Bloomberg was slammed by Virginia's then-attorney general - and now governor - Bob McDonnell for the 2006 stings.

The announcement comes a few days after 8 current and former NYPD officers were arrested by the FBI in a gunrunning sting where the officers are accused of trafficking in stolen property and purchasing guns from an undercover FBI agent before filing off the serial numbers.

The investigation into the conspiracy began in 2009, when an FBI informant was introduced to one cop, William Masso of the 68th Precinct, "as a person who could 'fix' the [informant's] traffic tickets," according to court papers obtained by the Post. But a law-enforcement official tells the tabloid that the probe was "totally unrelated" to the NYPD ticket-fixing scandal currently under investigation by the Bronx DA, who is expected to charge 16 officers soon.

In this case, the officers are accused of buying inoperable weapons, including an M-4 assault rifle, from an undercover FBI agent. They then allegedly filed off the serial numbers so they couldn't be traced, and transported them over state lines. Masso allegedly told his conspirators that they should carry their police badges, and if they ran into trouble with non-corrupt cops, to say they were cops working off-duty "delivering items purchased at auction."

"The criminal complaint lays out a scheme of brazen misconduct that include the illegal transportation of stolen cigarettes and stolen slot machines, the illegal transportation firearms, and the illegal transportation of defaced firearms," FBI's Special Agent in Charge, Diego Rodriguez, said in a statement this morning. "All of these crimes were seemingly committed for one simple reason: money. For their participation in the various schemes—cigarettes, slot machines, guns—the defendants were paid handsomely."

Interestingly, while the news of crooked NYPD cops allegedly trafficking black market guns with the serial numbers filed off was the most dramatic accusation made against them, the cigarette smuggling scheme the accused were reportedly involved in was their most lucrative.

The demand for cheap cigarettes in New York—which has the nation's highest tax levy, $6.46 a pack in the city—has fueled a burgeoning underground market that costs the city about $200 million a year and the state $525 million, city, state and federal officials said.

"Over the past decade we have seen a marked increase in contraband cigarettes coming into the greater New York area," Joseph Green, a spokesman for the ATF's New York office, said Wednesday.

The cigarette-smuggling operation actually made the defendants more money: Undercover investigators paid the defendants about three times as much money—about $92,000—for moving cigarettes than for the guns, the complaint said.

And unlike the guns the defendants sold in the federal sting operation, some of the 2.4 million cigarettes they allegedly smuggled appear to have made their way into the New York market, the complaint suggests.

According to recorded conversations cited by federal prosecutors, Mr. Masso was long familiar with cigarette smuggling. He told undercover investigators that he used to acquire cigarettes from a woman who bought them from Native American reservations and put bogus tax stamps on the cigarette boxes, a criminal complaint said.

He allegedly told the informant that he made $5,000 a week on the scheme and ruminated about again finding the woman and getting a tax stamp.

By May of this year, Mr. Masso and the group of officers and civilians he recruited allegedly had participated in the smuggling and sale of more than $600,000 worth of cigarettes, moving them from Virginia and New Jersey into the New York City area, authorities said. In one case, a group broke into box trucks in Virginia and stole the cigarettes, authorities said.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg's felon-riddled gun control advocacy group has begun lobbying in earnest against national conceal-carry reciprocity legislation that has been working its way through Congress. Members of the organization claim the legislation would undercut state's rights, which is pretty interesting considering how much Bloomberg himself had attempted to influence firearms legislation in Virginia and Arizona.

Iron Horse Roundup For August 2010

CHINA: Passengers stranded on a train that was stuck on a partially collapsed bridge Guanghan, Sechuan were successfully evacuated shortly before at least two of the cars plunged into the river below this week. Amateur video shot inside one of the cars shows passengers making frantic calls to loved ones as the bridge starts to buckle, and later on shows another train passing in the background on a separate bridge immediately in the background as the passenger cars are plunging into the river. Rescuers and railway officials were able to get the passengers out of the cars minutes before the first passenger car toppled into the floodwater-swollen river and came to rest at the abutments of nearby bridge that was still under construction.

Severe flooding and landslides triggered by heavy rainfall have battered southern China leaving hundreds dead and hundreds missing this month alone.

HOLLAND: An out of control maintenance-of-way train crashed through a barrier and tore its way through 300 feet of parking lot and slicing a watersports shop in two before coming to a stop in the town square in Stavoren, Holland on July 26.

Dutch Daily De Telegraaf reported that the official in charge of safety on the maintenance of way train was a temporary worker that spoke no Dutch. Investigators said that the firm- Spoorflex Safety First- had a history of safety infractions over the last two years and suspended the contract.

IOWA: The volunteer fire departments in Atlantic and Anita, Iowa held a fundraiser that featured Iowa Interstate's Chinese made QJ 2-10-2 #7081 powering an excursion between the two southwestern Iowa towns. The excursion ran on the western portion of Iowa Interstate's former Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific between Blue Island, IL (Chicagoland) and Omaha, NE (across the river from Omaha, NE) line.

Two trips were initially planned, but a third was added due to increased demand.

ALASKA: The Alaska Railroad announced that Kiewit Pacific Co. has been awarded the contract to provide general contracting and construction management services for the first phase of their planned 80-mile extension from the current end of the line between Fairbanks, AK and Delta Jct.

Kiewit is the same company that Alaska Native Coropration Suulutaq Inc subcontracted their $54 Million no-bid Napa Valley Wine Train Project to for less than $30 million earlier this year.

ELSEWHERE: The trailer for Unstoppable is now available online. The movie was flimed along portions of the Wheeling & Lake Erie in Pennsylvania and Western New York & Pennsylvania in western New York State using locomotives from Canadian Pacific and Wheeling & Lake Erie (modified to portray the fictitious Allegheny & West Virginia)



OK....not to get all Jay Sherman here, but it looks like Tony Scott took some of the Cop Show/movie tropes and applied them to a fictional railroad and its workers....["turn in your gun and badge fluorescent safety vest and walkie talkie!!"- NANESB!] Ah well....as I mentioned earlier, the movie is very loosely based on a real life runaway train incident in Ohio back in May 2001.

Iron Horse Roundup: Week of October 12-19

(Railpictures.net/Craig Williams)

Hawkeye State shortline Iowa Northern is back in one piece as of the end of September. The railway was effectively bisected after the floods of 2008 washed out the Union Pacific bridge over the Cedar River in downtown Waterloo, IA. Although Union Pacific owned the affected bridge, the 163-mile Iowa Northern was the only railway using it when the 2008 floods struck. The loss of the bridge cut the Iowa Northern in half, requiring lengthy and time-consuming detours over other rail lines. Here, Craig Williams catches the first revenue train over the bridge on October 6th, 2009, led by IANR GP40-2LW #4001.

(Railpictures.net/Kyle Norek)

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is anticiapting that the filming of Tony Scott's Unstoppable in Western Pennsylvania will bring in an estimated $91 million in revenue to the reigon. The Pennsylvania Deparmtent of Community and Economic Development offers a 25-cent credit to film and TV production companies for every qualifying dollar spent within the state. To qualify, at least 60% of a movie, TV show, game show, commercial or pilot episode must be filmed in Pennsylvania. Although most of Unstoppable is slated to be filmed in the Keystone State, Brewster, OH and Olean, NY are listed among the other filming locations for the movie. Here, 'Alleghany & West Virginia' C44-9W #777 (Canadian Pacific #9777 in real life) is seen on Western New York & Pennsylvania trackage at Portville, NY.

Say Hello to Idaho's newest railroad- WATCO's 26-mile Boise Valley Railroad. Pittsburgh, KS-based WATCO entered into an agreement to lease the 11-mile Wilder branch and 25-mile Boise cutoff from Iowa Pacific's Idaho Northern & Pacific in September. Trackage rights over Union Pacific from Nampa to Caldwell, ID are also included in the deal. This is shortline operator WATCO's fourth railway in Idaho.

Speaking of WATCO, might as well say hello to Alabama's newest railroad while we're at it. WATCO started up operations of the Alabama Warrior railroad in mid-August. The Alabama Warrior operates 15 miles of track in the Birmingham, AL area and interchanges with the Norfolk Southern, BNSF and CSX. The railroad was previously operated as the Jefferson Warrior Railroad.

Union Pacific [NYSE: UNP] announced that they are testing Progress Rail's PR30C Gensets in intermediate line-haul service in Calfornia, Texas and the midwest. If successful, the UP will likely assign the cleaner locomotives to service in California due to the state's increasingly stringent emissions standards.

Rail America [NYSE: RA] made it's IPO debut on the New York Stock Exchange, starting at $13.75 a share on it's first day of trading (RA closed at $14.32 a share on Tuesday afternoon). Fortress Investment Group [NYSE: FIG], which acquired Rail America and the Florida East Coast seperately in 2007, is expected to be a 55% shareholder in RA.

Today's Train of Thought Goes Hollywood: October 5, 2009

Curiously, today's Train of Thought highlights a railroad that doesn't even exist.

Railpictures.net member BurghMan caught this train headed up by Alleghany & West Virginia SD40-2 #7346 and five other A&WV units heading westbound over the Buffalo and Pittsburgh line at Evans City, PA.

The thing is, there's no such railroad as the Alleghany & West Virginia. The locomotives and rolling stock were repainted for the fictitous railway to be used in the filming of Unstoppable, reportedly starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine and Rosario Dawson due out in Fall 2010. Here, the 7346 is seen shuttling other locomotives and equipment between filming locations.

For awhile, Hollywood's been batting .000 when it comes to movies concerning trains (Atomic Train or Under Siege 2: Dark Territory anyone?). The plot sounds pretty familiar; runaway train, volatile/toxic chemicals, etc. etc. I'm only somewhat reassured that this project is directed by Tony Scott (True Romance, Crimson Tide, Enemy of the State), so we'll see.

Filming began in August in Pennsylvania and western New York State. Reportedly the movie was inspired in part by this May 2001 incident in Ohio.