Like a lot of people who love movies, I was shocked to hear of director Tony Scott’s suicide on Sunday. This was a filmmaker who not only helped “invent” the modern action film with movies like Top Gun, but who was still relevant all these years later–his last film 2010’s Unstoppable (starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine) was a box office hit and thoroughly entertaining to boot.

My favorite Scott movie is True Romance and my favorite moment in that film is the Sicilian scene. Christopher Walken’s Sicilian mobster confronts Dennis Hopper—to learn the whereabouts of Hopper’s son played By Christian Slater. Hopper knows there’s no way Walken is going to let him live so he decides to get in one last jab by way of writer Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant monologue explaining the heritage of the Sicilian people in…well, let’s say un-P.C. terms.

As great as Scott was with an action sequence, I think this scene represents him at his best. The way he retains the scene’s simplicity—never losing the focus on the actors and the words—yet still bringing his own style and sensibility is a joy to behold. This is what the movies are all about:

RIP Tony Scott…