As reported by U.K. Yahoo News, the British director was speaking at the BFI Southbank about how he tends to watch plenty of films and TV shows, especially to find new talent to cast in his projects.

He spotted Gladiator II‘s Paul Mescal, for example, while watching the BBC miniseries Normal People.

“Right now I’m finding mediocrity, we’re drowning in mediocrity,” Scott said. “The quantity of movies that are made today, literally globally, millions. There’s not thousands, there’s millions, and most of it is shit — 60 percent ‘eh,’ 40 percent is the rest, and 25 percent of that 40 is not bad, and 10 percent is pretty good, and the top 5 percent is great.”

What does Scott watch?

“What I do — and it’s a horrible thing — but I’ve started to watch my own movies, and actually they’re really good,” Scott said. “And also, they don’t age … I watched Black Hawk Down the other night and I thought, ‘How the hell did I do that?’ But I think that occasionally there’s a good one that will happen, it’s like a relief that there’s somebody out there who’s doing a good movie.”

“It was pretty fraught doing Alien,” Scott added about that classic title. “Between my producers, everyone had opinion, and I was not used to opinions. I’d been on my own boss for years. I had to literally draw the line in the sand and say, ‘Back off. Watch me do this, OK?’ And so it was not a good experience.”