NURSE Madonna to his rescue—Gerard Butler enjoyed a special perk in working in a Guy Ritchie-directed film. Madonna injected the actor with a vitamin shot in his bum when he was sick on the set of “RocknRolla.” PHOTO BY RUBEN V. NEPALES
LOS ANGELES, California—“She likes my movie and I wouldn’t tell you if she didn’t,” Guy Ritchie answered with a boyish smile when a reporter asked what his wife, Madonna, thinks of his new film, “RocknRolla.”
The British director, whom we recently interviewed in Toronto a few days before he turned 40, quipped about the milestone, “I’m starting to feel almost mature.” After a series of disappointments that didn’t live up to the hoopla that greeted his early films, “Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch,” Guy is back in top form in “RocknRolla.” The film about mobsters in London is one of the most entertaining movies of the year—it’s witty, snappily edited and boasts of topnotch ensemble acting by Gerard Butler, Tom Wilkinson, Mark Strong, Toby Kebbell, Tom Hardy and Thandie Newton.
Despite being married to a world-famous pop icon, Guy, preppy in a crewneck sweater, shirt and jeans, and looking much younger in person, claimed that he does not live a “rocknrolla” life.
Defining film’s title
“RocknRolla is the idea of a volatile individual who has a strong desire for life. Part of getting mature is about not getting too volatile. So on my 40th birthday, I’m going to wear slippers and smoke a pipe more (laughter). I’m kind of happy with that. I’ve actually enjoyed getting older, almost exponentially as the years go by. So I’m not a ‘rocknrolla.’”
Asked about what being mature means to him, he obliged with, “I suppose it has something to do with a philosophical outlook. It’s the recognition of triumph and disaster.”
“I think it’s fantastic,” he commented about his wife’s current “Sticky & Sweet” tour. “I went and saw her in Cardiff (Wales). I couldn’t have been more impressed.” He added wryly, “I like her. She’s the best thing in it.” All throughout the press con, he mostly referred to Madonna as “she” or “her.”
Love of creativity
As to what binds Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie, who first met through mutual friends Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, he offered, “It’s a love of creativity. That’s probably the main connection.” According to him, the famous couple’s idea of having fun and relaxing together is simple. “It’s mostly going out to dinner,” he said.
“I pretty much just show her the movie when I’m finished,” Guy replied when asked how much input the singer-actress, who is a decade older than him, has on his projects.
“Oh no, I do,” Guy declared, clarifying that he does value his wife’s feedback. “I think her opinion is very valid. I think she’s brilliant at what she does. At some point, I’ll show a film to her and ask, ‘What do you think?’ and I’ll ask her that before a project is locked off.”
Tourist in London
To a journalist who wanted to confirm that he and his missus are planning to adopt another child, Guy, who has a biological son with Madonna, Rocco, 8, deadpanned, “Not that I’m aware of.” The Ritchie brood includes the couple’s adopted son, David, 3, and Madonna’s daughter with Carlos Leon, 11.
Guy shared the benefits of having a wife from the US in terms of appreciating London: “Being married to an American allowed me to see London like a tourist rather than a spy. I was very keen to come and live on this side of the pond. I left all the ghosts that I previously had in London but what happened was, she could see London in a way that I couldn’t see it. She sort of reintroduced me to London.”
He elaborated, “Well, like when you turn up in Rome for the weekend, you’re not interested in all the shitty stuff in Rome. You’re interested in the nice stuff. When my wife hits London, she’s a tourist so she’s interested in the good stuff. So I live vicariously through an American’s eyes now (laughter). Consequently, I sort of enjoy being a tourist in London.”
Sorry, Madonna fans, but you wouldn’t hear Guy humming her “4 Minutes” or “Borderline.” “I rather like traditional music,” he admitted. “I quite like Johnny Cash because I like a story. I’m story-minded generally in everything. So I like traditional Irish music. I like music that has an expression of some axe to grind, some expression of suffering, a philosophical narrative, commentary within a song. I am not a pop guy, really. I like stuff that has a beginning, middle and an end. I quite like to end up crying in a song if I can.”
Philosophical expression
As for his wife’s beliefs in Kabbalah, a body of mystical teachings which other celebrities like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher also subscribe to, Guy declared, “I’m interested in any philosophical and theological expression, not just Kabbalah. Anything that encourages thought or philosophy, I encourage.”
Of the rise and fall trajectory of his career (he’s on the upswing again, based on the good reviews heaped on “RocknRolla”), Guy explained, “Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called ‘If.’ There are lines in it which I think are brilliant and these are, ‘If you can meet with triumph and disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same.’ You have to convince your own mind that it’s true so one day you’re popular, the next you’re not. The truth is, neither really happened. It only appears as though it happened.
“You’re on a road and ultimately only you can assess your journey at the end of it. You can’t be beguiled or deluded to the so-called triumphs and disasters. Often our disasters are our greatest triumphs so it’s the inability to understand the journey is what we have to deal with.”
As for the sensationalistic stories that hound the couple (which lately hint at a rift in the seven-year union), Guy said, “We’ll have to come back to the same philosophy about triumph and disaster. If you buy into any tabloid sensation, you simply give credibility to something that is ultimately an illusion. You can’t buy into it. The only way that you can’t buy into it is not to read it.”
What critics are buying is a wittily edited four-second quickie between Gerard Butler (whom Guy calls Gerry) and Thandie Newton in “RocknRolla.” “The sex scene was a happy accident,” confessed Guy, who also wrote the script. “It was one of those things I turned up and I just didn’t know what I wanted to shoot. All I know is I’m just not interested in watching people having sex onscreen. It’s so weird. On that day, Gerry turned up with a throat infection. We were going to have 12 hours to shoot this sex scene that I didn’t want to shoot anyway. But because Thandie couldn’t kiss him, we came up with the clever idea, or what I thought was a clever idea, of reducing a two minute sex scene down to a four second sex scene and the two never had to touch. That’s one of my favorite bits in the movie now. It was a happy accident.”
Apparently, Gerard got sick several times while filming “RocknRolla.” “Terrible afflictions,” Guy said. “The poor man boils all over the place.”
Gerard had a famous nurse one time on the set. In a separate interview, he told us, “A scene in a Range Rover with Tom Hardy was the night when I wasn’t feeling well. You can actually hear it in my voice. I was feeling not so great. About half an hour before we started, I got a B-12 shot in my ass from Madonna. She was like, ‘So you’re the sick one.’ I hadn’t met her before and I was just about to go do that scene. I was like, ‘Yeah.’ She was basically being my nurse and put together a whole load of medicine cabinet of vitamin pills and these things for me, which was really sweet. She gave me a few of these Vitamin B shots to take with me but gave me one, to show me how it works. So I had a shot in my ass and played this scene with my boy, Tom Hardy, telling me that probably he wanted to give me a shot in the ass, too (laughter).”
He confessed to experiencing being ripped off, which happens often in the movie. “Endlessly,” he rued. “Haven’t we all been ripped off? One could argue that taxis rip us off sometimes. An overpriced meal does the same thing. It’s an endless cycle but I’m sure we have all done the same thing to others.”
Privileged childhood
Guy had a privileged childhood and went to private prep schools but after finishing the equivalent of a secondary education, he worked as a construction worker. He did not pursue a career in film until he was 25.
Like a typical Brit dude who loves his ale, Guy described his screenwriting process: “It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens with me jotting down a few ideas on the back of beer mats (coasters) and then gradually those beer mats get to a height where I can start to form a narrative. And then I just need a trigger, someone making a commentary in a magazine on the sophistication of London. Then all those beer mats get stuck into the laptop and out comes a film.” We wondered if his missus raises a beer mug as a toast when the piles of beer coasters have served their duty in the name of cinema and can be thrown away.
For a man who first made his name directing music videos, he made a surprising declaration: “I’m certainly not interested in going back into music videos. I hated my ride in music videos more than anything else but it informed me and allowed me to get to where I’ve got to go now. I probably just didn’t appreciate it enough because it was a great place for me to start in. It’s like film school and it teaches you about the business of cinema as much as anything else. I don’t want to be too negative on it but my golly, it can be a filthy world.”
‘Sherlock Holmes’
Next up is “Sherlock Holmes,” an action-drama version not to be confused with a comedy version starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell that is also in the works. “I’m very excited about that,” he stated, stressing that he will not be directing in the trademark Guy Ritchie fashion. “It’s a poetic sort of project for me. It’s based in England—it’s all about the city that I know so much about. I’m passionate about Sherlock Holmes anyway but we wish to inject a new sense of contemporary adventure within the narrative.”
Hollywood’s man of the hour, Robert Downey Jr., is Guy’s Sherlock Holmes. “Mark Strong is in there also,” he said.
When a writer asked about Robert acquiring an English accent, Guy quipped, “I’ve got to say that Robert’s accent is infinitely more sophisticated than my British accent (laughter). I can’t reveal who Watson is just yet mostly because I don’t know.”
With the Ritchies’ busy schedule, how will they find time to see each other? He said, “I’m shooting. She’s on tour. We’re going to try and find times to somehow meet up.”
Copyright 2009 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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