By Christina Radish

Writer/director Guy Ritchie with actors Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Jeremy Piven, Idris Elba and Gerard Butler at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con held at the Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.

Ritchie, along with four of the films stars -- Gerard Butler, Jeremy Piven, Idris Elba and Chris “Ludacris” Bridges -- spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about criminal subcultures.

MediaBlvd Magazine> Guy, what was your inspiration for this film?

Guy Ritchie> It’s in the same genre as Snatch and Lock Stock, and I felt as though I wanted to do another one, partly because of the amount of enthusiasm I got from those movies, but also because England’s changed so much in the last 15-20 years. The world of crime has consequently changed so much in the last 20 years so, to a degree, part of the movie is about old school gangsters being pushed out by the new school, and an aspect of that is eastern European or Russian. A few years ago, your average gangster had made a few million pounds and was seen as a big to-do. That’s really been eclipsed by the international eastern gangster, who now comes packing billions. He’s like a mobile corporation. And, to a degree, one of the stories is a reflection of the old school natives, trying to hang on to business as it used to be, but they’re just being pushed out by corporate, massive crime, in a purely criminal sense.

MediaBlvd> Why does this genre click with you so well?

Guy> I don’t know. I like under-cultures and subcultures. It just happens to be my thing.

MediaBlvd> What are the similarities and differences in tone with this, as compared to your previous films?

Guy> It’s in the same genre, so if you saw this and you saw Snatch, you would suspect that the same filmmaker was behind it.

MediaBlvd> Are there any differences?

Guy> I’d like to think so because otherwise we’d have called it Snatch 2. It’s a new take, and it’s a contemporary take, and the stories are new, but you can tell that the guy that made those movies previously is the guy that made this movie. That’s part of the package. That’s what I like to do, so the influence is there.

MediaBlvd> As you get older and you make more films, has the way you approach criminals changed? Do you approach criminals less romantically?

Guy> Probably not. It’s pretty much an objective view of crime, on the whole. I try not to be ethical or moral about it. It’s simply an observation, and commentary on that observation.

MediaBlvd> For the actors, who do you play in the film and what is your take on working on this film?

Gerard Butler> My name is One Two and I’m part of the gang. Myself, Idris and Tom Hardy are small-town crooks who, at the start of the movie, are actually trying to do something that is almost legitimate. They get screwed over by the more native boss, who sees us as immigrants, which I suppose we are, in a way. We spend the rest of the movie trying to make that up, trying to cover our asses and messing with the Russians, who then start blaming other people. It becomes that irresistible Guy Ritchie movie.

Idris Elba> I play Mumbles, who is part of a gang that, in London, we call earners. They’re out there making a little bit of money, any which way they can. They’re smart guys. They’re street smart, but they just do it the dodgy way.

Jeremy Piven> I was in Cannes when I read the script and I just wanted to be a part of the movie, in any way, shape or form. So, I basically begged and tried to bribe Guy and, somehow, I made it into the movie. Ludacris and I are the only American voices in it. The characters originally came about because of an Andre 3000 video.

Guy> It did, yeah. There characters were inspired and influenced by Andre and Big Boi.

Jeremy> I just wanted to take the ride, and it did not disappoint, that’s for sure.

Writer/director Guy Ritchie at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con held at the Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.

Ludacris> Without giving too much of the story away, most of Jeremy’s and my scenes are together. We play the managers of the rock ‘n’ roll artist who the movie is basically named after. The Russian mob is coming into London and taking over organized crime, and there’s just different things going on. We’re hustlers, in our own right. We’re the two Americans in the movie.

MediaBlvd> Idris, you and Gerard play characters who are on the verge of going legit. Why is it that criminals can’t quite seem to make that jump?

Idris> The reality is that 80% of criminals end up in jail or dead. The other 20% end up being politicians. It’s good to be home, making a movie with Guy in London with a really good bunch of actors and a good crew. Honestly, this film, from start to finish, is really, really good. 

MediaBlvd> Have any of you ever met somebody from the underworld of crime?

Ludacris> I plead the fifth.

Guy> Absolutely not! The criminal underbelly of society is heavily frowned upon by myself.

MediaBlvd> Do you ever find that real criminals want to get involved and be part of the process?

Guy> Yes. Many of the ideas come from them. For example, the pig feeding story in Snatch is a cliché of how people dispose of bodies. Since then, I’ve seen it pop up in several movies. And, I had met the guy that used to remove the teeth, before they chopped up the body and gave it to the pigs. By the way, now he’s a grandfather. He’s a lovely chap. He gives to charity, he runs his local football team and he looks like your average, avuncular, generous individual. Sometimes, there’s nothing exotic about the exoticism of crime. It’s interesting, in itself, that sometimes people can do what we see as heinous and nefarious acts, and to them, it’s just par for the course.

MediaBlvd> For the actors, what was it like to work with Guy, who is such a stylist? How well did you understand his process?

Ludacris> He practices his jujitsu early in the morning, and then he comes in to the set, energetic as Hell, every day. He knows exactly what he wants and how everything is supposed to pan out. He’s very particular and very opinionated. I’ve never worked with anybody like him, but he’s a very great guy. I was very happy to work with him. I learned a lot from him.

Idris> Guy has this thing where he counts down to the action. That was new to me. It was an interesting way to work. You could see the whole room focus and get into the Guy Ritchie space, which was great.

Gerard> What I loved about Guy is that name. It’s in your soul. He’s an institution. Suddenly, I was there and working with him. What surprised me was how easy-going he was. With Guy, you can trust that you have a director who knows exactly what he wants, but he’s going to let you do what you want. There was a natural flow that we all got into, as we hung out and spent time together. The script had a rhythm, and he really understood that, but at the same time, he just lets it happen and interjects when it’s necessary. That’s what’s great about the movie. It has this flow and rhythm that’s in the script, and you just have to learn to trust that. He’s the master director of it all.

MediaBlvd> What is the social commentary in RocknRolla?

Guy> The social commentary is about the face of England, and how England no longer has the identity that we previously understood it to have. It’s become international, like New York has become international. So, the commentary is how cultural identities have shifted. If you take New York and London now, they’re so much more similar than they used to be, and it’s commentary on that. It’s commentary on how crime has shifted. It’s commentary on how business is conducted. Previously people could offer a  million pounds for a house, and then an oligarch would come along and say, “Just to take it off the market and to save any haggling, I’ll offer you $20 million.” That wasn’t necessarily uncommon. It suddenly became, “It’s going for a million? Well, I’ll offer two or three.” And then, you just go, “Oh, fuck it! How much do you want for it? Here’s $20 million.” They also did that with football teams and football players. They did it with every sort of cultural manifestation that we had. These exponential bids would suddenly come into the equation. That had tremendous cultural effect upon the way everything was manifested, so we try to reflect some of that within the movie.

MediaBlvd> Is it important for you to keep exploring contemporary London, as you continue making movies?

Guy> I’ve used the word exponential, and I think it’s pertinent toward culture, in general, and, particularly, any capital that moves as fast as New York or London. Technology is the reduction of time and space, in motion. It’s done that to culture and everything is moving  so exponentially fast that we can’t keep tabs on it. This is the interesting part, just before it completely goes off the Richter scale, in terms of its pace of changing. This is like a documentary, before we can’t recognize it at all for the identity it once had.

MediaBlvd> As your career keeps going, audiences come to expect certain things from you. Are audiences harder to surprise with twists and turns now?

Guy> I think it depends on what genre I’m going into. The movie after this, we’re doing Sherlock Holmes, and that is clearly going to be in a different genre. I think people would expect something very different and, hopefully, a flavor of what it is that they’re familiar with. This was clear in the fact that it did what it said on the tin. I was interested in this genre that people are familiar with, and I hope it’s got enough stuff in it, that is new nutrition, to inspire an audience.

MediaBlvd> Does it keep people guessing?

Guy> I’ve been ambitious with how the plots interweave. The hard work is actually writing the thing. Shooting it is comparatively easy.

MediaBlvd> Guy, how different is your take going to be on Sherlock Holmes?

Guy> It’s going to be very contemporary. Originally, Sherlock Holmes was this intellectual action-man and they played down the action-man aspect because they just didn’t have the means of executing the action in an interesting way. Well, we do have the means and we have the technology, so we’re just riding on the back of that.

MediaBlvd> When you say contemporary, do you mean present-day?

Guy> No, it still remains in its period. But, we like the idea that he’s an intellectual action guy, to a degree.

MediaBlvd> Is there a race against time, with the Sacha Baron Cohen project about Sherlock Holmes, to get the film done quicker?

Guy> They don’t even have a script yet, so we’re hoping not.

MediaBlvd> Is Sherlock Holmes going to be London-based as well?

Guy> Yeah.

MediaBlvd> Are you still a fan of London?

Guy> That’s me hometown, yeah.

MediaBlvd> Do you have a pub?

Guy> I do have a pub. It’s much harder to run a pub than it is to make a film, by the way.                    

MediaBlvd> Has the smoking ban in England affected your pub at all?

Guy> The only reason I went into the pub business is because they stopped smoking in pubs. But, I think four pubs a day go out of business because of it.

MediaBlvd> What do you love about London?

Guy> I was born there. I’ve seen it change, and I know a great deal about it. I’m invested. I live vicariously through my wife, so I was once a spy and now I’ve become a tourist. It’s much more fun to live in London as a tourist than it is as a spy. A spy always looks for the bad stuff and a tourist always looks for the good stuff. So, it makes it easy, being married to an American.

MediaBlvd> Have you discovered new things about London, since being married to an American?

Guy> Sure. London’s big. You think New York’s big, but New York goes up. London just goes on and on and on. London’s been going on for 2,000 years, and it hasn’t stopped. New York’s been going for like 300 years.

MediaBlvd> Gerard, can you talk about working on Game, and how insane that was to make?

Gerard> That was a pretty intense experience, working with Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank). They have an incredible imagination and they create a great connection with pop culture and science. This movie is very much an example of that. I’ve never quite met guys that can create a story so cleverly with such great characters, and yet add such a dark vibe to it. They do it for fun.

MediaBlvd> Are you involved with the sequel to 300 at all?

Gerard> No. They mentioned it, and we’ll leave it at that. It’s a very interesting idea, I have to say.