Guy Ritchie:  I'm all right, I think.

Q: No jet lag or anything?

RITCHIE:  No, no, I've been here a week or so, so I'm not jet lagged.

Q: You came here for our fires.

RITCHIE:  It was very nice, you see.  I flew up in the Bay (area).  I was down in Mexico, and I flew up in the bay, and you come in and you can't see anything for a very long way.  I'm surprised that you can even see the sunshine from down here, because from up there you can't see anything. So I hope you're not too perplexed by this film.

Q: No, not really. It’s easy to understand.

RITCHIE:  Oh, it is.  Good.  I'm pleased.  You're the first person that said that, because this is a slightly different cut than the one that we released about two years ago or whatever it was because they just found it too complicated, or so we thought.  I expected some people to understand what the theme of the film was going to be about, and there wasn't many that did.  So we thought, 'Well, what we'll do is just put a bunch of psychiatrists on the end that could explain that it actually was about something.'  So, I'm pleased to hear it.  And I haven't spoken to anyone literally since this new cut, so I'm quite pleased to hear you say that.

Q: Well, I’ve been questioning my inside voice ever since.

RITCHIE:  Oh, yeah?

I don’t know why it’s lying to me. Can you talk about the idea of Sam Gold and do we all have that inside our heads?

RITCHIE:  Well, the idea is, is that let me just start with the idea of why I was intrigued with the concept of the film is because the mind hates the concept of the film, right.  And that's why it was a conscious thing.  I can't remember who the first person was that actually brought the concept to me.  I realized my mind was trying to make it more complicated than what it actually was. The film is tremendously simple.  It's simply that the only thing or entity that you're battling is an internal one, right.  It's that voice that when you're running keeps telling you to stop just when you start getting tired.  It's the ubiquitous voice that stops you from enjoying your life essentially.  And it tricks you and seduces you and tells you this is a good idea.  And then later, it transponds that it's not, so that's the movie, right, and it's no more complicated than that.  Where the mind starts to make it complicated is when you really have to imply it, and then the mind really makes sure that you don't understand it.  And I suppose that's what I found most intriguing about the concept is how people, you know, you could clearly tell them.  We tell them three times in the film.  The film is about the fact that there is ultimately no major enemy, external enemy.  So we say that three times, and there are some people, 'Well, what's the film about?'  And after you tell someone that three times, you think like, 'That's interesting, because we told you three times.' And really, that's all the film's about, so there's three times we say it conspicuously that essentially is what the film is about all the way through.  So I'm slightly flummoxed, or I'm not that flummoxed because I understand that the mind's making it complicated.  Because it took me about a week for me to understand the premise in the first place, and then I realized I was just complicating it, and it's just tremendously simple.  So Sam Gold is that entity that makes it complicated.  He's that entity that makes our life useless.

Q: Couldn’t you just appreciate it as a gangster story then?

RITCHIE:  I think that's up to the individual.  I mean, I try to do that.  I try to make it so, but this makes people so pissed off about the fact that they don't understand it that they weren't interested in any gangster movie.  What happened was is they got, 'I don't understand it, and I'm angry.'  There are some people that didn't have that reaction. But some people went bananas, and they got really upset about it.  And so then pretty swiftly after that, the kind of the gangster aspect was reduced, and it was that what's the film about aspect was the only thing that anyone was interested in.  So I'd like to think that you can enjoy it on that basis.  But what gets in the way is that if you don't understand it, then you can get angry.  And I suppose in effect that was supposed to be what Sam Gold is like, because Sam Gold can't understand it, and Sam Gold has a high opinion of himself.  And if Sam Gold can't understand it, then he's got to project some kind of an enemy somewhere in the film.  So I like to stick with the film on explanations.

Why did you cast Jason Statham again? And he looks totally different.

RITCHIE:  The funny thing about Jason is Jason actually has hair, and he makes himself look bald.  So I actually let his natural hair grow out.

Q: He didn’t make you say that did he?

RITCHIE:  [Laughing] So obviously I like working with Jason and because I had a short hand.  And by the way, I had this conversation with Jason, and I said, 'Listen.  Try and get your head around this.'  And he did get his head around it, and then he called back two days later.  And if we speak to about it now two years later, now it's his favorite film.  But gradually the concept percolates, and when it does you think, 'Oh, I know.  This is interesting,' because it's the ubiquitous concept that affects every aspect of your life.  Because there's no doubt of this tone of conceptualized self or whatever it is that you want to call it. It exists now. I mean, it exists.  It just depends on what you want to call it, but Jason really liked that idea, and I liked that idea, because he was into it.  So I had a main actor that wanted to do it, and I wanted to do it.  That's why Jason and I ended up working together on it.

Q: Can you talk about the other casting such as Ray Liotta who is really great and also Andre Benjamin and Vincent Pastore and those guys?

RITCHIE:  Well, they're all guys that at some point or another I've seen them do something that I was attracted to.  And I thought they were all still kind of relatively fresh and hadn't done this kind of a thing.  So for all those reasons, that's really how I most conspired this collection of actors.

Q: What about all of Ray’s performance in the film? Was that you coming up with different ideas?

RITCHIE:  I think that was probably both of us.  That was both of us. The idea is that the devil here in Vegas, all right.  So we use this kind of Vegas-esque world, which titillates the senses, and you have to be something of an extravagant character within that.  So inevitably, he ended up being what it was.

Q: Were you making the film under a lot more scrutiny than previous projects because of your past films and because of real life?

RITCHIE:  I'm not sure if I understand the question.

Q: Well it seems you might have taken a beating with Swept Away, and now with your personal life too… so was it a different experience making a gangster film?

RITCHIE:  Well, it was a different experience in the fact that it's hard for people to initially get the premise, right.  So you could find members of the crew sitting around reading the concept.  And they so wanted to laugh; they wanted it to be a 'Snatch,' right, because they thought, 'Oh, I know what this is going to be.  It's Jason and Guy. It's the Jason and Guy show,' right.  And to a degree, I want to pick that box, but that's simply not what this film is about.  So it was tricky in the fact that you need to just kind of talk to people about this film before they go and see the film, so they're like braced for what it is that they're going to see.  I mean, what we don't want to encourage is people to go and see this film that think they're going to get a 'Snatch' or something that's light, because it ain't.  It ain't light, and it ain't funny.  So it's a film that we want to make sure that you know what you're getting into before you get into it.  We want it to say on the label on the tin what's in the tin.  And there is a temptation, I think, for people to sort of give it a brand that people are familiar with, and I'm desperate for that not to happen.

Q: Most people know that the film was delayed several years in coming out here, and that makes people skeptical. They say is something wrong? So how do you expect that to play into what already sounds like an uphill battle?

RITCHIE:  Well listen, it's just a battle, just what can you do? It's an uphill battle.  The movie itself is about kind of the ultimate trick.  And if it has any validity to it, it's always going to be an uphill battle.  And you know, I anticipated that when I got myself into it, but I don't wish to make life hard for myself for the rest of my life.  But the premise was too audacious for me to turn down, and to a degree you sort of forget about uphill battles when you're working, because you're distracted by the fact that you're doing what you're doing.  So I mean, my experience is if you know what you're getting into and if you can keep a bold mind, then you will be rewarded by the experience and ultimately much more so than anything else I suspect I'm going to do.  But in the interim, it's not an easy film, but that's the nature of the movie.

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