Matthew McConaughey, Guy Ritchie & Cast of 'The Gentlemen' Break Down a Scene

[Host] Were you a fan of Guy's movies?

It's always a bit embarrassing.

It's embarrassing if they are,

it's embarrassing if they're not.

[laughing]

I'm Matthew McConaughey.

I'm Michelle Dockery.

I am Charlie Hunnam.

And Guy Ritchie and this is Notes on a Scene

for The Gentlemen.

Ah he's bought you a gun.

That's a nice little gift.

Five years in prison all in one little box.

Oh but that's not a gun dear, that's a paperweight.

Course it is.

Along with a family of six baby bullets.

Guess we'll have to get rid of that.

Yeah when I got the script it was when I went,

oh okay this is the arena that I'd like to go play

with Guy Ritchie directing Lock, Stock and Snatch,

this is that small gangster crime world

where things are a bit heightened.

The humor is there, the bullets hit,

people do fall out of buildings and die

but it's all got a hidden wink behind it.

The first time we ever met, which was for Arthur,

we spent an hour and a half talking

about the California medical marijuana business.

Which I realize now Guy's interest in that.

Oh he's bought you a gun.

That's a nice little gift.

You must've already been thinking about this.

Well I wrote this film about 10 years ago I think.

Oh you did?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've always been, incidentally I don't have

any particularly strong opinions

on the legalization or not of marijuana in the UK

'cos it's fraught with all sorts of complications

and nuances this particular subject.

There was a line, once upon a time, in the film

that as long as there's a Queen sitting on the throne

that marijuana would never be legalized in the great UK.

And that's something that I

all of that is attractive to me

and I'm not sure why but I like the juxtaposition.

So Matthew Berger's given me

this paperweight yet he knows that

if I'm holding on to it, could be jail time et cetera

et cetera but it's not actually a paperweight it is a...

It is a gun.

Oh it's gun, with six baby bullets.

It's a tiny gun with six baby bullets.

Yeah we did make it actually.

Hands Across the Sea.

It's quite hard, the only one that they had

in the country at the time was like an enormous caliber

and it was like fit for killing bears.

So it wasn't very appropriate

'cos we had to have six baby bullets.

So how were we gonna get six baby bullets in the one.

So in the end we had it made and it is 24 carat gold.

Is it plated?

[Guy] No it's 24 carat gold.

[Charlie] No I don't believe it.

[Guy] Yeah. Right there.

Across the sea.

And it works.

[Guy] 24 carat.

And it does work.

That's a nice little gift.

Nice outfit by the way and nice skin.

[laughing]

This man could put his fingers on your threads

and tell you what the thread count is, what the material is,

what part of Syria it came from and what it might cost you.

I am the costume designer.

But this whole look you see, I like all of this

and I like all of this.

Because filming to a degree is about contrast

and old matey boy is Mr Americana who comes to l'Angleterra

and what we have over here is someone that's

come from the rough side of the tracks and has,

this is an aspirational outfit.

In fact these two characters are pretty aspirational

and it's the idea that an American has espoused,

actually you had this in Downton Abbey

it was kind of American money in an English world

and it's this espousing of a kind of English way of life

seen through an American prism.

You're allowed to be an actor,

enjoy all the best aspects of England without being

dragged down by too serious a narrative and I like that.

So you can have that outfit, that look

but you're not authentically dragged down

by the dogmatic narrative of sporting those threads.

I very much like the idea, I've always been attracted

to women that are attracted to cars 'cos I'm not

and I like that, again it's a sort of juxtaposition,

I like that and there are quite a few girls

I know that know a lot about cars

and are terribly passionate about them.

And I also like the idea that

it's a garage where ladies can go

and they don't feel intimidated

or uncomfortable by traditional mechanics.

So I just thought that was a nice sort of juxtaposition.

Sanctuary for the ladies.

Yeah.

Also I like the idea that you're essentially a business

woman and you like your old man being a businessman.

But you understand all the aspects of business

and I just thought that was

an interesting world to put you in.

Yeah and she's not a

typical stereotype of a gangster's wife you know.

Like we say she's got her own business

and she knows, she knows what's going on with Mickey.

She's very much kind of you know, behind all of it

and knows the score which is you know,

different from any other role

a woman in this type of film, which I loved.

This was one of those scenes

in particular where it was just--

We had a laugh you and I on this one.

Six baby bullets.

We made it all up at the time.

We did yeah.

But it felt like it was quite late in the day this scene

'cos it was something that changed.

Well yeah we really made most of this up.

And it was pretty much on the spot,

yeah you kept like trying to find--

We weren't happy with what we had

and it was, oh look at that.

A box of bullets, a box of,

a small box of, a family of--

And we weren't happy long roll

with the family, six baby bullets.

Hello Ray.

Rosalind.

Sorry for the interruption.

[Mickey] What do you need Ray?

Laura Pressfield has been returned home safely.

♪ Ah shit ♪

Good.

What else?

So as we're trying to measure,

he is being one of the people that may have sabotaged,

tried to sabotage my enterprise.

My right hand man, my heavy here comes here

and find out we've got another leak in the boat.

We weren't clean we've got a dead body on our hands

to complicate things more so.

I quite like the fact that you're delivering

this information in quite a tacit fashion

and it's you that cottons on to the fact that

by his pause,

there is more to come.

Yes.

Good.

♪ Ah shit ♪

What else?

Yeah I was going to do another film

that I was scheduled to do before Guy

had asked me to do this that required a very long,

substantial beard so I showed up

with this beard right and it was a little bit

anxiety inducing to begin with

but I think it ended up working right.

We dobbed some sideburns in,

tidied the hair up a little bit.

You're a handsome man.

Oh thank you.

You are a handsome man.

Mm.

The glasses were a last minute addition right?

Those went on--

well I modeled my look on your look.

I know I had noticed that.

We're even wearing the same shoes.

Yeah those dobbed on 30 seconds before we started,

before we shot the first scene right?

Well you see the other thing we didn't want is

a traditional tough guy conciliary.

I quite fancied this, and I think the glasses

give you the illusion of being clever Charlie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah sure.

I understand.

♪ Ah shit ♪

One of our associates had an accident.

♪ Oh shit ♪

Shit.

He fell out of a window boss.

Hey what's the time Mr Wolf?

It's time

for you

to fuck off lads.

[screaming]

[Boy] Oo shit!

Well we just threw a man out of the window.

[laughing]

Yeah yeah that's a real stuntman.

It's a funny thing, on the first film I ever did,

which was called Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

which we made about 23 years ago or something

and you know, I'd watched films on stuntmen

and all that sort of stuff and I couldn't wait.

We had one sequence where a man runs a man over and he dies.

And so, you know, stuntman was all limbering himself up

and I'm sort of speaking to the stunt coordinator,

How you gonna do this?

It's really interesting.

I thought there's gotta be some special technique.

Anyway, so the car comes along and the man

threw himself in front of the car and he got run over.

[laughing]

And that was it.

You'll be surprised the punishment

that the stuntmen can take.

And he sort of got up, limped away again and out came

another stuntman and we did the same thing to him.

Yeah this guy.

[laughing]

He broke the fall with his face.

He's no longer with us.

Yeah that was just one take.

Sounds like quite an extreme accident.

Yeah it's more like a death really.

[cameras clicking]

♪ Little Sally Walker, sittin' in a saucer ♪

[Boy] Selfie bruv.

So you killed someone?

No it was the gravity that killed him.

I brought this up to you but I still think

it's a good idea, you might not wanna do it

because you said you wanted to be elusive.

But have you ever made dictionaries for your films.

No.

'Cos you do have probably thousands of

Ritchie-isms. Ritchie-isms.

Salt and pepper, what ducking [bleep]?

[laughing]

And then say you can't look that one up.

And when she goes--

No you probably can't.

Well of course if you're a [bleep]

and you eat duck, it would make sense.

Yeah usually I choose actor according to whether

I think I'm gonna get on with them or not.

Sadly...

What if they're not any good?

Eh?

What if they're not any good at acting?

Well

that's secondary.

What's primary is whether I'm gonna have a nice time or not.

Yeah I think it's rare that I ever talk about the script

when I meet an actor and they've read the script.

I'd much rather talk about

something more

facile or philosophical.

That way you can find out if you're on--

Does not enjoy small talk.

Or if you do you just don't ever have it.

Well small talk, actually I do like

but small talk I feel is seldom about small talk.

It's like the English talking about the weather,

I don't think is ever talking about the weather.

I think it's some form of lubrication to understand

the contours of one's character.

Small talk should never be small talk

but it's still small talk yeah.

What I'm interested in is whether

I can dial into the frequency of an individual

and whether you have some simpatico,

you're on that similar frequency

and then everything's just much easier thereafter.

And it feels to me like, if you the propose an idea

are they propose an idea to you,

you'll be able to dial into that in a much more

organic and efficient fashion.

Otherwise you're just tethered to someone

that you don't really wanna be with.

[laughing]