For his nattily attired crew of ne’er-do-wells, Ritchie drew from real-life inspirations. “Some of the vainest people I know are people who walk on the wrong side of the law,” he says, laughing. “And they’re more fashion-conscious than the average Joe. But I think that’s true of all criminals, or criminals who are relatively successful. It’s a thing, that villains like to dress well.” As Susan Downey, one of RocknRolla’s producers, explains, “When you’re hiring Guy, that’s part of what you’re getting with the package: You know [the film is] going to have a great sense of style; you know that it’s going to be really sexy.”
The subject of dressing well comes up a few weeks later, when Ritchie calls from Los Angeles, where he is deep in meetings for Sherlock Holmes, which he’s cowritten and will begin directing in October with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. (Downey’s wife, the aforementioned Susan, will produce.) Ritchie explains that while the film is not yet in the design stage, it will be a glamorized version of the Victorian era, with Holmes’s relationship to Watson taking center stage. “It’s going to be a heightened reality of that period,” he says. Ritchie, in fact, has been weathering his own heightened reality when we speak, with claims that the missus has stepped out on the director with New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez grabbing headlines for weeks. How, one wonders, does he cope with all the rag-mag gossip? “I ignore it,” he says. Pressed on the issue, Ritchie, ever cheerful, sounds exactly like one of his fast-talking characters. “Listen, if I commented to you,” he says, “I wouldn’t be ignoring it, now would I?”
