Sherlock Holmes Q&A
It seems like you’re wearing a very untraditional look for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson…
JL: He’s in disguise.
RDJ: Now, you’re not going to condescend right at the beginning, are you? Holmes is in a disguise for this particular mission.
I guess expecting to see the deerstalker shows how strong Holmes’ image is…
RDL: You don’t have to have read a book to have an opinion. That’s what’s so interesting about an iconic character. When we first met at Claridges, and Guy and I were trying to woo Jude into joining us into making the dynamic duo that we feel is the story we’re telling, we went back and were looking at the books. The funny thing is when the first movies had come out, it was a time theatrically – and then in television – where the characters were always clearly defined. You look at The Honeymooners, you look at Abbott & Costello…so it was always like, ‘I play this side of the field, you play that side and that means you’re always going to be this way and that way.’ And as we look back, it was so exciting. Jude was saying, ‘So he’s a soldier. He has a war wound here. He was in Afghanistan. He’s seen a lot of deaths.’ So there’s more to him than just being a blue-collar doctor. It’s deeper than that and the sense of adventure that Holmes brings and the sense of domesticity that Watson craves, even though by the time he was married his wife is encouraging him to go still have these perilous adventures that they go on…
JL: I agree that you can have an opinion of an iconic character without necessarily having garnered an opinion from the source material. But what is very interesting when you go back to the source material of this, an awful lot of the impressions that we all carry – or have carried – are based on the Basil Rathbone movies, which create the deerstalker and the bumbling Watson. But what amazed me, is that when you go back, because he’s a great writer and great writer’s spark the imagination – as opposed to fill it all in and spoon-feed you as a reader – we were suddenly allowed to interpret from afresh really, and that’s really been our intention.
RDJ: The fresh way is to go back and get it right out of the book. Oftentimes, we’re extrapolating stuff from stories and reference material and compilations of the greatest hits of Watson phrases on Holmes, Holmes on himself and Watson, other people on Holmes and Watson, right out of the books. Interestingly enough, the deerstalker, there is one occasion in all of the reference material where he wore one. One time. For one scene. In one of the books. The big curved pipe was not from Rathbone or any of these guys. When William Gillette played him in theatre, he wanted a pipe that didn’t obscure his face. Otherwise, Holmes smoked a straight black clay pipe – or had a bunch of different pipes.
Are you doing a British accent? Are you worried about that?
RDJ: Well, it turned out alright for Chaplin. I think I won your Bafta award. I don’t think I did – I have it!
And you’re talking old English, I guess…
RDJ: I guess Victorian. I love it. I have a great dialect coach. Sometimes, I even run free! But it’s always intimidating to do an accent in the country you’re doing it, y’know?
JL: Except he speaks English better than most people on set really!
RDJ: Well, I work harder!
I take it this film won’t be following the path of the more adult Billy Wilder film The Private Lives of Sherlock Holmes?
JL: To be honest, without giving too much away, I feel we’re touching on all the elements in the book. But it’s to what degree. Obviously, we’re very excited that it’s a PG-13. We want to bring in a whole new audience. We want to entertain. It’s a great yarn. There are great adventures. But we touch on more adult subjects too. It’s just how we touch on them and how we hint at them – so certain age groups get it and others won’t have to get it.
So we won’t be seeing you both in an opium den…
JL: Well, there are hints of that but it’s not in-your-face. Like I said, we touch pretty much on everything.
RDJ: I don’t know if you want the kids to buy the action figures of Holmes and Watson lying on their sides sharing a Hookah tube! Or really it would be Watson pulling Holmes out of the…yeah.
But what convinced you to dive into such iconic characters?
RDJ: Same stuff that always does. There’s an intuitive process, there’s a business prospect, then the central figure is the director. We got real excited about what Guy brings to the table. I think it’s safe to say – we’ve been talking about this – that we’ve all grown a tremendous amount as – and I’ll use the term loosely for now – artists and actors and producers and directors. We’ve all grown a lot coming into this. When something is so much bigger than the idea of simply making a movie about it…there’s a lot of onus on reinvigorating this and hopefully making a franchise, that it was quite humbling for all of us. I think what we did was roll up our sleeves and really worked our asses off non-stop to try to deliver the best product.
Jude – did you need convincing to take your role?
JL: I was very excited to meet Robert. And the prospect of working with him was even more exciting. And what Robert said is on the money: when you meet the people you’re hoping to work with, or intending to work with, or have been asked to work with, it’s a lot to do with the initial sense of ‘What’s this creative process going to be like? Is it going to be fun? Is it going to be collaborative?’ Y’know – are you going to enjoy going to work and doing 14 hours hard grind? We were working seven-day weeks for a while, because we were busting the script on our days off and watching stuff back. So you want to know that you’re going to get on with the people you’re going to do that with. That to be honest is one of the most important aspects of being persuaded – though ‘persuaded’ always makes it sound like there’s a part of you that didn’t want to, which there wasn’t. I was intrigued. I went into this thinking I was clear on who and what the character of Watson was. Meeting Robert, reading the script, meeting Guy, then doing my own research, made me realise that there was a whole volume of stuff that I could out into this that had never really been explored before, in this character, in this partnership. And I became overnight a big Conan Doyle fan.
Were you not a fan before then?
JL: Funnily enough, my first job on TV was in a TV show of Sherlock Holmes. But I wasn’t a big fan. I knew the stories, a few of them. And I’d read one at school…they’re great books, great characters.
What sort of villain is Mark Strong?
RDJ: He’s a sweetheart. We love Mark Strong. And he’s damn good.
Was it more physically challenging than you expected?
JL: It’s physically challenging but not more so than I expected.
RDJ: Once you know you’re working with Guy Ritchie, you look at some of the storyboards and read the script and you’re like, ‘Oh, my God!’ At first it’s really exciting, and then pretty soon you’re looking at each other, going, ‘Let’s just stretch out.’
JL: There a huge chunks in the book where Holmes and Watson are waiting for the villainous cad to come out of the door, and then before you know it, they’ve apprehended them. But in film, you can’t just apprehend someone. You have to see how they apprehend someone. So there’s a lot of apprehending going on! So we stretch out before we apprehend.
RDJ: Timing has a lot to do with things too. For any of us, in the curvature of your career, what you wind up doing is strange. Like we’ve both recently done, respectively, Repo Men for Jude and Iron Man for me – and even Tropic Thunder was a very physical role…but it a little more strange for me now I’m approaching my mid-Forties. Urgh! But it’s great. It’s a time when you return to that very warrior part of yourself and it’s really fun to train up and do choreography, and do it safely and make it look messy enough not to look choreographed.
How would you describe the tone of the movie?
RDJ: It’s a good mix. As a matter of fact, when people are watching the footage – the studio guys, or friends or the people Guy will show stuff to – what’s interesting is that I think what makes a film succeed is when a film has its own frequency. And this is definitely not a film that is going to scare your kids. But then again when I look at the different versions of Harry Potter or Batman, I still think that what this has is a great sense of humour and shows a lot about the relationship and the complexities. It would be easy to do the dysfunctional duo – Felix and Oscar, the Odd Couple thing. That was passé almost by the Seventies. We can’t do a pop-psy version of delving into what it all means, because then it’s like watching paint dry instead of going to a movie to be entertained.
So this is funny too then as a film?
RDJ: We love to have a laugh – and Guy has a great sense of humour – but sometimes he’ll say, ‘That line is too funny for its own good now so let’s shelve that one.’ Then we’ll get bored and we’ll do it anyway, and maybe it works or maybe it doesn’t. We’ve just had a quality control thing. Jude will bring in a piece of information that will change everything for the day. Or we’ll put our heads together, and Guy will say ‘What you’re doing here, let’s style it more in this way’ or ‘Let’s have fun today’, when we’re shooting green screen and everyone’s bored. Then a really funny scene comes out of something that was one of those transition scenes that when you’re watching the movie, you go, ‘I know the producers made them shoot this. Why do I have to watch this? I already knew that!’
JL: If anything, that’s been the most exhilarating part of the process for me. Not one day – seriously not one scene – have I felt, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to do that scene.’ We’ve wrung out as much as we can in every scene. The juices are just flowing, and we’ve got a lot of energy on the set and a lot of good people. We’re managing to pull little gems out of each moment. Raiders of the Lost Ark, that had a great tone – entertaining, scary enough, that’s to me where we’re going. Some of the darker stuff is freaky – though no nightmares. Well, maybe a few.
How do you compete against the Harry Potter market?
RDJ: By not trying to compete. By not trying to fit into someone else’s pattern. The thing is, nowadays, more than ever, people are inundated in the information age and what they want is something that’s a new flavour. And genuine. So I think it’s new frequencies and new sensibilities, that are still grounded enough in stuff where you kinda know what you’re getting by the time you’ve seen the trailer. I hate being short-changed when I can tell marketing has decided to sell the film as one thing because what it really is nobody wants to see. You can tell. Me, as a consumer and someone who loves movies, I know when I’m going to dig something or not. And I know when I’m being manipulated. I think audiences are so much more capable and smart than they’re given credit for, so that’s our litmus test.
JL: Definitely. I think also what Robert was saying before, about the hard work we’re putting in, and the input and the leadership that Guy is showing, as people who make films, we’re not interested in going ‘We’re making one of those…’ We have great faith in the source material. We’ve got a well of stuff that we can use, so we thought, ‘Let’s just be true to this and true to ourselves.’ We don’t need to match or compete. We can just be true to the piece.
What ideas does Guy have to refresh Sherlock Holmes?
RDJ: One of the new ideas is to not just do a Guy Ritchie style movie because everyone is re-inventing themselves a bit. So there are some things that you’ll say ‘Looking back on it, I can tell it’s the kind of thing Guy would conceive but it’s also a little more staid and has a classic approach than you imagine.’ All of us are more outlandish and more reserved than anyone might imagine – all of us are at certain times. I think it’s been about everybody redefining themselves, not so that you can say ‘Look how we redefined ourselves with this’ – but just because it’s called for.
After the success of Iron Man, how do you feel with this film being sold on your name?
RDJ: I can definitely go down that road. But at the end of the day, without Jude and Guy, and Susan Downey – as she’s the gal for the job – there’s always a bunch of perspectives. It kind of feels like we’re shooting the slaughterhouse sequence today. Mr. Law and Mr Downey enjoy lunch together every day like proper gentleman, like their characters would.
Sherlock Holmes will be in cinemas from December 26th. For tickets and times at the Odeon Cinema, go to www.odeon.co.uk.
