Reading Esquire’s profile of director Guy Ritchie, whose Sherlock Holmes is soon to hit theaters, you almost feel bad for two people: the writer, and Ritchie himself. And you feel bad for the same reason. Scribe Tom Chiarella has penned a very readable, not annoying profile, and Ritchie worked pretty hard to give him material — taking him to a jujitsu class, letting him snoop around his apartment while he stepped out, introducing him to his son, Rocco, and even getting drunk with him for hours, all with the recorder running. But the only lines that are getting attention from this profile so far, of course, are about Madonna.
I decide to take a shot now, as we burn through the city, at asking after her. Ritchie sighs. “She’s a manifester, if there ever was one,” he says. “First-rate manifester. Madonna makes things happen. Put Madonna up against any twenty-three-year-old, she’ll outwork them, outdance them, outperform them. The woman is broad.”
“Broad,” I say, repeating the word of the day.
“And, of course, here you go: I still love her,” he says. He takes a breath, drives through a red light. If no one is ahead of him, Guy Ritchie does not typically stop. “But she’s retarded, too.”
It’s rocky getting a divorce, innit? I say.
Those were the only complete sentences about Madonna in the entire piece. Except the part where Chiarella found legal documents with her name on them, and didn’t read them because that would be a transgression. It’s almost sad, the little games we play.
Please Be Seated. Guy Ritchie’s Life Will Begin Shortly. [Esquire]
