Matt Platts-Mills (‘The Gentlemen’ editor) on Hitler’s missing testicle, boxing and Guy Ritchie’s ‘lively mind’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“Guy has an incredibly lively mind,” says “The Gentlemen” editor Matt Platts-Mills about the show’s creator, Guy Ritchie. “He won’t rest until he’s absolutely sure that he’s hit everything that’s possible with the scene, and that’s across everything. And he kind of develops ideas as he watches it. It’s kind of a ride in itself.” Watch our video interview above.
Platts-Mills edited three episodes of the Netflix comedy series: “An Unsympathetic Gentleman,” “All Eventualities” and the season finale, “The Gospel According to Bobby Glass.” The eight-episode thrill-ride stars Theo James as Edward Horniman, who has unexpectedly inherited an estate of 15,000 acres and the title of Duke of Halstead from his deceased father. Unbeknownst to Horniman, it’s also home to a massive weed empire.
SEE Kaya Scodelario (‘The Gentlemen’) on playing ‘a real boss bitch’ not defined by her sexuality
One subject Platts-Mills never expected to be talking about? Adolf Hitler‘s missing testicle. “Yeah, that was fun,” the editor laughs. “It was quite an interesting concept we came up with towards the end. Yeah, Hitler’s testicle, the whole show’s about Hitler’s testicle, but you don’t really know until right at the end. It’s another one of these incredible ideas that Guy comes up with, and I think if you were to see it on paper, you’d think that’s not going to work. But actually when it comes down to two guys and the ladies [standing] in a basement at gunpoint, it actually starts to work really well.”
One of the editor’s biggest technical achievements takes place in the boxing ring as Jack Glass (Harry Goodwins) takes on an Uzbek fighter named Henry (Max Beesley). Using a handheld camera and Easyrig, Platts-Mills says, “It creates this kind of sharpness to the image. When it’s played in normal speed, it feels very clipped and clean, every shot. They call it the 45-degree shutter, and something that Ridley Scott uses quite a lot. It gives that kind of very sharp appearance, is the best way to describe it. But then you can also slip it into the slow motion as well. So you’ve got this dual range of material that’s very sharp, clipped, aggressive. Informal motion. And then you can cut that against the slow-motion material as well. So suddenly the actors are moving first, and you can see the blood coming and you see the sweating and they’re moving, and you can really feel that. It creates this really lovely sense in those moments. And you can really jar the audience with sudden punches and then a bit of slow motion and some more sudden shocks, and there’s a lot of frame cutting in there to make the hits look harder.”
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