Guy Ritchie ne regrette pas d'avoir fait "Swept Away" avec son ex-femme Madonna.

20 December 2009 13:16:26

Guy Ritchie doesn't regret making 'Swept Away' with ex-wife Madonna despite the fact it was a box office flop.
The 41-year-old British director - whose 2002 movie 'Swept Away' starring his ex-wife Madonna, 51, flopped at the cinema and went straight to DVD in the UK - said he wasn't upset by the critics, because you have to do some things wrong in order to know what works.
He said: "'Swept Away' was always going to have a limited audience. The idea was that it was going to be a small film... but you can't do small films with the ex."
The romantic comedy was a disaster at the box office, just like his 2005 film 'Revolver' which starred Jason Stratham, but Guy said he doesn't take too much criticism on board, and in fact, 'Revolver' was still his favourite movie.
He said: "I think on reflection it always will be. Celebrity culture can only be capricious and ephemeral, sometimes you are in synch with what everybody wants, sometimes you are not."
Speaking to The Sunday Times newspaper, Guy said one of the best things about making his newest film, 'Sherlock Holmes' - starring Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. - was the huge £80 million budget he was given.
He said: "It was good having deep pockets, I never had deep pockets before."

Source: Contactmusic News.

From The Sunday Times
December 20, 2009
Guy Ritchie on Sherlock Holmes
The director's detective is an all-out action hero, but his film is still true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Victorian icon
Jeff Dawson

"Fancy some kedgeree?” asks Guy Ritchie. The last time I had kedgeree was as a student, I say, one of those squalid mash-ups of unspeakable leftovers. What the hell, this is Claridge’s. “The kedgeree here is the best,” he enthuses. Kedgeree has cultural significance for Ritchie. “Very English,” as he puts it, a product of the Raj. Like pale ale, I offer, noting his proprietorship of a Mayfair pub. “What, and then we gave it to the Spanish?” Not paella, pale ale. He laughs. A famous dyslexic, Ritchie would seem to have copped it rather acutely.
Englishness runs through Ritchie like letters in a stick of Brighton rock. “As I’ve spent more time stateside,” he muses, “I’ve become increasingly appreciative of English culture.” Never British: this is “English”, used in the Churchillian, Celt-offending sense, to describe everything from these isles. Given Ritchie’s recent estrangement from a very famous alien, home would appear to be where the heart is. Brunch is served, mouthfuls are wolfed. “They’ve done well on the sauce, haven’t they? The magic ingredient.” Indeed they have, sir. Most pukka.
Was there anybody more “English” than the Caledonian-created Sherlock Holmes? This Christmas, Ritchie serves up a big-budget version of our most famous sleuth, played by Robert Downey Jr, with Jude Law as Dr Watson. It is a film of double significance. It’s the first blockbuster treatment given to the detective; more pertinently, it is Ritchie’s debut at hosting a major studio knees-up, the acid test as to whether, after those terse, insular Brit flicks, he can cut the mustard (English, naturally) at the helm of something epic and international. “This seemed like a natural segue, going small to large, but still maintaining an English identity,” he explains. “New, but not too much. You can recognise the natural progression.” Certainly we are on a recognisable manor. “And it was good having deep pockets,” he adds (the film cost $80m). “I never had deep pockets before.”
The presence of Downey, plus Rachel McAdams as the femme fatale Irene Adler, places it prudently “right in the middle of the Atlantic”. Here, though, in the 1890s, Britain is the superpower (with Tower Bridge as an Empire Statement building) and America the post­colonial upstart. The story, written by a gang of Hollywood scribes, is a cocktail of Holmes themes. Veering onto Jack the Ripper turf, it features Ritchie regular Mark Strong as Lord Blackwood — a dark-arts serial killer, vaguely modelled on Aleister Crowley. “They [the Victorians] had a moment, rather like in the Renaissance, when they were interested in a reconciliation between science and spirituality,” Ritchie says, “and we tried to reflect that.”
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a bit of a Ren­aissance man himself. The Edinburgh-born ­physician-turned-author was also an authority on the supernatural, a social reformer and an athlete — one who played cricket for the MCC and kept goal for Portsmouth. Traditionalists may be uncomfortable with the hyper-twitchy Downey Jr and Ritchie’s portrayal of Holmes as an action hero (we meet him as a bare-knuckle prizefighter). Yet this Sherlock is probably truer in spirit to Conan Doyle’s than are the deerstalker, tweeds and magnifying glass of legend — an invention of the Victorian illustrator Sidney Paget, compounded by the Basil Rathbone films.
It was at boarding school, says Ritchie, that he first got a taste for Holmes. Between the ages of six and eight, they would, for good behaviour, get narrated stories piped into the dormitory.
“I built up a mental image from back then.
I liked the idea that you had a guy who could think and act. Obviously, we’ve bigged up the physicality somewhat, though I don’t think that’s an inappropriate or an unfair interpretation.”
The original popular private eye, Holmes remains hugely influential, on sleuths from Miss Marple to Morse, Columbo to CSI. Over 80 years and umpteen screen incarnations, the most faithful renderings of him are considered to be the four series Jeremy Brett did for ITV between 1984 and 1993. Even these glossed over Holmes’s industrial intake of cocaine and morphine. Five years ago, the BBC showed Rupert Everett’s sleuth waking up in an opium den. But, with a young audience in mind, there are no narcotics here. “Well, if you’re going to be realistic about this, you can’t have your hero on the gear, so to speak, can you?”
The celebrated phrase “Elementary, my dear Watson” is absent — that being attributed to PG Wodehouse — and so, mercifully, is the bumbling Nigel Bruce version of Watson. Law’s ex-army medic is a more masculine, yet strangely doting, partner, “mother hen” to Holmes’s “old cock”, the near homoerotic equilibrium threatened by a Yoko, Watson’s fiancée, Mary Morstan (Kelly Reilly). “Most of the relationships I know where men are very close, it does get a bit Hinge and Bracket at times,” Ritchie chuckles. “I think that’s an endearing quality in a conspicuously heterosexual set-up, that they can afford to be rather camp with one another.” Such admissions are a little unexpected, but Ritchie has always been a bundle of contradictions: the professed quiet man who doesn’t shut up; the purveyor of East End gangster films, hobnobber with lowlifes, 15-year-old school leaver, versus the Hertfordshire-born mockney fringe aristo. To many, he and his producer partner, Matthew Vaughn (originally named Matthew De Vere Drummond), are lag-hags as interloping as the yuppie drug dealers in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
In Ritchie’s defence, the chip rested more on our shoulders. There are certainly no affectations today. Dressed down in V-neck sweater, dark jeans and trainers, he is as affable as you could hope for. The voice is remarkable less for any Estuarine strangulations than for its acquired American pronunciations, such as “process” and “route”. “They are the two words,” he squirms. Legacy of time in LA, the former missus or both. Whatever the topic, there is always the proverbial elephant in the room — she of whom we do not speak, Her Madgesty, the woman he married in 2000 and quickie-divorced a year ago (copping, it is said, a settlement of between £50m and £60m). But it would be remiss to ignore her completely, so here goes. While one can understand an aversion to the tabloidisation of his life, I suggest, given what’s happened over recent months, was doing a film of this magnitude a cathartic release?
Suddenly, over my shoulder, a large black man in a Savile Row suit looms, with Ritchie nodding feverishly in a “behind you” manner. A minder, about to terminate proceedings? An official from a Malawian adoption agency? No, it is Mr Christopher Livingstone Eubank, come to say hello. The lisping former middleweight thrusts out a shovel-sized hand in salutation. “You ain’t half a got a grip on there, Chris,” says Ritchie, the pair entering into some Hinge and Bracketry of their own, with Eubank apologising for the pressure of his clasp. “No,” titters Ritchie, “I quite like a firm grip.” Saved by the bell.
“Sorry, you might have to recap,” he says as Eubank saunters off. I do. He thinks for a moment. The response alludes to the new film filling a certain void. After announcing himself in such spectacular fashion with Lock Stock and then Snatch — the shooters, the geezers, the ­Jasons — the advent of Madonna seems to have coincided with Ritchie’s creative slide, first with the notorious Swept Away, a desert island romance starring his former wife that went straight to DVD in the UK; then Revolver, a supposedly Kabbalah-influenced metaphysical casino yarn: ambitious, yes, but which yielded the unedifying spectacle of Ray Liotta in his underpants. Critics laced up their Doc Martens.
Did the reaction upset him? “Swept Away was always going to have a limited audience,” he insists. “The idea was that it was going to be a small film, but you can’t do small films with the ex.” And Revolver is still his favourite.
“I think on reflection it always will be.” The problem, he says, is because he hit it big straightaway, he never got to do “esoteric”. “You feel misrepresented on what your intentions were. And then you feel a bit of a mug. But there’s a sense in all of us that enjoys other people’s ascension — usually, more, the descent.” So it was personal? “Celebrity culture can only be capricious and ephemeral,” he shrugs. “Sometimes you are in sync with what everybody wants. Sometimes you’re not.”
By contrast, last year’s RocknRolla, another gangland caper, was No?1 at the UK box office and hailed, inevitably, as a return to form — or return to the familiar. The end credits promised a sequel, the Real RocknRolla. “I tell you what, I’d like to do that,” he says. There may be other priorities. He mentions the possibility of a children’s movie. “A lot of kids’ stuff is good stuff. I thought Ice Age 3 was quite genius.” But you can bet that if Sherlock Holmes is a sizeable hit, Warner Brothers will be hauling him in pronto for a follow-up. The character doesn’t figure directly in the film, but the hand of Holmes’s nemesis, Moriarty, is there, teeing up round two. One can’t believe it’s not already in the works. “Might be,” he smirks.
For Ritchie, the possibilities would seem endless. “I always wanted to go in this direction,” he says. “Just been rather busy. I’ve got more time on my hands now.”
Sherlock Holmes opens on Boxing Day.
Source: The Sunday Times.

Guy Ritchie
Photo: Francesco Guidicini.


Madonna in ''Swept Away''

Guy Ritchie amène le Pub à New York et L.A.

18 December 2009 12:21

Madonna's ex-husband Guy Ritchie wants to turn his London pub into an international chain - he plans to open branches in New York City and Los Angeles.
The director bought The Punch Bowl, in the British capital's Mayfair, while he was married to the pop superstar and was allowed to keep his beloved pub in their divorce settlement.
And Ritchie is so enamoured with the drinking establishment, he plans to expand his pub empire by opening sister venues in the Big Apple and Hollywood.
Ritchie's business partner Nick House, says, "We want to start with a branch in New York first. It will be just like the one in Mayfair, styled like a traditional country pub with traditional pub food and real ales that we'd like to import from Britain. We're looking around the centre of Manhattan near Central Park.
“Then we'd like to open in Los Angeles. Lot's of people keep saying that there aren't enough drinking places with outside seating in L.A., so we'd love to open a place with a traditional English beer garden.”
The news comes shortly after officials in London ordered Ritchie to scale down parties at The Punch Bowl, following a slew of complaints from neighbours about the noise coming from the venue.
Ritchie and his co-proprietors have been told to keep patrons indoors after 8pm and to scale down their private parties.

Source: Contactmusic News.

Adam Lambert se rappelle la rencontre avec Madonna.

Dec 09 2009. Posted by Adam

Adam Lambert says it was “surreal” meeting Madonna.
The American Idol runner-up visited the Queen of Pop at her home in New York — and was greeted at the door by the singer’s 3-year-old son David Banda.
“I was at her house in New York. It was intimidating. Her son David answered the door. I thought, ‘This is so surreal’,” Lambert told People magazine.
“When we talked about singing together, she said, ‘I’m really bossy in the studio. I’ll p*ss you off’. I said, ‘If you p*ss me off, we’d probably make good art’. We bantered, she was cool.
“[She] told me, ‘Keep your eye on the prize’.”
Source: Showbiz Spy.

Adam Lambert

Madonna Gets 'Brainwashed': interview de Mr. Brainwash.

Associated Press
11 décembre 2009

Mr. Brainwash, the artist behind all of the images for Madonna's newest album, discusses what it's like to work with the pop icon. (Dec. 12)

Tom Ford: "On n'attendait pas Madonna".

Dec. 7, 2009 02:44 PM
USA TODAY

She was the surprise guest of honor Sunday night at the screening of Tom Ford's drama A Single Man at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. But Madonna was late. Very late. And so, the film rolled without her in the audience.
"We were called at 7:30. And then we changed it to 7:45 and we let everyone know. We always intended to start at eight. And we actually started without Madonna," Ford told USA TODAY Monday. "She came in after the movie had started. She's a friend of mine and I wasn't going to hold the film for Madonna. We were not waiting for Madonna."
The superstar walked the carpet solo, posed for photos, and ran into the screening room. She also swung by the after-party at Monkey Bar, along with Anna Wintour and Courtney Love. As for Ford, he and his stars Colin Firth and Julianne Moore ducked out of the screening for their own private party honoring Nicholas Hoult, who plays an amorous college student. "We ran off to celebrate Nick's birthday. He was turning 20," says Ford.

Source: azcentral.

Designer/director Tom Ford and singer/actress Madonna attend the after party for 'A Single Man' hosted by The Cinema Society and Bing at Monkey Bar on December 6, 2009 in New York City.
Photo: Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.

Mark Salling: Madonna ne viendra pas sur le plateau de "Glee".

Madonna Is Not Coming to 'Glee' Set
Posted Monday 07 December 07:00 PM By: Amber James

As the cast of 'Glee' prepares for the all-Madonna episode, which is set to air in 2010, Mark Salling spoke to PopEater at Marshalls & TJ Maxx's 'Carol-oke' contest in Bryant Park about his admiration for the Queen of Pop, her rumored surprise appearance on set and what songs he wants to sing but "will never happen."
Source: PopEater.

Mark Salling

Je peux encore adopter, dit Madonna.

07/12/2009

Madonna has revealed she could adopt again.
The 51-year-old star already has two children from Malawi - son David Banda and daughter Mercy - as well as Rocco, from her marriage to Guy Ritchie, and Lourdes, from a previous relationship.
But when the singer was asked if she would adopt again, she told GMTV: "Never say never."
The star, who funds the Raising Malawi charity serving 25,000 orphaned children, added: "I'm really proud of the work that I'm doing in Africa. I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment in terms of my career and the work that I have done.
"I have four children now and I'd like to think I'm a good mother. I feel a great sense of satisfaction in all areas of my life."
Madonna, who has moved back to New York following her split with Ritchie last year, said she did not miss London pubs.
But the pop queen, whose former husband owns the Punch Bowl pub in London, said: "I miss being able to walk around the neighbourhood. It's more mellow, laid back and relaxed (in London) than it is in Manhattan."

Source: PRESS ASSOCIATION.

Madonna Refuses To Rule Out Another Adoption
07 December 2009 16:06

Madonna has refused to rule out adopting another child, hinting she may return to Malawi to bring another youngster into her family.
The pop superstar has a 13-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from her relationship with Carlos Leon, and Rocco, nine, with ex-husband Guy Ritchie.
The former couple travelled to the African country of Malawi in 2006 to adopt son David Banda, and after their divorce was finalised in 2008, Madonna returned to take home little Mercy James this year (09).
And when asked whether she would ever adopt another child, the pop superstar replied, "Never say never. I have four children now and I'd like to think I'm a good mother."
During the interview with British TV show GMTV, the singer also admitted she misses living in London since she moved back to her native New York after splitting from Ritchie.
She added, "I miss being able to walk around the neighbourhood. It's more mellow, laid back and relaxed (in London) than it is in Manhattan."

Source: Contactmusic News.

Madonna n'a pas pardonné à Rupert Everett pour son autobiographie.

Madonna Has Never Forgiven Everett For Book
01 December 2009 08:01

Madonna cut Rupert Everett out of her life after he branded her an "old whiny barmaid" and published intimate secrets of their friendship in his 2006 autobiography.
The actor befriended the singer in 1985 when she first began dating Sean Penn and, in his memoir Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, Everett admitted he was fascinated by her from their very first meeting.
But he also detailed alleged incidents when the Material Girl behaved badly, including an evening when she pleasured Penn in a Los Angeles restaurant, which the pop superstar took exception to.
He explains, "She really didn't like it (the book). I think it is very affectionate, and certainly with her I was very careful to only write things that were. But she felt it was an infringement of privacy... Goddesses like that are obsessed with their public image and want to control everything about it, so if anyone is to tell anyone anything about her it's got to be her."
And Everett, who played Madonna's gay best friend in 1999's The Next Best Thing, insists his former pal has never forgiven him, adding, "Elephants don't forget... She doesn't trust me any more."

Source: Contactmusic News.

Madonna still hasn't forgiven ex-pal Rupert Everett for his autobiography

Washington, Dec 1 : Madonna's former pal Rupert Everett has revealed that the singer has not forgiven him after he branded her an 'old whiny barmaid' and published intimate secrets of their friendship in his 2006 autobiography.
The actor befriended the 'Material Girl' hitmaker in 1985 when she first began dating Sean Penn and, in his memoir 'Red Carpets and Other Banana Skin's, Everett admitted he was fascinated by her from their very first meeting.
'She really didn't like it (the book). I think it is very affectionate, and certainly with her I was very careful to only write things that were,' Contactmusic quoted him as saying.
'But she felt it was an infringement of privacy... Goddesses like that are obsessed with their public image and want to control everything about it, so if anyone is to tell anyone anything about her it's got to be her,' he added.
Everett, who played the role of Madonna's gay best friend in 1999's The Next Best Thing, insists the singer has never forgiven him, adding, 'Elephants don't forget... She doesn't trust me any more.'

Source: Newkerala/ANI.

Interview: Susan Boyle fait une déclaration avec "You'll See" de Madonna.

Susan Boyle on life, fame & thumb sucking

EXCLUSIVE
By Douglas Wight, 29/11/2009

SOARAWAY superstar Susan Boyle last night insisted she's NOT on the verge of cracking up and insisted: "I'm happy and doing fine."
Fans feared the worst after photos emerged of the Scottish singer sucking her thumb in New York last week.
But SuBo - whose debut album I Dreamed A Dream is set to go in at No1 on both sides of the Atlantic tonight - told the News of the World she did it as a JOKE.
And she added: "I have never been accepted by the world before. Now I DO feel part of it and I find it really exciting.
"I feel very content within myself, and as I'm finally achieving my dream I feel so lucky and privileged. I keep asking myself, 'Is this really happening?' And I keep expecting someone to say, 'Ha ha, love, we're kidding.'"
The spinster, who is enjoying a quiet weekend at home with her cat Pebbles in Blackburn, West Lothian, spent a spell in a Priory clinic after shooting to global stardom on Britain's Got Talent last spring.
Exciting
Now she has now got the fastest selling album in the WORLD under her belt - and is basking in the glow of wowing Britain on ITV's X Factor last Sunday.
But she raised a few eyebrows when she told host Dermot O'Leary in a stilted interview that her life was "bloody fantastic".
Yesterday she pointed out those words were her catchphrase. And she insisted she was loving being famous, telling us: "Everyone has fears but mine is probably that this will all disappear. I want it to keep on going as long as possible.
"If it did all go away tomorrow, I know that I've enjoyed every moment of living the dream now."
The best thing about her new celebrity status, she said, was the feeling of acceptance.
All her life Susan has been cruelly taunted with names like "Simple Susan" because of her mild learning disabilities.
She explained: "It means I'm a wee bit slower at picking things up than other people. But I've got a great deal more ability than people give me credit for.
"At school, I felt very frustrated, very lonely - people didn't want to sit next to me in class. I was often bawling my eyes out and it does tend to chip away at your personality." Her album track You'll See - a version of Madonna's hit - is meant as a fingers up to the bullies who tormented her.
"That's a statement I was trying to make," she explained. "'You may have done that to me when I was younger but you can't do that to me now.'"
And she is also loving all the trips to the States, where around 700,000 copies of her album were sold last week alone.
In Britain it was an estimated 500,000 - eclipsing Leona Lewis's Spirit, the previous fastest selling UK debut album, which sold 375,000 in its first week. Susan said: "I went to LA and there were great crowds waiting for us at the airport. It was quite something - nothing that a woman like me was used to, for heaven's sake. But I found Americans to be incredibly warm and friendly.
"It was quite something to be in Hollywood. The hotel I was staying in, apparently Frank Sinatra used to take his women there. And I dipped my toes in the same pool Grace Kelly had been in.
"This is a world I'd never seen before and never dreamt that I would get to see. I can't wait to visit again."
Her one regret is that her beloved parents are not alive to see her amazing transformation. Her dad Patrick Boyle, a miner and pub singer, died in 1999, and her typist mum Bridget lived with Susan until she died two years ago.
SuBo said: "I think they would be very proud of me - I hope they would.
"I've done a lot of wrong with my parents. There's no one around that hasn't. But hopefully I've made up for that now and they're smiling down on me. I can feel it sometimes.
"The only dream my dad had, of becoming a singer, is coming true through me - so I think he'd be proud!"

Source: News Of The World.

SHE'S MADE UP: Susan with album yesterday.

Pour l'ami de Madonna, renommée par association: interview de Jesus Luz.

Jesus Luz, best known as the 22-year-old Brazilian model who is dating Madonna, is making the most of being in the spotlight.

For Madonna’s Boyfriend, Fame by Association
By ALLEN SALKIN
Published: November 27, 2009

THROUGH the penthouse windows, New York City, foggy and soft-looking, was spread out in every direction. Jesus Luz, best known as the 22-year-old Brazilian model who is dating Madonna, was about to step up to the D.J. station in a club atop a Lower East Side hotel.
Young models in sheer cocktail dresses shimmied near chrome buckets holding bottles of the vodka brand sponsoring the party.
A freelance reporter for Life & Style magazine prepared to sidle up for a quick interview. “I’m here because I’m supposed to ask him questions about dating Madonna,” she said.
Asked if she knew how to say Mr. Luz’s first name, she ventured, “Hay-soos? Or maybe Gee-zus?”
Life has changed so fast for Mr. Luz, it is not surprising that not everyone in his orbit knows how to pronounce Jesus in the proper Portuguese way. Matt Levine, a club owner who had organized the party and refers to Mr. Luz as a friend, was going with “Hay-soos.” Josh Holland, who has been his personal trainer for several months, after the two met through a Madonna connection, was snapping photos and calling him “J.”
A year ago, Mr. Luz was earning about $500 a day as a model in Rio de Janeiro, said Sérgio Mattos, his agent at the time. Then in December 2008 he landed a shoot with Madonna for W magazine in which the two played lovers in a Rio hotel.
“At the moment he met Madonna, I never see him after that,” said Mr. Mattos in a telephone interview. “I sent him to the job and after that he changed phone numbers and I never see him again.”
The months since have been a study in ascension. Mr. Luz signed with Ford Models in New York, escorted Madonna to the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball in the spring and appeared on the runway for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan.
He enrolled at a D.J. school in Manhattan and in no time has landed high-profile gigs. For the 90-minute set he was spinning Nov. 12, only his second professional D.J. outing in the city, he was being paid around $15,000, said Matthew Isaacs, a promoter who had booked him, at a lower cost, to spin two nights later at Hiro in the meatpacking district.
Mr. Luz is hot, and he is enjoying it.
“I love the energy of the crowd,” he said, stepping away from the D.J. stand to pose for photos with admiring female fans. “It’s good to have two careers going on, modeling and D.J.ing. I feel good.”
Before Mr. Luz, muscular and curly haired with piercing blue eyes, returned to the laptop and mixing board, he explained the proper way to say his first and last names: “Zhay-ZOOSE. Loose.”
If dating Madonna were enough to make it big in New York, Carlos Leon, the personal trainer who fathered her first child, might own a citywide chain of Get Cut with Carlos gyms. Jellybean Benitez, the D.J. who remixed songs for her when they were a couple in the 1980s, might be a judge on “American Idol.”
Mr. Luz, the son of a hospital clerical worker and a hairdresser, is charming, friendly, sincere and hard-working. As his star has rocketed upward, he has shown one of the qualities of a great New York: the ability to use the opportunities presented to their fullest.
If you want to say he owes it all to Madonna, go ahead. He isn’t concerned with responding to those who say he’d be nothing without the singer, who included Mr. Luz at her 51st birthday party aboard a boat in Italy in August, with her children and the designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana.
“I don’t talk about my girlfriend,” Mr. Luz said. “Let them come to their own conclusions.” (Through a spokeswoman, Madonna declined to comment for this article.)
Jesus Pinto na Luz, who has two younger brothers, moved frequently as a child, especially after his parents split when he was almost 5 years old.
“I grew up with many ups and downs,” he said. “I also saw the beauty of people who were living an intellectual life and also people who were humble and had nothing.”
As a teenager he pursued modeling and acting, working odd jobs, including as a salesman at a surf shop in Ipanema.
“When I was a teenager, I thought I couldn’t do nothing in my life,” he said. “I felt very hopeless. And then something started to happen.”
He studied Buddhism and yoga and an ex-girlfriend introduced him to kabbalah. “I’m just looking for something to make me strong, and kabbalah has given me that,” he said. “I’m looking for something to make me comfortable and happy in my life.”
In 2006, he spent six months in New York, living with an aunt and learning English.
When he met Madonna, also a kabbalah devotee, last December, she had been divorced from the filmmaker Guy Ritchie for one month.
Once back in Manhattan, things happened very quickly for Mr. Luz. He became friendly with Mr. Holland, the personal trainer, who was an assistant to Madonna’s trainer, Tracy Anderson. “I was helping Tracy train Madonna,” Mr. Holland said. “And that’s how I met him, because he was always there.”
Mr. Luz works out five or six days a week, Mr. Holland said.
He also began studying at Dubspot, a D.J. school. “I like music,” Mr. Luz explained. “I like electronic music. I’m learning how to produce. It’s great to be a channel of music. It’s great to have the energy of the people going through you.”
Although some gossip Web sites have reported that Madonna pays Mr. Luz an “allowance,” he said that was ridiculous. “I’m laughing so loud,” he said.
He has landed paying jobs, whether by association with the singer the British newspapers call “Madge,” or not. He walked the runway in Milan in June for Dolce & Gabbana and appeared in an ad campaign for the company this fall. He is in campaigns for the winter collection of Pepe Jeans and the spring-summer collection of the Argentine fashion label Ona Saez.
In May, he and Madonna attended the 30th birthday party of Lorenzo Martone, a Brazilian publicist for models who is the boyfriend of the designer Marc Jacobs. Mr. Martone and Mr. Luz became friends.
At the party, attended by about 150 people including Amanda Setton from the cast of “Gossip Girl” and the artist Terence Koh, Mr. Martone gave Mr. Luz a turn as D.J. Photos appeared on the W magazine blog and other Web sites.
“Of course being with someone high-profile helps,” Mr. Martone said, “but if you don’t work hard, that doesn’t last more than a couple of months in New York.”
New York has been good to him, Mr. Luz allowed. “I like the strong energy of the people in the city and how they work and run behind your ideals here,” he said. “It is very contagious in a good way. Sometimes when I look at the Statue of Liberty, I feel a sensation similar to when I look at the statue of Christ in Rio.”
About six weeks ago, a D.J. agent for Mr. Luz began spreading word that he was available for parties. It didn’t hurt his prospects that Madonna attended his first significant gig in New York, a Nov. 3 party at the Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel to promote the documentary “Valentino: The Last Emperor.”
“Every club person in the city, including me, jumped on it in the hopes of having her at the party as well,” said Mr. Isaacs, the promoter for the club Hiro. “There’s a lot of media hype around him. Girls seem to be interested in him.”
Mr. Isaacs said he had tried to help book Mr. Luz for a party at a club in Las Vegas, but the club balked at the fee Mr. Luz’s representatives were requesting, $30,000.
It is a lot of money for a D.J. who has not worked enough nights to find his own voice, said D.J. Manero, who followed Mr. Luz one night. But, D.J. Manero added, “He had an opportunity and he took full advantage of it.”
At Hiro last Saturday, Karl Templer, the creative director of Interview magazine, stepped onto the D.J. platform to pat Mr. Luz on the back. Mr. Luz danced to the rumbling electronic music he played, stamping his right foot, throwing out his rear end and, occasionally, throwing an arm in the air like a rodeo rider.
After climbing down, Mr. Templer said he had come to offer support as a friend, following a shoot Mr. Luz had done that day for Interview.
When did Mr. Templer first meet his friend?
“Today,” Mr. Templer said.
Will it last? Can it last? Should it last?
Hard work is helpful, but there is a lot of competition at the top. After the Lower East Side penthouse show, Marie Cuccurullo, a publicist with Think PR, which had been hired by the promoters, was bemoaning the lack of A-list turnout. Christian Siriano, of “Project Runway,” was arguably the most famous person there — besides Mr. Luz.
“We were hired to get celebrities, but we were competing with the ‘Twilight’ premiere and after-party, the Victoria’s Secret show and after-party, and P. Diddy’s 40th birthday,” she said. “Every prospect was like ‘Are you kidding?’ ”
Mr. Luz is not quite ready to fly solo in such a universe.
He has mixed two of his own songs so far, one called “Sweet Mystery” and another called “We Come From Light.” (In Portuguese, luz means light.)
He finished his sets last weekend by mashing together “We Come From Light” with a Madonna hit.
“Revolver,” he explained. “I mix it with my song. You can hear my voice and her voice together.”
Source: New York Times.

SPIN MASTER Madonna’s name helps Jesus Luz get jobs as a D.J.
Photo: Ariel Marinkovic/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

FELLOW TRAVELER Visiting a Jewish mystic's tomb in Israel.
Photo: Jini/Associated Press.

HIS OWN GIG Mr. Luz worked as a D.J. at the Hiro ballroom in Chelsea last weekend.
Photo: Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times.