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Q&A WITH BOND'S PRODUCERS

IN THEIR EYES ONLY | October 28th 2008

Daniel Craig's sneer is gracing billboards everywhere, promising blood and mojo in theatres soon. Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming's biographer, talks shop with the producers of "Quantum of Solace"
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From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, Autumn 2008

James Bond has been having a bumper year. There has
been the centenary of his creator Ian Fleming, a bestselling new novel
(Sebastian Faulks's "Devil May Care"), and an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum
(continuing to March 1st). Now comes the new film, "Quantum of Solace", the
second to star the convincingly brutal Daniel Craig (pictured).

The film takes up
where "Casino Royale" left off and so becomes the first sequel in the series. Andrew
Lycett, Fleming's biographer, talks to the film's producers, Barbara Broccoli
and her half-brother Michael Wilson.

I sometimes
get a sense of two competing Bond franchises--the films and the books. Do they
see eye to eye?

Barbara Broccoli: Oh
definitely. We have a common interest. The root of everything is Fleming, so of
course we work together to keep his name alive. People are still very
interested in the books. Look at the success of Sebastian Faulks's book.

Would you
take on Faulks's book as a movie project?

BB: It's set in the
1960s. Our films are set in the present day. But if we ever decided to do
period films, yes, it's a bloody good yarn.

How do you
explain Bond's enduring appeal? Is he a mythic character, fighting for good
against evil?

Michael Wilson: Bond is
incorruptible, I think that's part of him, his integrity. He has become mythic
in the sense that, though fictitious, hardly a day goes by without some kind of
reference to him. I was watching the TV news this morning and they were
describing the nuclear submarine pen in China as a James Bond type of
place. It's become part of our language.

BB: And our popular
culture. He's very real too. I think that's part of his appeal, he has a
hedonistic quality, he can bleed and his heart can get broken. He's so many
contradictions. He's a romantic: in the middle of some crisis, he'll succumb to
a beautiful woman who's in jeopardy, and he'll suddenly over-complicate his
mission by having to drag her along. And yet he's cold, detached and can't
commit--so he's all these contradictions, and I think that's why people like
him.

What did your
father [Cubby Broccoli, whose centenary falls in 2009] bring to the mix?

BB: If it had been a
strict British interpretation of the character, it would have had much more
limited appeal. The fact that an American [Broccoli] and a Canadian [his
partner Harry Saltzman] put their spin on it, that opened it up. And they cast
someone who Fleming thought totally inappropriate: not a David Niven type but a
milkman from Scotland
who'd been in the chorus of "South Pacific" [Sean Connery]. You couldn't think
of anything more kind of unusual.

Bond's the
most successful modern British cultural export these days. People have almost
forgotten about the Beatles.

BB: Oh I do hope not.

"Quantum of Solace" 
British opening October 31st, America and most of Europe
November 7th