Martin Campbell talks about making Daniel Craig the new 007
17-Nov-2006 • Casino Royale
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For Daniel Craig, who was initially vilified when he became the sixth actor to be cast as 007, it was something of a triumph. "Daniel is brilliant, he's brought Bond alive," said Sir Richard Branson. Sugababe Keisha Buchanan was even more succinct. "I fancy him," she said.
As he mingled with the crowd, a stirred but unshaken Craig had the support not just of his girlfriend, film producer Satsuki Mitchell, but of his co-stars Eva Green, who plays Vesper Lynd, and Caterina Murino, who plays Solange. "I can't explain how this feels," said Craig, 38. "I'm just very excited. These sort of things happen once in a lifetime and I'm just trying to enjoy it."
The Evening Standard has already praised Casino Royale, which is based on Ian Fleming's first Bond book, and hailed Craig as "the best Bond since Sean Connery. Perhaps the best ever".
But the £60 million film's director Martin Campbell admits, in his first interview, that he took a massive gamble in casting Craig to replace Pierce Brosnan, and in moving the most successful film franchise ever back towards its roots after the excesses of Brosnan's last outing in Die Another Day.
"It was a big risk," says Campbell, who helmed Brosnan's first Bond film, Goldeneye, in 1995. "Pierce clearly could have done one or two more movies, but that wouldn't work if we were doing a more realistic film, basing it on Casino Royale and going back to the beginning of Bond's career.
"Who today has read Casino Royale? In this film you haven't got Miss Moneypenny and you haven't got Q, two of the classic Bond characters. And with a new Bond, you never know if it's going to work. Even if you've got the best actor in the world, you don't know until the last minute if he will connect with the public as Bond."
"I knew there would be criticism because he is not your stereotypical, pretty-boy Bond," says Campbell. "He's sexy but he's not poster pin-up goodlooking. And everyone in England feels very possessive of Bond. I was used to certain sections of the press giving us a tough time before Goldeneye started shooting, but the criticism of Daniel was so personal I thought it was totally unjustified."
There were also rumours that Campbell favoured Ewan MacGregor over Craig. "That's total rubbish," he says. "When we started out Ewan was on the list, but I don't think there was a known British actor who wasn't. Then we tightened that list to eight people who we tested. Ewan was never a serious contender."
Campbell, his producers and the film's financial backers from Sony unanimously chose Craig, after he auditioned having flown straight to London after a long day's filming on the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers in New York.
"God knows how long he'd been up for, but he did a very good audition," says Campbell. "With his ability as an actor he has made the character more human, more vulnerable, with a great sense of humour and, in the early scenes with Judi Dench's M, great arrogance.
"He also has a darker, more dangerous quality than a lot of previous Bonds. Sean [Connery] had it, too. You wouldn't want to mess with Daniel, or with Sean. Between the audition and the next time I saw him, he also did a lot of work in the gym, so he looks fantastic." Campbell also praises French actress Eva Green, who plays Vesper Lynd, for her "mysterious quality - there's a slightly enigmatic side to her that fits perfectly with Vesper's personality".
Casino Royale, first published in 1953, sees Bond beat Russian agent Le Chiffre at baccarat to prevent him recouping the Soviet funds he has squandered, and suffering terrible torture by Le Chiffre as a result. It also shows Bond falling in love with his colleague, Vesper Lynd, with tragic consequences that partially explain his later ruthless womanising.
It was the book the original Bond film producers, Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, wanted to make with their f ledgling company Eon, before they settled for Dr No in 1962. It was not until 2000 that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, Cubby's daughter and stepson and his successors at Eon, secured the rights. Campbell signed on when they convinced him they wanted to get away from the exaggerated fantasy of Die Another Day, with its invisible cars and melting ice palaces.
The story of Casino Royale has been carefully updated. Le Chiffre is now a banker to the world's terrorists, who profits from aeroplane bombings by speculating with airline stock. The card games have been changed from baccarat to poker, the locations expanded from France to include the Bahamas, Montenegro, Madagascar and Venice. But the love story is still there, as is the torture scene.
Campbell has also filled the 21st official Bond film with references to others in the series, as when Bond wins a Goldfinger-era Aston Martin DB5 at the gaming tables, or emerges, Ursula Andress-style from the sea.
At one point, after suffering a crushing defeat at the card table, Craig's Bond is asked if he wants his Martini shaken or stirred. "Do I look like I give a damn?" he replies. But, during a scene where Judi Dench's M is seen in bed, Campbell resisted the temptation to put another woman, or a Chippendale toyboy under the covers with her, even though he says Dench was "well up for it". The Bond films' old blend of innuendo, gadgets and explosions has been replaced with genuine wit and more imaginative, harder-edged action sequences.
In the pre-credit sequence we see how Bond won his licence to kill by drowning an enemy agent in a lavatory washbasin. "Daniel really went for that scene and by the end of it, he'd skinned his knuckles and wrenched his shoulder," says Campbell.
In the first big action sequence, Bond chases a terrorist - played by the balletic free-runner Sebastien Foucan - on foot through a building site into an embassy compound, where he beats him up and shoots him dead. It took 17 takes to get the fight right, during which Craig had a capped tooth knocked out.
"Daniel has done more cerebral parts very successfully, but action is kind of specialised," says Campbell. "But he was determined to get it right, and he did. At one point I put a stunt double in but he wasn't as good. Steven Spielberg rang me after seeing the film and said that the moment Bond shot the terrorist, he knew we were doing something different."
The 10-month film shoot was arduous, hectic and planned with military precision. Sony was initially opposed to the casting of Eva Green, believing Audrey Tatou's French accent contributed to the losses on The Da Vinci Code. "But time was on our side when we cast Eva," says Campbell, "in that we had no time, so they had to agree."
The director and his actors spent two weeks locked inside a half-submerged, overheated model of a collapsing Venetian villa in the tank at Pinewood for the film's dramatic denouement. One week after shooting wrapped, fire destroyed the studio's famous 007 soundstage. On location, Campbell was given only one day to shoot in Venice's St Mark's Square and on the Grand Canal, and he wrote off two new £150,000 Aston Martin DBS sports cars for a single stunt, a pivotal car crash.
The first car simply slewed off the road without turning over, as required, but the second time around stuntman Adam Kirley broke the Guinness world record for "cannon rolls" by flipping the car over seven times. The previous record of six had been set by Top Gear.
Asked what qualities he thinks he brought to the latest Bond film, 66-yearold Campbell says: "Well, I'm good at action, and I'm just a huge Bond fan." He remembers taking his mother to see Dr No in his hometown of Hastings in New Zealand in 1962, and deciding to make his future in the film business in England, initially as a cameraman and as production manager on the film Scum, then as a TV director, perfecting his trade on The Professionals. This led to Minder, Shoestring, Reilly - Ace of Spies, and the excellent series Edge of Darkness.
He made his Hollywood debut with the underrated Criminal Law, and proved he could handle both romance and humour in The Mask of Zorro (if not in its sequel). Now he has the best Bond film in years under his belt. Since Daniel Craig has expressed interest in doing at least one, if not two, more instalments in the franchise, I ask Campbell what the future might hold for Britain's favourite secret agent in the movie provisionally entitled "Bond 22".
"I don't honestly know, but, interestingly, we've painted ourselves into a corner by making this one more realistic," he says. "So we can't have a crazed mastermind with plans for world domination and lasers from space. I imagine Bond will hunt down the organisation behind Le Chiffre and wreak his revenge."
And might Campbell be prepared to sign up for that sequel? "Well, I said I'd never do another one after Goldeneye, and here I am talking to you," he says. "So I'd never say never."
Thanks to `Brokenclaw` for the alert.
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