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When did you actually begin working on the first wave
of Bond DVDs?
I started working in April of 1999, and those first DVDs
came out later that year...
...in October 1999. That wasn't much time at all!
And our deadline was the end of July, and even then MGM
was very hard pressed to get enough product out to meet
street date. In contrast, we finished the second wave in
the beginning of January 2000 and the street date for that
set wasn't until May. So there was a good six weeks added
on to the second wave schedule, and even then MGM still
felt the pressure of being able to deliver enough product.
But with the second wave - and I don't want to say
it was easier - but I would gather you already had an infrastructure
created, and established contacts with Eon and Danjaq. Is
it fair to surmise you had already "hit the ground
running," so to speak, with waves 2 and 3?
Yes, well, the main connection we had was my ongoing relationship
with Eon and Danjaq, and that I had worked with them before.
So I think we had a certain level of trust of the way I
would go about and do things. So yes, the second wave was
in certain ways easier, and also because they (Eon and Danjaq)
weren't yet in production of The World Is Not Enough at
the time. A lot of those interviews we did on the first
wave, when we went out to Pinewood Studios (one of the primary
soundstages used to produce the James Bond films) where
they were shooting The World Is Not Enough. We would try
to grab crew members who had worked on some of the earlier
films and try to pull them in for interviews on almost a
catch-as-catch-can basis.
We were really on pins and needles if we would actually
get an interview with Michael G. Wilson because he was busy
producing the movie. We just kept jumping up and down and
screaming, I mean, he's just too involved with For Your
Eyes Only and License To Kill to not have an interview with
him! But he was very generous with us.
How many hours did it take for you to amass all this
material? With, what, about 19 films to cover, it must have
been a massive undertaking...
Well, we did over 150 interviews and our average interview
was between 60 and 90 minutes. And we had over 1,000 source
tapes by the end of the project. Some of the interviews
were much longer. For example, when you start talking about
Michael G. Wilson (longtime Bond producer), he did seven
interviews with us.
When you started the assignment, it must have been
an incredibly daunting task. How do you come up with almost
16 or so special editions? How do you keep each one fresh
and not repeat yourself, but still maintain a consistency
among the supplements and the equal focus and weight on
each film that fans would want?
The first thing is, you do your research. You look over
what already exists, and research how each film was made.
And I was already fairly familiar with that (aspect) of
the films, because I'm a Bond fan and started the Foundation.
I also think most big movie fans are reasonably familiar
with at least some of the stories from almost any major
movie, especially the Bond films.
But then the next thing you do is try to dig a little bit
deeper. You go back to the original press release materials,
and you make sure you review all of the early publicity
material written on the film at the time. And then when
you do the interviews, you have to make sure you ask the
right questions and really listen to the answers, and follow
up on any dangling things that are left out there. Because
that, sometimes, is where the more interesting stories come
from.
Any examples?
On Live And Let Die, which was in the first wave, we read
a book called "Roger Moore's Live And Let Die Diary."
Well, in that book, he talks about someone who shot some
behind-the-scenes footage, a guy named Chris Dahl. And then
Bruce Scivally really picked up on that, and said, "We
need to find Chris Dahl." I then turned to David Naylor,
who was setting up all our interviews and coordinating our
clearances, and asked him to follow up on that. I then gave
him some leads for the publicity people, to please ask them
if they know anything about Chris Dahl.
Then, boom, we found Chris Dahl. And Chris said "Yeah,
I made this documentary, it was supposed to be on the BBC."
But unfortunately, just before Dahl was supposed to finish
it, he showed it to Harry (Saltzman) and Cubby (Broccoli),
and they said "You're showing how all the stunts are
done! You're showing how we do everything! No, we don't
want to do this!" So Dahl's heart was broken, and all
that existed was a work print, which Dahl had given to a
stuntman!
So, we got this stuntman's name, and eventually David (Naylor)
was able to track down this guy, who shows up at the telecine
transfer with a reel of film. So, we're all thrilled, and
it turns out this reel is his family's black & white,
16mm home movies from the 50's! Which is fascinating, but
it wasn't what we were looking for. (laughter) So David
(Naylor) went back to the stuntman's house and went through
his garage, and they found the actual reel of film. We eventually
got it telecined, but we were knee-deep in the editing (of
the Live And Let Die disc.) And we had literally scanned
in thousands of stills from Live And Let Die to help illustrate
the stories. But suddenly we had the actual footage of this
material, and we were able to reshape the documentary in
time and get it in by the deadline.
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