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Going back to the inception of each documentary, how
do you focus in on what the documentary will eventually
be about? I'm sure each Bond film has far more stories to
tell than will fit in a single 30-odd minute feature...
As far as coming up with the concept of what a special
edition is going to be in itself, a lot of the things are
pretty standard. Everyone loves an audio commentary, though
I tend to prefer having it be more of an audio documentary
that goes along with the film. I tend to find that most
filmmakers really have about 20 to 30 minutes of things
to say about their movie, and a lot of times the participants
of these running commentaries that to me are not engaging
at all. You know, "Here's the scene where she comes
running through the door, it's an important scene in the
film!" And that's great, because you feel like you're
sitting there with them and they are just telling you about
the movie. But a lot of times it is just "filmmaking
for the blind," which is what we started referring
to it as.
So one of the things I always liked about the Criterion
Collection commentaries (on their early Bond discs as well
as other titles) was that they did create these audio documentaries.
The other problem we had is that we could not get - the
Bond films are a collaborative filmmaking process, so you
have a lot of people involved who have interesting stories
- all the key players in the room at one time anyway. There
was just no way to do that.
One of the other comments that have come up in some of
the reviews (of the Bond DVDs) is "Gee, how come Roger
Moore, or George Lazenby, or Pierce Brosnan aren't in the
audio commentary?" And the reason is real simple. Both
MGM and Eon Productions said they didn't want the actors
playing James Bond to participate in commentaries. That
was their decision to make.
Huh. I must admit, such a decision perplexes me...
Why people do things, hard to imagine. And obviously we
(the producers) were going to honor any decisions MGM and
Eon made.
Wasn't Sean Connery on one of the tracks though?
Yes, he was the Goldfinger commentary. We used an old
audio interview clip that we licensed. But that was done
back in 1995, so it was a different team at the time. Also,
we had done two audio commentaries already (before the DVDs)
for Goldfinger and Thunderball, and they are so time consuming.
Finishing those audio commentaries actually delayed the
release of those laserdiscs a fairly significant amount.
And at that time laserdiscs did not sell all that much -
they didn't sell nearly as well as these DVDs do - so it
was much easier to slide these things around in terms of
the schedule, and there wasn't nearly the financial risk
for the studio.
One thing I noticed about the initial first wave of
Bond DVDs versus waves two and three is there seemed to
be a move to include more documentaries and less audio commentaries.
How did you decide to begin to include additional "featurettes"
on Bond-related subjects, such as Ian Fleming, Maurice Binder
and Peter Lamont, in addition to the main "making of"
documentary?
We initially decided we would do one making-of documentary
per film, along with other little things on each DVD, and
we'll do two audio commentaries. But what we realized very
quickly with the making-of documentaries is that you want
to end them well. You want to end them with something interesting,
whether it is the premiere of the film or a big sequence
that flows well. But you want to take the viewer out, like
a Bond film itself, with some sense of "Wow, I've been
on a great ride!"
So you can't go into all the detail in the world on everything,
and even with the films a lot of times, if you were to try
to tell Maurice Binder's story during a title sequence and
talk about it, you just can't fit it in. So, you run into
problems there. And that's really all the involvement Maurice
Binder has in these films, outside of the opening gun barrel
logo (that opens each film.) So it is important to be able
to say there are aspects to the films and stories we're
not able to tell here, but we still want to find a place
for them.
Also, there are people who work behind the scenes of these
films that people just don't know about. I haven't read
any reviews that said "Hey, why didn't they do a profile
on Sean Connery?" and I'm grateful for that. Because
I think people understand we're trying to focus on aspects
that you don't necessarily know very much about, and look
at stories that are interesting and that you can't find
somewhere else very easily. Certainly, if you are a big
reader of film books and articles, you'll find details about
Ken Adams life, or Peter Lamont, but to find such detail
in the broad consumer spectrum I think is very difficult.
And even with the more well known stories we managed to
get details that really hadn't seen the light of day before.
Once you've amassed all this footage, how in the world
do you go about deciding what to keep and what to discard?
I'm sure you have countless hours of great material you
just couldn't use?
Yes, there are some great moments on the cutting room
floor. But the main thing you got to do is go through early
on and try to figure out what story you are trying to tell,
and you work with that in the interview. And you get interviews
with everyone, because (Bond girl) Christina Wayburn may
say something great about the sets that you can use in the
Peter Lamont documentary. Or someone may have actually known
Maurice Binder. So you always have to ask about everything.
But you try to figure out thematically where a particular
film fell in the place of the series.
One of the things that was important for MGM and for marketing
purposes, was they want everyone to like every one of the
Bond films. So they want everyone to want to watch every
one of the Bond films. And they figure fans will pick their
favorites. Like on your own site, there is a great defense
of A View To A Kill and The Man With The Golden Gun, both
of which are films that for a lot of Bond fans are not necessarily
their favorites.
(Laughs) Well, I like those two!
Yes, there are people who do. One of the things that was
important for me was to decide that for each one of these
documentaries, we were not going to try and tell anybody
why not to like this film. We were going to be honest about
the production stories, we were going to be honest if there
were problems with the production, or troubles and things
that were going on, but ultimately these are celebrations
of these movies.
On a separate level, you have to say "This is a remarkable
series." The Bond films are the longest running, commercially
successful series in motion picture history. And there is
a reason for that. And each link in that chain is an important
one in being able to tell the story of the series as a whole.
And I wanted for somebody, if they sat down - hopefully
over the course a couple of months or something! - to be
able to watch the making-ofs starting with Dr. No and all
the way on through to License To Kill...
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