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What about GoldenEye onward?
We did a little thing, a featurette, on GoldenEye, and
I produced the GoldenEye commentaries, but I didn't produce
Tomorrow Never Dies nor The World Is Not Enough. Anyway,
if you watched all the documentaries straight on through,
you would understand the arc of the story of the series
through License To Kill. You would understand what the filmmakers
faced, what the challenges were, and get at least a general
concept of what the place of each one of the films is. So
that was it, trying to define that for the viewer.
Once you pick out your themes, the stories gravitate towards
that theme. Of course, a lot of times, you have to hunt
for that theme, even while you are doing it. For example,
with A View To A Kill, we knew it was going to be Roger
Moore's last outing as Bond, but we didn't want to start
it off by saying "This is Roger Moore's last Bond film!",
and is he up for the job? Because it was a commercially
successful film and the people who like that film, you don't
want to pull out the rug from under them.
We also didn't want to go into the varying critical reactions
to the films. We only do a little of that with On Her Majesty's
Secret Service, because that one sort of has a unique place
in the history of Bond. We do get into a little bit of the
commercial success aspects of some of the different films,
but not much. The Man With The Golden Gun was not terribly
successful financially, but that wasn't what the point of
that documentary was about. It was about the making of that
movie, and the fallout of that film was really felt at the
beginning of The Spy Who Loved Me documentary, and so that
is where we really covered that.
Were there any particular editorial challenges you remember
on any specific titles?
On A View To A Kill, there is a fairly lengthy story about
the stuntman Don who did a "pirate jump" off the
Eiffel Tower while was the crew was still shooting. It was
a story that everyone was still sensitive about when we
were told about it. And a lot of people really didn't want
to talk about it on camera because (that jump) had really
put the production in danger. And Don gave us an interview,
in which he talked very openly about it and the sacrifice
that that caused him to have to make. It basically stopped
him from working in films as a stuntman forever after that,
and was certainly a big price for him to pay.
But thematically, it also speaks to what kind of people
jump off the Eiffel Tower with a parachute! They really
aren't in it for money, more the romance of doing it. And
the (Bond) films give them an excuse to do that,. The real
issue becomes do you have to have enough professionalism
to know that when the film says "We got the shot"
that if you haven't gotten to do it, you still have to pack
your bags and go home. So that was a great story to me,
and it wasn't something we knew about at the start of production.
In terms of production, how extensive was your support?
What kind of team did you have to work with? It wasn't just
you, I imagine.
Oh, no, it wasn't just me. There was an incredible team
effort on this. First and foremost on the team was Bruce
Scivally, whose name is all over these documentaries.
You know, looking over the credits, I wasn't sure when
trying to arrange this interview if I should call you or
him!
(Laughs) Actually, I asked Bruce if he wanted to come
(for this interview), but he couldn't as he is working on
something big right now. But, yeah, Bruce was an absolute
lifesaver. This job was a seven-day-a-week job, nonstop
really for 14 months solid. Bruce was there toe to toe every
minute of every hour of those days. And the editors on this
did an incredible job. They would be given timecoded broken-down
scripts, but you still have to have editors whom you can
communicate with and trust. The editors we had really went
down to the mat, and we received incredible support from
them. And the assistant editors, too; we had 24-hour shifts
at the editing room, so we had editors working on the daytime
shift and assistant editors coming in at night to do the
digitizing and other tasks, and the support staff on that
side was also great.
Then there was the staff of Matchframe Video, these fantastic
people, who were always there and willing to help us make
it all work no matter how crunched we got with a deadline.
The sound mixer, Don Miller, who mixed all these documentaries,
he would say "Hey, we'll work over the weekend."
I would find out that sometimes he would be sleeping at
Matchframe so he wouldn't have to take the time to commute
so we could get our work done on schedule. That kind of
support, that kind of commitment, is incredible.
But at MGM, and at Eon Productions, there were people who
were vital to making this project a success. Simon Matthew
was our main liaison at Eon Productions and he was tremendous.
Meg Simmons, who runs the archives at Eon, an incredible,
wonderful woman who generously let us go into that archive
and do our work. She really helped facilitate the access
that we needed. Anne Bennett, who is in charge of publicity
over there, was remarkable.
How was the Bond team themselves?
I can't say enough about Michael G. Wilson, nor can I say
enough about Barbara Broccoli, who personally went through
every one of these documentaries and audio commentaries
to approve them. And as you know from reviewing them, it
is a tremendous amount of hours of work. And she would get
these things piling up, for example over Christmas through
New Years of last year, and even after just having finished
The World Is Not Enough and the publicity, she sat down
and went through all these hours and hours of material.
12 hours of audio commentary, 6 hours of documentaries,
and all the other supplementary material. She was also the
person who allowed us access and made sure that it happened,
that we would be able to get access to outtakes and other
material from the vaults that had been kept.
Then there are people like John Grover, who edited many
of the Bond films, and his son, went in and pulled out all
that footage for us and made the editing logs. And the incredible
camera crews, who I think all made jokes about the length
of the day we made them work! And we got to work with a
great crew in England, that again worked seven-day weeks
with us because we had such a limited period of time that
we could be there. And it wasn't just the long hours, but
all the traveling out to locations and people's homes fin
remote villages for the interviews. And there was never
a time when I said "Hey, can we do this" and they
said "No." They always said yes.
And I can't forget a wonderful couple who lives in the
United States, Paul Scarbo and his wife George Ann Muller,
who did a lot of the interviews in the first and third waves.
And they went on the road for many days in the eastern corridor
doing interviews. They are big movie fans, and they just
finished doing work on a new Dr. Strangelove special edition
for Columbia that's coming out. It was really a wonderful,
wonderful team of people who came together, just a really
good group of people.
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