The previous 19 Bond DVDs were largely created by John Cork and David Naylor, of the Ian Fleming Foundation. This is your first Bond DVD, so how did you come to be involved with the Die Another Day project?

I've been a huge Bond fan since I was a kid, and I had worked with MGM on previous discs like Hannibal and Thelma & Louise. I knew they were prepping Die Another Day, and I had gotten a hold of an early synopsis so I had a sense of what the movie was going to be about. I aggressively went after it, and pitched myself very enthusiastically and wrote a fairly detailed proposal. I just tried to sell myself for the project as best I could, and I got it. This was way before production began. This was very early on in the process, and I was hoping that that would help in the production of the disc, but it didn't. (laughs) It didn't help at all.

Did you go back and look at any of the previous Bond DVDs for inspiration?

I had already been familiar with the other Bond DVDs just as a fan. I certainly had seen all of John Cork's work and what he did with David Naylor. I was well aware of what had been done before. I didn't go back and look at them specifically because I didn't want to copy anything, but at the same time I did want to carry over some things. For example, naming the documentary "Inside Die Another Day," which was my tip of the hat to John Cork.

Did you meet at all with him before or during production of the DVD?

The first time I met John Cork was actually at John Cleese's ranch in Santa Barbara. Cork was going to interview Cleese for A Fish Called Wanda, and I was going to interview him for Die Another Day. That was the first time I had ever met John (Cork), and right off the bat I told him I was a huge fan of his work and that it wouldn't be a Bond disc without him. So I tried to bring him on in some capacity, and he ended up writing all the text for the MI6 Datastream track.

Was he cool with you "taking over the reigns" with Die Another Day?

II was really worried about it. The whole way up to Santa Barbara, I was thinking, Wow, is this going to be kind of awkward? But we hit it off. He said he had liked the work of mine that he'd seen and I told him I loved his work. From the get-go, we don't have to be competitors, we can work together. And who else better to write the trivia track than him? He's the man.

It is funny, but I remember the early days of the website, and in my recollection there seemed to be a bit more of a competitive nature between some DVD producers. Do you find that as the format has gone mainstream that producers tend to work together more?

Not so much working together as supporting each other. I hang out with some of them, there are some I'm friendly with. David Prior obviously, Van Ling. I've known them both for several years, long before DVD was even invented. And other producers like Jeffrey Schwarz and J.M. Kenny are always a pleasure to run into. I'm sure there are many I'm forgetting. We occasionally check in with each other and offer moral support, Hey you're doing a great job on this and vice versa. Any of that sort of negative competition I've long since tried to forget about. Certainly, there can be that but I don't have time for it anymore. I've got too much work to focus on.

Getting back to Die Another Day, was it always intended to be a two-disc set?

I don't know specifically when that became official, but that was always my goal. For whatever reason, I just can't do a one-disc set. (laughs) it is really tough for me to do. And with Bond, I thought, Why not? It is the 20th film, the 40th anniversary of Bond, why not go big with it? And MGM seemed to agree. That wasn't a hard sell.

Given how huge the Bond phenomenon is, how did you decide what angle to take with the supplements?

Based on my first proposal, I was pretty clear on what angle I wanted to take, which was to do something really different with a Bond film. On the past DVDs, especially the Cork documentaries, they all have a historical perspective. They can always look back and discuss each film's impact on the fans and the period. You can't really do that with Die Another Day, because there is no perspective yet. So I figured, why not just focus on the hi-tech quality of the movie. The effects, the stunts, the action. Everything that makes a Bond film a Bond film.

But what I didn't count on was that it would be very difficult to get access to materials in a timely manner. Again, you think it is a new movie, it is fresh, you can just easily access this stuff. But then again, Bond is a very protected franchise, a venerable institution. You can't just start raiding the vaults and say, I'm taking this for the DVD. You have to go through negotiations with Eon and the people on board and explain to them what you are doing before you can get access to it. A lot of the stuff that we got access to came very late in the game. I almost hate to say it, but the disc almost kind of formed itself based on what we had available.