So what the hell is going on with Daniel Craig?

There's this story running around about him saying some really, really stupid things. I guess he was strung out from what was an exhausting shoot, but f*ck's sake man you're an actor, you're the face of the brand - The Brand, the hugely-grossing, fifty-years-and-counting franchise that has basically become to action movies what Doctor Who is to science-fiction television, namely That Thing That Defined It In The Sixties And Then Refused To Die. (Oh, there are so many parallels between Bond and Who - they started within a year of each other, both franchises did Things They'd Never Done Before in 1969, their longest-runner started in the early-to-mid-70s and did seven films/seasons, 1987-9 saw a darker and edgier take on the character and the "death" of the franchise, followed by a wrongheaded dead-ended revival in the mid-90s and then a proper quasi-reboot circa 2005 with that short-haired amusingly-eared actor from Our Friends in the North.)

Anyway... Daniel Craig had some extremely unflattering things to say about the role that made him a household name. And these comments frankly veer straight into the realm of utterly unprofessional. I'm shocked, actually.

Of course this isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened.

Some random James Bond thoughts

In the process of hunting down information about an outfit that Diana Rigg wore in one scene of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, I stumbled across this post on clothesonfilm. (Obviously it's a bit dated.)

Here's the interesting bit, comparing the issues post-Quantum to the kerfuffle that led to The Wizard Some Call Tim leaving the role back in the early 90s.

Hmm…Does anyone see this as a little bit of history repeating? A not entirely dissimilar situation occurred after Timothy Dalton signed as Bond for The Living Daylights in 1987. Soon followed License to Kill in ’89 and then nothing for six years, until Pierce Brosnan finally got his shot and saved the series from near extinction with GoldenEye.

Well. Quite. Edgy, serious, "back-to-Fleming" actor aw frak it, just see my Quantum of Solace post for an interminable list of comparisons between Licence to Kill and Quantum of Solace. Neither film was particularly well-received by general audiences (though both are utterly super and deserve a second look), and MGM held off on making another one afterwards, pleading "financial difficulties," which is fair enough.

Now, I know a thing or two about what The Property of a Lady (as Bond XVII was known while Dalton was still attached to the project) was going to look like, and what it was going to look like was Licence to Kill on speed. Bond kills the baddie with a frickin' blowtorch, for example.

Now, although Charles Helfenstein says, in the section his thoroughly-researched book The Making of the Living Daylights that deals with Dalton's departure from the role, that there's no evidence to suggest that MGM muscled Dalton out, the fact of the matter is that Dalton was still up for the job in early 1993 (after his contract had expired) and had changed his mind a year later. It probably wasn't friction with the Broccoli-Wilson family, given that Dalton popped up at Cubby Broccoli's birthday party two days after announcing his departure. So... what was it that made Dalton change his mind about coming back, if it wasn't MGM's refusal to green-light another film while he was in the lead role?

(Maybe the fact that Dalton read the books, in which Bond was stated to be 37, and faced mandatory retirement from 00-status at 45, and Dalton was nearing the age of 50 when he stepped down. That's all I've got. I'm sympathetic to the argument that Dalton wasn't as enthusiastic about him playing Bond as Cubby Broccoli was, but that doesn't explain why he was willing to come back in 1993 only to change his mind within a year.)

That makes me wonder if Skyfall, twisted and confused and decidedly overrated wretch that it is, wasn't the result of a compromise that Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson made with MGM to retain Mr. Craig's formidable services. Shove the tone back Goldfinger-wards, despite the massive step backwards that represents, in the name of money.

Oh well.

In other news, RIP Richard Kiel, aka Jaws.