Time Out has an exclusive interview with Daniel Craig to promote ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’, but naturally they also quiz him on his role as James Bond, his relationship with the press and some of the issues with Quantum of Solace. When the journalist comments that big budget films often don’t seem to make the script a priority, Craig replies:
‘We had the bare bones of a script and then there was a writers’ strike and there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t employ a writer to finish it… There was me trying to rewrite scenes – and a writer I am not…‘Me and the director were the ones allowed to do it. The rules were that you couldn’t employ anyone as a writer, but the actor and director could work on scenes together. We were stuffed. We got away with it, but only just. It was never meant to be as much of a sequel as it was, but it ended up being a sequel, starting where the last one finished.’
He goes on to say that although a commerical success, he didn’t feel satisfied by Quantum of Solace and wanted to do better on Skyfall.
‘If you’re going to do that sort of stuff, you’ve just got to get it right. You’ve got to give it your best shot. When you’ve got all that talent, everyone gunning to make it good, you’ve got to get it… For fuck’s sake, it’s a Bond movie. You want people to go, “Whooah!” – a sharp intake of breath during a movie is never a bad thing.’
And when asked about whether he had any say in getting Sam Mendes on board as director he answers in the affirmative, going on to say:
‘He’s lived with Bond all his life, he grew up with Bond the way I did. We grew up at exactly the same time, and I said to him, “We have to do this together, we have exactly the same reference points, we both like the same Bond movies and we both like the same bits in the same Bond movies we like.” We sat down and we just rabbited for hours about “Live and Let Die” or “From Russia with Love”, and talked about little scenes that we knew from them. That’s how we started talking about it. That’s what we tried to instill in the script. He’s been working his arse off to tie all these things together so they make sense – in a Bond way.’
