Hey boys and girls, we got to sit in on the New York press conference for 007’s latest adventure, Skyfall.  We were lucky enough to ask some questions of director Sam Mendes, Bond’s new nemesis, Spanish superstar, Javier Bardem, and even a quick word with Bond, James Bond himself, Daniel Craig. 

Sam Mendes:  There’s nothing in the movie that I don’t stand by and didn’t want to put in myself.  And I certainly felt no pressure to put in stuff from old movies from anyone else.  I think they were delighted when I said I want to use the DB5 and I want to try and instill some more humour into the proceedings in some way, but they never said, “We want the DB5.”  That’s not their style.  They’re incredibly trusting and hands-off as producers and very supportive.  And once I’d explained to them my vision, which seems to me the main job of the director in a way is to describe what you want to see because it’s so much the case that it’s everyone else’s job to then try and fulfill that vision, they let me get on with it.  I felt about the homage elements, that you have to earn them.  I think that if you put them in at the wrong time, they’re going to strike a false note.  One of the reasons I think that, for me, I hope the DB5 moment works when you first reveal the DB5 and you hear the Bond theme -- in the one screening with people that I watched, they kind of started cheering at that point, which was a great pleasure to me -- but it’s partly because it’s a relief after an incredibly intense 15-minute action sequence.  So, there’s a release of tension there.  So it operates properly within the film as a kind of way that the movie can breathe out and reboot itself before the third act of the film, so it was very carefully placed there.  But it’s also true that in making a Bond movie, certainly for me, you have to rediscover your 13-year-old self, and it was a great delight to me as somebody who also has kids to find that part of myself in making a film again.  All my movies have been R-rated movies, you know?  And here, I was trying to get in touch with a part of myself that loved the DB5; that had that model, like pretty much every boy of my generation and was thrilled by it again. And so that was part of it, too, was trying to find my inner 13-year-old. {Laughs}

Javier Bardem

LMD:  Mr. Silva is probably one of the biggest Bond villains I’ve ever seen, in terms of his personality.  He’s very interesting because he seems like combination of a throwback to the old series and something completely new.  There had been a strong intensity to the two films previous to Skyfall, but Mr. Silva’s got charm and humour and he’s also huge and flamboyant.  How large were you allowed to take Mr. Silva in your performance and were you ever worried that he would be too camp?  If you go a little too far, he becomes a joke.

Javier Bardem: Camp is a word that somebody taught me the other day, because I don’t know what you mean by “camp,” but now I know what camp means.  Wow, beautiful things you said, thank you very much.  I’m always saying that everything has to be on the page, and the first time I read it, I realised the character was there with many colours and layer to fulfill, but it was important for me to see what Sam will say about it.  What was his take on the character?  And once I talked to Sam and he gave me these different options, I realised that we were dealing with something that was fun to create and that also will bring the opportunity to do kind of a little humble homage to the Bond classics with, as you said, something mixed with the more modern in the combination of creating somebody that best of all and above all is a human being. Rather than a figure or a larger-than-life character; he’s more of a broken person with a very definitive and a specific goal to achieve, which is way easier to portray than a symbolic idea, which is more or less what it was in No Country For Old Men; that was the idea of violence, horrible fate itself, that’s what Chugurh was, but there was no human being behind.  Here, there is a broken person.  And then everything was there pointed out on the script, but it’s true, we started thinking about it and Sam gave me this great note which is “uncomfortableness.”  We wanted to create somebody that creates uncomfortable situations rather than being somebody scary or threatening; somebody that really creates a scenario of insecurity, of something unexpected to happen in front of the person who he’s dealing with.  And from there came the looks; we bought pictures, I brought some ideas of people that I know, of people who are publicly known and we worked with it until the point of where we found that it will makes sense.  Because this thing of hair or looks, it has to make sense; I don’t believe in the firework of it.  I don’t believe that you just do that because you want to have fun with it.  You always have to make sense.  And I guess, I hope, I wish that when you watch the movie and you rewind and you see what character is Silva and how he is inside, then you will understand the outside and it makes sense.  And from there, we went to the set and the scenes were there, the words were there, but the approach we did was very different.  The great thing with Sam is that he really encouraged us to approach the same scenes from different angles, like, “Let’s go higher in this tone, now.  Now let’s put it down and go the other way.”  And it was fun, which for me was a huge surprise because this is my first big movie and I thought it was going be more kind of everything has to be in place, and I found a great creative laboratory of performers with a great director in charge.  And that was a great -- not relief -- it’s not that I was afraid of it being the opposite, but it was a nice surprise.  And then we had a lot of fun and things were popping out; different options of the scenes, and I guess he put together the ones that he considered the best ones and that’s what you saw.  But nothing was written in stone, which I think is great, and it’s a great risk for a movie like this, where everything has to be in place, no?

Daniel Craig:  The rule that we applied was that I start rehearsing those scenes well before we started shooting and the fight sequences are worked out very carefully so that they’re choreographed.  I’m not a fighter.  I mean, I pretend to be one.  It’s called bullshit boxing.  But I know that we try and make it look good and we talk about camera angles and we talk about how to best take advantage of the situation.  With the stuff at the beginning on the train, I mean, you’ve also gotta deal with the fact that the train’s going from side to side, so you’re trying to stay on your feet most of the time.  But it’s just very carefully worked out and Roger {Deakins, cinematographer} knows where to put the camera, and Alexander Witt, who did the second unit, he knows where to put the camera, and we have constant dialog about it and we watch and we look and we say, ‘This fist looks good going into this face like that,’ and it’s just a lot of work and a lot of skilled people.

I had to do a lot of running in this movie, which I hate.  So, I did a lot of sprinting and running.  And Bond doesn’t usually walk through a room… We’ll have to change that. Don’t know why you can’t sort of gracefully go through?  So, I find I end up doing a day’s filming, which on paper should look fairly easy; I don’t have any dialog, it says Bond goes from a to b, then he goes from b to c, and he goes…  But he goes from a to b at a lick, he runs down the stairs, he runs up the stairs, and we had to do ten takes at a time, so by the end of it, I’m kind of…  God, it’s just kind of painful.

Barbara Broccoli:  {Laughs} How many push ups and pull ups did you do?

DC:  I don’t know.  All I know is they’re not on camera.  They’re on the floor of the cutting room.

~ The Lady Miz Diva

October 15^th 2012

Click here for our exclusive interview with the Bond film series producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson.

Click here for our exclusive interview with new Bond Girl, Bérénice Marlohe.

Click here for our exclusive interview with Skyfall costar, Naomie Harris.