Daniel Craig: Quantum of Solace

Nov 14, 2008

Call me Hollywood, but I don't usually dress up for work. It's almost de rigueur to wear jeans and T-shirts to an interview. And if the actors are doing it, why shouldn't we? Quantum of Solace was a special occasion though. For James Bond, at least for Craig's James Bond, I put on my best black suit. It's the suit I got married in, but, though I'm now divorced, neither Brooks Brothers nor Bond should have to suffer for my loss.

I'll admit, I have a man crush on Daniel Craig. I thought I liked Pierce Brosnan as Bond until I saw Casino Royale. Then I thought, "Oh, this is much better." Meeting him in person for an interview, I almost matched Craig, who one-upped me with his black on black attire (black suit with black shirt and black tie). Added to that, Craig had his arm in a black cast resting in a black sling. Bond even makes injuries look cool.

Craig continues his hard-edged version of 007 in the Casino sequel. And it is a sequel. Where most Bond movies comprise of a brand new adventure, which merely features an occasional reference to a dead wife, an old arch-enemy or some other common theme, Quantum picks up right where Casino left off. Bond is going after the bad guys who turned his lover, Vesper Lynd, and ultimately killed her. It might be tough to follow if you haven't seen Casino Royale -- but see Casino Royale anyway -- then you'll have to see Daniel Craig do Bond again!

Question: What happened to your arm?

Daniel Craig: I got some surgery done six weeks ago to stitch me back up. I got a rotator cuff or something. It's just I have six dissolvable pins put in, that tie the thing to the thing and it's going to be okay.

Was it from one specific injury?

DC:

Who knows? I don't know exactly what did it. I have no idea. It could have been any number of things that could have done it. It's a tear. I genuinely don't know. It's called a slap tear and it goes fifty percent from the top posterior all the way around into the middle. They have to put six screws in it and it's a pain in the ass because it doesn't heal quickly.

Ho how long will you be out of commission?

DC:

Another six years. [laughs] I'll be probably be fit by Christmas but I won't be able to put any pressure on it like hanging from a train or anything stupid.

So you're not really working now?

DC:

I don't want to.

Were you surprised or did you know in advance that this would be a direct sequel to the last Bond movie?

DC:

It just seemed to me when we came down to it, and we all agreed that to my mind, at the end of Casino Royale, it was sort of the beginning of the story as opposed to the end of a story. He'd fallen in love, he'd had his heart broken, this organization that they'd discovered, they'd just started peeling back the onion skins of. To do another movie and just sort of go, "Oh, there was this chick once," seemed to be the wrong thing to do. So it just fit. I don't know when the idea came up. I have no idea.

Is it a great acting challenge to play a more emotionally shut off Bond vs. the gregarious, witty Sean Connery Bond?

DC:

I would never do that because I'd never copy somebody else. I would never do an impression of anybody else or try and improve on what they did. That would be a pointless exercise for me. I had to find out how I was going to do this and these two movies have tied that in for me.

Is it more difficult to delve into the pain of Bond for the first time in the series?

DC:

It's not at all. It's not at all difficult. We started off something like Casino Royale. We had a great story and a great book and a novel by Ian Flemming that was solid and had a love story in it. A really strong love story and Eva Green played this part, a wonderful performance and when it came around to shooting this movie it was like, we can't just push that aside, we have to develop that, we have to tie up the loose ends here. That's what Quantum of Solace is about. It's him finding his quantum of solace. He's not on a vendetta, he's not after revenge, he's after finding his place. His relationships -- with M and Felix and obviously with Mathis and subsequently with Camille in the movie -- are about solidifying his place in the world and discovering who his allies are.

Do you think he can lighten up a little bit now?

DC:

Ah, no. I mean, of course we can do anything but writing gags for a movie like this is wrong. You can't write gags for a movie like this. They either come or they don't. We dealt with this in a way and that is the way the story went, but honestly, the lines and all the, not Bond clichés, but the Bond clichés we can put in as long as we earn them and this is not what this has been about. There's a few gags in there. There's some belly laughs in there. Somewhere.

People seriously reported it when you said this one would be funnier. Do people not get your deadpan?

DC:

I mean, I'm sorry. I probably say stupid things in interviews sometimes but I'm not nailing anything down. People kind of want to know exactly what's going to happen in the next movie and I don't know. Is there room for more comedy? Yes, there's room for more comedy.

But it amused me that people took the joke seriously. Do you find people don't get you sometimes?

DC:

I think that's the same for everybody. The thing is, I'm not that complicated, I don't think. I'm a pretty open book. I make gags and if people don't get them, I can't please everybody.

Would you like a classic Bond ski chase in the next one?

DC:

I'm not a very good skier, Jesus. I think my Bond actually slides down the hill on a blanket. I don't think there's a lot of that going on.

Isn't there still a question of the Quantum organization to follow up on in the next one?

DC:

I don't know, maybe.

Will there be another SPECTRE?

DC:

Well, I think we've set that up. There could be. I don't like films that tie everything up at the end. I like an open ending. I want an audience to go away asking those questions and hopefully they'll continue asking those questions into the next movie we do.

Would you like to see Q and Moneypenny in this version of the series?

DC:

I'd love to, yeah, love to. I think though you offer it to the best actors you can and you say to them, "Forget what's happened. Reinvent it. Tell us what you think these characters should be." That's where it should come from because what they do is a given. How they are is a given.

How challenging were the stunts this time?

DC:

We set the bar on Casino so we had to try and achieve and try and make these different but as good. Things have moved on. Special effects have moved on. We certainly didn't want to make this a more CGI based movie but the plane sequence insists that we have CGI.

I think the freefall sequence was incredible to do because we went and learned to freefall. We had a conversation about the freefall sequence. I was like, "I've never seen a good one." I think they're always kind of naff. There's obviously people freefalling and then they have a close-up of somebody with a hair dryer. That always seemed to me the way, and they always last about five minutes longer than they should. So I said, "It has to be quick. They have to look like they're falling out of the plane."

Someone came up with the idea, there's this 200 mile an hour vertical wind tunnel where people go and learn how to freefall and you can do it. So Olga and I went and rehearsed for about a week on it and we stuck a camera, a guy cameraman with a small camera flying with a controller. We had 20 digital cameras around and I think just, you look at it, it was hell, but it looks like we're falling out of an airplane.

What was your biggest challenge? There's fire, water, air... Which was the most difficult?

DC:

I don't think one was more difficult than the other. Each one came up with a different challenge. The rooftop chase sequences were difficult, it was challenging, it took a long time. It was a bore because we had six cameras going and cranes and weird cameras.

How many times did you have to do that one?

DC:

I can't remember, I really can't remember but over and over again.

How much of it was you?

DC:

As much as possible. I hope you can tell it's me. There were never any dangerous parts but we set up rehearsals in a studio where we put up 30 - 40 foot towers and I'm wired and I just jump from areas to areas and then sort of do the other thing which is just jump off the tower. Once we get to Siena it's that up there and the cranes are up and the wires are up and I jump from one roof to another and I slide down and that's all me. I'm doing a jump and all the wires are for is, if I fall he'll grab me, so I'm doing a fall and it might take the pinch out of the impact.

How did it feel to shoot the signature opening iris walk sequence?

DC:

That was probably when I was scared. That was probably the moment when I was actually kind of had a [moment]. We did that twice.

Just two walks and you nailed it?

DC:

Well, we filmed it twice. How many times I did it, over and over again. I was watching it on a monitor. I think we got it right.

How did it feel when you saw it the first time?

DC:

I just loved, because I snap out because I'm not looking. The sound, ba dum, bad dum, bum [sings opening Bond Theme]. We wanted to keep it, there was ideas to sort of fuck around with that and make it into sort of a bit more graphic and things and I was just like, "No, no, no, no, it has to be like the old ones, almost slightly jerky coming across like it was."

Besides yourself, who was your favorite Bond?

DC:

Sean Connery.

Did he ever give you any advice?

DC:

No, I haven't spoken to him.

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