The screenwriters behind “Die Another Day” talk about playing rough with 007 – even as they honor his franchise’s double anniversary.

by Mike Russell

 

Neal Purvis and Robert Wade are still beating up on Bond.

The prolific British duo’s first James Bond screenplay, for 1999’s “The World Is Not Enough,” added drama and gravity to the landmark spy franchise – mostly by piling misfortune upon its hero. “We really pulled out all the stops,” admits Wade: In addition to saddling Bond with a painful shoulder injury, “We had him fall for a girl and then kill her in cold blood, and we blew up MI6 at the start. And then we had to start all over again with this one.”

“This one” is “Die Another Day” – the fourth film in the series to feature Pierce Brosnan dodging bullets, guzzling martinis and bedding improbably named women. It hits screens Nov. 22 – and it’s not particularly nice to its hero, either.

For one thing, Bond is denied female companionship after being thrown in a North Korean prison; then, after he’s freed during a prisoner exchange, he’s suspected of having cracked under torture – and so the master spy has to clear his name. Along for the ride are returning castmates Judi Dench and John Cleese (taking over for the late Desmond Llewellyn as Q), plus “Reservoir Dogs” vet Michael Madsen as an NSA agent and Oscar-winner Halle Berry donning the Bond-girl catsuit.

In addition to their self-proclaimed mission to create “a dramatic starting point in terms of the character of James Bond,” Purvis and Wade also had to honor an unprecedented double anniversary: “Die Another Day” marks the 20th film in the Bond series – and 40 years since “Dr. No” launched the franchise.

Keeping such a venerable character fresh can be a daunting task – even for two men who may be the hardest-working screenwriters in show business. Consider the raw stats: The duo broke through in 1991 with their script for the British true-crime indie “Let Him Have It,” and followed it with a draft of Disney’s 1994 sci-fi saga “The Puppet Masters.” In 1995, they apparently lurched into some sort of caffeinated overdrive – cranking out a staggering five screenplays in 1995 (including a version of “An American Werewolf in Paris”) and four more in 1997 (including the swashbuckler “Plunkett & Macleane.”)

Then they got involved with Bond – after which, to hear them tell it, they worked even harder. “We didn’t realize we’d been taking it easy,” laments Purvis.

Fittingly, both Purvis and Wade were born in 1962, the year the 007 movies were launched. They first met in college in the early 1980s – and their earliest collaborations were musical, not cinematic. “We were put into shared bunk beds at university, against our will,” Wade deadpans. “Neal left after one term, but we’d formed a band in that time … and a bond. So we kept in touch for the sake of the music. To subsidize the band, we started writing screenplays. So really, Bond is just a sideline for us.”

Uh-huh. Here’s what Purvis and Wade had to say about honoring the Bond legacy, handing the reins to a new Q, and what it’s like when your Bond girl wins the Best Actress Oscar during filming.

So what kind of music did your band play?
Robert Wade: Well, we were kind of “heavy twang.”
Neal Purvis: The music we played was similar to the Bond theme. Twang, of a sort.
RW: We played Bond as if Link Wray had done the Bond theme. In between films, we try to get the band together. We were very good musically, but we could never come up with a name.

In the space of about a decade, you two have gone from writing a gritty, true-crime drama – “Let Him Have It” – to writing two films in what is essentially the ultimate fantasy version of “good guy/bad guy” moviemaking – the Bond series.
RW: Well, a good story’s a good story. I think all films should be humorous, even if they’re about really serious subjects. So in a way, writing a Bond film is maybe a little bit more an obvious channel for humor – but it’s still about finding a story that’s interesting.

And we actually believe that what we’ve brought to the last two Bond films is a dramatic starting point in terms of the character of James Bond. People from the outside sort of look at the Bond series as a sort of fantasy, and obviously that’s right. But you do have to give the actor playing Bond some sort of emotional reality to look for.

In your first Bond film, “The World Is Not Enough,” you had Bond injured for the entire film.
RW: Yes, that was one of our earliest thoughts. Because the enemy of good storytelling, in terms of trying to achieve some sort of identification with the hero, is if he’s some sort of superhero. So although Bond is obviously able to look after himself, the thing that we’re trying to show with these stories is that he’s a mortal man who can be injured, and has this sort of vulnerability as well as being “James Bond.”

Now you make him vulnerable in “Die Another Day” by cutting him off from MI6, correct?
RW: Yes – and he’s distrusted. It means he’s not just fulfilling Her Majesty’s pleasure – he’s got something to prove. He’s got to reclaim his identity as Bond, in a way.

It sort of hearkens back to “Licence to Kill” – another film in the series where Bond is disconnected from his regular duties.

But the difference is that in “Licence to Kill,” he did it for personal reasons; he voluntarily kind of went out of the system. It was about revenge. But in “Die Another Day,” he has to prove himself. This is more of a quest to find out whether they’re right to distrust him – to find the traitor in their midst, and to prove that he’s still James Bond and that he didn’t crack under torture. So in a way, it’s more of a rear-guard action for him.

I read an interview with director Lee Tamahori where he said that, in this film, James Bond gets the best sex of his life.
RW: Well, that’s more Lee’s contribution. What we did is we created a situation where Bond hasn’t had sex in quite a long time; he’s been incarcerated. And therefore, when he does, you read in between the lines that it’s quite a moment. And so Lee decided to sort of shoot it that way.
NP: It’s possibly the biggest explosion in the film.
RW: Well, the biggest bang – and that happens to be with Halle Berry, so….

Now, did Halle Berry win Best Actress during filming?
RW: Yeah, she did. It was a fantastic moment. And she came back and we thought, “Well, we’d better give her a few more lines now.”
NP: Rob, weren’t you there when she came back on set, having come back with the Oscar?
RW: Yeah, that’s right. And also our sound man, he’d also gone there and picked up the Oscar for “Black Hawk Down.” And so there were two Oscars on set. And everyone gave Halle an ovation – and then she got back into the red leather catsuit and carried on working.
NP: While being strapped onto the laser table.
RW: Yes, while being strapped onto the laser table. It was fantastic.

Now, was Berry’s entrance in the film – which evokes Ursula Andress’ bikini-clad entrance in “Dr. No” – your idea?
RW: Well, what it said in the script was that she was swimming naked. And Lee was the one who decided to have her coming out of the water in a bikini.
NP: Yes, we were disappointed that she was wearing the bikini.
RW: See, in the novel of “Dr. No,” Ursula Andress’ character was in the nude – and when she sees that Bond is on the beach, instead of covering up her privates, she covers up her nose, because it’s broken. But that’s Ian Fleming.

This film brings back some classics – like the Aston Martin and the bikini entrance. What drives those sorts of self-conscious choices?
RW: Well, this is an anniversary film – and it was right to celebrate it. I mean, it is a bit indulgent, but films are so self-referential now anyway. It was just fun to draw on all the knowledge.

And also, this is the film in which we have a transition to a new Q. We sadly lost Desmond Llewellyn. And so we thought, “It’s a nice tribute to him – and also sort of goes along with the 40th anniversary – to get a lot of the old gadgets and sort of show another side to the Q labs. And so we’ve got the very first gadget that Q gave Sean Connery, which is the briefcase, and Bond sort of handles it a little bit.
NP: And so it’s the actual briefcase from that film, isn’t it?
RW: Yes, it is. One of the things that Neal and I are interested in is trying to ease in elements from the Ian Fleming novels – because it just adds a little bit of texture. And so in introducing the new Q [John Cleese], we started with Bond calling him “Quartermaster,” which is the origin of the name “Q” – he’s the quartermaster of the Secret Service. And only by the end of the scene, where’s he’s been won over by Q’s gadgets, does he call him “Q.” Obviously, a Q scene has to be a fun scene, but we wanted to just seed in the idea that he earns the endearment “Q.”

How did you approach writing John Cleese’s dialogue differently than Desmond Llewellyn’s?
RW: Well, some of it’s very similar. But just as one’s grown up with Desmond Llewellyn, one’s equally grown up with John Cleese. So we sort of wrote it with his qualities in mind, and then sent it to him – and he had his own suggestions about what he would actually say in that situation. And John Cleese is no mean writer, and he knows what he’s good at – so you’re not going to argue with him too much.

What does director Lee Tamahori bring to the series?
RW: Well, he was very keen on making a fast-moving movie. And also he was keen on actually sort of upping the amount of action in it, and the scale of the action.
NP: There was also a bit of inspiration in choosing Christian Wagner as the editor – he’d worked with John Woo and Tony Scott. It was really clear that this was going to be a very contemporary action-adventure.

Let’s talk about some of the ways this new film deviates from previous Bonds. A fairly edgy actor, Michael Madsen, has a part in this film.
RW: He’s an NSA agent, and the American agents in the Bond films have, on the whole, been very wholesome.
NP: And we wanted a real friction between Bond and this NSA chief.
RW: And we wanted to have a little friction between England and America.

I never thought there’d be a movie with Dame Judi Dench and Michael Madsen. Do they have a scene together?
RW: [laughs] They do, actually.
NP: It was this massive conflict between these two styles of acting. Judi Dench has got these laser eyes, and looks right at you and fixes you – and Michael Madsen is the complete opposite. I mean, you didn’t really know what he was going to do from take to take.

You guys have done an astonishing number of films together. [Purvis and Wade laugh.] I mean, you wrote five screenplays together in 1995, and four together in 1997.
NP: Probably.
RW: We do work hard. I guess our output has dropped a little bit because Bond films are extremely demanding.
NP: Our method is to plan things out – break the film down into scenes – and then we split it up and do about five pages each a day, then join them together. We work with laptops sitting in cafes, and then e-mail it using mobile phones to the other person. And then you just re-write the other person – and gradually it comes together. We meet two or three times a week, I suppose, towards the end of the day.

We drink lots of coffee during the day, and then we have to go to the pub at the end of the day so the alcohol can bring us back down.

E-mail must have been a nice invention for you guys.
RW: We’re hoping it will get better and better, and we’ll never have to see each other again.

The Bond films are interesting in that they almost evoke the classic Hollywood system of the ‘30s and ‘40s, where one producer (or producing family) controls the material and a shifting array of talent. Were you two approached with a story?
NP: No, that’s the strange thing that people seem to think happens. All we have is a blank page.
RW: You know, it’s extremely daunting. We got the job of writing the third James Bond with Pierce Brosnan just after “Tomorrow Never Dies” opened – and those first two films took in about $700 million.

So suddenly you’ve been told to turn up and write, in discussion with the producers, a film that’s got to take the same in again. And it’s got a release date, and nothing’s been agreed yet about what the story’s going to be. So then it’s just a matter of brainstorming and coming up with lots and lots of ideas – a few of which will be good enough to make it into the movie.

How much input does Pierce Brosnan have into the writing process?
RW: Well, he makes it very clear what he wants – that he likes to have stuff to play, that he wants scenes, that he wants a character.
NP: He appreciates that you’ve got to have the action, but he wants the drama and he wants to act.
RW: It’s motivating because he wants you to give him stuff – and then when the script finally turns up, he makes you work that extra bit harder. Because in writing a Bond movie, the thing that’s more important than anything else is to make James Bond look good. The other people are icing on the cake – but it’s a sort of celebration of this man, and this character, who has an effortless kind of style and way of doing things.

It strikes me that the producers are actually having a bit of a globe-trotting James Bond adventure themselves, dealing with all these governments as they’re trying to make this film.
RW: Yeah. I think they had quite an experience making “Tomorrow Never Dies.” The DMZ between North and South Korea is kind of a thematic playground for this movie – but that was something that we couldn’t really deal with. So it’s been re-created elsewhere. It’s too much of a hot spot to actually film there.
NP: I don’t want to go to North Korea.
RW: And we’ve got a sequence set in Cuba, but we weren’t allowed to film there.

Do the producers come up with action sequences and ask you to fill in the blanks in between, or do you conceive them out of whole cloth as well?
RW: It’s a bit of both, really. I mean, if they’ve got an idea or a stunt man says, “I’ve got this really great …”
NP: But not on “Die Another Day.”
RW: No, that’s right. On “Die Another Day,” the concepts came from us and the producers just talking – but I suppose we suggested doing some surfing stuff and a hovercraft chase and a minefield and –
NP: We outlined the action sequence and the concepts ourselves – and it comes down to what the stunt team and the director and the second-unit director feel they can do and how they can push the envelope.

Have you guys ever written a stunt sequence so fantastic it couldn’t be filmed?
RW: Yes. In fact, the original concept of the hovercraft chase [in “Die Another Day”] was unfilmable. It was just too dangerous. In this film Lee came in with action ideas as well.
NP: We have a chase on the ice around this ice palace, and Lee said, since they were building this enormous palace, “Why can’t we have the chase inside it?” So they had to redesign the palace so it could take the weight of cars going down the corridors.
RW: And stuntmen are always coming up with ideas. On “The World Is Not Enough,” someone had found those helicopters that dangled saws, and the producers asked us to think of a way to work that into the story. They weren’t our idea – but having a caviar factory that they carve up was our idea.

Looking back over the entire series, who’s your favorite Bond villain?
RW: My favorite is Hugo Drax in “Moonraker.” You know, it was a kind of out-there film, but the actor, Michael Lonsdale, was very good. He had the best lines: “Look after Mr. Bond. See that some harm comes to him.” You know, I’d probably say something else if I had another pint in me.

The bald albino fellow in the “Die Another Day” trailer looks cool. What’s his story?
RW: He’s had a bit of bad luck. He encountered James Bond and got hit with flying shrapnel – and then the second encounter with Bond actually resulted in his being rendered an albino. So he’s a bit unfortunate, really. Bond gets out of a North Korean jail because he’s been traded for this other guy – and in a sense, that is a dishonor to Bond, so he’s got to go and get that guy, and he ends up holding the answers to all his questions.

Do you think you’ll write a third Bond film together?
RW: Yeah. I think that could be a likelihood.
NP: But it’s early days; you can’t presume that will happen.
RW: But we’ve got plenty of ideas left. But at the moment we’re doing some other work.
NP: We’ve got “Johnny English” coming out in March in America. It’s a comedy about a bumbling British [intelligence agent] in the vein of Inspector Clouseau. And we’ve also got “The Wicked World of Brian Jones” – the story of Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and the last few weeks of his life.
RW: It’s been in the works for about eight years. We’ve been working on it longer than Brian Jones was in the Rolling Stones. That’s a very interesting movie – it’s probably the antithesis of Bond. It’s set at The House on Pooh Corner, which is where he was living when he died.

“Johnny English” sounds like it was an opportunity to work out some demons from the Bond series.
RW: Yeah. [both laugh] We were scrupulously trying to steer it in a Graham Greene direction rather than an Ian Fleming direction. After Sept. 11, because it was comedy, the producers wanted to make sure it didn’t have any controversial elements in it. We weren’t available to work on it – so a writer called Will Davies came in on it, and he sort of made it un-controversial.

Would or do you two ever work apart?
Both: No.

Do you worry at all that up-and-comers like “XXX” and even outright spoofs like “Austin Powers” could steal Bond’s thunder?
RW: No. I think “Austin Powers” has stolen the outrageous names … .
NP: And “XXX” is its own thing. The problem for any other sort of film is how they keep going.
RW: Yeah. I’ll be surprised to see “Austin Powers 20.” But the other thing is, this is the original; if you’re doing something sort of adjacent to Bond, you’re not necessarily going to try so hard – you can come up with a Bond-type plot and it’ll be sort of generic. But of you’re doing the actual Bond, you have to try and think of something new, because it’s already been done in Bond. You can’t just say, “What the hell – we’ll steal a nuclear weapon and hold the world for ransom,” because you’ve already done that.