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From Barbara with Love
As the definitive Bond story, Casino Royale was always a project Albert “Cubby” Broccoli wanted to make. Ten years after his death, daughter Barbara is thrilled to have finally made that happen.
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:40 PM
By Ian Spelling
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Jon Furniss/WireImage.com
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Broccoli, now a full eight years older than her new Bond
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Back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, the 007 adventures thrived on their complex, convoluted plots as much as they did on a dashing Bond, red-hot Bond girls and nifty gadgets. Now, the Cold War is long over and, unfortunately, moviegoer attention spans are shorter than ever.
And so there was a debate raging in some circles prior to the fall theatrical release of Casino Royale - with its fresh Bond (Daniel Craig) and a Bond girl (Eva Green) who’s as smart and independent as she is ravishing - that the film could hit a brick wall because it runs two hours and 24 minutes and steadfastly retains the dense plotting of such classic Bond outings as From Russia With Love, You Only Live Twice and Live and Let Die.
Barbara Broccoli, longtime 007 producer and daughter of original Bond impresario Albert “Cubby” Broccoli (the man who first realized the promise of Ian Fleming’s novels about the British spy with a license to kill), was always confident that audiences would be receptive to an old school Bond flick. With Casino Royale now ranking according to BoxOfficeMojo.com as the most successful 007 adventure ever at the domestic box office, it turns out she was dead right.
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Jon Furniss/WireImage.com
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Quickly quelling the Internet rebellion
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“It’s always a challenge because you sit down and you say, ‘What journey are we going to take Bond on?’” she begins during her recent interview with FilmStew in New York. “We were very lucky this time because we had the book and we basically just sat down, analyzed the book and thought, ‘How are we going to adapt this for today?’”
“I mean, it was written in 1953,” she continues. “I think the essence of the book is certainly in the screenplay, which is that the Le Chiffre character (Mads Mikkelsen as the main villain) is banker to the world’s terrorists. He is the one that enables all this money to be moved around, to fund all kinds of terrorist activity.”
“I think that’s very relevant today, because as we are all concerned about terrorists we’re also concerned about how they are funded,” she adds. “So, strangely, it fit very well into a story that had been written in 1953. I think that the plots ARE complex, but it’s supposed to be a mystery. You’re supposed to be intrigued and try to figure out what Bond is up to as he’s trying to unravel the mystery as well. And hopefully by the end of it you feel as if you sort of understand everything.”
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Jeffrey Mayer/WireImage.com
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Director Martin Campbell
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In other words, Broccoli gave no consideration whatsoever to dumb-ing down Casino Royale, this week's marquee DVD release (about which folks are grousing over the lack of juicy extras such as Audio Commentary from Craig or director Martin Campbell). “I think when you make films you have to assume that people are intelligent,” she argues. “I think, often, people do dumb down films too much. Audiences, I don’t think, really like that.”
“There’s nothing better than when you go to a movie and, afterward, you’re having your glass of wine or you’re having your hot chocolate and you say, ‘Why did he do that?’ or ‘Why does…’ and you talk about it,” Broccoli continues. “That’s something I think people like. It’s a communal experience. I think people like to go to the movies and they like to talk about them and argue about them. That’s part of the fun.”
Another part of the fun this time around was of course watching how Craig fit into the tuxedo. He is the sixth Bond, following Sean Connery, Roger Moore, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan, and at 38 years old, he’s the youngest 007 in nearly 40 years. However, neither Bond aficionados nor the British tabloids initially embraced even the notion of casting Craig. After all, he’s blond and blue-eyed. And things only got nastier during production, as every minor injury or mishap became fodder for additional disparaging stories.
Though such names as Clive Owen, Julian McMahon, Ewan McGregor and Jude Law were repeatedly bandied about as options in the press and online, Broccoli insists that to her and co-producer Michael Wilson, Craig was always first choice. “The REALITY was that Michael and I always wanted Daniel,” she says. “He was our first choice from the get-go. The fact was we approached him and he said, ‘Look, I’ll consider it, but I’m not going to make a decision until I read a script.’ So the time between giving him the script and announcing him was about three or four weeks. All of that other stuff was a lot of speculation.”
“Obviously, we didn’t know if he would do it, so we did meet a lot of people and we considered people, but the speculation was… dumbfounding to me,” Broccoli maintains. “There was so much press going on, rumors about what we were doing that just were not true. We wanted him. He’s the only person we offered the role to. He read the script and he agreed.”
With Casino Royale sitting at 94% on RottenTomatoes.com and just shy of $600 million in worldwide box office, Broccoli is now actively working on Bond 22, with Craig in tow. Thrilled for the franchise and her leading man, she’d also like to think that somewhere up above, her dad is happy too.
“I think he would love Daniel,” she suggests. “When Daniel did that scene where he shoots the gun, I burst into tears because that’s all I could think of, that ‘I just wish my father was here to see him in this role.’ Because I think he would have loved him.”
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