The Express speculates Bond 23 will be `Oscar-friendly’

The U.K. newspaper The Express, in a story by David Stepehenson, is speculating that Bond 23 director Sam Mendes wants to make Bond 23 “Oscar friendly.”

Here’s an excerpt of a story that doesn’t appear to contain a lot of lot hard facts:

Rumours are growing that new British director Sam Mendes is planning to ditch a host of stunts and action scenes from his first Bond film.

Insiders say the new film, expected to be called Skyfall, will be very different in tone as Mendes instead aims for “characterful performances” that will put his creation in the running for Oscar nominations.

That could put a lot of pressure on Daniel Craig, who will be making his third appearance as the British secret agent It will also provide a big opportunity for the 43-year-old who has said that he wanted to bring more “emotional depth” to the role.

(snip)
One source said: “There are growing rumours Sam Mendes is cutting out the action scenes and making it Oscar-friendly.”

Let’s examine this passage carefully.

“Rumours are growing” (Translation: no actually reporting here, just passing along rumors.)

“Insiders say the new film…” Are these the producers? Associate producers? Actual crew members? Caterers? The Express doesn’t spell this out. You can protect the identity of a source while indicating whether that source actually knows something. (i.e., a person with direct knowledge would be the phrasing of a story based on someone with with actual, direct knowledge.) The Express doesn’t bother.

“That could put a lot of pressure on Daniel Craig…” Yes, it could. Or maybe not. The phrasing indicates the autor doesn’t actually KNOW. Put tactfully, the author is SPECULATING. Put less tactfully, he’s pulling it out of… well, never mind where.

To read the entire story in The Express, JUST CLICK HERE.

The Express may, or may not be, on to something. But its presentation leaves much to be desired, suggesting there’s at least some guess work. If you read the entire story on The Express’s Web site, you’ll see additional examples.

Peter Morgan says his `big hook’ is part of Bond 23 script

Peter Morgan, the prestige screenwriter originally hired to write Bond 23, says the movie retains his “big hook,” according to an interview on the Digital Spy Web site.

An excerpt:

“I hear that an idea, the central idea, is still there but not one similar thing other than that. I think they’ve still kept the big hook, which I’m not going to tell you!” (Morgan) said.

Of course, this was the same Peter Morgan who declared in another interview that that James Bond is dated and didn’t sound like he particularly cared for the character.

Morgan dropped out after financial problems, would lead to a short stay in bankruptcy court, at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. forced Bond 23 to shut down for almost a year. When MGM and Eon put out a release early this year that Bond 23 was back on, it said the script would be written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and John Logan, with no mention of Morgan.

How much of this is hype, how much is real is anybody’s guess. But, from our standpoint, the hiring of Morgan — whose previous work is lathered in politics — was very suspect. His involvement is part of a broader trend where Eon seems desperate for prestige, rather than concerned about putting out an entertaining movie.

007 questions now that Bond 23 is back on

A few key questions have been answered: we know Daniel Craig is coming back for his third 007 film, director Sam Mendes was finally confirmed and the names of the writers were disclosed. That just raises more questions about Bond 23, due to come out in November 2012. Here are some of the most obvious:

001. What’s the title? Remaining Ian Fleming short story titles include The Property Of a Lady (referenced already in Octopussy), Risico, The Hildebrand Rarity and 007 in New York. Few thought that Quantum of Solace would be used as a movie title, so the remaining are fair game, though it’s hard to imagine 007 in New York would be that appealing.

Of course, Eon bosses Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli don’t have to use a Fleming title. Fans have also speculated over the years that chapter titles from Fleming novels might be used. Your guess is as good as ours at this point.

002. Who’s John Logan? He’s a 49-year-old, Chicago-born writer, who has written both movies and made-for-television films, ranging from a genre movie (Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002), to a big costume drama/action movie (2000’s Gladiator, where he was part of a tag team of scribes) to a TV movie about the making of Citizen Kane, RKO 281.

Logan also was nominated for two Oscars, for Gladiator and The Aviator, a film biography of Howard Hughes. So Logan sports a varied resume.

003. Does John Logan have more enthusiasm for James Bond than Peter Morgan did? Some time back, Eon said they’d hired Morgan, a writer of politically themed movies mostly to work with with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who’ve hung around the 007 series since 1999’s The World Is Not Enough.

Given Morgan’s comments after he stopped working on Bond 23, bordering on disdain for 007, it’s hard to imagine Logan has less enthusiasm compared to Morgan. It would be nice if Logan advanced further than Morgan did. After promising a story that would be “shocking,” Morgan never got past the treatment phase (essentially a detailed outline) and never even wrote a draft of a script.

004. Will Logan, Purvis and Wade pick up on that “shocking” story? After Quantum of Solace, we’d settle for an entertaining story. We’re also on record as saying it’d be nice if Bond 23 wasn’t “personal.” Time to give the “this time it’s PERSONAL!” theme a rest.

005. Is Judi Dench coming back as M? No word in the Jan. 11 press release by Eon Productions and MGM. Dench’s status is just one of casting questions, with others including who’s going to be the villain, female lead, etc.

006. What does Mendes coming aboard as director mean? It means that producers Wilson and Broccoli still aren’t giving up on their desire for critical respect after getting a taste of it for 2006’s Casino Royale. The question really is whether Mendes can do a better job that the one Marc Forster did with the muddled Quantum of Solace.

007. But aren’t you glad about this announcement? Of course. This blog has been getting more traffic about the new Hawaii Five-0 series lately than it has about James Bond. All those posts about MGM’s financial ills weren’t very fun. At least there’s something new to talk about.

Eon’s drive for ‘respect’ and how it affects the 007 film franchise

The Peter Morgan situation (fiasco?), where Eon Productions’ flirtation with a “prestige” writer didn’t pan out, got us to thinking about the state of the James Bond movie franchise. As Lt. Columbo on more than one occasion said, “little things” bothered him about a case. So it is with our concerns about the state of the James Bond movie franchise.

Peter Morgan wrote Frost/Nixon and other movies that had the label of being a Very Important Film. So, in 2009, when Eon announced that Morgan would be part of a writing team to script Bond 23, it got a lot of attention, especially among Bond fans. Months after ending his 007 writing efforts, Morgan gave an interview where he indicated he really didn’t care that much for the Bond concept.

In a way, that seems to seems to represent the approach of Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli after the death of Albert R. Broccoli, Eon’s co-founder, in 1996. There have been hints of this for awhile. Michael Apted got hired to direct 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, even though he had basically no experience directing action films. But the stepson and daughter of Cubby Broccoli really hit paydirt on the respect scale with 2006’s Casino Royale, which arguably got the best reviews of a 007 film in decades. Part of the reason was co-screenwriter Paul Haggis, known as a writer and director of Very Important Movies, despite the fact he also created the schlocky TV series Walker, Texas Ranger.

That’s a heady thing to ignore. So the duo hired Marc Forster, also known as a director of Very Important Movies, such as Monster’s Ball, to direct Quantum of Solace, with Haggis returning as the lead writer, getting first billing ahead of Neal Purvis and Robert Wade. The result: a $230 million-budgeted movie that was hard to follow in many places and seemed twice the length of its 106-minute running time, the shortest of the 22-film Eon/Bond series.

For an encore, the Wilson-Broccoli duo hired Peter Morgan to write Bond 23. Now the delay in Bond 23, understandably, is blamed on financial problems at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., 007’s home studio which also controls half of the Bond franchise with Eon. But even if MGM’s finances hadn’t tanked, there’s some reason to doubt the current Eon regime was up to getting out a Bond film in a reasonable amount of time. In April, when Eon said it was suspending development of Bond 23 because of MGM’s financial ills, it said the film was originally scheduled for a “2011/2012” release. That would have been three or four YEARS after Quantum of Solace.

What’s more, Morgan revealed in an interview that after months of work in 2009, he had gotten no further than a “treatment” (essentially a detailed outline) and never had gotten around to actually writing a script. Aside from Morgan himself plus the grateful city of Vienna (where Morgan lives), it’s hard to see who else benefitted from the decision to hire Morgan in the first place. Morgan made his reputation on films that were lathered in politics. Bond films, while having a few referendces to the time they were made, tended to be as “timeless” as possible. Eon’s co-founders, Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, de-emphasized the Cold War roots of Ian Fleming novels such as Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger, which formed the basis of the first three films of the series. The Russians were the ultimate villains of all three novels; in the first two films the independent SPECTRE took the place of the Soviets while in Goldfinger, the title character was acting independently with the backing of the Chinese.

Bond 23 has been delayed primarily because of MGM’s financial ills, make no mistake. But even if MGM’s finances were fixed tomorrow, Eon would still have a lot of work to do to get a shootable script ready. The Broccoli-Saltzman team was able to do four films in four years and, after that, adhere to producing a film every other year (more or less). It’s unimaginable to envision the current Wilson-Broccoli regime sticking to such a schedule. They seem too busy worrying about their press clippings. The irony: Cubby Broccoli, a supposed hack, in 1982 received the Irving Thalberg Award, one of the most prestigious Hollywood gives to one of its own. Does anyone really think either Michael Wilson or Barbara Broccoli will receive that award anytime soon?

Peter Morgan, 007 fans hardly knew ye

Peter Morgan, screenwriter of Frost/Nixon and other prestige movies, joined a line of scribes such as Len Deighton and Anthony Burgess, who gave a try at writing a James Bond movie and couldn’t get it done. “The whole thing went to hell,” Morgan said in an interivew, published on the Indie Wire blog. “I’m so happy to be doing something else.”

Eon Productions put out a news release last year saying that Morgan would join Neal Purvis and Robert Wade in writing Bond 23. In the Indie Wire interview, which you can view for yourself starting around the 3:20 mark of the following video, Morgan says he “wrote a treatment, I never wrote a script…I went there with an orignial idea.” He never mentions Purvis and Wade.

Take a look for yourself:

In the next video, starting at the 0:15 mark, Morgan says the Bond is dated and “I’m not sure it’s possible to do it … I do think the absence of social reality in the Bond film…if they fix that, or they get that of if they get that in a script, which I’m so hoping they will, where you can actually believe in him, that he isn’t just a person in a dinner jacket…he is a creature of the Cold War, Bond….I just personally struggle to believe a British secret agent is still saving the world.”

Morgan goes on the praise Sam Mendes, the would-be director of Bond 23. You can see for yourself:

Eventually, the financial troubles at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., which controls half of the Bond franchise, caused Morgan to cease his efforts, which he clearly doesn’t seem sad about. The fate of Bond 23 won’t be decided until MGM’s future is resolved.

Some observations and specuation about Morgan’s comments:

— Prestige apparently means more to current Eon boss-people Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli than it did to master showman Albert R. Broccoli, Eon’s co-founder with Harry Saltzman. Broccoli relied on Richard Maibaum, at least for first drafts, while Saltzman tried to entice more prestigious scribes, such as Paul Dehn (on Goldfinger) and John Hopkins (on Thunderball) to revamp Maibaum’s early drafts. Deighton also did some work on From Russia With Love, according to U.K. film historian Adrian Turner, and Burgess was among a gaggle of writers that pitched ideas for The Spy Who Loved Me. But the old Eon seemed to keep it all in perspective (i.e. they didn’t let the search for presige bog down the screenwriting process) than the current crew.

— Morgan sounds like he was never highly interested in the world of 007. You half expect him to sound like Sebastian Faulks, author of a 2008 Bond continuation novel, that it might be a jolly good romp to try writing a Bond movie.

— This is another case why press releases shouldn’t be viewed as any more than the tip of an iceburg.