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Michael France répond à mes questions. (Oui, à défaut d'un Mel Nowak ou de Pierre Tremblay... on fait ce qu'on peut !) Il est crédité pour l'histoire de Goldeneye. Sympathiques anecdotes :
What kind of research did you do ? Only reading Bond novels and short stories ?
When the Bond franchise started up again in 1994 (some weird legal action with the studios stopped them for five years), a lot of writers were pitching stories. I always loved the films and was dying to write one. I wanted to have some new character angles (like, a closer look at Bond's relationships with other 00s) but also have the tech stuff grounded in reality. While working on a story, I did a lot of research on Lexis-Nexis, reading current scientific journals on what the next big weapon systems would be -- just looking for something cool. There was a lot of discussion about EMP devices, small and large, and I built a story around that. Michael Wilson, one of the series' producers, is very attuned to the tech end of things, and I think he was impressed that I'd done a fair amount of homework to make that part of it work.
I reread all the Fleming novels and stories to try to find some Fleming material that they hadn't used for the movies. There was little or nothing available there that would work with my story, unfortunately.
Did you work with a "Bond bible" with some rules to respect ? Did you try to change them anyway ?
We did work on kind of a "Bond bible" -- a document detailing the parameters of the character, as defined by the books and the best movies -- that I believe was mostly compiled by John Cork.
Was it a great challenge to put Bond into a "post-Cold War" world ?
I never thought the "taking Bond out of the Cold War" thing was a big deal because -- few of the movies really are about that. The Russians usually turn out to be more red herring than red menace -- it's always a distraction that Bond deals with until he discovers SPECTRE or some private villain is behind things. The key thing for me though, was that we wanted to take advantage of current political turmoil in Russia -- the breakup of the Soviet Union meant weapons and scientists were going all over the place -- which gave the story a realistic edge. It also was a big deal that, with the 17th film in the series, we find some new locations Bond hadn't been to. Surprisingly, he'd spent no major time in Russia during the series (FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE is set mostly in Turkey).
So I talked the Broccolis into sending me to Russia -- Moscow and St. Petersburg -- to do research. That was an amazing trip -- I had a guide take me to mob casinos, atomic research centers, and Soviet air bases. I cased the KGB building for a break-in, photographing it from every crazy angle I could, including inside the gates. (Not too bright, I just got carried away.) Obviously, this was a hell of a lot of fun, but it also helped me a lot in writing the script. If I'm writing about a locale that exists, especially for staging action, I need to see that place if at all possible.
Did they let you alone to write a first draft or did you always work with the producers and the director ?
In writing the first draft, I wasn't exactly left alone -- I met often with Albert Broccoli, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson. No director yet when I was on it.
Did you think about the action scenes first or the story ?
In working on GOLDENEYE, the first thing I thought of wasn't action or story, it was character. I wanted to do something that set it apart, somehow, from the rest of the series. It always seemed phony to me that in the other films, Double O agents were always dropping like flies, and that never meant anything to Bond emotionally. These guys are in the smallest, most elite intelligence unit in the world, they travel together, go into missions together, and die next to each other. So the first thought was, "what if a double O went bad"? How would that affect Bond in the mission? Next, you think, someone as smart and connected as Bond is the villain -- what would he know about? Top secret weapons systems built by a country he spied on for years? And the story came out of that.
The action was a blast to write. I had many more action scenes in the script that didn't make it to GOLDENEYE. One that I had for my first meeting with Albert Broccoli was the idea of Bond being trapped in an underground bomb testing site as the bomb goes off. He loved that one. It eventually made it to THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH, in an altered form.
What is the director's influence on the screenplay ?
The director's influence? Dunno, didn't meet him til I visited the set.
Why didn't they keep you to re-write the script ?
Why not keep me on all the way? Beats me! Like all producers, I think they like to bring in fresh horses after a while.
Finally, if I'm hired as a screenwriter on a Bond film, what do I have to expect ?
What can you expect if you get a job writing a Bond? The time of your life. It really is an exciting world to be a part of for a while.
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