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Miss Moneypenny suggests you review the following information on project code Bond 19, compiled from sources around the globe:
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``The World is Not Enough,'' the 19th entry in the Bond franchise, opened at No. 1 across North American theaters, earning about $37.2 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period, according to studio estimates issued Sunday.
Pierce Brosnan's third turn as Agent 007 marks the biggest opening both for a Bond movie and for its studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The previous records were held by ''Goldeneye,'' Brosnan's Bond debut, which opened to $26.2 million in November 1995 and went on to make $106 million domestically.
``Sleepy Hollow,'' director Tim Burton's loose adaptation of the Washington Irving story about a village terrorized by a sword-wielding equestrian, opened at No. 2 with $30.5 million. If the figures hold when final numbers are issued Monday, it will mark the first time that two movies have opened to over $30 million each in the same weekend, said Paramount Pictures, which released ``Sleepy Hollow.'' Last weekend's champ, ``Pokemon: The First Movie,'' based on the Nintendo video game characters, lost 57 percent of its audience as it fell to No. 3 with $13.3 million in its second round. However Warner Bros., which released the film, had expected the percentage drop to be higher. After 10 days in release, the film has grossed $68.2 million, and should be at the $90 million mark after Thanksgiving, said studio distribution president Dan Fellman.
According to Exhibitor Relations, which collects the studios' data, the top 12 films this weekend grossed a combined $108 million, up 22 percent from a week ago, and up 16 percent from the year-ago period when ``The Rugrats Movie'' led the field with a $27.3 million opening.
The one other new entry in the top 10 was ``Being John Malkovich,'' which finally made the list in its fourth weekend. The offbeat comedy about a puppeteer, played by John Cusack, who finds a portal into the head of the movie's title character, rose four places to No. 10 with $1.9 million.
The Spike Jonze-directed film now has $8.8 million after 24 days. Now playing at a maximum of 591 screens after adding 124 at the weekend, the film is expected to reach $15 million by Christmas. Gramercy Pictures hopes the film will then receive a second wind from year-end critics' awards.
Rounding out this weekend's top five were Universal's ``The Bone Collector,'' which fell two places to No. 4 with $6.5 million, bringing its 17-day total to $45.1 million; and Lions Gate's ``Dogma,'' down to two to No. 5 with $4.1 million for a 10-day haul of $15.8 million. The movies slid 46 percent and 52 percent, respectively, as ``The World is Not Enough'' and ''Sleepy Hollow'' pulled in viewers of all shapes and sizes.
MGM said its Bond movie, directed by Michael Apted, overcame the franchise's traditional pockets of resistance in the American heartland, where movies with English accents are treated with suspicion.
Critics were also less than thrilled with the plot, which has Bond facing a villain (played by Robert Carlyle) who is impervious to pain because of a bullet lodged in his head.
``What makes Bond pictures work is the action,'' said MGM worldwide distribution president Larry Gleason.
The film's per screen average of $11,761 was the highest in the top 10. ``Goldeneye'' opened with a $9,826 average, while 1997's ``Tomorrow Never Dies'' opened with $25.1 million (en route to $125 million) and an $8,957 average.
The picture also opened in Malaysia and Singapore on Friday, besting the opening haul of the ``Star Wars'' prequel in the former territory, Gleason said. It opens in the U.K. and Australia next weekend, and will be in 80 percent of the world by Christmas.
``Sleepy Hollow,'' which stars Johnny Depp as police constable Ichabod Crane and Christina Ricci as his nubile love interest, appealed to all demographics, though young females had the edge, said Paramount distribution president Wayne Lewellen.
The biggest per screen average overall went to Disney's ''Toy Story 2,'' which raked in $302,000 from one Los Angeles screen ahead of its nationwide launch on Wednesday.
Among last weekend's other new entries, Fox's ``Anywhere But Here,'' fell one place and 41 percent to No. 6 with $3.3 million, bringing its haul to $10.1 million. Columbia's ``The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc'' tumbled four places and 61 percent to No. 8 with $2.5 million, for a $10.8 million total.
Elsewhere, Touchstone's ``The Insider'' ranked at No. 7, down one place, with $2.9 million, off 41 percent. After 17 days, the Al Pacino tobacco wars expose has earned $18.4 million.
New Line's Chris O'Donnell romantic comedy ``The Bachelor'' fell two places to No. 9 with $2.4 million, off 47 percent. Its 17-day total is $17.9 million.
Q & A; OF HUMAN BOND-AGE: 007 GETS COMPLEX;
PIERCE BROSNAN, DIRECTOR MICHAEL APTED AIM TO MIX CHARACTER WITH ACTION.
by BILL DESOWITZ, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
If there's one thing we can count on as we rush headlong into the next millennium, it's that James Bond will be along for the ride, keeping the world safe from evil egomaniacs and political correctness with his timeless brand of shaken, not stirred fun.
"The World Is Not Enough," which opens Friday, is Pierce Brosnan's third outing as British agent 007.
The tone this time is darker and rougher around the edges, with greater emphasis on story and characterization, particularly among the intriguing people who surround him: M (Judi Dench), the stern boss whose maternal warmth comes through as she becomes part of the plot for the first time; Elektra (Sophie Marceau), the beautiful and powerful seductress who transcends the usual Bond villainess; and Renard (Robert Carlyle), a deadly but sad terrorist impervious to pleasure and pain because of a bullet lodged in his brain. Comely young actress Denise Richards playing a Bond love interest adds the requisite sizzle.
If audiences embrace this 19th Bond film, it will certainly solidify Brosnan's standing in the most profitable and enduring franchise in movie history (rapidly approaching a worldwide gross of $ 3 billion). For now, at least, he can take comfort in the fact that he's the most successful Bond yet, accounting for nearly $ 700 million and counting and attracting a whole new generation of fans.
In "World" the 46-year-old Irish actor was in the capable hands of British director Michael Apted, a curious choice for the film. The 58-year-old Apted specializes in character-driven dramas ("Gorillas in the Mist") and intimate documentaries ("42 Up," his latest in the "7 Up" series, opens at the Nuart on Dec. 10).
Apted has tried to instill a humanizing touch to the Bond series that many felt was missing from the last two films, "GoldenEye" and 'Tomorrow Never Dies."
During a recent interview in Los Angeles, Brosnan and Apted discussed the making of "World" and why an adrenaline rush is not enough to sustain the Bond franchise.
Question (to Apted): How was it for you to come in as an outsider and handle all of the demands of an action-adventure and a legendary franchise?
Apted: Well, that was the single most difficult thing. I had to pay attention to what I was doing as well as what everyone else was doing. The whole pre-production was intimidating. I was asked to make decisions about things I wasn't going to shoot for six months. It was very stressful.
Once we started shooting, a sense of priority began taking place, and I had to be on top of everything so the thing wouldn't run away from me. There's so much stuff to do, like the song being written and the opening titles being done.
Q: That pre-credit sequence alone is like a mini-movie with the shootout, the escape, the explosive murder, the boat chase and the balloon finale. How long is it?
Apted: Fourteen and a half minutes. Designing the action sequences for the opening was very complicated and overwhelming.
Q (to Brosnan): You've talked in the past about wanting to broaden and deepen the Bond films, particularly after your disappointment with "Tomorrow Never Dies" because of its dependence on wall-to-wall action. Is this what you had in mind in "The World Is Not Enough"?
Brosnan: Yes. It "World" moves like a bullet, and it's got content and style. And thanks to this man on my right, Mr. Apted, attention was paid to story and character, and it was a great time, actually. It was, for me, a walk in the park, really. It was not very stressful. All I had to do was show up.
Q (to Brosnan): Although the Broccoli family heirs of late Bond producer Albert Broccoli is very protective of the Bond legacy and won't let you go too far, if it were up to you, what would you do with the character?
Brosnan: If it was up to me, you would have scenes that have sex and violence. That's what this man is about. There would be lovemaking scenes that are palpable, like in "Thomas Crown Affair" Brosnan starred in a recent remake of the film with Rene Russo which were easy on the eye and exciting and erotic and tasteful. And I think you can work that into Bond as well.
Q: Kind of kinky?
Brosnan: Definitely kinky. He was born from the pen of Fleming with a perverseness. There's always a shadow in those stories. And violence, too; this man has a license to kill. But how does he kill? And you would see that violence. We've reached a good part of it here in this film. But I would love to take the censorship off it without being gratuitous, without being distasteful. Just sort of, ha! So you could be more believable. So you could have both: the intensity of the killing, which is very clinical and matter of fact, and then you go into the humor. You go back to the flip side of things.
Q (to Apted): You must have been surprised to even be approached to direct a Bond film.
Apted: It was kind of odd to ask me to do an action film. Once I figured out what I could offer it, that they wanted to redress the balance a bit between action and the other stuff, it was a fantastic opportunity for me in many, many ways. As a career opportunity, to do a big-budget film and have a go at that kind of stuff, to learn about action and to learn about computers and all that. At my age to have those kind of challenges cast your way.
Q: It seemed more human than most of the others. Was that something you insisted on?
Apted: When I first met Pierce and was offered the job, Pierce was saying, "Give me stuff to do. I'll do the action, but I don't want to spend six months running around, shooting guns and being fired at." And, of course, he was right. I went back to Ian Fleming author of the Bond series because I found it very empowering and reassuring. I think Pierce's Bond is much nearer the book than any of the other guys, no matter how dazzling Sean Connery was or amusing Roger Moore was. That wonderful tightrope Pierce walks between having a license to kill and being vulnerable and complex, interested in people and respectful of women.
Q: What's interesting is that Bond can be a catalyst for the others to explore their own demons.
Brosnan: Bond remains a constant. He never changes. He's the one stabilizer within the whole genre. And he's the one who remains somewhat timeless, somewhat trapped within a period of time as well. My task was always trying to find my own reality within it: How do you make it human but still keep the fantasy and mystique of the character? What is his relationship with M? What is his relationship with the woman that he will encounter? And how far can you push those relationships in a Bond film?
Q: Yet it seems you found a dark side emerging around the edges of this film.
Brosnan: There's this menage a trois involving Bond, Elektra and Renard that is rather perverse when you think about it. I mean, this secret agent who just goes through women, but for the first time he's kind of lent himself to this woman out of guilt. And not only that, she's a great seductress too, and she knows it. And just when he's near the edge of the abyss, the worm turns.
Q: How many more Bond films are you going to do?
Brosnan: My contract calls for one more. I love doing the role. It gives me great joy. It gives me wonderful financial security. It helps my career in many ways, creating my own company, to kind of accentuate the positive aspects of it. I guess I've painted myself into a corner. But you let the paint dry and it's not a bad corner at all. So, yes, I'll do a fourth. I'd like to leave at No. 20 in 2002.
by LOUIS B. PARKS
LOS ANGELES - In a James Bond film, it's traditional to cut to the chase at the beginning.
So tell us, Mr. Brosnan, Pierce Brosnan, will The World Is Not Enough be, as rumored, your last go as Secret Agent 007?
He gives a sly, knowing grin.
But let's not be misleading. Though movie stars have many reasons to be cagey about their plans, Brosnan does not seem deceitful.
Some stars look you straight in the eye and smile, then lie. Brosnan looks uncomfortable and chooses his words carefully before answering a question, often with a self-deprecating comment and a laugh.
He's a fascinating combination: a star of obvious confidence and knowledge of where he wants to be, yet also a regular chap eager to please. He gives the impression he knows that, despite all his talent and good looks, luck and timing are a great part of where he is now.
In this, our fourth interview, he seems much as he did for the first, four years ago for his initial Bond film, GoldenEye. He just seems a bit more tired today, less eager and excited than when Bond was new for him.
Not that he's complaining.
"It can become quite tiresome living with the character (of Bond)," he says. "He can become annoying, an intrusion within your life.
"But get over it. I would be a complete and utter fraud if I said I haven't had the best time in my life doing this role the last five years."
If less excited, Brosnan certainly has not lost his sense of humor. Earlier in the day with a small group of journalists, Brosnan finished a long, serious answer to a vague question with a self-mocking comedic flurry.
"Round 18, Round 18," he said, like a punch-drunk boxer talking to himself. "Keep going, keep going, keep going. Stay off the ropes, stay off the ropes, stay off the ropes, 'cause you don't know what you're talking about. You're just an actor. Get out of here."
Now as he welcomes me to his room for the interview, he is his usual friendly self, asking polite questions and offering a drink. For himself, he requests a beer, a Beck's. When his assistant brings it, he gives her a big smile.
"You are a grand woman," he says in an appreciative tone Bond would never use. "Thank you very much."
He is dressed in a shimmering blue-gray silk shirt with large, unusual silver cuff links. "I'm an old clotheshorse at heart," he says.
He also wears a Bondish black leather jacket, dark slacks, no rings or jewelry except a heavy silver watch with a black band. He has a two-day growth of beard that adds to the tired look.
But back to THE question. After Tomorrow Never Dies, his second Bond film, Brosnan was unsatisfied. Despite opening against Titanic, the film was a huge hit, making more money ($125 million) in North America than any other Bond film and raking up $ 343 million worldwide. But it offered little more than slick, overblown action scenes.
"I couldn't do another Tomorrow Never Dies," Brosnan says. "They're just boring to do, really, when there is so much action. You have no continuity or an emotional performance. No character. No interaction with the other characters.
"They sound like fun and look like fun in the cinema, but to actually do them over a period of six months, up at 5 o'clock, home at 8 o'clock, it wears you down."
Yet Brosnan likes to get himself into the stunts far more than Roger Moore ever did. In a spectacular shot in TWINE, as the new film is commonly called, with Bond racing a huge fireball down a tunnel, that is Brosnan we see, replacing the stuntman who did it first. And Brosnan did much of the 80-mph boat chase on the Thames River that opens the film.
"The Thames was a great scene for me because I could acquit myself well in the boat," Brosnan says. "I enjoyed doing it. I enjoy speed and boats and cars. When you find a sequence like that, and you can do it, and you are willing to put yourself in there, it only enhances the whole audience's enjoyment of that piece."
He was contracted for three Bond films, with an option for a fourth, so rumors began to fly that The World Is Not Enough would be his farewell.
But before doing TWINE, Brosnan pushed for more drama and a serious director. So the producers picked Michael Apted, director of Nell, Gorillas in the Mist and Coal Miner's Daughter to put flesh and bones on the characters. Apted was shocked to be asked, and Brosnan was thrilled to have him.
"Apted and I hit chords in this movie that haven't been hit in the last two," Brosnan says. "We've come back to the original premise of the character in some respects."
The characters and interaction remain thin, and the emphasis is still on action, globe-trotting and more action. But this film does allow Bond the most feeling since the brief Timothy Dalton era in the 1980s.
Brosnan admits it's just a first step at re-establishing the complex, self-analyzing Bond that author Ian Fleming created.
"I want more," he says of this new direction. "More of the character of Bond. In situations where he is tested and seen in a different light. Where he lives, what he is like. What's it like after he has killed someone?"
There is a hint of exactly that in TWINE, when Bond is forced to kill someone close to him and then shows his pain. It was a favorite scene for Brosnan.
"I wanted him to have a relationship with a (person) who really gets to him," Brosnan says. "Michael (Apted) and I talked about that. It was constructed in a way that made sense and had the surprise element to it.
"On the day of shooting, Michael and I didn't talk about it. It just seemed to be the thing to do. I could have just shot and turned and walked out, but it seemed to take the beat of going to the body, the simple gesture.
"I think we struck a good balance, with this one, of character and story and action. I'm not trying to detract from what we've got going here, but it's wonderful when you have a story that opens up and you want to know what happens next."
So don't start the search for a new 007 just yet.
"Bond is a wonderful thing to have in your back pocket," Brosnan says. "At some point I will have to give it up. (But) I'll do another.
"The rumors were not started by me. You hear about people retiring. I'm just beginning."
He may push to do the Bond movies every third year, instead of the traditional every other year. If so, MGM, which bankrolls the films, is likely to battle the idea. The Bond films have kept the struggling studio afloat for years.
"I'm ambivalent," Brosnan says. "There is a part of me that wants to go toe-to-toe with the studio and push for a three-year break.
"And (there's another part) thinking well, I'm 46 (he jokingly counts on his fingers) 47, 48, 49. There's that aspect of one's own clock ticking, as a quote-unquote male action . . . " He stops himself from saying "hero," instead finishing after a pause, "actor."
The Thomas Crown Affair, which so far has made $ 69 million domestically ($ 107 million worldwide), was the first major film for Brosnan's own company, Irish Dream Time. (The first film was a small Irish movie - Brosnan is Irish - called The Nephew, in which Brosnan had a role.)
Being James Bond did not immediately lead to stardom for Brosnan, any more than it did for Dalton or Moore. Since GoldenEye, Brosnan has starred in a number of small films and had supporting roles in big ones (Mars Attacks!, The Mirror Has Two Faces), but it wasn't until Dante's Peak (1997) and this summer's The Thomas Crown Affair, that he really began headlining big non-Bond pictures.
Crown has been a big boost to Brosnan's confidence.
"With the bit between my teeth now having done Thomas Crown, I'm excited to try other things and go further afield," he says.
"Thomas Crown played safe in the actual playing of the character. Not so safe in the choice of material, which was rather risky."
In playing Thomas Crown, Brosnan took on a role made famous by Steve McQueen, thus opening himself up to comparison with a screen icon.
"It's time now, I feel, to take more risks," he says. "To find material which is going to challenge me and test any acting ability I have. Either in a dramatic role or going to romantic comedy. That comes with having faith in one's self."
Brosnan is about to take on another challenge. Marriage.
In 1991, Brosnan's first wife, actress Cassandra Harris (who had a role in the Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, done with Moore) died of ovarian cancer. She had a son and daughter from a previous marriage, and the couple had a son together. Brosnan raised all three.
He took the loss hard and became prominent in several organizations promoting women's health. He has since gotten involved in environmental issues.
For the past five years, he has lived with TV journalist Keely Shaye Smith. They have a child, 2 1/2-year-old Dylan Thomas Brosnan. They now plan to marry, though Brosnan begged off saying when.
Why get married now, after all these years together?
"Love," he says, sitting forward and managing to sound at once self-conscious and proud. "Because we love each other, and I want the world to know I love this woman, and we respect each other, and we celebrate our love, and I don't know any better way than saying 'be my wife' and standing up there in the eyes of God and doing that with friends. It's traditional and old-fashioned, but we've had the most wonderful nearly six years together."
Brosnan remains involved in charity work.
"The environment and women's health care all came together at a certain point in my life, and I followed my instincts and my heart because of that and lent myself and my name to certain causes that I think are necessary for us all to pay attention to.
"It has been enriching in many ways, and should I - maybe five years, 10 years from now - want to give up (acting), which comes across my mind from time to time, then it would be maybe to work on certain areas like that."
For now, Brosnan has no plans to leave either movies or James Bond.
"It's always a lovely surprise for me to see these films.
"(During shooting) I am concerned with who Bond is and trying to get a performance in there of some kind. Then you see them, and the work is pretty outstanding."
He's happy with the way he plays Bond, but don't ask him to characterize it.
"I don't want to," he says. "It's too dangerous. Let the work speak for itself. You either like it, or you don't like it. It's not for me to say what my performance is. The history books will say."
Why in the world do we still bond with this guy?
by Stephen Humphries, Special to The Christian Science Monitor
That suave spy James Bond keeps changing with the times. Alwaysdebonair and witty, he's about to reveal a dark, more vulnerable side. There are four things people expect to hear in a James Bond movie," laughs Bruce Feirstein, a veteran Bond screenwriter:
"The name is Bond, James Bond."
"Shaken not stirred."
"I've been expecting you, Mr. Bond."
"Oh, James!"
What audiences may not be expecting in the new Bond movie, "The World Is Not Enough" (opening in theaters Nov. 19), is Pierce Brosnan's portrayal of a more serious, fallible James Bond echoing the complexity of the character in the original novels by Ian Fleming.
Audiences balked when two earlier 007 movies ("On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "License to Kill") attempted a similar direction. But this time it could turn out to be the shrewdest move yet in the evolution of the 37-year-old series that has become an indelible part of pop culture.
Those involved in producing the Bond series say the films have maintained their popularity by adjusting to the times while also retaining classic elements. "You can't stay the same," says Mr. Feirstein in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. "We're dealing with a vastly different marketplace than we were in the 1980s or 1970s [when] the idea of movies as amusement parks was strictly the domain of James Bond."
"Tomorrow Never Dies," 007's previous outing, did little to differentiate itself from other action movies. Its exhilarating roller coaster of action set-pieces left little time for Mr. Brosnan's character - or the audience - to breathe. Feirstein promises that "World," by contrast, will tell "a more personal story," focusing on the series' most important asset: Bond himself.
"We want to see that Bond is not invincible and does more than run down hallways shooting off machine guns," the screenwriter says. "Bond makes a serious mistake, which is something that doesn't usually happen ... he trips himself up."
Tinkering with the basic formula by adding a dose of realism is a bold move.
Desmond Llewelyn, who has played the role of gadget designer "Q" in all but two of the Bond movies, opines that the series' enduring appeal up until now has been predicated upon "its pure fantasy." "We live in a rather dreary world," he says in a telephone interview from Los Angeles, "and now we're looking at this wonderful world of Bond."
Mr. Llewelyn says that the series' long-time producer, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, wisely followed Bond author Ian Fleming's own recipe for a good thriller. "Fleming said, 'To any adventure story, add all the advantages of an expensive living.' In other words, "Give Bond the right clothes, the right background, and the right girls; set your story in the most glamorous and beautiful of places ... and take your story along so fast that nobody notices the idiosyncrasies."
Mr. Fleming's prototype James Bond was different from later film versions. The internal monologues of his suave spy reflected the character's worries.
"Fleming wrote with a sense of elegance and panache," says John Cork, a board member of The Ian Fleming Foundation in Los Angeles. "You can see it in his book titles, 'Live and Let Die' and 'You Only Live Twice,' and chapter headings like 'Slay It With Flowers' ... which were witty, dark turns of phrase."
It was an attempt to retain the books' ambience that led early film adaptations to eschew the seriousness of his Bond in favor of more levity for Sean Connery's 1962 debut in "Dr. No." "What [director] Terence Young did with 'Dr. No' was to take that style of writing and put it into the character of James Bond as he appeared on screen," Mr. Cork says. "The sense of competence that Fleming wrote with became the sense of competence of the screen character."
The approach paid dividends with audiences, and even the initially skeptical Fleming had to admit that the jocular, muscular Sean Connery was Bond.
The films also began to develop their own identity. By the third movie, the fabulously popular "Goldfinger" (1964), the series had begun to err on the side of the fantastic with more emphasis on gadgetry. Connery, tired of the formula and the increasingly two-dimensional role, eventually allowed his "license to kill" to expire after his sixth outing as 007.
Enter the longest inhabitant of the role, Roger Moore, who filled Bond's shoes in the '70s. "Roger Moore couldn't imitate and wouldn't want to imitate Sean Connery, so he made him his own Bond," says series regular Llewelyn, who has worked with all five Bond actors. "He made him much lighter, more jokey."
Much of the series' success during the Moore era can be attributed to Mr. Broccoli, who twisted the basic formula to suit the times. The Space Age "Moonraker" (1979), for example, was rushed into production to capitalize on the success of "Star Wars." But the comic elements had become so outlandish that Mr. Moore's trademark raised eyebrow now signified that not even Bond was pretending to take the proceedings seriously.
The tenure of Moore's successor, Timothy Dalton, coincided with the advent of a new breed of gritty action movies like "Die Hard." The time seemed right to reintroduce a harder-edged Bond in 1989's underrated "License to Kill." "Timothy made him into a real character," Llewelyn says. "Well, that didn't go down well with the public because Bond is a romantic character."
Exactly 20 years earlier, "On Her Majesty's Secret Service," starring unknown model George Lazenby, had tried to recapture the seriousness of the original books. Audiences were hardly prepared for the assassination of Bond's bride at the conclusion of the film, and, like "License," it didn't fare well at the box office.
After Dalton's exit, the producers sought to reinvent 007 yet again with "GoldenEye" (1995). In Pierce Brosnan they found someone able to deliver a bon mot as well as Roger Moore could while adding the dangerous presence of Sean Connery.
"GoldenEye" cleverly followed the Bond formula while also poking fun at it in a subtle postmodern way, even before the two "Austin Powers" spoofs. The success of Brosnan's Bond reestablished the franchise so strongly that its successor, "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997), matched "Titanic" for box-office dollars ($ 26 million) on their joint opening weekend.
It is this solid platform, and wide public acceptance of Brosnan, that has given the producers confidence to experiment with the character again.
"I think they'll like it," says Llewelyn, who sees a bright future for the series. "Bond films can go on forever."
BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. Pierce Brosnan has the fine-boned hands of an aristocrat, not exactly the testosterone-laden grip one might expect from that quintessence of Western manhood, James Bond. But, say all the principals involved with spinning the Bond franchise into the next millennium, this more sensitive aspect of Bond is what they intend to expand in coming films.
"Pierce is more vulnerable," says producer Michael Wilson, who quickly adds, "but not weak." This is important for a wide appeal, he says, because "older audiences like the emotional elements."
"We wanted to see the darker, more dramatic side [of Bond]," says first-time Bond director Michael Apted, who himself is more well-known for his serious documentaries than his ability to shoot on-screen adventure stories. "Pierce came to me and said, 'Give me stuff to play. I can't stand six months of action.' "
"We're going to see a lot more of the character, more emotion, more ambiguity that hasn't been there before," agrees Brosnan, whose clout has grown since his first Bond outing in "GoldenEye" (1995). At a recent press gathering he is nursing an anti-Bond unshaven look before noon, perhaps as a gesture of rebellion. Indeed, this wrestling with the nature of Bond has deep roots in his own history with the role.
"I never wanted to be Bond," he says, going on to say that "this myth that I wanted this role is untrue." He retells what has become a familiar story to Brosnan fans: arriving in Hollywood and driving around in a lime-green Pacer "with cushions on the seats to cover the exposed springs."
The Irish actor says he wanted to make films with respected directors such as Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola. "The Bond movies were shallow, beneath me. I was a serious actor."
But then came his first action role in the TV series "Remington Steele" (1982-87). Now that he has played Bond in three films, Brosnan says he has a new view of the role. "Bond requires real acting," he says with a wry smile. "There is a performance there, and you have to respect it."
(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society
BEVERLY HILLS, California - The meeting took place nearly two years ago -- and it signalled a significant change of tone in the James Bond films.
It had been initiated by Pierce Brosnan, who had recently completed his second outing as intrepid Secret Agent 007, and had seen his career move into high orbit as a result.
But Brosnan also wanted his next entry in the world's most lucrative and durable film franchise to offer a Bond who was something more than just an action hero -- which is why he was sitting down on this day with British director Michael Apted, a filmmaker best known for his superb documentaries and for more character-driven dramas such as Gorillas In The Mist and The Coal Miner's Daughter.
Apted recalls his reaction at the time. ''It was 'what am I doing here? I'm not interested in visceral action films.' To use an old English phrase, I was slightly gobsmacked when the call came in: would I be interested in doing a Bond film? I thought, 'why would they ask me?'''
It was Brosnan who brought the message home most forcefully when he met Apted.
''Give me something to do, '' the Irish-born actor pleaded. ''Give me stuff to play. I can't stand just doing six months of action. I'll do the action, but I want something more.'' An intrigued Apted was finally convinced.
In fact, Brosnan had been wanting ''something more'' ever since he triumphantly rejuvenated an ailing franchise with Goldeneye in 1995 and cemented his claim to the 007 torch with Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997. He wanted to evoke the era of the Sean Connery films of the early '60s -- films less reliant on splashy visual effects and more concerned with plot and character.
And now, with the latest Bond epic -- The World Is Not Enough -- set to open in movie houses Nov. 19, Brosnan hopes his wish has been granted, and that the foundations have been laid for the type of 007 film that has not been available to fans for decades. Among other things -- and this is unusual -- the normally cool, emotionally detached 007 finds himself falling in love.
''Michael Apted is a wonderful man,'' Brosnan says now. ''He brought a sense of character and drama that wasn't in the earlier two Bonds I've done. I'd wanted to find out more about who this man really is, so you don't have this wall-to-wall action going on all the time.
''Once you look behind the curtain of what makes this man tick, you get into what I call Bond's 'grey' area. Consequently, you have greater conflict of real emotions, more ambiguity.''
This doesn't mean that The World Is Not Enough is short on big action sequences. On the contrary, the producers were prepared to spend more than $100 million U.S. to deliver a movie chock-full of such moments. For example, there's a London boat chase with Bond zooming down the River Thames at 125 kilometres an hour.
Other intense action scenes include a tense skiing sequence in the French Alps that sees Bond and a wealthy oil heiress played by Sophie Marceau fleeing bullets from marauding helicopters; a tense moment in an underground tunnel with Bond pursued by a rampaging fireball; a death-defying leap off a high-rise building.
The scenes were physically exhausting -- in most cases Brosnan insisted on doing them himself rather than use a stunt man -- and he thinks they're as spectacular as anything available in the previous 18 films featuring 007.
But he also says the new movie offers something more. Both Brosnan and Apted say that the new film has a darker emotional texture because it places Bond in an emotional relationship that goes wrong.
''There is definitely an anger within the man,'' Brosnan says. And he adds that this is in keeping with the Bond of the original Ian Fleming novels. ''If you look at the books you see that he is fallible. You see that he is human and that he has fear and ambiguity. He also has these attributes we all know -- sophistication and worldliness -- but the man remains a solitary character. Who is this man? What are his beliefs? You never really find out that much about his life. You never see where he lives. You never see the people who are close to him -- yet these are the kinds of areas which give him character.''
Brosnan believes some of these questions have been answered in this new screenplay by Neil Purvis, Robert Wade and Bruce Feirstein.
The plot involves an international power struggle for the world's energy supply and Bond's efforts to prevent a nuclear explosion in an oil pipeline in Turkey. Marceau (Princess Isabelle in Braveheart) is the mysterious oil heiress whose kidnapping by terrorists initially triggers the crisis. Denise Richards (Drop Dead Gorgeous) is the sexy young nuclear weapons expert who also crosses Bond's path. Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty), playing the latest in the 007 gallery of master criminals, is a ruthless international terrorist who is incapable of feeling pain because of a bullet lodged in his brain.
Dame Judi Dench is back as Bond's secret service boss, M, and veteran Desmond Llewelyn does his 17th turn as the service's fussy gadget and weapons expert. John Cleese of Monty Python fame has a brief cameo as Q's assistant and Serena Scott Thomas plays a voluptuous physician named Dr. Holly Warmflash.
Brosnan says a terrible act of emotional betrayal lies at the heart of the story -- and that this is why the new film interests him so much.
''This is a man who starts on a mission and the mission goes so terribly wrong. He is confronted with his own sense of duty to Queen and Country, yet he has been seduced by somebody -- and in being seduced has been drawn into this web. So we see what happens when he lets a woman get too close to him -- when he really falls for someone, this woman who has captured his heart and touches a nerve within him, and is then betrayed.''
Although Brosnan has been able to make other non-Bond movies -- for example, the recent Grey Owl and The Thomas Crown Affair -- he knows that 007 is now a permanent part of his persona.
''I'm now in a situation where I live with this character everywhere in the world. We're joined at the hip, and if I fight it, he'll knock me down. So you make the best of it. He owns you and you're responsible to him.
''But I think we've struck a chord with this one in story-telling and character, and I'd like to think we can use this as a foundation for the next film to explore further who this man is.''
As for Apted, he says he found himself responding to the challenge of doing an action movie and learning a new craft. He saw this as a way of jump-starting his career again and sending it into new territories. Besides, as a Briton, he respects the Bond films.
''James Bond is a fascinating piece of English culture. I couldn't care less whether it's American money that finances it because its Englishness endures. In film, nothing has been as durable in 40 years as the Bond phenomenon.''
GRAPHIC: CP Color Photo: Pierce Brosnan's more dramatic James Bond doesn't mean The World Is Not Enough is short on big action sequences. Here, the secret agent escapes down a mountainside in the Swiss Alps as grenades explode around him.; Color Photo: Sophie Marceau plays seductive oil heiress Elektra King, who triggers a crisis for agent 007.
NOT MANY movies are acclaimed for being unoriginal. James Bond films
are. "Look," squeal the fans, "this one is really
hackneyed! It's got car chases, Martinis, catch phrases, ski jumps,
baddies who can't shoot straight - there's nothing new here at
all! Pierce Brosnan is almost but not quite as good as Sean Connery! The
theme song is almost but not quite as good as the
ones John Barry wrote! It's all familiar! Isn't that fantastic?"
A Bond film is a thriller in which you know exactly what to expect. No
part of the blueprint can be altered - except perhaps the
very essence of the lead character. The 007 of The World Is Not Enough
is a man who doesn't smoke, who respects women
and who, as Brosnan keeps reminding us in interviews, has to wrestle
with his personal demons. (Come on. Bond wrestles
bikini-clad double agents and Aryan assassins.)
But the reason that every other element of the movies is so predictable
is that they are banking on their nostalgic appeal. You're
supposed to remember how fun they used to be - or rather, how fun they
seemed.
The problem is that it's impossible to name a Bond film which gripped
you all the way through. Yes, they all do the job when you
have a glass of mulled wine in your hand, but what sticks in your mind
afterwards? When pushed, you can choose the nastiest
villain or the most quotable one-liner, but try to pick an entire Bond
film that isn't dragged down by flabby plotting or am-dram
fight scenes or wooden acting or laughable special effects or
agonisingly blatant product placements. Not so easy, is it?
No; Bond films are best enjoyed in fragments. They're perfect fodder for
pub conversations, quiz questions and lists in magazines
of the coolest gadgets and the sauciest girls. There is no Bond film
which is as exciting as a compilation of clips from the whole
series. Mind you, that's pretty much what a Bond film is, anyway.
Brosnan, currently promoting his third Bond film, The World Is Not
Enough, said: "I'd like to see him killed off.
"I want to have a death scene with Bond. Now that would be something."
The World Is Not Enough, which is due to hit Edinburgh cinemas at the
end of this month, is Brosnan's third outing as Bond - and
also stars Scottish actors Robert Carlyle and Robbie Coltrane.
Reports say suave Brosnan, who is yet to take up the option of a fourth
Bond flick, decided he wanted Bond dead after learning
that studio bosses had already started the hunt for his replacement.
Stars including Robbie Williams, Luke de Lacey, Ralph Fiennes and Ioan Gruffudd have already been linked with the role.
BOND star Pierce Brosnan went back to his roots yesterday, paying an
emotional visit to the graves of his forefathers in his
home town in Ireland.
Away from the glamour of Hollywood and the clamour of wellwishers, tears welled up in the actor's eyes as he spent time with
his mother, May, in quiet St Mary's churchyard in Navan, County Meath.
Brosnan, 46, also received the freedom of Navan. It was a far cry from the glitzy premiere of his third Bond movie, The World
Is Not Enough, in Los Angeles earlier this week. But he was clearly
moved by the reception he received in the town where he
spent his youth.
Brosnan told locals: "The man I have become started in this town. Many people do not know where they are from. I know. I am
a Navan man."
A mining town with a population of 20,000, Navan is frequently held up
in Ireland as the exception to the country's economic and
cultural booms - and is a million miles from the suave persona
cultivated by Brosnan over the years.
The actor was accompanied by his son Christopher, who turned 25
yesterday. He was sung "happy birthday" by a 500-strong
audience.
Brosnan left Navan and Ireland in the 1960s when his family moved to England and later embarked on the acting career that
established him as one of the most successful leading men of the 1990s.
His life has also been touched by tragedy, however. His wife, Cassandra Harris, died after a long battle against ovarian cancer in
1991.
Brosnan has since settled down with journalist Keely Shaye-Smith, to
whom he recently became engaged.
The star, back in Ireland to attend the MTV awards in Dublin last night, was "overwhelmed" by the warmth of his reception in
Navan. He added: "I am so deeply proud. I'll be back."
The first freeman of Navan, Brosnan was presented with a scroll and a painting of views from his old home.THE IRRITATIONS OF MODERN LIFE: 70. JAMES BOND
by Nicholas Barber
The Scotsman Publications
Ltd./ Evening News (Edinburgh)
November 12, 1999, Friday/Pg. 13BOND SHOULD BE KILLED OFF SAYS BROSNAN
JAMES Bond star Pierce Brosnan has confessed that he wants to see the
dashing secret agent dead, it emerged today.
Copyright 1999
Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail Ltd./Daily Record
November 12, 1999, Friday RETURN OF THE LOCAL BOND MADE GOOD; FAMILY TIES: PIERCE MAKES EMOTIONAL VISIT TO IRISH GRAVEYARD
by Janice Burns
Copyright 1999
The Mirror
November 12, 1999, Friday/ NEWS; Pg. 12, 13
THE NAME IS BOND, JAMES BOND.. I'M RICH, SEXY AND FREEMAN OF NAVAN; NEXT MISSION TO WED SAYS BROSNAN
by Pat Flanagan
JAMES BOND star Pierce Brosnan was handed a licence to thrill yesterday and spilled a 007 secret.
The multi-millionaire movie idol returned to his hometown of Navan to receive the Freedom of the Town.
And amid the excitement and congratulations, Brosnan left the crowd not shaken but stirred when he revealed wedding plans.
He told a packed reception in Newgrange Hotel that he had just asked his girlfriend, journalist Keely Shay-Smith, to marry him and she accepted.
The handsome star also said he had no intentions of retiring as the world's most famous secret agent.
And he confirmed for once and for all that he's from Navan, NOT Drogheda.
Thousands lined the streets to welcome Navan's most famous son. And it was clear that Brosnan was himself stirred by the warm welcome.
On receiving a scroll making him the first-ever person to be given the Freedom of Navan, Brosnan showed sentiments not typical of the screen tough guy.
"It all started here, I've always carried the image of Navan in my heart," the movie star said fighting back the tears.
"I may have left in 1964 but I've never forgotten the place - this is my spiritual home.
"I've always carried the image of the town with me no matter where I went and I always will.
"I have never been so overcome with emotion before - I'm a Navan man now and in the past as I was a Navan boy.
"I'm deeply proud to be here and to have my mother here with me, she was always a courageous woman, that's what Navan people have - courage."
And he finally buried the myth that because he was born in the Co Louth town of Drogheda, he belonged to it.
When the Irish Mirror asked him to settle the debate he said: "Yes, I was born in Drogheda but I am a Navan man and proud of it."
He also said it was appropriate that he was given the Freedom of the Town on the birthday of his son Christopher - from the marriage to his late wife - who was there with him.
The packed hall then burst into a spontaneous chorus of Happy Birthday.
Brosnan was presented with the scroll by Navan UDC Chairman, Paddy Fitzsimons.
He was also given three landscapes by local artists.
At this the 007 star quipped that he would have to use a truck to leave the town instead of his limousine.
Around 600 people crammed into the hotel and some had queued overnight to get tickets.
And when the UDC Chairman asked if Navan would ever produce another James Bond there was plenty of eager volunteers, including Kevin Walsh, 10, and Brian O'Reilly, nine, who came forward dressed in Bond tuxedos and carrying 007 pistols.
Then, Brosnan disclosed to the audience that two weeks ago he asked Keely to be his wife and she accepted.
However, in true Bond fashion he wasn't giving away too many secrets and refused to reveal the wedding date.
After the ceremony he signed the new Freedom of the Town book and in it he wrote:
"My love always to one and all in Navan, my hometown - Pierce Brosnan."
He also revealed he would be the world's top secret agent for the foreseeable future.
"I'm contracted to do at least one more Bond movie and who knows after that - so Pierce Brosnan will be James Bond for quite a good while yet."
He also promised that he would return to Navan soon.
In true Bond style, he left the civic reception flanked by bodyguards and was whisked away in a stretch-limo complete with a Garda escort.
But the convoy only went around the corner to his old home, No 2 St Finian's Terrace, where he spent his boyhood.
He didn't get out of his car to inspect the house, which is now up for sale.
Brosnan confirmed he had no intention of buying the property - obviously preferring the comfort of Beverley Hills to the two-up, two-down Navan terrace house.
After the fleeting visit to his former home, the convoy moved on to the cemetery to visit the graves of dead relatives.
While the Bond star proved a big hit with most of the fans who turned up, not everyone was so happy.
Pierce's cousin Donal Reilly, 56, known locally as 006 - never got to see the world's most famous secret agent.
Donal took the day off from work at a Co Louth timber mill in an effort to meet Brosnan whom he has not seen in five years.
However, when Drogheda-based Donal - together with his son Derek, 20, and daughter Norma, 19, tried to get to Brosnan, he said they were shunted away.
"I was kicked off the stage by a Guard when I went to talk to him," said an angry Donal.
"I was just standing there and literally pushed off the stage - I am not happy with that.
"My mother Ilene brought Pierce up when he was a kid, she practically reared him - I'm a bit put out to say the least.
"I did manage to talk to his mother May but it's not the same as meeting Pierce. I did really expect to meet him."
And Donal's hairdresser daughter Norma was equally disappointed.
She said: "I was really looking forward to being there because he is a relation of ours but now I'm really sad that I didn't even get to talk to him."
However, nine-year-old John McGahan came all the way from Dundalk just to see his idol and wasn't disappointed.
"I think he's just brilliant, my favourite film is Tomorrow Never Dies - I want to be James Bond when I grow up."
The Bond star who was accompanied by his mother May Carmichael at the reception, left for Dublin in the afternoon in time to make a presentation at the MTV European Music Awards last night.
GRAPHIC: HONOUR: Pierce signs up for the Freedom of Navan watched bymother; May and Paddy Fitzsimons Picture:
Fran Caffrey;
OUR HERO: Brian O"Reilly and Kevin Walsh from Navan
Picture: Fran Caffrey;
FROM NAVAN WITH LOVE:; Pierce Brosnan greeted by thousands of well-wishers yesterday in his hometown Picture: Chris Bacon
Brosnan returns to a hero's welcome in native Navan
By ELAINE KEOGH
From the moment he took off the black shades and gave a wide smile the crowds went wild. He signed autographs and posed for photographs as cameras flashed indoors and outdoors.
The actor whose latest Bond movie, The World is Not Enough, is being premiered worldwide returned to his home town to a hero's welcome. The excitement was tangible as the crowd waited and Pierce Brosnan admitted he was tongue-tied at the reception he got in Navan, Co Meath, yesterday. To the instrumental James Bond theme, the Irishman rated as the best Bond since Sean Connery entered a packed function room to receive the freedom of Navan. "I left a Navan boy and came back a Navan man," he said and the room erupted into applause.
Two hundred tickets were given out on a first-come basis by the local urban district council and some schools gave students the morning off to mark the visit. Lisa McClean (15) and her friends from Loreto secondary school got the last ticket just minutes before the 46-year-old celebrity arrived. The smile on her face said it all.
Accompanying the star were his mother, May Carmichael, and his son Christopher who was celebrating his 25th birthday yesterday. When the audience heard this they burst into Happy Birthday.
Brosnan left Navan when he was just 11 but said he carried the memories of his childhood there in his heart. "I am deeply proud to be standing here with my mother. She was very courageous to leave and find a new life for herself and myself; it took courage to leave in the '50s. That's what Navan people have, courage."
The applause was deafening.
He is the first person to be given the freedom of the town; it is a power the local authorities were given in the reform of legislation five years ago. A vellum scroll with his name on it and images of the house in St Finian's Terrace where the family lived was presented to him and the council also presented a painting to
both him and his mother. He appeared to be genuinely emotional and moved by the welcome and promised "I will be back!"
So an idea for such a reception for 007, which began life last year as a proposal from Mr Christy Gorman, a town councillor, reached fruition yesterday.
It was a fantastic success and the feel-good factor stayed long after the star had left for the next big event, the MTV Europe awards in Dublin last night.
Another Navan Man, well tanned, well toned
Fact File
Name: Pierce Brosnan
Age: 46
Lives: Malibu Beach and north London
Why in the news: This week he became the first person to be given the freedom of Navan
Most likely to say: Bond? I was the giant prawn
Least likely to say: I'll have the quiche
The bona-fide Navan Man, the one who features on The Last Word programme on Today FM, has been magnanimous in a week when his townsman Pierce Brosnan was awarded the freedom of the Co Meath town.
"Pierce is absolutely urbane, sophistimicated and witty, just like me," Navan Man said.
And like Navan Man, Brosnan, who is currently starring in his third Bond movie, is defiantly proud of his roots. It wasn't always so. "I spent such a long time trying not to be Irish, which is a sad state of affairs," he said during the summer.
This week he reaffirmed his commitment to the place where he spent his first 11 years. "I left a Navan boy and came back a Navan man," he told the ecstatic crowd at the reception.
"I am deeply proud to be standing here with my mother. She was very courageous to leave and find a new life for herself and myself. It took courage to leave in the 1950s. That's what Navan people have, courage," he said.
According to one Navan native they also have ambition. "Navan people want to make money, lots of it," he said.
His first Bond film, Goldeneye in 1994, catapulted him into the multi-million-dollars-a-movie bracket and won critical acclaim that had been slow in coming through a hit-and-miss career. He is said by Bond aficionados to be the best portrayer of Ian Fleming's womanising British spy since Sean Connery.
Despite his stunning good looks he is said to lack vanity and will eagerly recount embarrassing anecdotes such as the time he appeared on The Muppet Show when he had to dress up as a giant prawn.
A former director summed up his appeal: "I think it is very rare that an actor who is so handsome seems so devoid of narcissism . . . He wears it so lightly. What you end up with is a man's man women can like, too."
His penchant for self-deprecation has also seen him concede that many of the films and television series he has appeared in have been turkeys viewed by no one "except perhaps a couple of people in Bolivia". There have been more successes than this appraisal suggests, including Lawnmower Man and Mrs Doubtfire. The turkeys have included Taffin.
The journey from Navan Boy to Navan Man has been turbulent for Brosnan both professionally and personally. He has spoken openly about his childhood in Ireland which was marred by an absent father and a tough schooling in the Christian Brothers system.
His mother left the town for England where she qualified as a nurse. Brosnan stayed behind, living first with his grandparents and then with another relation, Mrs Reilly. Because of the connection, her son, Donal, who now lives in Drogheda, is known locally as 006.
Brosnan left Navan for England at the age of 11 and faced another set of challenges. At his London comprehensive school he was dubbed "the Paddy" and quickly learned to play down his Irishness in order to get by. He remembers this as a difficult time, and before he left school - where he enjoyed drama, music and art - he had a south London accent and the respect of his peers.
It was art that gave him his first job. He was a commercial artist for a period during the 1970s before becoming involved in fringe theatre. He grafted in the British theatre scene for years, including three years at drama college where his nickname was Hollywood, before the move to the US, the spoof detective series Remington Steele and fame. As a struggling actor in London he fell in love with Cassandra Harris, the Australian-born actress. She had two young children and the actress-model was, according to Brosnan, "way out of my league".
STILL, they made the move to the US together and theirs was held up as one of show business's most stable marriages. In 1987 Cassandra was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died in 1991 and her last words to him were "Always an actor".
Often berating himself for being overly confessional in interviews (perhaps because "once a Catholic always a Catholic") he said that talking about her death has helped him deal with the pain.
"Losing Cassandra affected me profoundly in many ways for ever. I'm Catholic and I have good faith that carried me through my wife's diagnosis and illness, but you do fear death," Brosnan has said.
His only regret in life is that his wife did not live to see him play Bond.
Since 1996 he has lived with an environmental journalist and actress, Keely Shaye-Smith (33), with whom he has a child, Dylan Thomas. A fortnight ago she became his fiancee, he told journalists in Navan.
The couple share homes in Malibu Beach and north London and he is signed up for a fourth Bond movie after the current stuntfest, The World Is Not Enough.
At the MTV awards on Thursday he appeared with his current Bond Girl Denise Rogers and looked every well-toned inch the Hollywood superstar. But no matter how deep the tan, Navan natives will always be there to remind him where he came from. Spot on, Brosnan, no bother.
X-RAY GLASSES, FIREPROOF PANTS AND A FLYING COAT...BOND'S SECRET WEAPONS; IT'S NO.19 IN THE SUPERSPY SAGA...AT POUNDS 69M IT'S THE MOST EXPENSIVE YET...THE MILLENNIUM DOME HAS A STAR ROLE...NOW READ MORE OF OUR FASCINATING FACTS FROM THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH
THE countdown has already begun to the day James Bond steps out and
saves the world for the 19th time. The World Is Not
Enough is the most expensive Bond film yet, with a pounds 69m budget to
make sure audiences are shaken and stirred like never
before. Even the Millennium Dome plays a starring role in Pierce
Brosnan's third outing as 007. The film opens in Britain on
November 26, but if you just can't wait, here are 30 top-secret facts to
savour while sipping a martini...
1. THE film's title comes from the Bond coat of arms seen in the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Its literal translation is "The World is Insufficient."
2. BOND has to track down and stop fanatical extremists hell-bent on jeopardising the world's oil supply.
3. IN one scene four para hawks - powered paragliders - pursue Bond as he skis for his life in the French Alps.
4. FILMING also took place in Azerbaijan, Cappadocia in Turkey, Bilbao in Spain and London after the Bond producers were persuaded to bring 007 home.
5. WEARING fireproof underwear, Pierce Brosnan becomes the first man to land on top of the Millennium Dome...attached to the end of a hot air balloon.
6. PIERCE was eased gently into his third Bond role - his dialogue on the first day of filming consisted of just two words: "Stop! King!"
7. A SKI chase lasted exactly four and a half minutes as researchers discovered that audiences start getting bored if they go on any longer.
8. FILMING was halted by an avalanche which swept away 17 chalets and killed 18 people in the French Alps, with the Bond crew helicopters sent in to help in the rescue.
9. SINGER Goldie might have shared a joke with Brosnan on the set...but he's out to get Bond as bad guy The Bull.
10. MONTY Python star John Cleese is Q's assistant and has struck a deal which gives him an option to appear in three more Bonds. At 85, Q - Desmond Llewelyn - says he still wants to carry on.
11. THE gadgets in this film include a pair of glasses that enable Bond to see through crooks' clothes to discover if they are armed and a coat that inflates into a balloon if he finds himself caught in an avalanche.
12. ONE stunt sees Bond driving his boat at another, doing a barrel roll over the top, and then emerging upright the other side to continue up the Thames.
13. A MILE of the Thames had to be closed off for up to two hours each day for three weeks during filming. A slipway was constructed by the side of the real MI6's HQ to launch James Bond's jetboat.
14. ELEKTRA King - here's her slinky ski suit -is the main femme fatale. Sharon Stone was in line for the role, but she was ditched in favour of Braveheart star Sophie Marceau as she was thought to be more classy.
15. DIRECTOR Michael Apted, who made his name with Gorillas In The Mist, was chosen because he was regarded as being sympathetic to his woman characters and the producers wanted Bond girls who were not just bikini-clad bimbos but had brains as well.
16. BROSNAN had to pretend to make love to Sophie 16 times before Apted was happy. Ten couldn't be used as they showed nipples and risked the film's PG certificate.
17. A NIGHT-TIME scene in a caviar factory features helicopters that trail 15ft saws beneath them and which cost pounds 1million to film. A final scene in which a nuclear submarine slams into the bed of the Bosphorus, was painfully slow because, at depths of 100ft, the crew could stay under water for no more than 19 minutes a day.
18. THE World Is Not Enough is the first Bond film since Licence To Kill in 1989 to be shot at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire - the traditional home of 007.
19. THE idea for the film was dreamed up by producer Barbara Broccoli - daughter of Cubby - while she was on a flight to Miami back in 1997. There was an item on the in-flight entertainment which claimed oil in the Caspian Sea might determine global economic growth in the next century.
20. THE scene with the para-hawks was filmed near Mont Blanc and involved the 170-strong crew having to hire chained vehicles from the Swiss army to help them get to 12,000ft.
21. DESPITE a week's pilot training in Florida, one of the parahawks landed at Argentier Heliport and was not allowed to leave until French authorities were convinced that everything was in order.
22. THE crew had planned to film part of the movie on oil platforms in Azerbaijan. But when they got there they found the platforms up to 50 miles out to sea, with a putrid smell of raw oil and gas everywhere.
23. BOND seduces no less than three stunning women: Sophie Marceau, Denise Richards and Serena Scott Thomas, the lesser-known sister of Kristin - star of the Oscar-laden The English Patient.
24. THE name of scientist Dr Christmas Jones (Denise Richards) was inspired by Christmas Humphreys, prosecuting counsel in the famous Craig and Bentley court case.
25. THE film wasn't shot in chronological order so Dr Jones went through months of hell with Bond as they avoided bullets, fireballs and giant helicopter saws before being introduced to him for the first time in Spain.
26. JUDI Dench, 64, appears for the third time in a Bond film as M, the female head of British intelligence. But this time it is her life that is in jeopardy and Bond who must come to the rescue. To prepare for her role, Dame Judi actually went for lunch at MI6.
27. FULL Monty star Robert Carlyle, 39, was chosen to play bad guy Renard after producer Michael Wilson saw him in TV's Cracker.
28. SCOTSMAN Robert was terrified he might lose his carefully-rehearsed Serbian accent. But, when filming was complete, experts reassured him his dialect was perfect. During filming, he was presented with an OBE by the Queen for services to acting. When she asked him what he was working on, Carlyle joked : "I've spent the week trying to kill James Bond!"
29. THE Bond crew, as usual, tried to make both the stunts and the scenery as real as possible, but when it came to the nuclear bombs a little dramatic licence was permitted. Aluminium was used instead of the rather riskier plutonium.
30. ROBBIE Coltrane is back as ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky. He had to spend two and a half nights in a huge tub of sago dyed black to look like caviar.
CARTOON CAPERS
PIERCE Brosnan's heroic antics in The World Is Not Enough may appear as slick and effortless as in any of the past 18 Bond movies. But before he steps out in front of the camera, a team of artists has worked for weeks planning his every manoeuvre. Thousands of cartoon-style storyboards like this are put together so, when the film crew arrives on location, they know exactly the effect they are trying to create.
ADAPTED by Amanda Kelly from The World Is Not Enough by Iain Johnstone, to be published by Boxtree on November 26
GRAPHIC: FEMME FATALE: Pierce Brosnan as Bond in a clinch with bad girl; Elektra King, played by slinky French star Sophie Marceau
Using Intelligent Technology, James Bond Co-Star Creates a Scene With Windows CE-Based HP Jornada Palm-size PC
REDMOND, Wash. Tick ... tick ... tick ... tick ... tick. Precious seconds are
slipping away, and our heroine, the shrewd and disciplined nuclear
physicist Dr. Christmas Jones, will be blown to smithereens unless she
can defuse a nuclear bomb before detonation. Tick. . .
tick. . . tick. She's rocketing down an oil pipeline at 70 miles per
hour. Tick. . . tick. Does she depend on her cohort, James
Bond, the world's most debonair secret agent, to rescue her from these
explosive circumstances? Tick. Not this resourceful
woman.
Relying on her knife-edged wits, the plucky nuclear weapons expert whips out her own secret weapon: an HP Jornada Palm-size PC. The slick device made by Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP) and powered by the Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows CE operating system, is just the cutting-edge tool she needs to diagnose this deadly bomb and find out what makes it, well, tick.
Does Dr. Jones succeed and save the world's oil supply from destruction? To learn the answer to that question, James Bond fans will have to wait until Nov. 19, when "The World is Not Enough" will begin showing on movie screens nationwide. The film, starring Pierce Brosnan as the inimitable Agent 007 and Denise Richards as the savvy Dr. Christmas Jones, showcases the portable power and intelligent technology that come together in HP's new Windows CE-based Palm-size PC.
Now available in stores, the innovative HP Jornada Palm-size PC features a 133MHz processor, 16 MB of memory, a full color display screen, and built-in digital imaging and music applications. Sure, this mobile companion can still help users keep track of appointments, store addresses and phone numbers, and stay in touch over e-mail. But this next-generation device has raised the bar for Palm-size PCs, capitalizing on the power of Windows CE to help users do more with the device -- and expect more from it.
For example, the Windows CE-based HP Jornada is ideally suited for a host of intriguing mobile applications, from health-care professionals diagnosing patients, to repair technicians troubleshooting faulty appliances, to field reps consulting a sales database, to real-estate agents sending digital pictures to prospective home buyers. In short, it's a tool of the trade designed to help users work more productively, whatever their business may be and wherever it takes them. Even if their profession is espionage, and their business is to squelch a criminal mastermind trying to control world oil supplies.
The HP Jornada's cameo appearance in "The World is Not Enough" marks a first-ever collaborative effort among Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and MGM. Trailers promoting the new Bond movie are in theaters now. To preview some action scenes from the film, use the links provided here.
More Information Sources
Press Release: Microsoft Windows CE and HP Jornada Explodes into MGM's new James Bond Movie
Other Microsoft Resources: Windows CE Palm-size PCs and "The World is Not Enough" Back to Top
BONDS, JAMES BONDS OF DUTY
by STEVE TILLEY, EDMONTON SUN
HOLLYWOOD. Welsh actor Desmond Llewelyn has portrayed gadget master Q in 17 James Bond movies, working with every 007 from Sean Connery to Pierce Brosnan. The affable actor's insights on the manyfaces of Bond, James Bond:
- SEAN CONNERY, the original James Bond, played 007 in the first five Bond films, then returned a sixth time for Diamonds Are Forever.
"Sean, naturally, was the first, and he was the prototype Bond back in those days," says Llewelyn. "People who saw him first (as Bond) prefer him."
- Australian actor GEORGE LAZENBY had but one Bond film to his credit, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service. He was never asked to return to the role.
"Poor old Lazenby, he just wasn't an actor. But he wasn't bad ... if he'd just behaved properly, he would have been a good Bond. Like an idiot, some fool told him, 'You are now a star, behave like one.' "
- ROGER MOORE took over the Bond franchise in 1973 with Live and Let Die and became the most prolific 007, with seven movies in 13 years.
"He made it much lighter, because he couldn't copy Sean, naturally. He made it lighter, more jokey. People who saw Roger first (as Bond) prefer him."
- TIMOTHY DALTON stepped into Bond's shoes for two films, The Living Daylights and Licence to Kill.
"To the Bond aficionado, Timothy is the nearest to (author Ian) Fleming's Bond. He was a very unpleasant character, and Timothy made absolutely no concession whatsoever to Bond. He just made him a really hard man."
- PIERCE BROSNAN makes his third outing as Bond in The World is Not Enough, opening in theatres Friday. He's also tentatively agreed to star in a fourth Bond movie.
"I think it's a very, very good interpretation. He's gone back to Sean. You've got to remain romantic, whatever happens, but he shows pain."
GRAPHIC: 1. photo of ROGER MOORE Prolific Bond
2. photo of TIMOTHY DALTON Unpleasant Bond
3. photo of SEAN CONNERY Prototype Bond
BOND WORLD IS ENOUGH: The usually serious-minded Robert Carlyle finally gets to have some acting fun. He's the villain in the latest Pierce Brosnan Bond picture, The World Is Not Enough, which opens Friday.
Carlyle grew up in Glasgow and always admired the Sean Connery Bond, " because finally there was somebody up on the screen who talked like me," Carlyle says in his thick burr.
Another bonus? His Bond baddie is a baldy, just like his favourite Bond bad guy, Blofeld, as defined by Donald Pleasence. "Yes," says Carlyle smiling, "there's a wee homage there."
The spy adventure part is in sharp contrast to his grim role as the drunken father in Angela's Ashes. The Pulitizer Prize-winning Frank McCourt memoir-turned-movie will be released wide in January, but get an L.A. release in December in order to qualify for Oscar nominations.
"The two movies are as different as chalk and cheese," says Carlyle, who adds that he isn't sure whether he'd do another Bond feature.
"I was going to say 'Never say never again' ", he says, repeating the title of a Bond movie. Go ahead, he's told, that's clever. "I think I will, then."
TEACHING MR. MATTHEW: Director Joel Schumacher is a comeback guy for two reasons. He's a recovering substance abuser and a quick-witted retorter.
Schumacher, who featured Matthew McConaughey in A Time To Kill, was asked recently if he was the one who taught McConaughey how to play the bongos.
"No," responds Schumacher without missing a beat, "I was the one who taught him to take off his clothes."
Meanwhile, Schumacher is followng up on his promise to downsize his film budgets after a series of mega-features.
His latest is Flawless, opening next week. It stars Robert De Niro as a stroke victim, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a drag queen who tries to help him. The film cost only $ 15 million, which was lunch money on Schumacher's Batman And Robin.
GET CAINE MOVIES: Michael Caine had a cameo in Sly Stallone's remake of Caine's Get Carter. "In the original, my character gets thrown off a roof by me," remembers Caine, who just finished shooting in Vancouver. It's the politically correct '90s, "so Sly forgives my character now."
Besides Get Carter, two other Caine vehicles are getting makeovers -- Zulu and The Italian Job.
Caine was even invited to do Alfie again. "Alfie's 55 and he's in strip clubs? I wrote back, I don't want to do this, I don't think you should either. "
GONE IN TWO MONTHS: Let's do a time warp again. There's a show-stopping car chase sequence in Nicolas Cage's car-theft flick, Gone In 60 Seconds. Better than Bullitt's classic sequences, says an insider.
Okay, maybe or maybe not. But the Bullitt sequences were shot in a week. Gone In 60 Seconds' bits took over two months.
GRAPHIC: 1. photo from Sun file CITIZEN CAINE ... Michael Caine stars in the remake of one of his own classics, Get Carter. 2. photo Robert Carlyle goes from bad in the new James Bond to grim as the dad in Angela's Ashes.
LOS ANGELES TWO films I directed are opening this week: the new James Bond and "42 Up." Coincidentally, they are the longest-running franchises in the history of their genres -- it's the 19th Bond movie, and the 35th year of a series that has followed the lives of 14 British people every seven years from age 7 to the present day. Any similarities pretty much end there, as "The World Is Not Enough" (opening Friday) cost 240 times more to make than "42 Up" (opening Wednesday at the Film Forum).
Normally you would shrug off the serendipity of the two openings as part of life's rich pattern. But another element came into the mix recently with the publication in England of "The Arithmetic of Memory," an autobiography by a contemporary of mine from school, Anthony Rudolf. The book jump-started a flood of memories about my teenage years, and it put me in the middle of my own documentary. The "Up" films ask the question, "Can you see the adult in the child?" and I wonder if that's true of me. Is it conceivable that there was anything in my younger self that would give clues to the man guiding 007 (Pierce Brosnan) as he wrestles with the world's most feared terrorist (Robert Carlyle) for control of Caspian Sea oil?
As far back as I can remember, I loved the radio: plays, comedy, quizzes, and music. Television came late in our suburban London household -- and I think I learned to read figuring out the listings in Radio Times. Encouraged by my mother, I gobbled up popular culture and was able to put it all to some purpose when, at 11, I went to the City of London, the school Tony Rudolf evokes in his memoir. Like him, I fell under the spell of Nobby Clark, an English teacher with a love of theater and the drive and passion to communicate it to teenage boys. My inchoate feeling for drama blossomed into something solid and then, of course, into the beginnings of a dream. The school was situated right in the heart of London, and that turned out to be the making of me. From an early age, I had a sense of the world; traveling every day from the suburbs to town in the rush hour left you in no doubt that there was a throbbing, complicated world lying in wait. More specifically, being in central London put the theater and cinema at my disposal. At 16 I saw, by chance, Ingmar Bergman's "Wild Strawberries," and fell immediately in love with movies. I realized that film could carry ideas and emotions as well as any book, poem or play, and from that moment I knew what I wanted to do with my life. It's quite a journey from Bergman to Brosnan, but Bond begins to make some sort of sense.
One of my heroes, the Spanish film director Luis Bunuel, wrote that our imagination and our dreams are forever invading our memories; since we are all apt to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths. My series of "Up" films has the cruel trick of confronting people with the cold reality of the past. The visual truth of them on film erases any filtered version. The 42-year-old senior librarian who is trying to inspire and drive her two teenage daughters through school is reminded that her ambition at age 7 was to go and work in "Woolworfs." The Hackney Borough councilor, with his working-class, immigrant constituency, has to live with the thought that as a kid he thought "colored people" were purple, with red eyes and yellow feet. And the anguished little boy from a children's home who didn't want to get married because, "Say you had a wife and had to eat what they cooked you, and say I didn't like greens, which I don't, and say she said you had to eat them, well, then, that's it." He has been married for 20 years, has two children and is none the worse for eating his greens.
Sometimes the films can be uncannily prescient. The 7-year-old country boy wandering through the Yorkshire Dales in his big Wellington boots wanting to find out all about the moon is now a science professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The jug-eared, saintly lad who wanted to give most of his money to the poor did just that, by choosing to use his Oxford education to help poor immigrant children in the East End of London rather than tapping the richer pastures of the private sector. It's very powerful watching people grow up in front of you, even if their lives are treated in ridiculous shorthand -- 42 years in 12 minutes!
So if it's powerful for us to watch, what's it like for them? The question I'm most asked is whether or not being in the films has changed their lives, so in "42 Up" I let them answer it. Some say they enjoy it; others hate it and take part only under sufferance, persuaded by me that the films are unique and that we should finish what we started. They argue that at 7, they had no say in the decision to take part -- and anyway, when is it ever going to end? Some see it as a treasured record of their lives, while others regard it as a major invasion of privacy and wouldn't wish it on anybody. Most shrug off its psychological impact, but it's hard to believe that putting yourself up for public examination every seven years doesn't take some toll.
As for me, I find the films increasingly stressful to make. For one thing, the age difference between me and the subjects (15 years) diminishes as time goes on. I started out as an anonymous adult figure, then became a sort of big brother and now am an equal, a collaborator. Whether or not they like doing the film, or like or don't like me, we all know each other extremely well: 35 years in the documentary trenches together. As we get older, thoughts of mortality click in. Americans particularly have always been obsessed by how many of them are still alive (all, mercifully). I used to brush the question aside, putting it down to some local sense of the macabre, but not any more; for a death would be a death in the family, with all the pain that would bring. Given the anxieties of being part of the project, it still seems worth doing. It's immensely popular wherever it's shown, has achieved icon status in England and is widely used as a tool in schools, teachers colleges and universities. Does it have anything useful to say in a general way about the human condition? Maybe it shows that the core character doesn't change -- if you're extroverted or timid as a child, then that's how it will always be. Yet I find that very hard to apply to my own life. I was a wallflower at school, frightened of authority, terrified of girls, avoiding my own shadow. And now I'm directing a blockbuster movie with a budget and schedule that leaves no room for a faint heart. But then, wallflower may not be how others saw me -- it could be a trick or deceit of my own memory.
Anthony Rudolf says the past is a limitless repertory of virtual possibility, which you can invent and reinvent, shape and reshape. If he's right, then I've destroyed that fun for my "Up" characters by putting their past into the relative permanence of celluloid. It's the same for movie stars, like my friend Jodie Foster, who has been making films since she was 3. Her whole life is up there for everyone to see. There's no mystery about how she looked, how she sounded, how she has aged: it's a matter of public record.
The rest of us are luckier. I was proud to have been at school with Mike Brearley, England's most successful cricket captain in generations, and I tell a story of playing in the school junior team and his scoring 120 runs to my 3. At best it's an exaggeration, but it's possibly not even true. I'm not really sure, but no matter: it's a part of who I think I am. I was also at school with the actor John Shrapnel and played Claudius to his Hamlet. John was the real thing, the rest of us poseurs, but the memory of it sparkles in my mind. Unfortunately even that powerful fantasy goes a little pear-shaped whenever I run into my Gertrude, the distinguished natural-history filmmaker Malcolm Penny -- a robust, gray-haired, full-bearded father of four. The Lord Mayor of London, Lord Levene of Portsoken, was also a contemporary, and we weren't particularly close; but my pleasure in his success has me reinventing our past.
Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man, say the Jesuits. And this was the starting point for the original "7 Up" back in 1964. As I construct my present with 007 and "42 Up," and find the strength to meet the new challenges, I wonder whether my past isn't just as fluid and volatile as my present. Everything's in motion, everything's a constant process of reinvention. If I show you the man, will you see the boy of 7?
GRAPHIC: Photo: Jackie, Lynn and Sue in "42 Up," a series that began when they were 7, with pictures of themselves at various stages in their lives. (First Run Features)
After nearly five years in the popular TV series "Remington Steele," Brosnan appeared in a number of entirely forgettable features ("Taffin," anyone?) and then became a truly international star when he took over the role of British secret agent James Bond from Timothy Dalton. With the passing of that particular baton in 1995, the world-famous spy's transformation into a completely uninteresting bore was complete.
On the printed page, author Ian Fleming's Agent 007 was a borderline neurotic who smoked about three packs of cigarettes a day, drank too much, drove too fast, worried about the approach of his 40th birthday and saw himself dying at 45. The all-too-human creation of an author with no discernible sense of humor, the Clicquot-guzzling, Senior Service-puffing Bond had his rough edges rounded and was gradually turned into a character that only someone like Brosnan could play -- a wartless dressmaker's dummy.
Imagine, then, the surprise this reviewer felt upon being thoroughly engaged by this actor's performance as the eponymous hero of "The Thomas Crown Affair." This is, director John McTiernan assured readers of Entertainment Weekly earlier this year, "only nominally a remake" of the 1968 film in which Steve McQueen portrayed a larcenous Boston blueblood pursued by insurance investigator Faye Dunaway. In the film under review, Dunaway makes a guest appearance as Crown's therapist, an unnecessary bit of casting that McTiernan describes as "a way of being respectful of the original."
Given that the film McTiernan claims he only nominally remade is hardly a timeless classic, one wonders why he felt it necessary to sound so reassuringly respectful, like a museum curator promising not to draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa. Fortunately, though, he eliminated the original's most grievously outdated stylistic conceit -- split-screen cinematography -- and does a much better job than did Norman Jewison in handling both the plot's action and romance.
As might be expected from the director of "Die Hard," the theft of a priceless painting that sets the narrative gears in motion is excitingly staged. The mastermind behind the light-fingered heist of a Monet is, we know, self-made billionaire Thomas Crown (Brosnan). Insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo) knows this, too, but can't prove it. And so begins a cat-and-mouse game that, ever so gradually, changes into a cautious, mutual pursuit of love.
In the original, McQueen and Dunaway seemed barely able to restrain themselves from ripping off each other's clothes. To be sure, the clothes come off here, but the people underneath them are cynics, calloused and bruised, who long ago abandoned the idea that genuine romance, as opposed to superficial sex, could play much of a role in their lives. They've been around the block more than once and are more than a little wary of letting their defenses down.
Given the film industry's current obsession with capturing that demographic cohort that still gets homework assignments, it's a pleasant change of pace to see a feature about two grown-ups gradually finding the courage to come to terms with an emotion they previously thought extinguished. McQueen was in his late 30s, and Dunaway in her late 20s, when they assayed their roles in the original film; both Brosnan and Russo are in their mid-40s. Thus, the tentativeness in the early portion of their romance has a heightened poignancy, as the two move slowly, careful not to brush too harshly against each other's emotional scars.
Russo, who didn't make her first screen appearance until she was in her mid-30s, is unsurprisingly good as a woman of a certain age with a certain amount of emotional baggage in tow. The real revelation, however, is Brosnan, whose sometimes offputting diffidence as a performer is just what is needed for a man who cannot find, and is afraid of seeking, emotional closeness. It's a performance that makes you think this actor, in his next time out as Bond, can reinvigorate the character he has done so much to drain of life.
"The Thomas Crown Affair" will open on Nov. 13.
Excitement is rapidly building in anticipation of next month's release of the latest James Bond opus, The World is Not Enough, with some claims that it is the best yet. Pierce Brosnan, who plays 007, is riding high, having wooed most female cinema-goers with his performance in The Thomas Crown Affair, and Scots duo Robert Carlyle and Robbie Coltrane are expected to deliver.
The theme music will be an integral part of the overall feel of the movie and is performed and sung by Glaswegian Shirley Manson's band, Garbage.
Sticking with recent attempts to keep the title song firmly in popular music territory - Sheryl Crow sang the last one - could be a mistake if the film is as good as people seem to think. In the past, the more classical approach has certainly worked towards sealing an overall great feel to Bond flicks. Legendary composer John Barry is responsible for single-handedly setting the standards by which all future themes would be judged. He penned the piece of music - The James Bond Theme - which opens every film.
Barry is also responsible for a number of other great film music moments, including Diamonds are Forever, Goldfinger, Born Free, and Midnight Cowboy among others.
Now the multiple Oscar-winning composer is eyeing a score for a feature-length version of Thomas the Tank Engine, the popular children's books and successful television animation series. Few project details are available yet, but aside from the original score, the great composer is also planning to steam ahead with plans for four separate original tracks.
It is not clear if the music will accompany a mixture of animation and live action or simply a feature-length cartoon, but the makers believe Thomas will attract a host of young cinema-goers.
Meanwhile, a large proportion of the animated talk going on in the UK last week was dominated by one deal - a huge coup by Bristol-based Aardman Animations which has persuaded American studio Dreamworks SKG to stump up $ 250m for five feature films.
Aardman is the umbrella outfit of award-winning animator and modelling maverick Nick Park and pioneering plasticinist Peter Lord. The creators of Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts are presently being funded by Dreamworks to make their feature-length debut, Chicken Run, which is due to be in cinemas by the end of June next year.
Once Chicken Run is finished and all the characters have been melted down, Aardman is expected to get the go-ahead from Dreamworks to mould a brilliant film version from one of the most popular children's stories of all time, the Aesop fable of The Tortoise and the Hare.
IRISH heart-throb Pierce Brosnan wants steamier sex scenes in the James Bond movies.
Brosnan, who is making his third appearance as suave agent 007 in the forthcoming action epic The World Is Not Enough, said he would love to have kinky sex romps during his next big-screen adventure.
He also thinks the bed-hopping secret agent and his Bond girls should strip for their frolics. Pierce made his "more sex" plea while discussing the new movie, which also stars Robert Carlyle as a psycho terrorist called Renard.
Ideally, he said, the love scenes would be similar to his last movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, where he stripped naked with actress Rene Russo for a sex session on a table.
However, his explicit sex scene plan would have to be approved by the Broccoli family, who own the rights to the James Bond character, and they want to keep the sex and violence at a level acceptable for family viewing.
But Pierce said his proposal would be truer to the original Bond.
"It would be definitely kinky. He was born from the pen of Fleming with a perverseness.
"There's always a shadow in those stories. And violence, too.
"This man has a license to kill. But how does he kill?
"And you would see that violence. We've reached a good part of it here in this film.
"But I would love to take the censorship off it without being gratuitous, without being distasteful.
"So you could be more believable. So you could have both: the intensity of the killing, which is very clinical and matter of fact, and then you go into the humour."
GRAPHIC: ROMPS: Pierce Brosnan
Bracing ourselves for the release of The World Is Not Enough, the 19th Bond film in the most successful film franchise in history, we find Pierce Brosnan is once again licensed to kill and BMW are yet again licensed to sell.
As Brosnan makes his third appearance as Ian Fleming's secret agent, so BMW get a third bout of Bond-sponsored product placement heaven by supplying his car. In 1995's Goldeneye Bond got behind the wheel of the Z3 roadster and in 1997's Tomorrow Never Dies, Q reluctantly handed over the keys to a 7 series saloon and a BMW motorbike.
This time it's the new Z8, and BMW couldn't be happier. 'With Bond films we get the widest possible audience for a new product. It's the perfect show case for a brand that focuses on new technology,' says Graham Biggs, BMW's media relations manager.
There are criteria for choosing the right film in which to place their cars. 'We look at the images that the car is placed in and the quality of those images. Is the character driving like our potential buyer? We also look at the suitability of the environment for the car,' explains Biggs. This is why in 1989 BMW declined the chance of having Bond use a 7 series to stop a petrol tanker in Licence to Kill. The company believed that this 'did not quite fit in with the 7 series image'.
In general, BMW avoid placing their cars in 'anything that isn't stylish, anything that's not family orientated and anything with too much violence', says Biggs. If the violence in Bond is deemed acceptable what sort of film violence wouldn't be good for BMW? 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' says Biggs with a laugh.
Films have always sold cars. The Herbie films shifted the VW Beetle in the States and The Italian Job did the same for the Mini Cooper in Britain. But while BMW are understandably pleased to be associated with Bond, there are many who don't share their joy. When, in 1995, they signed a three picture deal many Bond fans considered it unthinkable that their hero could drive anything other than a British set of wheels. It's easy to say that Bond heritage is being whittled away by the commercial pressures of product placement a vodka brand here, a palm-top computer there but in his original stories Ian Fleming was never shy of plugging a champagne house, a perfume brand or even a car. In the books, 007's car of choice was a supercharged Bentley Continental all the way from Casino Royale to Moonraker.
Yet in the translation to celluloid Bond loses the Bentley by the time we get to 1964's Goldfinger and finds himself behind the wheel of an Aston Martin DB5. This is the car, complete with passenger ejector seat, revolving number plates and forward firing machine guns that many still see as the ultimate Bond car. Yet if Fleming's text had been followed our hero would have been driving a DB3.
It was the legendary John Stears, special effects wizard on the early Bond movies, who decided to customise a prototype of the Aston DB5 (yet to hit the showrooms when the movie appeared in 196) to create Bond's most enduring set of wheel's.
History repeated itself in 1995 when BMW's Z3 was unveiled in Goldeneye. As special effect supervisor Chris Corbould explains, the car was a disappointment to those who expected it to be traditionally gadget-laden. 'They (BMW) were so paranoid about keeping it under wraps, we weren't actually allowed to do much to it. If you look at Goldeneye it doesn't actually do very much. We would like to have got hold of it and made a few modifications but we weren't allowed to.' In the film Bond seems unimpressed as he first ignores the car and then gives it away to a CIA agent. But BMW didn't complain the Z3 sold out in its first production year.
In 1997 Bond was handed the controls of the rather sober BMW 7 series saloon. He drives it by remote control from a palmtop computer and crashes it off the top of a multi-storey car park. Whilst Chris Corbould is proud of the sequence he had his reservations about the car. 'The 7 series is a family saloon, not a Bond car. I wish we'd done that sequence with the BMW we've got this time,' he says.
He thinks the new car is awesome , though in the end it doesn't actually feature that much in the film, and ends up being cut in half by a helicopter with a saw.
Only around 75 of BMW's new sports car, which will cost around pounds 80,000 when they find their way to the UK next spring. But the car is still not exclusive enough for some Bond fans. Novelist and Bond fanatic, David Bowker, whose latest book, From Stockport with Love, has a plot centred around a Bond obsessive father, can never accept Bond in a BMW. 'It's not about the car being German,' he says, 'It's about it being exclusive. Aston Martins have always been about exclusivity and excitement but BMW make cars for photocopier salesmen and accountants.'
Although BMW did not pay, they provide the cars and promote the film through the brand in their advertising. Until recently Aston Martin could never compete with such marketing might; now they have Ford's backing things could change.
BMW do not know at present if they'll be involved in the next film. Special -effects supervisor Chris Corbould knows what he'd like to happen. 'I think essentially that James Bond's car should be an Aston Martin,' he says. 'It wouldn't surprise me if next time it was.' The World is Not Enough opens on Nov 26th
THE name's Bond, James Bond. And they share a common bond.
Oh oh, all SEVEN have the same name as the suave agent.
With the new Bond movie The World Is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan, hitting Britain on November 26, they will find themselves the target of a million jokes.
So do they bond with Bond - or have they had ENOUGH? Our under-cover girl went on a mission to track them down...
1. JAMES BOND, 33, a builder. He's married to Kim and lives in Southend- on -Sea, Essex. He hates the famous name.
He says: "I once got stopped for speeding and didn't have my driving licence. When I told the police my name I was arrested on the spot and put in a cell for the night.
"I've even considered changing my name. Everywhere I go there are the same old jokes - it's a nightmare."
2. JAMES BOND, 35, a company director from Knutsford, Cheshire, is married to Jill, 39. Their six-year-old son is also named James.
Bond Snr says: "I love James Bond so much that there was no other choice when it came to naming our son. When I was at school I was teased about my monicker, but it didn't stop me passing it down through the family. I think it's something to be proud of."
3. JAMES BOND, aged six, (James and Jill's lad - otherwise known as 0031/2). It's taken him a while to realise what this name game is all about.
He says: "When I was little I never understood why people found my name funny.
"Mummy and Daddy explained that I was named after James Bond 007. When I first wrote my name I put 007 at the end of it.
"I felt a bit silly when I found out the 007 bit isn't in my name - only in the man's name in the films. But I do like the films especially the bits where they race around in cars."
4. JAMES BOND, 39, a writer, is single and lives in Pinner, Middlesex. He's not so much a vodka martini man - more a Bacardi geezer.
He says: "I'd never dream of spending a fortune on one bottle of wine or champagne. I don't like vodka martinis either - I'm more of a Bacardi and Coke man.
"I'm not a ladies' man like Bond either. I've had several successful relationships but somehow I don't have the knack of attracting women like he does.
"My former girlfriend loved my name. I once offered to cook her breakfast and asked how she would like her eggs. She replied, 'Unfertilised, Mr Bond."
5. JAMES BOND, 43, a car dealer is divorced and owns a four-bedroom flat, nicknamed James Bond Towers, in Willesden, North London.
He says: "I've spent two nights in police cells after being stopped for speeding. The police never believe my name and have no hesitation in locking me up.
"But I've learnt my lesson and always carry some identity document to avoid trouble.
"I used to drive a silver DB5 Aston Martin like Bond and I drove it at break -neck speed like he does. But I sold it because I got fed up with wisecracks from friends. They would say things like, 'Bond, what's your next mission?' or 'Be careful out there, James'. The jokes really do wear thin after a while.
"And whenever I introduce myself to women they say, 'Where's Miss Moneypenny?' which becomes totally infuriating."
6. JAMES BOND, 37, a stand-up comedian, is single and lives in Clapham, South London. He reckons his name's got him girlfriends galore.
He says: "When I was 18 girls would whisper in my ear, 'Would you like to be shaken or stirred' or 'Can we help you with your mission, Mr Bond?' And sometimes they were really forward saying, 'Am I your Miss Moneypenny or Pussy Galore?"
007. JAMES BOND, 20, a computer whizzkid, lives with his parents in Chertsey, Surrey. He loves the way all the Bond babes are putty in the star's hands.
He says: "I love the art of seduction. If I go on a date with an attractive woman I'll crack open a bottle of champagne to relax the atmosphere.
"But I certainly would never abandon women like Bond.
"The women who work at the gym I go to think my name is very amusing. Each time I check in with my electronic tag a message flashes up, Bond, do you accept your mission to train?"
GRAPHIC: FAME-SAKES: Here are the seven real-life James Bonds. Love or hate their name, they're stuck with it - for Beretta or worse Picture: JASON; BUCKNER; SCREEN HERO: Brosnan
1. JAMES BOND
The builder
2. JAMES BOND
The company director
3. JAMES BOND
The cool schoolboy
4. JAMES BOND
The writer
5. JAMES BOND
The car dealer
6. JAMES BOND
The stand-up comedian
007. JAMES BOND
The computer whizzkid
As choices go, the one confronting French actress Sophie Marceau was a tough one. After years on the fringes of popular cinema, she had been chosen to play Elektra King, the female lead in the new James Bond movie.
It was a plum role, and promised to open doors to even greater things. But her partner of 14 years, director Andrzej Zulawski, opposed it. He is said to have declared the film 'beneath her' and was supposedly jealous that she'd be working with Pierce Brosnan (Zulawski is 24 years older than Sophie).
Apparently, while she was in negotiations with the film-makers, Sophie kept her whereabouts secret lest her lover scupper the deal.
So what was she to do? Sensibly, she took the film. Bond, it seemed, had won the girl again. But at what price? With the release of The World is Not Enough later this month, she will become a household name. However, she has now separated from Zulawski, by whom she has a four-year-old son.
Sophie Marceau was born Sophie Maupu (she is not the daughter of mime-artist Marcel Marceau, and is tired of answering that one). She grew up in a Paris suburb, the daughter of a shop assistant and a lorry driver, but was always ambitious. At 13, she answered an advertisement for child models, was invited to an audition, which led to a role in the French teen flick La Boum, and she was on her way.
In career, if not in personal, terms, she has always made smart moves. At 33, Sophie has appeared in nearly 30 movies. She has a huge following in France, was voted the woman French men would most like to sleep with, and, with her comely face and voluptuous figure ('I'm curvy, so what?', she once said), regularly graces the pages of Paris Match.
She met Zulawski when she starred in his 1985 film L'amour braque (Crazy Love). The film flopped, but, despite the age gap, they fell in love. In 1994, Sophie had the lead in D'Artagnan's Daughter, a French movie which enjoyed some success in America. She was required to swash and buckle her way through the film in true musketeer style, which brought her to the notice of Mel Gibson, who chose her for a pivotal role in his Scottish epic Braveheart.
With her career in the ascendant, Sophie opted to take time out and have a baby. 'My career is 49 per cent of me, and my life is 51 per cent,' she said.
But it wasn't long after the birth of Vincent that she was back at work, and in demand.
With her strength of character, both on screen and off, she seems well cast as a Bond girl. But Brosnan better watch out: in the past, she has proven more than a match for the charms of her leading men.
She referred to Sean Bean, with whom she starred in Anna Karenina, as 'very ordinary', and Leonardo DiCaprio as 'a boy, a child. He is 13* perhaps 11'.
After meeting Bruce Willis, she said, 'I thought, "So what?"' She even managed to upset President Mitterrand when she accompanied him on a tour of the Far East. She chose an official dinner as her moment to tell him that she didn't like the Louvre's glass pyramid - his pride and joy.
Mitterrand stalked out.
But can Sophie take as good as she gives? He must hope so, because her performance as Hippolyta in A_idsummer Night's Dream was condemned by respected critic Alexander Walker as 'unspeakable'.
As well as acting and being a mother, Sophie has also directed a short film and written a novel. Menteuse ('Liar') had a lukewarm reception when it was published, not least from her former lover, who, according to Sophie, simply 'didn't like it'.
Their break-up was undoubtedly traumatic: only last year, while she was still with Zulawski, Sophie proclaimed: 'He is my only lover* the only other men I go to bed with are on screen.'
So it can't have been an easy decision to put Bond before him. But after her sultry performance in the new 007 film, a host of other offers will surely come flooding in.
by Alexander Walker
FROM its opening minute, The World Is Not Enough, the 19th James Bond film, is determined to take our breath away - and not let us draw it again for another 125 minutes.
In a bank in Bilbao a wicked Swiss banker finds himself looking down the gun barrel of a client seeking a speedy withdrawal. "Count up to three," 007 (Pierce Brosnan) tells the moneyman, "You can do that, can't you?" But once delivered to MI6's Embankment HQ - this turreted ogre's castle making its first official appearance on the screen by permission of Foreign Secretary Robin Cook - the cash hoard explodes in the face (or thereabouts) of Dame Judi Dench's headmistressy M.
Exit 007 on the latest amphibian vehicle designed by Q to pursue the responsible terrorist up, down and indeed under the Thames, zooming through Docklands, vaulting bridges, leapfrogging wharfs, disrupting restaurant service and swamping traffic wardens, until he shins up the ropes of an ascending hot-air balloon in which his enemy is making her escape.
From there, it's one easy drop on to the Greenwich Dome, also making its movie debut. The sequence lasts 15 minutes before we ever get to the opening credits. The mistake the makers then make is to err on the side of generosity and overdo the rest of the Bond blow-out. Far from being "not enough", Bond's world this time round feels much too much. Brosnan stands up to his third outing without showing fatigue, but the non-stop action gives him no chance to show anything else except incredible feats of physical endurance. He skis down a mountainside in Khazakistan while being machine-gunned by a pursuing flotilla of power-driven paraglid-ers; barrels through an empty oil pipeline in Baku with a primed nuclear bomb on his tail; is chased along an Istanbul fishing wharf by a helicopter dangling six circular saws like an aerial egg-slicer that bisect Bond's BMW.
Finally, he dives into the Bospho-rus to use his underwater gills and stop a Russian sub suffering nuclear meltdown at the hands of Robert Carlyle's omnipotent, omniscient, ubiquitous villain. Ungratefully, you find yourself hankering for something calmer, a little more characterful, a touch of Sean Con-nery's latent menace, a reminder of Roger Moore's flippant insouciance.
We are shaken, but not moved. Even the derring-do has lost a little of its edge of human risk, now that we know such superhuman feats can be safely created on digital computers.
The best jokes - to judge by the reaction of the preview audience at the Odeon, Leicester Square - were those to do with double entendres, like Bond murmuring that he could stand "one last screw" when Sophie Marceau's villainess is garroting him. No expense has been spared on furnishing the formula with all the old ingredients. Gizmos like the ski jacket that self-inflates into a huge puffball and ingests Bond into its protective innards when an avalanche overtakes him; the X-ray spectacles that forewarn Bond which heavies are packing lethal hardware.
And, as a bonus, which bimbos are sporting the sexiest underwear. But too many sequences seem to end with someone screaming "Bomb!" so that being repeatedly blown up soon loses its freshness. This time around, Q (Desmond Llewellyn) announces his retirement and hands over to his "new young man", who turns out to be John Cleese bringing a touch of the Ministry of Funny Walks to MI6.
Denise Richards plays the latest Bond girl heroine, a nuclear physicist called Dr Christmas Jones whose work clothes consist of halter top and hot pants and whose name prompts a Bond quip about "having Christmas in Turkey".
But what the 007 saga now finds really tough work is supplying a truly exotic villain. Robert Carlyle's arch-criminal makes a splendid entrance as a giant holograph image. But when he finally appears in the flesh, his reality is a letdown. He resembles a superannuated skinhead.
Nevertheless. director Michael Apted has done a superhuman job just holding The World Is Not Enough together while an army of indefatigable artists and technicians construct their close shaves, cliff-hangers, last gasps and assorted nicks of time around the indestructible 007.
This adventure will see Bond nicely into the millennium; but it's not the one I'd want to place in my time capsule.
GRAPHIC: BONDAGE: THE VILLAINESS (SOPHIE MARCEAU) GETS TO GRIPS WITH PIERCE BROSNAN AS 007 (LEFT) WHILE ABOVE, DENISE RICHARDS JOINS HIM IN ANOTHER NAILBITING ESCAPE
IT has been hailed as the biggest and best Bond movie of all time. The World Is Not Enough has more action, more stunts and enough gadgets to satisfy the most ardent 007 addict.
The opening quarter hour, where James Bond pursues a villain along the Thames in a speedboat and onto the roof of the Millennium Dome, is said to have cost GBP 750,000 a minute to film.
This time out, Pierce Brosnan has to hunt down Robert Carlyle's character Renard who attempts to hold the world to ransom by hijacking a Russian nuclear submarine.
The Daily Mail's Chief Showbusiness Writer BAZ BAMIGBOYE, who was one of the first to view The World Is Not Enough, sees whether Bond is still licensed to thrill.
ONCE they simpered like latter-day damsels in distress or smouldered a la Mata Hari.
Now, it seems, the Bond beauties have discovered Girl Power.
What struck me most watching the new 007 extravaganza was how the girls were not being put down. After 37 years Bond's world has been shaken and stirred by feminism, and about time.
Ian Fleming's hero, Bond, James Bond, in the impeccably coiffed shape of Pierce Brosnan, is on tiptop form in The World Is Not Enough, although more cold-hearted and ruthless than before. He performs the most improbable action scenes and not a hair falls out of place - he has the suavity of Cary Grant; but it's a woman, the gorgeous scientist Dr Christmas Jones,who defuses a nuclear bomb and another, the villainess Elektra King, played by Sophie Marceau, who powers the film along.
Robert Carlyle as Renard, who feels no pain because of a bullet lodged in his brain, is the official bad guy but I was more taken by Miss Marceau's ice-cool wickedness.
What other movie would give us Denise Richards as the sexy Dr Jones, wearing revealing shorts - fashion experts insist they're not hot pants - and tank top, plus a smile that boasts Farrah Fawcett-style gleaming dental work?
Once upon a time she would have looked, well, all scientific in white gown, glasses and sensible shoes.
Dr Jones has one of the picture's best lines. 'Could you translate that into English, for those of us who don't speak spy,' she snaps at Bond.
It was almost inevitable that 007 and the scriptwriters would come up with: 'I didn't know Christmas came more than once a year.' I must confess that I didn't have high hopes of Miss Richards coming up to scratch in this movie, but she has an interesting, attractive Bond girl look and good comic timing.
Then, of course, Dame Judi Dench as M is Bond's boss , and Samantha Bond's Miss Moneypenny with her razor-sharp wit can run rings round 007.
Role models all, apart from the duplicitous Elektra King, that is.
But gorgeous girls, clever or not, are only part of the reason the Bond franchise has lasted nearly four decades and 19 films.
It's the edge-of-your seat action that gives you an adrenalin rush.
That fifteen-minute opening set-up, before the main titles, begins in Switzerland and ends with Bond chasing a hit woman in a Q-designed super-boat on the Thames to Greenwich and the Millennium Dome. There's one perilous situation after another, but you know not one fabulously groomed hair on Mr Brosnan's head will be harmed, because he has already signed to do Bond Number 20 next year!
There are fun gadgets, from a coat that turns into a protective cocoon (perfect for two) and X-ray security glasses for checking out girls... sorry, whether your opponents are armed.
There is a plot, something about oil pipelines and blowing up half of Turkey, but it's no great shakes.
It's the action and those shorts that grabbed my attention.
The World Is Not Enough opens on November 26, although a gala premiere will be held in London on November 22.
GRAPHIC: 1)SAVING THE WORLD: BOND CHEATS DEATH AGAIN, WITH DR CHRISTMAS JONES...2)AND FACE TO FACE WITH ELEKTRA KING
THE famous bachelor may not have approved of Pierce Brosnan's decision to marry his long-time lover, but 007 would certainly have approved of the actor's co-stars who appeared at the gala premiere of the 19th Bond film.
The sultry actresses are living proof that political correctness has yet to influence the physical attributes of Bond girls, even if modern film-makers permit their characters to display a level of intellect to match their assets.
For in The World is not Enough, which opens in the United States on 12 November, Denise Richards stars as a nuclear weapons specialist, Dr Christmas Jones. Her co-star Maria Grazia Cucinotta, however, must be content to play Cigar Girl.
But, in a departure from 007's preference to love them and leave them, Brosnan preferred to watch the film with Keely Shaye Smith, his fiancee and mother of his child, Dylan.
However, he had not lost his taste for playing the part and will star in the next Bond film.
Fans lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the stars, including Robbie Coltrane and Desmond Llewelyn, who makes his 17th appearance as Q, arriving for Monday night's premiere the Westwood Village Theatre in Los Angeles. The UK premiere will take place on 22 November in London.
Rene Russo, who starred with Brosnan in this summer's The Thomas Crown Affair, was also present.
After the premiere, the stars moved to Santa Monica airport where martinis were handed out by Bond girls, and guests feasted on shrimp and oysters and fillet of beef in a hangar decked out as a casino.
The popularity of the latest Bond film, in which Brosnan has a vested financial interest, has attracted the interests of bootleggers. Pirated copies are being sold over the internet for GBP 20 before it goes on general release.
James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan was accompanied by screen beauties and his real life love at the world premiere of 007 movie, The World Is Not Enough, in Los Angeles.
The 46-year-old star posed with the latest Bond girls and his fiancee Keely Shaye Smith, 33.
The couple decided to get married last month but have refused to say where and when the ceremony will take place.
The Bond girls include American actress Denise Richards, who plays nuclear scientist Dr Christmas Jones, and Italian Maria Grazia Cucinotta, who plays Cigar Girl.
The film is released in Britain on November 29.
(c) NORTH CHARITY PREMIERE - PAGE 10
GRAPHIC: bond stars - Robbie Coltrane, Pierce Brosnan, Denise Richards and director Michael Apted
NOT MANY movies are acclaimed for being unoriginal. James Bond films are. "Look," squeal the fans, "this one is really hackneyed! It's got car chases, Martinis, catch phrases, ski jumps, baddies who can't shoot straight - there's nothing new here at all! Pierce Brosnan is almost but not quite as good as Sean Connery! The theme song is almost but not quite as good as the ones John Barry wrote! It's all familiar! Isn't that fantastic?"
A Bond film is a thriller in which you know exactly what to expect. No part of the blueprint can be altered - except perhaps the very essence of the lead character. The 007 of The World Is Not Enough is a man who doesn't smoke, who respects women and who, as Brosnan keeps reminding us in interviews, has to wrestle with his personal demons. (Come on. Bond wrestles bikini-clad double agents and Aryan assassins.)
But the reason that every other element of the movies is so predictable is that they are banking on their nostalgic appeal. You're supposed to remember how fun they used to be - or rather, how fun they seemed.
The problem is that it's impossible to name a Bond film which gripped you all the way through. Yes, they all do the job when you have a glass of mulled wine in your hand, but what sticks in your mind afterwards? When pushed, you can choose the nastiest villain or the most quotable one-liner, but try to pick an entire Bond film that isn't dragged down by flabby plotting or am-dram fight scenes or wooden acting or laughable special effects or agonisingly blatant product placements. Not so easy, is it?
No; Bond films are best enjoyed in fragments. They're perfect fodder for pub conversations, quiz questions and lists in magazines of the coolest gadgets and the sauciest girls. There is no Bond film which is as exciting as a compilation of clips from the whole series. Mind you, that's pretty much what a Bond film is, anyway.
FEATURES; Pg. 23
JAMES BOND was surrounded by his arch enemies last night - but for once Britain's best spy let them off the hook.
Actor Pierce Brosnan settled down to watch the premiere of his latest movie with fiancee Keely Shaye Smith.
Robbie Coltrane lined up alongside Brosnan at the cinema in Hollywood to watch The World Is Not Enough.
Italian temptress Maria Grazia looked stunning as she appeared in a revealing but stunning red dress that even outshone new Bond girl Denise Richards.
Brosnan delighted fans when he revealed plans to continue in his Bond role.
As he entered the cinema, he said: "I have a contract for another film and we will go again."
It will be his fourth Bond film and he pledged to do even more of his own stunts.
He said: "It is fun,but you feel it. Not just at the end but before and during you feel it.
"I get to do what most guys can only dream of. I love the action. I love the speed.
"But in reality, I hate gadgets. Don't understand them.
"During the first Bond film they gave me this tiny little computer gadget. I loved the idea, opened it up, thought I would write a screen play. Then I switched it off - fade out. I couldn't get it to work."
He said that he has little in common with the spy character and explained: "He is nothing like me. I'm a much more shy and retiring person."
Hundreds of fans lined the streets to catch a glimpse of Bond and his baddies at the cinema.
But Brosnan, 46, was staying more guarded about his imminent wedding. He has picked the time and the place for it -but he is not telling.
And he revealed he didn't get down on one knee to propose.
The star said: "I would have done, but we were too busy holding and hugging and kissing. I knew I had found a great lady.
"I told her it was about time to say: 'Will you marry me? Will you be my wife?'"
Brosnan recently became a granddad when former wife Cassandra's daughter Charlotte had a baby.
He said: "I have been Charlotte's dad since she was five. At first I was Pierce, then I was daddy to her. Now I am a grandad."
Bootlegged copies of the latest Bond film are being sold over the Internet and executives from the movie makers are furious.
The illegal copies of the film are changing hands for as little as pounds 20 over the world wide web before the film is released in cinemas.
Detectives from the MGM Studios and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were yesterday trying to track down the mastermind behind the scam which could cost the film makers millions in lost revenue.
Brosnan's salary is linked to the profit of the film.
HUNDREDS of James Bond fans - most of them men - queued up yes- terday for tickets to see 007 star Pierce Brosnan.
Two male Bond fans even went on an overnight mission, camping outside the ticket office in Brosnan's home town of Navan to be sure of a rendezvous with the world's top secret agent.
On Thursday fans get to meet Brosnan when he receives the freedom of the town.
Two hundred tickets were made available to the public and were snapped up in less than an hour from the UDC office.
More than half of those in the rush for passes were male, many of them in their teens.
Brosnan, the first person ever to be presented with the award, will collect it at a function in the Newgrange Hotel.
Navan Urban District Council voted in favour of honouring the 007 star on Tuesday night.
The council chairman, Paddy Fitzsimons, said the town was proud of their favourite son and pleased to be able to pay tribute to him.
"We all admire Pierce and we wish to honour him for his many achievements in film and television," he said.
A landscape painting will be presented to Brosnan, a talented painter himself, at the ceremony.
Carlyle, who plays a Bosnian terrorist in The World Is Not Enough, has nothing but good things to say about the leading man.
"Pierce has set fire to the whole thing again," he told Total Film magazine.
"He's got a quality very few actors have, he's got charisma about him which is very tangible. You can feel it coming off him."
Brosnan, 46 - famed for his debonair roles including James Bond - will be given the freedom of his native Navan, Co Meath, at a civic reception next Thursday.
Council chairman Paddy Fitzsimons said: "Pierce is possibly the best-known actor in light entertainment in the world and we're very proud of him here in Navan.
"He has been back on private visits over the years but this is the first time he has been given a public acclamation."
Known for furniture and carpeting manufacturing as well as its zinc and lead mines, Navan is commonly portrayed in Ireland as epitomising the midlands backwater, the antithesis of sophisticated Celtic Tiger-booming Dublin.
But Mr Fitzsimons said Brosnan and other entertainers, such as rising comic star Tommy Tiernan, were evidence of Navan's cultural credentials.
"It's a powerful town," he said.
Brosnan left Navan as a teenager to pursue an acting career and established himself in America as the quint- essential urbane action hero.
He found fame in the TV series Remington Steele and made his debut as 007 in 1995 in Goldeneye.
His wife, Cassandra Harris, died of ovarian cancer in 1991 and he has since settled down with journalist Keely Shaye-Smith and they have a two year-old son, Dylan.
Brosnan's last film, The Thomas Crown Affair, was a box-office hit this year. His next Bond movie, The World is Not Enough, is to be released at Christmas.
Times Newspapers Limited/Sunday Times (London)
November 7, 1999, Sunday/ Home news
THE pop star Robbie Williams wants to be the next James Bond, write John Harlow and Dominic Rushe.
He has told Eon, the film company behind 19 Bond films including the soon-to be released The World is Not Enough, that he is willing to take acting lessons and a year off from his music career to succeed Pierce Brosnan as 007. Brosnan is expected to step down after the next Bond film, due for release in 2001.
The abdication will open the floodgates for would-be Bonds, but Williams has stolen a march on the competition by registering his interest with Eon. Sources within the company said he was a bright prospect who would be a serious candidate.
"Robbie has always been mad keen on Bond, as everyone who saw his video for the song Millennium, where he dresses up as 007, will know. He set out to become an actor rather than a pop star, and although it may seem presumptious, he cannot resist the opportunity to go for the role of his lifetime," said a source close to Williams.
The singer, the only former Take That member to have forged a successful solo career, has amassed a fortune estimated at Pounds 12m over the past 18 months, scoring No 1 hits across Europe and being critically acclaimed in America.
But this is apparently not enough. It was reported last week that he is weary of the pop music treadmill, and wants to go back to school to learn how to act. A Hollywood source said last week: "Robbie has undoubted charisma, but he would have to prove himself in a few minor roles before he could come close to claiming Brosnan's crown, never mind his pay cheque. James Bond takes a lot more than the ability to moon at teenage girls."
THE look of fear in Pierce Brosnan's eyes was for real as he grappled with Bobby Carlyle on the set of the new Bond movie.
Brosnan reckons Carlyle's character Renard is the most fearsome 007 villain ever.
He shivered: "Bobby makes an excellent bad guy. He will not disappoint."
Renard is a skinhead psycho who feels no pain after being shot through the head by a bullet.
Brosnan said: "He's the kind of guy who does not want to rule the world - just blow it to hell."
The World Is Not Enough premieres in London tomorrow. And the few people who have seen it reckon it is the best ever.
Carlyle is joined by fellow Scots Robbie Coltrane and rap star Goldie.
One American critic said: "Carlyle is outstanding. But the most amazing thing about the new Bond film is that they have actors who can actually act."
Apart from Brosnan, Coltrane and Carlyle, there's Dame Judy Dench. Any director would give his eye teeth for a line-up like that.
Brosnan's sure the movie will be a huge success: "We wanted the film to be as big and bold as the last two."
Renard could be the best Bond baddie yet. "He's virtually indestructible," says Carlyle, who spent hours in make-up each day having the right side of his face transformed into the character.
But Carlyle looked beyond Renard's evil side. "Whenever I'm confronted with a nasty character, I always try to make the audience work a bit," he says.
"It's easy to dislike the guy but I always put a grey area into a part like that."
He couldn't resist appearing in a Bond film. "It was an easy choice because I have grown up with them." And he admits that Sean Connery's suave 007 inspired him when he was a child.
"I believed he was the only Scottish actor because he was the only guy up there on screen who spoke like me. That affinity with the man is still very strong."
Carlyle is coy about the money he was paid, but he says it was a pittance compared with Brosnan's pounds 3 million.
Awesome-looking Carlyle is the sidekick of sexy Sophie Marceau's evil Elektra King.
Not far behind with the frighteners is cult drum 'n' bass music star Goldie, whose mum is from Glasgow.
He tackles his biggest acting role so far as new bad boy Bull and he'll fill you with fear with those gold inlaid teeth.
There's also a welcome return of Robbie Coltrane, as Russian Mafia-style gangster and ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky, who proved such a formidable foe in GoldenEye four years ago.
Coltrane jumped at the chance to play Zukovsky again: "He was supposed to be killed in GoldenEye but I suggested it might be a good idea if he wasn't." He had more room to develop Zukovsky's character in The World Is Not Enough and grew fond of the big baddie.
"It's a bigger role this time and a lot more interesting. I think of him as an Arthur Daley/Bilko kind of bad guy!
"He is on the wrong side of the law, but he wouldn't shoot your granny. But he'd shoot you if you were too cheeky."
Like Renard, Zukovsky also has a close face-off with Bond, and Coltrane found the hands-on approach was the best way to get back into the swing of shooting 007.
"On my first day of filming, Pierce beat me up and said: "God, it's ages since I strangled you Coltrane'."
If the Scots have made a big impression on the movie, the bevy of Bond beauties is no letdown either.
As well as Sophie as the daughter of a murdered tycoon, who is hell-bent on revenge, Denise Richards, of sci-fi action movie Starship Troopers, plays nuclear weapons expert Dr Christmas Jones. Dame Judi Dench, returns as M for the second time, to be joined by Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny, and John Cleese makes his debut as R, deputy of long-serving inspector gadget Q, played for the 17th time by Desmond Llewelyn.
It's not hard to disagree with Brosnan that this will be the best Bond yet. From its explosive opening sequence, when the MI6 headquarters are blown up and 007 chases the female baddie down the Thames, it's a thrill-ride that will keep fans hooked.
Boats zoom through London at 60 mph, there's a punch-up on a hot-air balloon, a breathtaking battle on top of the Millennium Dome and a deadly helicopter with giant chainsaws suspended underneath it wreaking havoc on oil-rigs.
But smiling Brosnan says: "It's like putting on an old pair of shoes," he says. "Somebody said the third time is a charm...so fingers crossed."
Somehow, though, you don't think Pierce and gang will need too much help from Lady Luck.
It's a dirty job... but some poor guy has to plot world domination
NO Bond movie would be complete without a villain doing his damndest to give James a suitable send-off. Here's the rogues gallery: Dr No (1962): Dr Julius No (Joseph Wiseman). Worked for Spectre. Drowned in scalding radioactive liquid.
From Russia With Love (1963): Rosa Klebb (Lotte Lenya). Worked for Spectre. Shot by Tatiana Romanova.
Goldfinger (1964): Auric Goldfinger (Gert Frobe). Worked for Red China. Sucked out of a plane.
Thunderball (1965): Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi). Worked for Spectre. Shot with a harpoon.
You Only Live Twice (1967): Ernst Blofeld (Donald Pleasance).
He was Spectre. Escaped.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): Blofeld (Telly Savalas). Escaped.
Diamonds Are Forever (1971): Blofeld (Charles Grey). Escaped.
Live and Let Die (1973): Mr Big/Kananga (Yaphet Kotto). Died of inflation.
The Man With The Golden Gun
(1974): Scaramanga (Christopher Lee). He was shot dead by Bond.
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977):
Carl Stromberg (Kurt Jurgens). Shot by Bond.
Moonraker (1979): Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale). Sucked into space.
For Your Eyes Only (1981): Harris Kristatos (Julian Glover). KGB agent stabbed in the back.
Octopussy (1983): Kamal Kahn (Louis Jourdan). Plane crashed into a mountain.
Never Say Never Again (1983): Blofeld (Max Von Sydow). Escaped again.
A View To A Kill (1985): Max Zorin (Christopher Walken). Took a swan-dive off San Fransisco's Golden Gate Bridge.
The Living Daylights (1987): Brad Whittaker (Joe Don Baker). Crushed to death by a bust.
Licence To Kill (1989): Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi). Killed by by a gadget.
GoldenEye (1995): Alec Trevelyan (Sean Bean). Dropped from a satellite dish and crushed by it.
Tomorrow Never Dies (1997): Elliot Carver (Jonathon Pryce). Crushed by a sea drill.
Garbage preview Bond theme online now; NEW JAMES BOND SONG! I'm With The Bond
The name's Manson, Shirley Manson...
GARBAGE, who have recorded the theme tune to the latest James Bond movie 'The World Is Not Enough', are previewing
the song on the Windows Media
http:/windowsmedia.microsoft.com/preview/bond/bond.asp .
The song of the same name was written by composers David Arnold and Don Black especially for the film which is set for release on November 25 featuring Pierce Brosnan as in his third outing as gentleman thug 007 with a supporting role for Goldie.
http:/www.jamesbond.com/ for more on the new Bond movie.
David Arnold previously collaborated with Bjork on the track 'Play Dead' in 1993, and he also provided the instrumentation for the James Bond tribute album 'Shaken And Stirred' which featured Iggy Pop, David McAlmont and Pulp.
The soundtrack album for 'The World Is Not Enough' is released on November 9.
LICENSED - TO SHOP
CUSTOMERS at a Coventry store could have the chance to be James Bond for a day as part of a contest to promote 007's
latest film, The World is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan (left).
Entry forms are available from Coventry and East Mercia Co-operative stores until November 12
AS PIERCE BROSNAN prepares to launch the latest James Bond thriller, a hush-hush search has begun to find the next star who will be 'licensed to kill'.
One name that keeps cropping up on secret shortlists that movie executives claim do not exist, is that of handsome Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, who is already popular thanks to his role in the high seas TV drama Hornblower.
Mr Gruffudd, 26, is a fast-rising actor who has landed a series of plum roles, from Pip in Tony Marchant's adaptation of Great Expectations to co-starring in 102 Dalmatians.
Picking a new James Bond is an exercise that can leave you shaken and stirred.
Take George Lazenby. When, in 1969, he replaced Sean Connery, he was a disaster, totally lacking the gravitas required. Connery, the original, is perceived by many as the archetypal Commander Bond, with Mr Brosnan close behind.
Brosnan's portrayal in the latest Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough, is much more hard-edged and lethal than of late.
Roger Moore was too comic. Timothy Dalton was hardboiled, but lacked a certain exuberance. Brosnan has let it be known that he does not want to do too many more 007 movies.
When Mr Brosnan was anointed as a future Bond, it took him eight years before he appeared before the cameras as Ian Fleming's hero.
It is early days for Mr Gruffudd-indeed he may not get it - and there's plenty of time to groom him to appreciate the finer things Bond enjoys such as Dom Perignon '53 at a temperature above 38f and knocking back a martini or or two. Meanwhile, The World Is Not Enough opens here on November 26.
The Freemen's Park complex is one of a handful of cinemas to show Pierce Brosnan's third outing as the allnaction 007 agent, with proceeds going to charity.
Staff at the venue were shaken but not stirred when they heard the good news and are already preparing for a star-studded night.
The premiere will be screened on Wednesday, November 24 at 7.30pm.
General manager at the Odeon, Mr David Holmes, said he was very pleased that the Odeon had been selected to host such an auspicious event.
"The film will be shown in one of the larger houses, which has a capacity of 330," he said.
"We don't know at this stage how many celebrities will be attending but I know arrangements are currently being made.
"Whatever happens it will be a great night, a fantastic coup for the Odeon and a good thing for Leicester."
The film follows Bond as he fights to save the world's oil supply and overthrow yet another corrupt international political regime.
En route, he encounters scar-faced villains, escapes unscathed from a myriad of explosive situations and sidesteps the advances of a string of luscious ladies.
All money from the regional premiers n the film is also being shown at cinemas in Ipswich, Norwich, Reading, Cornwall, Brighton and Cambridge n will be donated to the FSID, the Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths.
General tickets are still on sale, priced GBP 15. For more information contact the FSID head office on 020 7235 0965.
THE ROBBIE I LOVED WAS ATHIN MAN, BUT AMBITION ATE HIM UP. IT
GAVE HIM A
PHYSICAL HUNGER;
The 20-stone star yearned to be like Bogart, says the ex -lover driven
to despair by his womanising
by Sharon Churcher
WHEN a laser show arcs over the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square next month at the premiere of The World Is Not Enough, it should be the most triumphant - and happiest - night of Robbie Coltrane's career.
The new James Bond epic is the most expensive movie the 49-year-old actor has ever made and celebrities are expected to turn out in force to toast his breakthrough into a big-budget role in which he can at last capitalise on his immense bulk.
Hollywood has decided that, at 20 stone, with middle age finally imparting an almost Churchillian grandeur to his spongey face, he makes the ideal villain to star with Pierce Brosnan's James Bond. The evening will also be an opportunity to show off another development in his life which Coltrane - best known until now for TV roles such as the police psychologist in Cracker - claims makes him content and proud.
Sitting alongside him in a glamorous gown will be Rhona Gemmell, the beautiful, redheaded artist 20 years his junior whom he has variously described as his wife and girlfriend. They have a six-year-old son and, he says, they are deeply and irrevocably in love.
Yet, as he cradles Rhona's hand in his huge hand and watches himself quite literally fill the screen, what will go through Robbie Coltrane's mind is a sense not of achievement but of loss.
For this is a man, we can reveal, racked by dreams of another, very different life - one in which he visualises himself not as a comically gross character actor, but a lithe and handsome matinee idol. A life in which he often imagines how it might have been had he married the woman who became the great love of his life - his only true love, he led her to believe - when he was a 21-year-old student.
Her name is Robin Paine and, except for the fact that she is 47, living alone in a New England artists' colony and childless, she is uncannily similar to Rhona. A lovely redhead, Robin was just 19 when she met Robbie at the Glasgow School of Art and began a relationship that, over the following 16 years, would be characterised by such cruel behaviour that it all but wrecked her own hopes.
Last week, as she showed me Robbie's love letters and other cherished mementos, she spoke for the first time of what she calls 'the very sad end' to what fleetingly seemed the perfect match of breeding, chemistry and talent.
A renowned portrait painter, daughter of a successful architect, her Celtic colouring reminded Robbie, he said, of the young Katherine Hepburn.
THERE is a snapshot in Robin's album of her riding pillion on a scooter during a 1972 Minorca holiday. She is seated behind a young man with an athlete's toned body - a man almost unrecognisable as Robbie.
Though his image to millions of TV viewers is of an oafish prole - who has gone out of his way to emphasise his Marxist sympathies through such stunts as refusing to bow to Princess Anne at a Royal Variety Performance - he comes from a comfortable home.
The son of a Glasgow police surgeon, he was educated at public school. His ambition, he told Robin, was to become the new Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy or Marlon Brando.
Yet in that long-ago Mediterranean photo, there is a pain-stricken look in Robin's eyes. Around the time it was taken, her lover embarked on a downward spiral of binge drinking which, combined with junk food and fry-ups, would turn him into a bloated caricature of the man she originally loved. He also became so promiscuous that any other woman would have dumped him there and then.
'I don't know if I'm still in love with Robbie but I do love him and I will always feel very close to him,' she told me in the drawing room of her Victorian house north of Boston.
'I stopped sleeping with him four years after we met, when I was 23. He was sleeping with so many women, including friends of mine, that turning our love affair into a platonic relationship was the only way I could protect my health. He told me I was still his number one girlfriend, which to all appearances I was. I was the woman he took on important "dates" such as the openings of his plays and films. He said the idea was that he'd sow his wild oats and then we'd settle down.
'It was almost as if there were two Robbies. The Robbie I loved was the slim, funny, affectionate, romantic dreamer in that photo in Minorca. 'But there was also the dark Robbie.
That side would come out in paintings he did, arid cityscapes, never with people in them, just faceless grey houses. Maybe he had a depressive streak.
I'd heard that he toyed with suicide when he was at school, but I put it down to a histrionic, melodramatic side of his personality.
'He had a ferocious desire for fame, for being the centre of attention. His dream was to play romantic leads and become a great success in the US.
But his real talent was as a mimic and comedian and he found getting enough work to support himself a struggle.
'When he wasn't working, his ambition took the form of a physical hunger that had to be fed. He'd stuff his mouth with food, smoke incessantly and go on all-night drinking binges at a seedy boxers' hangout. Women were his chief way of trying to prove himself.
He boasts about his attractiveness to them. I'm afraid the reality is that a lot of the women are really attracted by his celebrity and fame.
'I think he is in self-denial and that when he watches himself on screen, he sees a thin man. He was so keen to have me watch him that once he went out and bought me a portable TV so I could see him in a Persil ad.
'Robbie imagined himself as this romantic figure who on the exterior was a hardboiled loner but was really warmhearted and vulnerable, the great lover like Bogart in Casablanca.
'He really did try to live the part.
He shopped for vintage clothes and dressed in double-breasted suits, white silk scarves and big fedoras.' One of Robin's most treasured mementos from those early years was a cartoon he drew of himself in sepia ink. Seated at the wheel of a Cadillac convertible he is young, consumed with longing and, of course, thin.
HE SENT the sketch to Robin for her birthday.
A balloon comes out of his character's mouth as he proclaims himself 'crazee' for 'this dame (with) hair as red as the ace of hearts'. But not so 'crazee' that he could be faithful to her.
'One day, when I was 23, Robbie invited me to a party given by an older woman from a well-to-do Edinburgh family,' Robin recalls.
'The hostess began crying hysterically and someone came over and told me Robbie and I had to leave. I asked him, "Why is she crying?"
That's when he told me he'd been sleeping with her and hadn't told her he was living with me.' It was the beginning of the end of the couple's physical relationship.
They agreed they would live apart and have their own relationships.
But the freedom was distinctly one-sided. Robbie continued to have affairs, 'but he was increasingly possessive and he would never introduce me to any of his male friends because he knew the way he behaved with my female friends. I did try to date. But it never amounted to anything because Robbie was always in the background.' Robbie lived in squats and worked intermittently on building sites, but moved back to Robin's flat after his younger sister, Jane, accidentally killed herself with an overdose of pills and alcohol. Deranged with grief, Robbie seemed on the edge of a breakdown but Robin lovingly nursed him back to health.
But his drinking worsened, and when he invited Robin to a party in Mayfair, at least three other women there also turned out to be his mistresses. He still wasn't willing to let Robin go. In 1985, when he got a small part in the film Mona Lisa, he bought her a black damask dress and insisted she accompany him to the premiere.
His role as a clapped out rock 'n' roller, starring with Emma Thompson in the TV series Tutti Frutti, followed.
But his reputation for being touchy and aggressive dogged him and his film work became a treadmill of mostly small comedies such as the bumbling priest in The Pope Must Die.
'He'd get very frustrated when little things went wrong,' Robin says.
'Once he threw my radio through the window of one of his vintage Austins.
When he finally did begin to be a success, it went to his head, made him arrogant.' Robbie was 36 and had moved into a house in Hackney, East London, which Robin was helping him to decorate when he invited her round for pre-dinner drinks one day.
Pouring himself a Scotch, he abruptly announced: 'Listen doll, next year we are going to get married because I want to have babies.' 'For the next year and a half he went on begging me to marry,' says Robin. 'He assured me he'd be faithful if I had his child. I wanted a child, but I wasn't sure about having one with Robbie. I worried it would be one of his props, an ornament the way I sometimes worried I was.
FINALLY I came to the conclusion that even though I still loved him as much as ever, I couldn't be happy as his wife and I didn't believe I could make him happy if I was unhappy.' When she rejected him, Robbie ordered her to leave his house immediately. She tells herself it was sorrow which made him so cold. But she admits that, when he began to date the 18-year-old Rhona, she did wonder if he was using the pretty young woman in one final attempt to regenerate that Katherine Hepburn fantasy. His son is named Spencer, after Spencer Tracy.
When I ask her if she is happy, she deflects the question. She married a Harvard professor, but he died of cancer two years later. 'I miss Robbie, ' she finally says, near to tears.
Robbie has installed Rhona in his grand Scottish estate. But proudly displayed in the house is a portrait Robin painted of him as a young man and she likes to believe it means she still has a place in his heart, if not his life.
GRAPHIC: TV BREAK: COLTRANE AS CRACKER BEFORE THE BINGEING: A SLIMLINE COLTRANE WITH ROBIN DURING A 1972 HOLIDAY TOUGH GUY ACT: COLTRANE ONCE DREAMED OF BEING ANOTHER BOGART'I MISS ROBBIE'; ROBIN PAINE HAD A 16-YEAR RELATIONSHIP WITH COLTRANE
The BMW marketing people have secured yet another brilliant coup: come November, a new Bond film is due to be released, and however awful it may be, The World is Not Enough will feature at least one memorable scene, a car chase with Pierce Brosnan at the wheel of BMW's new supercar, an exquisitely retro-styled 400 horsepower roadster called the Z8. This will be the third consecutive Bond picture with 007 in a BMW: Goldeneye launched the Z3 roadster, and Tomorrow Never Dies had Brosnan getting around in a big 7 series - the 750i, the marque's flagship executive express.
What's different about 007's latest BMW ride is that hardly anyone will ever see one on the street. Only 'an exclusive number' of Z8s will be exported to Canada for the 2000 model year, according to BMW Canada corporate communications manager Tobias Nickel. That tiny production run will likely have sold out and generated waiting lists long before The World is Not Enough is even released.
Pushing models that are destined to sell in the most insignificant quantities has become a trademark of BMW marketing. Last year in the U.S., for example, BMW's most conspicuous magazine advertising campaign was for its low-production $61,900 M coupe, a ghastly looking but stupendously fun-to-drive two-seat sports car. And last spring, if you read the National Post, The Globe and Mail or La Presse, you would have come across an ad campaign for the 540i touring, BMW's new $74,850 wagon.
BMW's sales volume leader in North America is, naturally enough, its least expensive, smallest car, the 3 series, which sold 57,520 examples in 1998. The mid-range sedan, the 5 series, attracted 35,000 buyers, and the top of the line 7 series, another 18,309. Within the 5 series model range, the 528i sedans conspicuously outsell the more expensive and powerful 540i sedans. As for the station wagon, I've spotted only one 540i touring out on the street - and I've yet to see an M coupe anywhere but on a showroom floor.
It's all part of BMW's unique take on image-building. The cars may be rare, but they're building a brand- and since the brand is BMW, the building blocks of the image are made of speed. The M coupe, a sparsely furnished lightweight hatchback possessed of almost unprecedented handling prowess, rockets to 100 kph in just five-and-a-half seconds. And while the 540i touring is a big, luxurious and heavy station wagon, it packs a torquey 282 horsepower V8, and can take you from zero to 100 kph is just over six seconds. It also handles like, well, just like a BMW 5 series, 'the standard by which others are judged,' as Road & Track calls it.
No question about it, the 540i touring is the world's finest performance wagon. But then again there is no better-handling large luxury sedan than the 7 series, no faster ride for four than the soon-to-come 5 series sedan as stroked by BMW Motorsports, the company's racing division, the M5. And the 3 series is an excellent compact sports sedan, a car category BMW has basically owned since it invented it with the 2002, back in 1968. With all these large market category leaders in its stable, why push the small niche products like the M coupe and 540i touring?
'The general thing we do here comes down from BMW Germany,' says Tobias Nickel. 'They are the ones who identify the specific model that is so strong in its character that it will represent the series.
The 540i touring is very good for representing its series. 540 has a good, strong engine - it represents BMW's dynamism.'
BMW, in fact, brings only its most dynamic cars to North America. In Europe, BMW sells diesels, and slow 5 series sedans with small engines, and even the odd-looking 3 series hatchbacks that they briefly brought to Canada, and then dropped. Here, BMW sells only its most expensive, best-appointed high-end models.
'In Germany BMW is 6% market share,' says Nickel. 'Here it is 1%. So all the cars we offer here have to be much more brand-building.'
It's an arduous and costly process - and more necessary for BMW than its main rival, Mercedes-Benz. History has done the job already for Daimler-Benz, but BMW, although it's an old marque, has only recently acquired such great image value. Until the late '60s, most BMWs were basically utilitarian.
When James Bond was played by Sean Connery, he drove a Bentley, and then an Aston Martin. An agent on Her Majesty's secret service would never have been caught in a Bimmer, and not only because its blue-and-white spinning-propeller badge commemorates BMW's old aeronautical division, which supplied engines to the Luftwaffe. Back in1964, when Bond started tooling around in a DB5 Aston Martin, chances are that if he ran into a BMW on the road it would have been a tiny Isetta, so small that it could be parked perpendicular to the sidewalk. BMW as we know it didn't happen until the1970s.
'I don't think people even know that BMW doesn't have a marque history,' observes David Geneen, president of Toronto's Grand Touring Automobiles, dealership for all the great old British marques: Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Aston Martin. But, he adds, 'BMW brand-built here by selling a product that was exclusively about performance.'
That focus has been the key to their success. Niche performance cars like the M coupe, 540i touring and Z8 add to the vitality of the brand, even if their sales don't do much for the bottom line. This is the advantage of a performance marque: while Honda's amazing racing record in Formula 1 isn't of the slightest significance to the average Civic driver, most BMW drivers, even 3 series owners, will feel even better about their cars when they find out Bond drives a Bimmer too - even if it is a $170,000, 400 horsepower model that they'll probably never even see on the road.
GRAPHIC: Graphic/Diagram: Illustration by Jean-Francois Leblanc / Illustration shows a BMW being driven with various advertising throughout for the BMW.
It's blasphemy I know but, for this viewer, Brosnan's Bond beat Connery's hands down
All those dangerous stunts as 007 have obviously given Pierce Brosnan's brain a bit of a bashing. Why else would he be looking a gift horse in the mouth and considering quitting one of the most sought-after roles in cinema - James Bond?
Seemingly, at the age of 46, he's worried that if he doesn't go soon, he may end up being so closely associated with the Ian Fleming hero that he won't be offered other film roles.
That could be a problem for him at some point in the future, but right now Brosnan isn't just a Bond winner, he's hit the jackpot. Taking on the mantle of the supercool spy would have been difficult for any actor, especially as Sean Connery had made the part so much his own. But with his 1995 debut in GoldenEye, Brosnan proved to be inspired casting - just the right blend of smooth action man good looks and an ironic twinkle in the eye. It's blasphemy I know, but for this viewer, Brosnan's Bond beat Connery's hands down.
He's made two more Bond films: Tomorrow Never Dies in 1997, and - the nineteenth in the series - The World Is Not Enough, due for release this autumn. In four years he has seen his fee quadruple from an initial =A3750,000 to =A33m a film - not bad for someone whose only claim to fame until then had been playing the pretty boy lead in the television series, Remington Steele. But, given that GoldenEye was the biggest grossing Bond film of all time, topping =A3250m at the box office worldwide, and that he's credited with injecting new life into the ageing secret agent, Brosnan now reckons that he should be up there with the big boys, Cruise and Travolta, who can command =A315m a film and a share of box office earnings.
Clearly ambitious and determined to keep his options wide open, Brosnan has another film due for release soon, a =A340m remake of the 1968 Steve McQueen thriller, The Thomas Crown Affair, made by his own production company, Irish Dream Time. Wisely, the film does not replicate McQueen and Dunaway's famous chess game sequence, but a remake of a classic film seems an odd and unwise choice for a man eager to establish himself as a major star in his own right.
Presumably, Brosnan is keen to avoid the post-Bond problems encountered by his predecessors. Roger Moore, George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton, who, after playing 007 with varying level of success, all failed to ignite their careers thereafter. But Brosnan should stick with it, not only because he is so much better than any of them, but also because there's no guarantee that it'll make any difference to his career if he quits now rather than10 years down the line.
In any case, despite their success, like any other product, the Bond films must have a sell-by date. Perhaps 007 will prove to be a bit of a dated concept for 21st century audiences, in which case Rupert Everett could be the ideal chap to bring a new twist to the role. He's recently broken into the Hollywood big time after the success of My Best Friend's Wedding, and he'll co -star with Madonna in the new John Schlesinger movie, The Next Best Thing.
![[pb in a boat]](pbboat.jpg) |
He's currently working on a screenplay for a spy movie featuring a gay James Bond. Don't scoff, it makes perfect sense - Bond
is always perfectly groomed and knows how to make a proper martini. The women were just a smokescreen - Bond's been in
the closet all along.
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On the last day of filming the new Bond film, The World is not Enough, at Pinewood Studios, the self-congratulatory back-slapping ought to be running at quite a pitch. Stuntmen, cast and crew will almost definitely be engaged in a frantic round of high-fives and adrenaline-fuelled banter centred around the chisel-jawed, flinty-eyed figure of Pierce Brosnan.
But no - Brosnan is far away from the action, barefoot and alone in his dressing room, picking at a bowl of fruit and relating how, early this morning, amidst film sets littered with guns, explosives and fake blood, he was chatting quietly to a friend about the unfathomable mystery that is Love. 'We were talking about how you fall in love with people. How it just happens, and you think, is this love? Is this real? What is this?'
In the corner of the room are not the usual accoutrements of the action-movie star - the weights and the bell bars - but a stack of pretty-looking paintings he has done himself. Brosnan lacks vanity - he talks without shame of the time he appeared on The Muppet Show dressed as a giant prawn - and refers cheerfully to the raft of dud films he has made throughout his career and which nobody has ever seen, 'except perhaps, a couple of people in Bolivia'.
If this combination of self-deprecation and improbable good looks were not fuel enough to ignite the passions of all the world's modern-thinking women, he is also a man who is better equipped than most to engage in searching conversations about Love. Twenty-two-years ago, he met a woman with whom he formed what was widely regarded as one of Tinseltown's most stable and romantic relationships. They were married for 11 years, she changed his life and helped to transform his image from mini-serial stalwart to big-time Bond. The fact that Cassandra Harris, the love of his life, died in 1991 of ovarian cancer has been a source of deep anguish ever since.
However, it is a tribute to his plain-speaking ordinariness that he remembers his wife not with an air of maudlin introspection, but with real joy and humour.
'The first time we met, I was raiding her fridge,' he says. He was friends with Cassie's nephew, who was living with her at the time, and Brosnan would habitually cycle round to their Fulham flat to play poker. 'It was about 11 or 12 at night and she'd just come in after a date with some merchant banker, and I was this rather cocksure, drunken lout of an actor eating her chicken.'
They didn't hit it off. She was a glamorous model and actress, a working mother with two small children who was, says Brosnan, 'stunning, beautiful, completely out of my league'. A few months later, she threw a party and it was then, possibly because of the rakish way the 23-year-old Brosnan wore his bicycle clips, that she warmed to him. 'And that was it,' he says. 'The start of it.'
After they married in 1980, they lived for a while, happy but impoverished, with her two children from a previous marriage, Christopher, now 25, and Charlotte, 26, and their own son Sean, now 15, in a rented house in Wimbledon. 'We had a great time, plotting and planning life together. She was a wonderful woman. I was pretty serious, intense, and she made me laugh at myself.'
She had just finished a stint as, coincidentally, a Bond girl in For Your Eyes Only, and he had completed a run in the West End comedy Filumena. They then found themselves out of work. 'It was really tough,' says Brosnan. 'We were both on the dole, and she'd never experienced anything like that in her life. I said, 'Are you sure you shouldn't have gone off with that merchant banker? You're stuck with me now.''
It was, all things considered, about time something went Brosnan's way. He may have been ludicrously blessed in the looks department, but his life, up to when he left school and discovered music, books and drama, had been wretched. He had an alcoholic father, and an unhappy school life at a tiny country school run by Irish Christian Brothers, just outside Dublin.
He might have thought a move to England with his mother would relieve his suffering but, in fact, the nightmare only worsened. At his Putney comprehensive he was, he says, 'the paddy. In 1964, there was still a lot of prejudice.' He fought back - good practice, perhaps, for when he would, 30 years later, be fending off Russian spies with a harpoon while hanging from the tailfin of a fighter jet - and learned to conceal his Irishness. Now, he says, he is embracing his roots with some vigour. 'More so as I get older. I spent such a long time trying not to be Irish, which is a sad state of affairs.'
When, in 1980, Cassie suggested they go to the States, Brosnan was reluctant. 'America was something I'd thought about, but it was just a dream. The practicality of life, for me, was to go off and work in theatre, or BBC costume dramas.' But he hadn't reckoned on his wife's determination to pursue a new life abroad. 'I was much more cautious than she was. I said, 'How are we going to go to America? We've just bought this bloody house!'
She said, 'Don't worry, I'll find a way.''
In the end, she took out a second mortgage on the central heating and borrowed GBP 2,000 from the bank. Then, says Brosnan, 'we got on a Freddie Laker flight with our sandwiches and went over to California.' Within two weeks, Brosnan had secured an agent, and landed the lead role in the detective series, Remington Steele, which ran from 1982 to 1987.
In the middle of all this, Brosnan was offered Bond after Roger Moore in 1986, but the producers of Brosnan's series would not release him and he lost out to Timothy Dalton. 'I was gutted,' he says, with feeling. He finally got the part in 1994, with Goldeneye, the first of a four-film deal.
His only regret is that his wife did not live to see him do Bond. 'She would have been so proud.'
His voice drops almost to a whisper as he recalls the first time there was any suspicion that Cassie was ill. They were in India in 1987, while he was shooting the film The Deceivers. 'She had missed two periods and we really thought she was pregnant. She went straight to her gynaecologist and returned ashen-faced. She said, 'I have to go into surgery tomorrow.'' Ovarian cancer was subsequently diagnosed and the doctor gave her six months to live.
It was a tribute to her will power and determination, says Brosnan, that she survived a further four-and-a-half years. 'She did it through sheer strength, and through education. She was fearless with doctors, and asked questions. I think when people getcancer, they're so scared that they don't want to look, because you're looking at your own death and pain. But she just said, 'I want to know.''
Last year, Brosnan became patron of Gilda's Club London, part of an American cancer charity co-founded by Gene Wilder in memory of his wife, the American comedienne Gilda Radner. In America, the charity has clubhouses where people with cancer, their families and friends can go for much-needed social and emotional support, and Gilda's Club London is in the process of setting up a branch here.
'Gilda, Cassie and Jill Ireland (Charles Bronson's wife who also had cancer) were good friends,' says Brosnan. 'They were in constant contact, talking about their chemotherapy, talking about loss of hair, talking about the next treatment, about life and the pain of life and the pain of what might have been.'
Paula Reed, the chair of Gilda's Club London, says it was a great boost for the charity to have secured Brosnan's patronage. 'We had lots of women helping out, but not many men, and Gilda's Club isn't just about women, it's about families and husbands, old men and young men.'
She had pursued Brosnan for going on two years - 'to get a patron who was glamorous and capable was an unbelievablyattractive proposition'. But because he now lives in Malibu Beach, distance proved an obstacle. Last year, when he came to England to start filming the new Bond movie, her efforts were rewarded.
'He was right on the doorstep, and got in touch and said he'd love to do it.'
With Brosnan they were assured a sensitive, deeply committed man who has experienced at close quarters the ravages of what he calls 'that filthy, disgusting disease'. 'Gilda's Club,' he says, 'is a great sanctuary. When one person gets cancer, the whole family suffers, too.'
During the long years of Cassie's illness, Brosnan was an unfailingly attentive nurse. He put his career ambitions on hold, filming a 'dire' TV mini-series that was later scrapped, 'and we just kind of dug ourselves in.
You can't go out, you can't work. Your world becomes very small.' There were, he says, little periods of reprieve that brought light to the gloom.
'Those tiny moments when the pain goes away, you embrace life. You see it with the greatest of clarity when you're dealing with cancer because it's so terrifying.'
Besides doing a lot of praying ('I still do a lot of praying. Once a Catholic, always a Catholic'), Brosnan found solace in painting, a skill he has retained since his days as a commercial artist. 'One night, at four or five in the morning, with a head full of madness, I just started painting with my fingers, basically, and then I started painting properly. It was therapeutic. I went to put down on canvas all this angst and darkness, but instead of darkness, out came all this colour. It was joyous.'
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After Cassie's death - her last words to him were 'Always an actor' -
Brosnan was forced to suppress his own grief and battle
on for the children's sake. 'Being a single parent is tough. It's very
demanding and you feel very alone and scared about making
decisions you used to make with your partner, whether it be simple
decisions like what you're going to have for dinner, or how
to sort out the finances and issues about schooling. Suddenly you're mum and you're dad.' He tried to do the right thing, by taking the children to see therapists - 'although I've never really believed in them. I've always kept my own counsel' - before Sean, then eight, finally said to him, 'I don't need this, Dad. If I need someone, I'll talk to my brother or my sister or you.' 'So,' I said, 'fair enough', and we ditched the therapists and we all kind of mucked along.'
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![[pb, cassie and kids]](family.jpg) |
He admires her independence, he says. 'It's one of the reasons I fell in love with her; because she can do without me! Just because you fall in love with someone doesn't mean you have to give up who you are. So many people do! If there's one thing I've learned it's that you come into this world alone and you go out alone.'
He entered the relationship tentatively at first, holding her at arm's length for nearly three years, before she finally moved in with him in 1996.
Frankly, you don't envy her (well, obviously, you do a bit) her position as the woman who is condemned to walk forever in the lovely Cassandra's shadow.
Brosnan agrees. 'Oh, yes. Poor woman. She's weathered a lot. We've weathered a lot together.'
Not least, you imagine, press speculation alleging that his children had made him promise to never remarry. He does not elaborate, but it sounds unlikely. They seem like sensible, loving children who would want only happiness for their father.
Brosnan currently shares homes in Malibu and north London with Keely, 33, and their two-year-old son, Dylan Thomas. Ask him if he will eventually marry Keely, and he says, airily, 'Not yet, but one day. We have a good life. There's a balance to it, a harmony.' And for a man whose life has been racked by so much chronic imbalance and disharmony, no one could begrudge him a little stability.
Brosnan, at 45, is now a grandfather. He flinches when he hears the word - he prefers the barely more acceptable Pappy - but
hopes that by the time his daughter's nine-month-old child is old enough to talk, he will have come round to the idea of being
called grandad.
The ageing process itself, however, doesn't bother Brosnan. He has
watched himself grow older during the Bond years, which
has included non-007 roles in Dante's Peak and Mars Attacks!, and likes what he sees. 'There's a poster of me from the
Goldeneye days which I hate. I look so serious, a complete pillock.' The new Bond is, he likes to think, a more insightful,
characterful individual with a personality informed, perhaps, by
Brosnan's own experiences. The poster for the forthcoming film,
The World is Not Enough, reveals an altogether more rounded 007. 'It'sstill the same pose,' he says, 'but this man has more of
a knowing look in his eye.' Which, considering some of the things that eye has been forced to confront, is hardly surprising.
The World is not Enough opens on November 26. For further information about Gilda's Club London, or to send a donation, write to: Gilda's Club London, c/o Munkenbeck & Marshall, Exmouth House, 3 Pine Street, London EC1R 0JH.
(Please enclose an SAE if possible.) Or visit the website on www.gildas.org
by ANDREW COLLINS
Reports of James Bond's demise are always greatly exaggerated. He's been on the verge of extinction for well over 30 years, but we've come to rely on the fact that 007 doesn't die, he just 'regenerates', like a libidinous Doctor Who. 'Do you expect me to talk?' he famously asked Goldfinger, while strapped to a table, legs apart, with a laser beam fast approaching the contents of his diplomatic bag. 'No, Mr Bond,' replied the rotund villain. 'I expect you to die!' Dream on. Mr Bond didn't die then, and he didn't die the next time an eastern European megalomaniac had him by the short and curlies. Rest assured, he isn't going to die now either, despite whispered reports that the actor who currently plays him, Pierce Brosnan, is planning to 'hang up his Walther PPK' before the next general election.
Although Brosnan's people have been quick to deny it, the bush fire of rumour is already spreading about the next-but-one Bond movie being the plucky Irishman's last in the role. This Christmas, he will appear in The World Is Not Enough - or 'Bond 19' as the $ 70-million movie was rather lovelessly working-titled - and he's signed on for the next one, which will be made in 2001. But after that? It doesn't take a tip-off from one of the mysterious 'showbusiness friends' cited in the current tittle-tattle to second-guess that Brosnan might jack it in after four Bond movies (his first was Goldeneye in 1995, then Tomorrow Never Dies in '97). He turns 50 in 2001, a self-conscious turning point for any actor, although age was never an issue for Sean Connery, the so-called 'breakaway Bond' who, at the age of 53, reprised the 007 role for 1983's Never Say Never Again, or Roger Moore, who was 55 when he made his swansong A View to a Kill ('He looks a bit old,' noted Variety).
One reason Brosnan's prospective retirement from the civil service is news at all is because he is widely accepted as 'the best Bond since Connery'. Admittedly, after the unspectacular Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), there was everything to play for, but few would deny that the boy from County Meath brought a much-needed sizzle back to what had become a rather lukewarm franchise. Box-office returns leapt past the $ 300 million mark for the first time with Goldeneye, more than doubling the take for The Living Daylights.
Brosnan can proudly claim much of the credit for this renaissance, although dumping any late-Eighties concessions to political correctness helped - 'You can't have the women buttoned down too much,' commented the star in 1995.
The other reason you'll read a lot about Brosnan's departure is because naming the next James Bond is always such good sport. Last time we were permitted to play the game, Hugh Grant, Ralph Fiennes and Mel Gibson were among the favourites.
The time before that, Sam Neill was said to be a front-runner, with James Brolin an outside bet, having tested for Octopussy when Roger Moore had threatened to pull out. And back in 1971, a 25-year-old hopeful called Timothy Dalton was eventually passed over as 'too young'.
He must've thought you only audition twice.
'Serious actors of the world wouldn't touch the part with a ten-foot pole,' says David Morefield of the Ian Fleming Foundation's webzine Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. 'And we wouldn't want them to.'
Hardcore Bond fans find it pathologically impossible to criticise any who fill 007's shoes. They admire Roger Moore's lightness of touch; they gloss over the unsuitability of George Lazenby because On Her Majesty's Secret Service was one of Fleming's best stories; they even give Dalton credit for the leather -armchair dignity he brought to the part despite being such a public second -choice. (Brosnan was picked for the role back in 1986, but couldn't extricate himself from NBC's Remington Steele - he'd just married Stephanie Zimbalist in the series, and the network wanted to squeeze three specials out of the pair).
But even a true loyalist would swallow hard at some of the actors' names who have been linked with the Bond part down the years. When casting for the original Bond film, Dr No, producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli was gung-ho for Cary Grant. Already in his late fifties, Grant declined, not wishing to be tied to a three-picture deal. The same fear of commitment put off David Niven, a friend of Ian Fleming (though he ended up playing a retired Sir James Bond in the awful 1967 spoof Casino Royale).
Stewart Granger was also considered, as were TV stars Patrick McGoohan and, yes, Roger Moore. So perhaps we should be grateful for the way the Edinburgh truck driver's son Sean Connery moved when he first met Broccoli and co-producer Harry Saltzman. They were impressed with the former body-builder's 'cat-like grace', according to Adrian Turner's recent Bloomsbury Guide to Goldfinger. 'Afterwards, when the producers held meetings with financiers from United Artists, they would summon Connery to their office and ask him to turn around and pace the room - just like a model, an actress auditioning, or a piece of meat.' Ian Fleming called Connery an 'overgrown stuntman', but the cinema-going public took to him instantly. Connery threw in the towel after five films, aptly enough while making You Only Live Twice, the book which Fleming had intended to be 007's last (it ends with an obituary from the Times, in which Bond is described as 'missing, believed killed, while on an official mission to Japan'). Both Fleming and Connery were tempted to reconsider: the author cranked out two more books (despite warning his publishers that he had 'run out of puff and zest'), and the actor came back for Diamonds Are Forever.
Because Connery had left Broccoli and Saltzman in the lurch at a time when their new franchise was really cooking, they seemed to lose all perspective, and cast George Lazenby, an Australian model with no acting experience. Lazenby rather coarsely told Life magazine that he was looking forward to 'the bread and the birds', and ruined the premiere of On Her Majesty's Secret Service by turning up with un-Bond-like beard and long hair. He had to go. American actor John Gavin, best-known for Psycho, was duly signed to play Bond, but stepped aside when a $ 1.25 million package had changed Connery's mind. For 1973's Live and Let Die, Burt Reynolds entered the frame ('a little short,' commented director Guy Hamilton, 'but he moved like a dream'). Michael Billington, of television's UFO fame, was also tested, as was Julian Glover, who later turned up as the baddie in For Your Eyes Only (and, ironically, shot Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade).
It is worth mentioning Jason Connery, son of Sean and the star of ITV's Robin of Sherwood, whose name habitually comes up when the 007 job is going begging. He usually says he could never better his dad. Sweet. And he's so right.
So if it's not going to be Jason for 2002, then who? Ewan McGregor will be 31 by then - close to Bond's age in the books - and with the Scots heritage that served Connery so well, he has to be any producer's first choice. Unless, of course, The Phantom Menace renders him too famous - Bond maketh the star and not vice versa. McGregor's co-star from Trainspotting, Jonny Lee Miller, does an impeccable Connery impression.
Leonardo DiCaprio would, of course, be dreadful in the role, but we have to go through the motions (and he does satisfy the piece of meat' test). A far more interesting choice would be Ben Chaplin: English, good-looking and superb in an action role inThe Thin Red Line. Colin Firth has what Jane Austen described as 'a noble mien' - but slobbing it in Fever Pitch may havedashed his hopes of promotion. Since TV has proven such a fertile breeding ground for Bonds, what about Ross Kemp, aka EastEnders' Grant Mitchell, soon to wave goodbye to Albert Square and keen to reshape his bouncer's image? Ardal O'Hanlan, equally set on reinvention, might duplicate Brosnan's emerald charm ('Just keeping the British end up, Ted!'). And if Alan Davies would be willing to rethink the King-Charles-spaniel hair, he'd bring a Roger Moore-style raised-eyebrow to the job of saving the planet. Vinnie Jones? By 2002, he'll be so famous actors will be queuing up to play him.
Hugh Grant is too well-established this time around, but the man who stole Notting Hill from under his nose, Rhys Ifans, would make a magnificent Welsh superspy (Remember, Timothy Dalton's from Colwyn Bay). It depends how far off -piste the Bond franchise wishes to go. Will Smith can handle gun-totin' action, wise-ass humour and bedroom duty, plus he'll sing the theme tune. Mind you, dear old Ian Fleming would spin in his colonial grave.
Maybe after 40 years, it really is time for a change. M is already a woman (Judi Dench), so why not her top double-O agent? You must admit, Gwyneth Paltrow has the English public school accent down to a tee.
'Do you expect me to talk?' 'No, Ms Bond, I expect you to cry!'
007 Brosnan is set to hang up his gun
by York Membury
SO it's farewell, Mr Bond, yet again. Pierce Brosnan, widely acclaimed as the best James Bond since Sean Connery, is preparing to hang up his Walther PPK after making a final 007 film in 18 months' time. The Irish actor, credited with reviving British cinema's most successful franchise, fears he will be typecast as the suave secret agent unless he quits before he is 50.
Brosnan is 46 and has told showbusiness friends that he wants to make other kinds of films. This is impossible while he maintains the production rate of the 007 series.
He has just completed working on his third Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, to be released in Britain in December. He plans to make just one more action spectacular. He is already looking at a wish list of films that will remake his image from 2002.
Brosnan's three pictures for the British company Eon - GoldenEye (1995), Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) and the forthcoming £70m blockbuster - have been shot at two-year intervals, which suggests that the fourth will be made over eight months in 2001.
Brosnan was mooted as 007 before Timothy Dalton took his two-film stint in the role. He was invited back when Dalton quit to make a series of worthy but undistinguished films.
Brosnan's pay has leapt from an initial £750,000 for GoldenEye to £3m a film, which lags far behind that of Hollywood superstars such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta. They can command £15m salaries and a share of box office receipts.
His departure will come as a shock to dedicated Bond fans. Dave Worrall, author of The Essential Bond and president of the James Bond Collectors' Club, said: "As far as I am concerned, he is just growing into the role."
A career after Bond has proved troublesome for other carriers of the flame. Connery had largely distanced himself from the role before he was 40, giving him plenty of time for a range of films, yet Roger Moore, who played a smoother version of Ian Fleming's cold snobbish agent in six films, never emulated that success. The Australian actor George Lazenby, who played 007 once, failed to score at all.
Brosnan, however, has been laying the groundwork for his post-007 roles. Two years ago he starred in the disaster movie Dante's Peak and he has since set up a production company, Irish Dream Time.
This summer it releases a £40m remake of the 1968 film The Thomas Crown Affair, which originally starred Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. Early next year Brosnan will be back in the £30m Grey Owl, directed by Richard Attenborough, which tells the story of Archie Belaney, a British-born adventurer who travelled to Canada and reinvented himself as a Red Indian.
It may be premature to speculate on who'll be the next Bond but Soundtrack is putting its money on Greg Wise.
Emma Thompson's squeeze is already being talked about as a replacement for Pierce Brosnan, even though the current Bond star is expected to make at least one more movie after The World Is Not Enough.
Wise is flattered. "It would be great to do it," he told us at Thursday night's film quiz in aid of the Oscar Moore Foundation. "The producers saw me after Timothy Dalton left but I had these very unsexy sideburns for some period thing, which spoilt my chances."
James Bond filming kicks off in Azerbaijan
Cameras were rolling in Azerbaijan on Thursday when the latest James Bond thriller, steeped in the high-stakes intrigue of the international oil industry, went into full-swing production. Called "The World is Not Enough," the newest instalment of the lucrative spy series features Irish-born actor Pierce Brosnan and France's Sophie Marceau.
The two stars arrived late Tuesday night, along with producer Michael Wilson and director Michael Apted, and spent the next day shooting scenes outside the Azeri capital. A second crew will film establishing shots over the weekend.
"One of the themes of our film is Caspian oil, so we thought we would come where the Caspian oil is," said Apted. "So wecame to Baku and we fell in love with the oil fields and the great constructions out in the sea."
Bond's latest incarnation, Brosnan, fights an international group of bad guys intent on dominating the production and transport of the world's oil supply, the film's makers say. Marceau plays Elektra King, "the daughter of a murdered oil tycoon Bond is hired to protect." Rounding out the cast are US actress Denise Richards and Robert Carlyle, from "The Full Monty," as the villain.
According to those involved with the project, the agent from Her Majesty's Secret Service will defend the concept of a trans-Turkish pipeline. Interestingly, the future of a real-life pipeline from Azerbaijan to Turkey has been thrown in doubt by world oil prices and doubts about the actual size of Caspian oil reserves. The film offers up the usual mix of death-defying stunts and exotic locations, starting with the new Guggenheim Art Gallery in Bilbao, Spain and moving on to Turkey and the Scottish Highlands.
In Azerbaijan, Bond and Elektra will watch the destruction of a caviar factory -- "accessible only by a network of raised walkways constructed above the waters of the Caspian Sea" -- which they have escaped from.
The release date is scheduled for sometime in November of this year.
Playing Bond can be such a treadmill
007 wannabees take note. The honed and toned exterior that Bond actor Pierce Brosnan displayed at the BAFTA'S is, I can reveal, not simply the working of mother nature.
For that morning, while other stars were putting on their make-up, Pierce, 45, currently filming The World is Not Enough, was going through a punishing exercise routine at the exclusive Lingfield gym inelsize Park. Wearing shiny tracksuit bottoms, he was ferociously pumping iron.
"I felt quite tired just watching him," confessed my trainer-clad spy. "He went from the treadmill to the cycling machine and was tuned into the cardio theatre." Alas, it seems, some parts of Pierce are better left covered. "He had rather spindly legs...but he still looked very handsome," sighed my source.
Monday, Feb 15, 1999
Sexy stars of new 007 film must be brainy too, Dr Holly Warmflash included. Beauty alone is not enough for Bond girls
by Mark Jagasi, Showbusiness Correspondent
Bond girls are not usually chosen for the size of their IQ. But in the latest 007 film it's brains that count as much as beauty. Its director Michael Apted, who has just started filming at Pinewood studios insists his female characters are a lot more than scantily-clad window dressing. They include a nuclear weapons expert, a doctor, an oil heiress and an international criminal who blows up the M16 HQ in London before escaping down the Thames by speedboat.
"They are very sexy women, but they have much more complex lives. We want them to be at the centre of the story and not just objects," said Mr. Apted, whose previous credits include Gorky Park and Gorillas In The Mist.
Actresses Maria Grazia Cuccnota, Serena Scott Thomas, Denise Richards and Sophie Marceau play the high-flying foursome in the 19th Bond film, The World Is Not Enough.
Maria, heroine of Italian comedy It Postino, plays the villain in a chase sequence which cost 1 million a minute to make and ends with a fight in a hot-air balloon above the Millennium Dome.
Denise Richards, of Starship Troopers fame, plays nuclear scientist Dr Christmas Jones. Serena, sister of English = Patient star Kristin Scott Thomas, has an even more memorable name as physician Dr Holly Warmflash. And French actress Sophie Marceau, star of Braveheart, is heiress Elektra King.
Pierce Brosnan, who is playing the world's suavest spy for the third time, is more than happy with his bevy of brainy beauties. "Sophie is a stunning woman," he said. "And if you had seen Denise Richards running round in hotpants, well - I think Mr Apted had a great deal of fun casting the film." With a 70 million budget it is the most expensive Bond movie yet. One scene involving an attack on a Caspian Sea caviar factory by helicopters dangling huge circular saws reulnites Brosnan with Robbie Coltrane who reprises his GoldenEye role as ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky.
The film also stars Dame Judi Dench as M, John Cleese and rap star Goldie.
James Bond could be going back in time in his latest big-screen adventure - with the return of the likes of Pussy Galore and Honey Ryder.
More than a dozen actresses who played the women who tempted the spy in his earlier films are reportedly being asked to perform small walk-on parts in The World Is Not Enough, starring Pierce Brosnan as 007.
They include the first Bond girl, Ursula Andress - best known for appearing as a bikini-clad nymph walking out the ocean in Dr No - and Honor Blackman, who played the leather-clad Pussy Galore in Goldfinger.
Also in line for a comeback are Jill St John, who played Tiffany Case in 1971's Diamonds Are Forever, and Britt Ekland, who achieved worldwide fame as Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun in 1974.
Other actresses from the 1970s to the 1990s who could appear are Jane Seymour, Barbara Bach, Maud Adams, Tanya Roberts, Soto, Maryann D'Arbo, Cary Lowell and Famke Janssen.
The 19th Bond film, The World Is Not Enough is currently in production in London and Istanbul under the direction of Michael Apted.
The female leads playing alongside Brosnan are French actress Sophie Marceau and Hollywood star Denise Richards.
Marceau plays the daughter of a murdered oil tycoon whom Bond is assigned to protect, while Richards is a weapons expert named Dr Christmas Jones.
John Cleese, Robert Carlyle and Robbie Coltrane also join the cast for the film, which is due to open in the UK and US in November.
Feb 7 '99
007, licensed to treadmill
No doubt Sean Connery would never have needed one, but Pierce Brosnan has, I hear, been allocated a personal trainer by the makers of the new Bond film, The World Is Not Enough, currently in production at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, to whip him into shape.
What's even more humiliating for the latest 007 is that his trainer - 25-year-old Mancunian-accented former Royal Marine Simon Waterson -used to work principally for the 'ladies who lunch' market.
Sunday, January 17, 1999
Bond used to be a wimp
Nobody would dare to dispute Dickie Attenborough's cinematic prowess but, we learn, the legendary luvvie Lord is not the best talent spotter.
It is our sad duty to reveal that he showed James Bond star Pierce Brosnan the door at an audition 20 years ago for being too wimpy.
"It happened ages ago when I was making A Bridge Too Far," confesses Lord Attenborough.
"I wanted to show soldiers who really looked like soldiers, so I =
auditioned a group of young men and had a sergeant major put them through their paces for six weeks. I'm afraid Pierce was one of the ones we rejected."
He has made up for it now, though. His latest film, the 20 million epic Grey Owl, features a macho Englishman who joins a Red Indian tribe.
The part is played by ...Pierce Brosnan.
"I'm just glad to have finally got the chance to work with Dickie," said Brosnan from the set of the new Bond film, The World Is NotEnough, at Pinewood studios.
Sept, 98
And Scottish heartthrob Ewan McGregor, star of Trainspotting, is number one choice for a battle to the death with the father he never knew in the role of James Bond Jr.
The superspy's son will be the right-hand man to the main villain in the 19th 007 adventure, provisionally titled The World Is Not Enough.
And Basic Instinct star Sharon Stone is favourite to land the role of the evil crook codenamed Electra in the £70 million epic. Sources tell me Bond's evil son is the product of a relationship with a beautiful American secret agent.
But she turns their child into the ultimate killing machine as revenge against the man who left her.
The insider added: "His true identity will not be revealed until the final scenes. It's a heart-breaking shock for Bond."
Scripts have been finalised for the blockbuster and work on four sets has begun at London's Pinewood studios.
Last night a film source said: "Bond's son is charming, ruthless and deadly - just like his dad.
"But the main difference is that he offers his services to the highest bidder.
"Ewan would be fantastic in the role and the bosses will go all out to get him."
Pierce Brosnan will be back as the legendary secret agent and Cracker star Robbie Coltrane has already signed up to reprise his Goldeneye role as ex-KGB man Valentin Zukovsky, this time teaming up with his former foe to save the world.
But Dame Judi Dench, who stars as Bond's boss, could be making her final appearance as one twist of the plot is rumoured to be the assassination of M.
THE EXPRESS (London) Oh what tangled webs we weave... Yesterday Jason Connery, son of the more famous Sean, was telling the press that he had been approached by a mysterious production company to play the part of James Bond, the role that made his dad famous.
"You wouldn't believe how much money has been offered to me," the 35-year-old actor said, before revealing the reasons he had turned down the cash and the chance to be the next 007.
"I think the films have lost a lot of their magic because of political correctness," Connery went on. "And how could you top my dad?" Not that this was meant as an insult to the current Bond incarnation, of course.
"Of the rest of the Bonds, my particular favourite is Brosnan," Jason said, before gracioulsy allowing that, "all (the actors) brought their own dimensions to the role."
The news that Jason was offered the opportunity to bring his own dimension to the secret agent is, however, news to Connery's agent. Peter Brooks not only denies that his client has ever been offered the part of 007, he also insists Jason has never spoken to journalists about the subject.
Certainly Jason's near-casting as James came as a shock to Eon
Productions, makers of the Bond series. "It's the first we've heard of it," said a spokesman. "What I can tell you is Pierce Brosnan is flying in on January 4 to begin shooting Bond 19."
Eon also dismissed the rumour that the nameless production company invoked by Connery was Sony, which is currently fighting Eon in the US courts over plans to produce a rival series of James Bond movies.
"That is an on-going legal situation," said the spokesman, "and until it is resolved, the part of James Bond could not be offered to any actor. Really, we are at a loss for an explanation."
The title of Pierce Brosnan's next Bond film is Pressure Point. This time the usual themes of world domination by megalomaniacal men take second place to the new film's
main story line: A woman loved and wronged by 007 is the villain. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned by Bond, James Bond.
Speaking of Brosnan and his role of 007, which he inherited from Sean Connery and Roger Moore, he says he does not want to grow old playing the man with the licence to kill.
He told London's Daily Mail: "I don't want people to watch me getting old and see my waist getting bigger and my hair thinner. That would be horrible."
THE MAIL ON SUNDAY
Nigel Dempster
THE EXPRESS,
Daily Variety
As a heroin user in "Trainspotting," Robert Carlyle felt
almost no pain. As the villain in the next James Bond
film he'll be feeling even less. The British actor has
signed on to play the villainous Renard, who has a bullet
lodged in his brain rendering him unable to feel pain, in
United Artists' "The World Is Not Enough," which
starts production in London on Jan. 11.
Sunday Mirror
NOW SPOT EWAN AS BOND'S BADDIE BOY
JAMES Bond will be forced to face up to his womanising past when his next deadly opponent is unmasked as his own illegitimate son.
THE PLOT THICKENS FOR JASON AND 007
Friday, September 4, 1998
by John Lyttle
PIERCE'S PRESSURE POINT
The Toronto Sun, August 23, 1998
BY: LIZ SMITH
WILL THE BOND BEAUTIES LIVE TWICE?
by Baz Bamigboye
DAILY MAIL (UK) This may well leave 007 serioulsy (but seductively) stirred, for all the Bond girls from the 18 spy thrillers made over the past four decades will gather for the last Bond picture of the century, James Bond No 19 starts filming at the end of the year, with Pierce Brosnan and Robbie Coltrane in the leading roles, but the film's producers also want to honour the actresses who have draped themselves over Ian Fleming's famous spy over the decades.
It was secret and very hush-hush -- till now -- but I can reveal that Bond film executives will be approaching the likes of Ursula Andress, who famously strode out of the surf wearing only a white bikini and a knife for Sean Connery's first outing as Bond in Dr No, 36 years ago.
Pussy Galore is the name most folk particularly remember and she was memorably portrayed by Honour Blackman in Goldfinger in 1964; Shirley Eaton, her body painted in gold, shone in the same movie.
Others being pursued by producers and casting agents around the globe include Jill St.John from Diamonds Are Forever in 1971, Jane Seymour from Live and Let Die, and let us not forget Britt Ekland and Maud Adams in The Man With the Golden Gun.
Barbara Bach took no nonsense from Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me and it's hoped she'll agree to a cameo spot in the new Bond Picture.
There will, however, be a poignant moment when the film's researchers come to the name Cassandra Harris, who appeared with Moore in For Your Eyes Only. She ws married to Brosnan but died on 1991 after a long illness.
Later Bond girls were less exciting -- who remembers Tanya Roberts in A View To A Kill? At the time, I was more taken with the dangerous bad girl Grace Jones as May Day.
Maryam D'Abo bored the Living Daylights out of audiences, as did Carey Lowell and Talisa Soto in Licence To Kill, opposite Timothy Dalton.
There were plenty of thrills, though, with Izabella scorupco and Famke Janssen in GoldenEye and Michell Yeoh in the last Bond flick Tomorrow Never Dies. The plan is for the 'girls' to do fleeting walk-on parts in the picture, which Michael Apted will direct.
The current script has Bond going underground as he attempts to unearth corruption at every top of the British and Russian spy agencies.
Daily Variety (US) Director Michael Apted is in negotiations to take the helm of United Artists' next James Bond film, tentatively titled "Bond 19."
The film, which is produced by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, is the followup to "Tomorrow Never Dies" and will be UA's 19th in its highly valuable series. U.K.-based screenwriting team Neal Purvis and Robert Wade penned the screenplay.
Bond 19 is slated to begin production in January, with Pierce Brosnan taking on the role of 007 for the third time, following "GoldenEye" and "Tomorrow Never Dies."
MGM/UA previously staked its claim to Nov. 19, 1999 as the release date of "Bond 19."
Mean woman blues
Though UA and the film's producers are keeping the film's storyline tightly under wraps, it's understood that James Bond's adversary in this installment may be a woman who has a personal grudge against the suave secret agent.
Numerically speaking, "Bond 19" fits in well with some of Apted's previous credits "14 Up," 21 Up," "28 Up," "35 Up" and the recently completed "42 Up," the latest in the long-running documentary series about a group of socio-economically diverse British schoolchildren.
Apted's previous feature credits include "Extreme Measures," "Nell," "Thunderheart," "Gorillas in the Mist," "Gorky Park" and "Coal Miner's Daughter."
The Brit director is finishing work on his sequel to "Inspirations," his documentary about the creative process told through the stories of seven celebrated artists. The docu shines a light on the scientific process.
Wedding, too
As his CAA reps negotiate the deal for "Bond 19," Apted is prepping his wedding to his longtime mate, screenwriter Dana Stevens ("Blink," "City of Angels"). The wedding is slated to take place this week in Los Angeles.
"Bond" will be Apted's next feature, which he may follow with "Enigma," a WWII era pic, scripted by Tom Stoppard and to be produced by Mick Jagger's Jagged Films and Lorne Michaels' Broadway Video.
Variety LONDON Britain's Millennium Dome may figure in the next James Bond film, perhaps even as a central element to the plot. Both the 007 production company, Eon Prods., and the New Millennium Experience, the company in charge of building the giant millennium project at Greenwich in South London, have confirmed that the dome is being considered as a site for the 19th Bond picture, which is set for release in November 1999. Some industry insiders say the script of the next Bond entails Pierce Brosnan as 007 saving the $1.2 billion dome -- and the tens of thousands of guests inside -- from a terrorist attack on New Year's Eve 1999. An Eon spokesperson, however, said that the dome was "not the theme of the next Bond" film and that the script was still being formulated. A representative for the New Millenium Experience added that nothing was certain but "we'd love to get involved." The next 007 feature -- to be directed by veteran British filmmaker Michael Apted ("Gorillas in the Mist," "Nell") -- will begin shooting at Pinewood studios outside London in January.
Reuters/Variety ^REUTERS