Quantum of Solace

Notes on what became “Quantum of Solace” that show glimpses of a more traditional Bond.

BOND 22 DRAFT 1: SCRIPT NOTES

HEADLINE NOTE

The big note is that we need to lose the quips. This time we’re keen to explore the human side of Bond. He’s learning how to trust again after Vesper’s betrayal. This Bond is not flippant. He’s hurting, and we want to go with him on his journey of revenge and healing.

SPECIFIC NOTES

Page 1-5: I love the opening. We’re right into the action and the story. We left Bond raging with grief at the death of Vesper Lynd, and that’s exactly how we should start this movie. I don’t think the car should have the oil spray or the side guns in the wheels though. We want this Bond to be more in the style of the Bourne movies – gritty and real etc.

Page 5: Take out the line “he got hung up” after Mitchell ends up hanging off the radio mast. As per our headline note, the new Bond doesn’t have that kind of cheesy humour any more. See also notes to pages 72, 75 and 127.

Page 10: I think we’re missing a trick by just using M as an opportunity for story exposition and banter. We need to build more of their relationship, and thread it throughout the film. She’s the one woman he doesn’t desire, which makes it interesting territory to explore. M is his moral heart, his conscience, the mother figure he longs for as a supplement to the meaningless sexual encounters that pepper his exploits. The audience have seen him sleep his way around the world with the hottest women on the planet, let’s see him connect with a woman emotionally.

Page 12: Sorry but we have to cut Q. I know we said try it, but it just doesn’t work, it feels like it’s from another film. And much as a motorbike that turns into a jetski would be fun, the gadgets Bond uses in this film should be his wits and his heart.

Page 16: Likewise we think our villain should be believable. Lose his use of paralysing pressure-points and the flick-knife in the Blackberry. When it comes to Dominic Greene, his weapon is power.

Page 27: As referenced in the note to page 12, cut the motorbike/jetski, and just make it a boat chase with boats. And not speedboats. Ordinary boats. Fishing vessels or tug boats. Once again, we need to keep it real. People will expect glitz and impossible stunts from a Bond boat chase. Let’s subvert their expectations with engines that don’t work and difficult steering. Let’s challenge the audience as well as Bond. Maybe his engine could overheat and blow up? It could end in a rowing chase. A fight with oars would be good, I don’t think we’ve done that before.

Page 32: The members of “The Organisation” meeting at midnight in the Louvre is good, and I can see why you did it that way, but I’m worried it’s a bit Da Vinci Code/Illuminati. Plus it’s behind closed doors. It would help with the tension if the meeting was in public, as it adds the risk of them being discovered. They could be on headsets. So it’s like a conference call in public. It’s just a different way of doing it, we’ve had enough secret meetings in Bond over the years. Some possible locations we knocked around were a boxing match, a bullfight, the opera, the ballet, a rock concert (with a famous band who can give us an extra song for the soundtrack), and the Winter Olympics (although Daniel’s not keen on skiing as that was Roger’s thing).

Page 44: Our current thinking is that Bond should not sleep with Camille. He’s still too vulnerable after the events of Casino Royale. I know Daniel wants to take it in this direction too, as it will give the character more depth for him to work with. We think it’s a good angle – the first Bond film where he doesn’t get the Bond girl!

Page 52: Can we make Mathis’s dialogue more like Mathis?

Page 61-72: The sniper in the nightclub/bike in the sewer chase/fight in the cathedral belltower sequence is fine, you’ve done a good job, apart from the quips – “he got hit in the bells” doesn’t even make sense. But it just feels a bit Bond-by-numbers. We’re mid-way through Act 2 here and I think we need to get back to what this film is really about – his grief over Vesper. Try a scene where he opens up with M or Mathis.

Page 75: Lose the innuendo line “what’s a strawberry without cream” after he seduces Strawberry Fields.

Page 82: Greene’s plan is way too unbelievable. I like the Antarctic as a location, although we did the Arctic in Die Another Day. But I don’t like him blowing up the ice sheet with a nuclear bomb to raise sea levels, then holding the world to ransom with his monopoly on flood barriers. When I said make this the “green” Bond I meant it to be much more connected to contemporary issues and less fantastical. Look at how Russia is holding Georgia to ransom over gas. It should be something like that. He’s a utility baron.

Page 91: Not sure M would say “Killing’s just a sport to you 007. Well unluckily for you, I’m the referee and I’m about to blow my whistle.” M would probably be more into the arts than sport. Maybe “Killing’s just a song to you. Well this conductor’s about to snap her baton.” Or is that too sexual? Have a think.

Page 92: Could they be on a bus instead of a tram? A bus seems more gritty. Bourne would be on a bus.

Page 97: Mathis dying is great! That’s going to hit the audience like a punch in the guts. We give them these characters they love, then we yank them away. And it’s great to pile the pressure on Bond. People always die around him, but this time it’s people he cares about. Every death is a severed connection that pushes him further into himself. And what everyone wants to know is, will he pull through, and in what state?

Page 101: Another reason to lose the Antarctic location – I don’t think we can pull off a fight using icicles as daggers. It’s way too hokey.

Page 116: Rather than a secret military base, can Greene and the General meet somewhere in keeping with our environmental theme? Now it’s not at the Antarctic it can be anywhere. The Eden Centre? An electric car factory? An eco-building with hydrogen fuel cells – we may be rebooting Bond but we still like explosions! Just don’t end the scene with him saying “business is booming” or “bang for your buck”.

Page 122: The final showdown with Greene should be a regular fistfight. As noted earlier, no special fighting skills, and no gadgets! So he doesn’t paralyse Bond with his double rib jab, and Bond doesn’t kill him with the mini-grenade in the phone earpiece. I just want to see two guys slugging it out.

Page 125: The coda with Vesper’s boyfriend works really well. It’s exactly the kind of emotional denouement we were looking for. This is a Bond whose flesh bleeds and whose heart can be broken. I think the trick is to thread this kind of approach throughout the script.

Page 127: Since he’s not going to sleep with Camille we can lose this last scene where they have sex on the Millennium Wheel at night. Although it does have my favourite quip – “How can I look at Big Ben when I’ve got big James to play with?” – it was great because you gave it to her which is a twist on our usual innuendo.

As you know we still need to nail down a title. Here are the current options, feel free to pitch in with suggestions. Some of these are pretty good, some are way off, but we find it helpful to blue sky at this stage.

Revenge Is A Dish

Spies Cry Too

Only The Earth

Love Dies Hard

Oil On Water

Tomorrow Dies Today

Dance Of Deceit

Planetary Conspiracy

Flood Of Lies

Sacrificial Instrument

Silence Of Despair

Mission To Love

Mission To Kill

Lies Of Concealment

Heart Of Resolve

Pending Assignment

Sign Of The Crimes

Who Killed Vesper?

Liason Of Futility

Associate Nemesis

Projected Returns

Interested Parties

Debt Repaid

Agent Of Isolation

The Fellowship of the Ring

Below are broad script notes for an unspecified draft of “The Fellowship of the Ring”.

First of all we all want to say what a great job you did on the latest draft. We can really see this script coming together. That said there are still some areas we feel need addressing to make this movie the massive success we all want it to be. These are the broad strokes taken from a conference call we had last week, we’ll send through a more detailed page by page breakdown when we’ve had all our notes collated into one document.

The prologue with the voiceover works really well at setting up the world of Middle-Earth and introducing Sauron and the Ring. In fact it works so well, we wondered if the voiceover could continue throughout, just to explain the more complicated moments. For example the Council of Elrond scene introduces a lot of new characters in a short space of time. A brief freeze frame and a voiceover would help with this. If you feel that’s too Guy Ritchie, how about a subtitle in the same font that we use for the writing on the Ring? It could tell the audience the character’s name and ethnic origin i.e. Legolas, Elf etc.

We love the authenticity of the Elvish speech, but it might be a little disorientating for the audience. Could the elves speak in English, but with an Elvish accent? We were thinking French or Italian would do the trick.

Do the wizards need to be so old? With Harry Potter coming out a month before us we don’t want to suffer from an audience wanting young wizards. We’re not saying they should be kids, but just not so old. We know you’re pushing for Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and while he’s a great stage actor, we were thinking someone like Richard Gere might be more suitable in terms of box office recognition.

The fights. No-one’s made this kid of fighting fantasy films since the Conan movies and Sword and the Sorceror. Since then we’ve had The Matrix, which changed the way movie fights are blocked and shot, and we really feel our trilogy should reflect that. So can the fights all be shot in “bullet time”?

Whilst we’re all huge fans of Enya we’re not sure that two songs from her is the way to go. We want the end of the film to be rousing, we want people leaping from their seats and yelling “Bring on The Two Towers!” So we’d like to suggest something more contemporary and edgy like Limp Bizkit, or something more classic with a foot in the fighting fantasy genre, like Meatloaf.

Could we bring Aragorn forward? He’s the “action-hero” of the film and we’re worried the first thirty minutes may be a little slow without him. Could he take over Gandalf’s role at Bilbo’s party and they meet Gandalf later on at Bree? Or could Aragorn be living in Hobbiton?

You’ve spoken of the Ring being a character in the films, should it speak?

Likewise it’s called “The Fellowship of the Ring” but they don’t form this Fellowship till halfway through the movie. Could they all be friends at the beginning, in the Shire? Basically we think the film really starts when they get to Rivendell, so let’s try and move all that to the start of the movie. It means we can see the journey of the characters from the beginning.

Could some of the Fellowship be women? We love what you’ve done with Arwen in bringing that love story to the fore, and understand that will be expanded in the remaining two films, but we could do with a bit more romance up front. Any problem with making Sam a woman? We don’t even need to change the name!

We think the Cave Troll or the Balrog should be Sauron. He’s like the Darth Vader of the movie, and Gandalf is like the Obi-Wan, so if Sauron was the one to kill Gandalf that would be really neat. Otherwise we don’t really have a clear idea who our villain is.

Any thoughts on comic relief? We noticed that you didn’t seem to push this in the current draft, and we still feel it’s important in selling the movie to as wide an audience as possible. Obviously Jar-Jar Binks was a disaster so we all know the pitfalls. But Joe Pesci in the Lethal Weapon movies, and Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom worked really well, so we’d like you to consider this again. Maybe look at goofing up Gollum? As it is he’s not really doing anything in this movie, although you say that he’s more central in parts two and three.

Harvey wants you to clarify how short a dwarf is. Are they shorter than hobbits? Are we talking Verne Troyer for Gimli? Apologies if we’ve covered this, but there are a lot of parts to cast in this film and Harvey has his plate full with multiple projects as you can imagine.

And that’s it! Great job guys, we really are getting there.

Fawlty Towers

The infamous internal BBC memo slating the first script of “Fawlty Towers”.

From: Comedy Script Editor, Light Entertainment, Television

Date: 29.5.1974

I’m afraid I thought this one as dire as its title.

It’s a kind of “Prince of Denmark” of the hotel world. A collection of cliches and stock characters which I can’t see being anything but a disaster.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

What follows below are notes from an exec on a draft of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Thankfully Lucas and Spielberg ignored pretty much all of this, although film buffs may spot that they seem to have taken one of the suggestions and used it nearly thirty years later in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.

I don’t like the opening crossfade from the Paramount logo to the mountain. We should open on the hero’s face. The way you have it we’re only going to see his back for the first five minutes. And we should know his name, otherwise the audience can’t engage with him. Something like this

MAN                Hey Dr Indiana, what are you a doctor of?

INDIANA        It’s Dr Jones. Indiana is my first name. And I’m a Doctor of Archaeology.

That way the audience knows everything they need to know in a really succinct way.

I’m not sure he should be an archaeologist, no-one can relate to that. I’ve never met an archaeologist in my life, so why should I care about him. Maybe he could be a spy whose hobby is archaeology? Or better still, a cop who likes history.

Not sure about the hat. Either he has a hat and he’s a cowboy, or he doesn’t have a hat and he’s not a cowboy. See my note about him being a cop.

Whip? What is he, a lion tamer? No. Lose the whip.

I don’t like that he’s scared of snakes. No-one wants to see a hero who’s scared of stuff. He should bite the snake’s head off and spit the poison at the guys chasing him. Or throw it into the propeller of the plane. And he should be flying the plane. Or at least the plane should be piloted by a hot woman he then has sex with. It’s five minutes in and there’s no love interest!  I’m thinking of this like the opening of a Bond film. So he should kill some guys and have sex. In fact he should probably also get that golden idol he was after. Otherwise I can’t see the audience warming to this guy. Think about it, in the opening sequence we see him lose out to some Frenchman, get chased by a bunch of semi-naked guys in the jungle, and bitch about how he doesn’t like snakes. Result – your hero comes across like a pussy.

You then cut from him as a cowboy in the jungle to him as a teacher! I don’t buy it, it’s too confusing. Who is this guy? Is he a teacher, or an archaeologist? He can’t be both. Like I say, I think he should be a cop.

Girl with writing on her eyelids – this is precisely why he should be a cop. Cause he’s a teacher he can’t take her out back and bone her. If he was a cop and she was a rookie that would give you your first love scene. Or second if we go for the chick in the plane.

Who’s the old guy Marcus Brody? Indy should have a younger sidekick. Someone headstrong and ballsy, to counteract him wimping around crying about snakes. Maybe cast Kurt Russell as Marcus Brody and have Indy as cowardly comic relief (Ned Beatty?)

This scene with the FBI is too long and boring. All this stuff about the Ark of the Covenant lost me. It should be Noah’s Ark, you’ve even got a line in there where one of the Feds gets confused. If a Federal Agent is going to get it mixed up, what chance for the average Joe on a Saturday night? He’s going to be more concerned about getting his hand under his date’s blouse, so let’s make it easy for him. Indy is on the search for Noah’s Ark, and he’s got to get it before Hitler because if he doesn’t there’s going to be another flood. There you go, that’s your jeopardy and your ticking clock all rolled into one.

I don’t like the scene with Indy and Marcus at Indy’s house. Two guys talking in a bedroom? We cut to a bedroom, we want to see hot women. Make it Indy talking to his girlfriend about how he’s got to go on a mission, she says “Let’s make this night count then” – badaboosh! Love scene number 3.

Do we need the montage with him travelling on the plane and the red line on the map? Why not just cut straight to China. Or Nepal. Or wherever it is. Japan, that’s it. Cut to Japan. I think the travel montage will be dead time.

The bar scene is good, and at last we’ve got a woman in it. But it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty dingy bar. Could it be a cocktail bar?

Seeing as how it’s in Japan, I think it would be really cool if Indy fought a Ninja or a Samurai, or hey, what about both?

As it’s now about Noah’s Ark you can cut this headpiece crap. He should be looking for the sail or the rudder or the anchor.

If you’re still crazy about the Nazi burning his hand on something maybe make it’s something small that could be heated, like a compass. Now you might say, would Noah’s Ark have had a compass? I think so, the Greeks had all sorts of shit worked out back then.

Could Sallah be a woman? Love rival for Indy? She could work as a belly dancer in the Nazi camp. That’s how he/she gets them in.

I love the stuff with the monkey, but what about we make it a bigger monkey that could help Indy out in fights? My pal Don Battatello produced those two trucking movies with Clint Eastwood and the monkey. I think he’s still got the monkey in a cage in his yard for the kids. Let me look into it.

This fight and chase in the market is awesome. Just an idea though, rather than them bickering and not really getting on before the baddies attack, should they be about to get it on? Or just about to get married, it would up the jeopardy. As it stands, if I was wandering round with an ex who was chewing my ear off about what an asshole I was, I’d be glad if some Nazis took her away and blew her up in a truck.

The monkey betrays her? No no no! Monkeys are cute. You don’t get evil monkeys. In fact, how about there are monkeys in the jungle at the beginning, and they help him fight those guys with the blow pipes? Indy could swing on a vine and do a Tarzan cry, it would be exciting and hilarious!

A drunk guy in a bar is confronted by his enemy and it doesn’t end in a barroom fight! You guys are going all free jazz here. This scene has got to end with Belloc and Indy swinging on lights and breaking chairs on each other. If you want to have kids break it up, have the kids fight like they’re from a kung-fu school (or whatever the Arab equivalent is), they can’t just wander in and walk him out, it’s boring.

Does it have to be an old ugly guy reading the headpiece/anchor? How about he’s blind and his hot granddaughter has to read it for him? Love scene number 4!

You want to kill the monkey!!! No frickin’ way! Kids love monkeys, they don’t love dead monkeys! The monkey lives! If you have to kill someone in this scene, kill the old guy. No-one gives a shit about old people.

Indy finds Marion and leaves her? What kind of a hero is this? Does this guy not like women? You know what I’m saying? You want to make that kind of movie, there’s another place to take this script – Europe. Either he bones her in the tent, or he takes her with him and bones her somewhere else. Or both. Love scenes 5 and possibly 6!

I’ve reread this Well of Souls scene about twenty times and it don’t make no sense to me. It’s a well, but there’s no water? Maybe it’s a typo, should it be “Wall of Souls”?

It’s full of snakes? Come on guys, now we’re going to have ten minutes of him wussing about and pissing his panties. If you want the snakes then he can’t be scared of them. He should say “I fear nothing”, jump down, and next thing you know there’s snakemeat all over the walls. By the way, don’t use real snakes. They cost like shitloads, and I’m actually not too keen on them myself. If you’ve got a load of live snakes crawling about, I might not make it on to set!

It’s okay that she mistakes his whip for a snake, but it’s a missed opportunity for more love scenes. How about she waves the torch at his crotch and he goes “Hey there sweetheart, you’re going for the one snake in this room that doesn’t bite!” Boom! Love scene number 7.

Rather than smash through the wall by smashing a statue into it, could he knock it down with his fists? Just a thought. He is a super-strong robot isn’t he? Or is that from another script I’m reading? Oh yeah, it is. Some piece of shit about a time-travelling cyborg. Forget it.

Rather than fighting one guy that’s way tougher than him, how about he fights about twenty guys that are all as soft as Ernest Borgnine’s six pack?

Who wants to see a chase with a truck? Not me. Motorbikes please.

Jesus this truck chase goes on. There’s pages and pages of this crap. He’s on the horse, then he’s on the truck, then he’s in the truck, then he’s on the front of the truck, then he’s under the truck, then he’s behind the truck, then he’s back in the truck. You know what this sequence screams to me – PISS BREAK!

I love that the truck drives into the square and all the Arabs hide it and try and sell the Krauts fruit. That is so true. I went to Egypt on vacation and those bastards will screw you like a paranoid Jack Nicholson who thinks his dick is going to turn into a Twinkie at midnight.

She kisses him for the first time on page 102? Have you lost your frickin’ minds!!! Audiences will hate this, they got to get it on way sooner, see my earlier suggestions. And no way should he fall asleep as they’re just about to have sex. Not unless you want your audience to think he’d rather be sharing a bunk with one of the sailors, if you know what I mean. Let me spell it out – right now Indy comes across like a fag!

Wait, he swims from the boat to the sub, then he climbs on the sub, then the sub dives and he’s on some island? Am I missing a page? What happened? Is he that good at holding his breath? He better be, cause this sequence stinks!

The getting into the Nazi costume and it being too small is great, but I reckon it could go on longer. Something I always love is a montage of a character trying on different kinds of clothes. That would be great here, and a good opportunity to get a song in. I play poker with Fleetwood Mac’s manager, I reckon I can get him to let us have Don’t Stop for this sequence. It could be Indy trying on Nazi stuff and Marion trying on dresses. Make for a great promo video. Who are you thinking of for the soundtrack? Don’t say John Williams, the guy’s a jerk. I worked with him on Superman. I sent him tapes of me humming what I wanted, I don’t think the prick even listened to them.

I don’t get it, why doesn’t Indy blow the Ark up with the rocket launcher? He might want to open it and see what’s inside, but the audience sure don’t. Not when they can see a Nazi-loving Frog getting his nuts blown off instead.

Okay, you lost me, what the fuck is in this Ark? It’s sand, then all these angels fly out, then they get scary? This is all over the place. It’s like you ran out of ideas and couldn’t decide what to do. How about there’s a monster in there. You see that film Alien? Pretty slow, and they ignored my advice that the chick shouldn’t be the hero, but the little alien was cool. How about one of those flies out and starts fighting people?

That fat Fed tells Indy “top men” are working on it and Indy takes it! He should slam that fucks head down on the table and scream “Top men are going to be needed to put you back together when I’ve beaten you like a Mexican housekeeper for not letting me investigate that Ark and all the little aliens that keep flying out of it!” Then the Fed tells him where the Ark is and Indy goes and bones Marion on top of it. After he’s killed the aliens. Or maybe during. People like sex and fighting in movies, we should end with both. Maybe Marion’s an alien so he bones her then shoots her? Or is that just what I want to do to my ex-wife.

Anyway, if I have any more thoughts I’ll let you know. It’s a neat idea, but it needs a lot of work. You guys might think you know what you’re doing on account of you having made Jaws and Star Wars, but you know how I feel about those movies because you read my notes – it should have been a flying shark, and you should have had some kid Jedis. Okay you did it your way and you made a lot of money. But think how much more money you would have made if you’d have done it my way. But hey, what do I know? Fuckin’ everything, that’s what. That’s why I’m in charge of a studio and you bums sit around playing with your pieces.

PS I checked with Don about the Eastwood monkey and it died. But I still think we should have a big fighting monkey. I know all that crap about not working with children and animals, so why don’t we just get a guy in a suit. Cheaper, plus he can feed himself. According to Don monkeys are total shit at fending for themselves.