In an interview with The
Times today, Michell gives a detailed account of
his brief experience with the 007 production team, and
why he walked away from directing Bond 22 and a reported
$8m pay check.
"Well," he says. "I did
give up directing the Bond film. And it wasn’t quite
$8 million but it was a lot of money. It was because in
the end I didn’t feel comfortable with the Bond process,
and I was very nervous that there was a start date but
really no script at all. And I like to be very well prepared
as a director." "The Bond people - who are lovely - are
used to going into these massive productions in quite a
chaotic way: ‘Oh, we’ll fix that later.’ I
panicked about this. And it was starting to make me feel
very, very unhappy about what I was doing and who I was.
The more the money went up, the worse it made me feel."
"I felt a bit like the character in Landscape with
Weapon [a weapons designer who pulls out of a massive payday
after he gets cold feet about his work] and a little bit
like Doctor Faustus, and just decided eventually that I’d
be doing it for the wrong reasons. I’d be doing it
for my friendship with Daniel Craig (Michell and Daniel Craig
are no strangers, having teamed on the 2004 drama Enduring
Love) I’d be doing it for the money. And not really
because I yearned to do it." |
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Above: Director Roger Michell
Above: Roger Michell (centre) directs Daniel Craig (left)
in the 2004 movie Enduring Love
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