Movie Trivia: Daniel Craig in “Flashbacks of a Fool”
Posted on April 16th, 2008 by Liz N.
Within a few short years, Daniel Craig has risen from British acting obscurity to become one of the most famous icons in the world. His performance as James Bond was as controversial as it was different from every actor who came before him, but Casino Royale was a critical and box office success. But according to a recent interview with the Associated Press, he’s not letting it go to his head.
Midway through filming the upcoming Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond took some time out of his schedule to attend the London premiere of another movie he stars in - Flashbacks of a Fool.
According to Craig, it’s a story about a dissolusioned actor who “has failed as a human being, and I wanted to explore that.” MSN Movies says:
A coming-of-age drama centered on Joe’s teenage years in the 1970s, the film veers — at times erratically — between wistfulness, tragedy and spiky humor. It has a strong British cast that includes Helen McRory, Olivia Williams and Harry Eden as the young Joe, a soundtrack of vintage David Bowie and Roxy Music, and fantastic seaside scenery — set in a suspiciously sunny English seaside town. It was actually filmed in South Africa.
Craig said the film was “a personal journey” for him.
“The film touches on a lot of things we all went through — electrifying moments when you’re a teenager which form who you are as a human being,” Craig said. “I think [director and longtime friend] Baille [Walsh] has captured that so well.”
“I hit 40 this year, but I still think about being a teenager, and hopefully I will for the rest of my life.”
Craig says that if he can use his newfound fame to promote small projects like this that he can “be proud of,” then all the hassle of being a superstar will be worth it.
An anonymous reviewer called “The Man With No Plan” wrote in to AICN after having attended the premiere: “Overall I thought the film was an amazing film, very powerful, and at points very moving…The actors were all superb, a high quality cast that were never flat or 2-dimensional. Special praise should be showered on the children actors, who were fantastic in portraying the central characters in their formative years.”
Sounds like Craig is right to be proud.
www.kwanzoo.com
News tidbits
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Germangirl
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From Daily Mail today (apologies if this is here already)
He's made the astonishing transition from being an unknown actor growing up in an English seaside town to becoming the toast of Hollywood.
But now he's turned 40, and his body is ravaged by an excess of drink, drugs and debauchery.
His face, with its taut jawline, once had only to stare moodily from his latest movie poster and a billion seats were sold.
But now, the dark bags under his eyes and the crows-feet pattern around them have to be disguised by heavy make-up lest the camera betrays to the few people who remember his heady fame that here is a star slowly imploding.
His name, which once blazed outside cinemas in megawatt lights is now little more than a flickering candle.
"Such is the transient business of fame," reflects Daniel Craig sadly.
"But when it all goes wrong, it happens very easily and very quickly, and nobody's immune."
Craig, it has to be said at once, is not talking about himself but Joe Scott, the faded movie star he plays in his latest film, Flashbacks Of A Fool.
There are some similarities, though.
Firstly, Craig is also 40; an English actor who rose out of a relatively minor league to become a major star and the darling of Tinseltown.
He is riding high in Hollywood for breaking all box office records for his portrayal of 007 in Casino Royale, and, with the help of an impressive six-pack and a tight pair of blue swimming trunks, turned himself into a pin-up all over the world.
And, he admits, he does sometimes wear a little eye make-up, although strictly for professional reasons.
But any similarities between Daniel Craig and the fictitious Joe Scott come to an end here - although, as we shall learn later, there may be other points of past biographical reference.
In all other respects - drink, drugs, faded looks, a penchant for hookers and a career on the skids - they are polar opposites.
However, Craig - clear-eyed and in splendid physical shape when we meet this week during a break in filming for his second Bond movie, Quantum Of Solace - confesses that he could turn into Scott if he isn't careful.
"Flashbacks Of A Fool is in part about a guy who has taken wrong turnings, in his life and career, and hasn't managed his life properly," he says.
"I could still do that. I could still make those mistakes and take those wrong turnings.
"Who knows how things might go for me? Who knows what the future holds? What I do know is that you can take nothing absolutely nothing, for granted and you have to work hard at not becoming disillusioned at what you do for a living.
"If you have had any kind of success - and there's no question Joe Scott has enjoyed the big time as an actor in the past if his Malibu mansion is anything to go by - you have to strive to retain the appetite, energy and love for the work you're going to be doing in the future.
"If you can keep that enthusiasm, you've really cracked it. The problem for Joe is that he hasn't just lost interest in the acting business in which he works, but in living, full stop. And, thankfully, I am a very long way from either of those things.
"But the state in which Joe finds himself, his failure as a human being, fascinated me - it was a primary reason for me wanting to do this picture. I wanted to explore his decline and fall."
Flashbacks Of A Fool is the brainchild of his close friend, Baillie Walsh, who wrote the story specifically with Craig in mind.
So how much of Daniel's own life is contained in the film? The movie - as the title suggests - is told partly in flashback, the audience seeing a teenage version of Daniel's character during his formative years in an English seaside town. (Baillie grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.)
It is an era of glam rock and evocative music, and bands such as Roxy Music and David Bowie feature heavily on the soundtrack.
The younger Joe, played by 18-year-old Harry Eden, becomes passionately involved with an older woman, Evelyn, (Jodhi May) sacrificing his relationship with the young and beautiful Ruth (Felicity Jones) in the process.
To what extent is this bit biographical, either deliberately or inadvertently? Did Daniel whisper in Baillie Walsh's ear, when he was writing the movie, and give him a few pointers as to his early life?
Was there a Ruth when he was growing up in Liverpool? Or an Evelyn? The notoriously taciturn Craig gives me an icy stare.
"Maybe there was," he growls.
Would you care to expand on that? This time an iceberg floats between us.
"No, it wouldn't be fair."
Later I ask the same question, but in a different way. I wondered if the flashback scenes with the women mirrored his own experience.
"Well, if I were being perfectly honest," he begins... then there is a long pause before the shutters come down.
"But I'm not going to be perfectly honest."
The dilemma for Craig is that he hates talking about himself only marginally less than he hates the intrusiveness that is the inevitable consequence of fame.
Daniel does a very good job at keeping his private life to himself, and he isn't afraid to complain publicly if he thinks the line has been crossed.
"The character I play in Flashbacks has driven himself into a corner and I can relate to that. I can understand him wanting to hide away from everything because that's what I want to do.
"People seem always to be staring at me, and that does get me down."
What is known about Craig's background is that he was born in Chester, and raised in Liverpool, the son of Timothy, a publican, and Olivia, an art teacher.
His parents divorced, but he insists he and his elder sister, Lea, were brought up with stability and love.
He wanted to be an actor from an early age.
"My mother found a school essay I had written when I was six, saying exactly that, although she is sure I probably toyed with the idea of being a marine biologist and an astronaut, too."
It was Olivia who encouraged him to join the National Youth Theatre when he was 16, just out of school and uncertain what to do with his life. Three years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama followed.
His breakthrough role on TV was as George Peacock in the BAFTA-winning 1996 BBC drama Our Friends In The North, which chronicled the lives of four friends from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Movie work came next - he was Angelina Jolie's lover in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001.
However, most of his work has been in off-beat productions such as the 2003 British film The Mother in which, curiously, he played the toyboy lover of a woman old enough to be his grandmother.
When he landed the Bond role, it came as a complete surprise to everyone - not least himself.
And from then on his life was to change for ever.
"I used to be able to enjoy a couple of pints in a pub in complete anonymity, but now I can't. So what do I do? I have learned to drink faster and duck out before I'm surrounded."
He takes part in showbizzy red carpet events, albeit reluctantly - as he did for the premiere of Flashbacks Of A Fool - because he recognises they are necessary to promote his films. But he doesn't enjoy them.
"I don't think I will ever get used to this part of the job", he says.
"However, if my change of circumstance" - as he rather coyly describes his elevation from character actor to superstar - "can help to get movies that I believe in off the ground, then I'll do it".
Does Craig - who has a 15-year-old daughter, Ella, from his marriage to the actress Fiona Loudon and whose current partner is Japanese-American film producer Satsuki Mitchell - have any tips on how to stay on the straight and narrow in movieland?
"You need good people around you to survive - it's absolutely essential. You need to keep people you care about close to you. If you let them disappear from your life you're in trouble.
"The problem then is that you have no yardstick any more; you've nobody around to tell you that what you are doing is wrong, if indeed what you are doing is wrong.
"You have to stay connected to reality and you can do that through having good people, and good family members, around you."
Craig clearly took his own advice to heart - specifically the bit about staying close to those one cares about - when it came to making Flashbacks Of A Fool.
"I believed in Baillie Walsh, and he believed in me," he says simply.
"Anyway, friends stick by each other."
He had first met Walsh on the set of the 1998 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil.
"We hit it off straight away," he says.
"He's done a number of classic music videos for bands such as Massive Attack and I always believed he had it in him to make a great movie."
Walsh struggled to raise the £5.5million financing for Flashbacks Of A Fool.
It was only when Craig not only agreed to star in the wake of his Casino Royale success, but to be executive producer as well, that the project took off.
It had taken seven years to come to fruition, but it was only in the last two-and-a-half years, since Craig landed the James Bond role, that backers showed any real interest.
"I was shameless in exploiting my connection," says Craig.
"It worked, though. I'd made a promise to Baillie a long time ago that we would make this film together, and I was able to keep my word."
This week, at the premiere of their labour of love - Craig could have commanded £5million for a Hollywood movie, but industry gossip is that he chose to work for his friend for peanuts - it was interesting to watch his body language as he worked the crowds.
He might have been happy to promote the film, but he certainly wasn't comfortable.
He resembled a reclusive uncle who has been press-ganged into showing his face at a family gathering out of duty only, but clearly wishing he was somewhere else.
Later - sipping from a bottle of Corona beer - he visibly relaxed and laughed and joked with people.
But no doubt he was pondering the joys of one day being able to sink back into obscurity in the same way that his character Joe Scott does - albeit reluctantly, in Scott's case - in Flashbacks Of A Fool.
Except, in Craig's case, it would be a voluntary act, a deliberate move rather than the consequence of an embarrassing, drugfuelled fall from grace.
As a lover of theatre work and small independent films, not to mention his solitude, it would be less a case of skidding off the rails as moving quietly to an acting branch line.
As Craig says: "I don't want to leave a big mark. I want to succeed at what I'm doing, but that doesn't necessarily mean leaving a huge impression."
Especially if it means giving up the role he likes best: keeper of his own counsel.
• Flashbacks Of A Fool (15) is released in cinemas today.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1773
He's made the astonishing transition from being an unknown actor growing up in an English seaside town to becoming the toast of Hollywood.
But now he's turned 40, and his body is ravaged by an excess of drink, drugs and debauchery.
His face, with its taut jawline, once had only to stare moodily from his latest movie poster and a billion seats were sold.
But now, the dark bags under his eyes and the crows-feet pattern around them have to be disguised by heavy make-up lest the camera betrays to the few people who remember his heady fame that here is a star slowly imploding.
His name, which once blazed outside cinemas in megawatt lights is now little more than a flickering candle.
"Such is the transient business of fame," reflects Daniel Craig sadly.
"But when it all goes wrong, it happens very easily and very quickly, and nobody's immune."
Craig, it has to be said at once, is not talking about himself but Joe Scott, the faded movie star he plays in his latest film, Flashbacks Of A Fool.
There are some similarities, though.
Firstly, Craig is also 40; an English actor who rose out of a relatively minor league to become a major star and the darling of Tinseltown.
He is riding high in Hollywood for breaking all box office records for his portrayal of 007 in Casino Royale, and, with the help of an impressive six-pack and a tight pair of blue swimming trunks, turned himself into a pin-up all over the world.
And, he admits, he does sometimes wear a little eye make-up, although strictly for professional reasons.
But any similarities between Daniel Craig and the fictitious Joe Scott come to an end here - although, as we shall learn later, there may be other points of past biographical reference.
In all other respects - drink, drugs, faded looks, a penchant for hookers and a career on the skids - they are polar opposites.
However, Craig - clear-eyed and in splendid physical shape when we meet this week during a break in filming for his second Bond movie, Quantum Of Solace - confesses that he could turn into Scott if he isn't careful.
"Flashbacks Of A Fool is in part about a guy who has taken wrong turnings, in his life and career, and hasn't managed his life properly," he says.
"I could still do that. I could still make those mistakes and take those wrong turnings.
"Who knows how things might go for me? Who knows what the future holds? What I do know is that you can take nothing absolutely nothing, for granted and you have to work hard at not becoming disillusioned at what you do for a living.
"If you have had any kind of success - and there's no question Joe Scott has enjoyed the big time as an actor in the past if his Malibu mansion is anything to go by - you have to strive to retain the appetite, energy and love for the work you're going to be doing in the future.
"If you can keep that enthusiasm, you've really cracked it. The problem for Joe is that he hasn't just lost interest in the acting business in which he works, but in living, full stop. And, thankfully, I am a very long way from either of those things.
"But the state in which Joe finds himself, his failure as a human being, fascinated me - it was a primary reason for me wanting to do this picture. I wanted to explore his decline and fall."
Flashbacks Of A Fool is the brainchild of his close friend, Baillie Walsh, who wrote the story specifically with Craig in mind.
So how much of Daniel's own life is contained in the film? The movie - as the title suggests - is told partly in flashback, the audience seeing a teenage version of Daniel's character during his formative years in an English seaside town. (Baillie grew up in Clacton-on-Sea, Essex.)
It is an era of glam rock and evocative music, and bands such as Roxy Music and David Bowie feature heavily on the soundtrack.
The younger Joe, played by 18-year-old Harry Eden, becomes passionately involved with an older woman, Evelyn, (Jodhi May) sacrificing his relationship with the young and beautiful Ruth (Felicity Jones) in the process.
To what extent is this bit biographical, either deliberately or inadvertently? Did Daniel whisper in Baillie Walsh's ear, when he was writing the movie, and give him a few pointers as to his early life?
Was there a Ruth when he was growing up in Liverpool? Or an Evelyn? The notoriously taciturn Craig gives me an icy stare.
"Maybe there was," he growls.
Would you care to expand on that? This time an iceberg floats between us.
"No, it wouldn't be fair."
Later I ask the same question, but in a different way. I wondered if the flashback scenes with the women mirrored his own experience.
"Well, if I were being perfectly honest," he begins... then there is a long pause before the shutters come down.
"But I'm not going to be perfectly honest."
The dilemma for Craig is that he hates talking about himself only marginally less than he hates the intrusiveness that is the inevitable consequence of fame.
Daniel does a very good job at keeping his private life to himself, and he isn't afraid to complain publicly if he thinks the line has been crossed.
"The character I play in Flashbacks has driven himself into a corner and I can relate to that. I can understand him wanting to hide away from everything because that's what I want to do.
"People seem always to be staring at me, and that does get me down."
What is known about Craig's background is that he was born in Chester, and raised in Liverpool, the son of Timothy, a publican, and Olivia, an art teacher.
His parents divorced, but he insists he and his elder sister, Lea, were brought up with stability and love.
He wanted to be an actor from an early age.
"My mother found a school essay I had written when I was six, saying exactly that, although she is sure I probably toyed with the idea of being a marine biologist and an astronaut, too."
It was Olivia who encouraged him to join the National Youth Theatre when he was 16, just out of school and uncertain what to do with his life. Three years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama followed.
His breakthrough role on TV was as George Peacock in the BAFTA-winning 1996 BBC drama Our Friends In The North, which chronicled the lives of four friends from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
Movie work came next - he was Angelina Jolie's lover in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in 2001.
However, most of his work has been in off-beat productions such as the 2003 British film The Mother in which, curiously, he played the toyboy lover of a woman old enough to be his grandmother.
When he landed the Bond role, it came as a complete surprise to everyone - not least himself.
And from then on his life was to change for ever.
"I used to be able to enjoy a couple of pints in a pub in complete anonymity, but now I can't. So what do I do? I have learned to drink faster and duck out before I'm surrounded."
He takes part in showbizzy red carpet events, albeit reluctantly - as he did for the premiere of Flashbacks Of A Fool - because he recognises they are necessary to promote his films. But he doesn't enjoy them.
"I don't think I will ever get used to this part of the job", he says.
"However, if my change of circumstance" - as he rather coyly describes his elevation from character actor to superstar - "can help to get movies that I believe in off the ground, then I'll do it".
Does Craig - who has a 15-year-old daughter, Ella, from his marriage to the actress Fiona Loudon and whose current partner is Japanese-American film producer Satsuki Mitchell - have any tips on how to stay on the straight and narrow in movieland?
"You need good people around you to survive - it's absolutely essential. You need to keep people you care about close to you. If you let them disappear from your life you're in trouble.
"The problem then is that you have no yardstick any more; you've nobody around to tell you that what you are doing is wrong, if indeed what you are doing is wrong.
"You have to stay connected to reality and you can do that through having good people, and good family members, around you."
Craig clearly took his own advice to heart - specifically the bit about staying close to those one cares about - when it came to making Flashbacks Of A Fool.
"I believed in Baillie Walsh, and he believed in me," he says simply.
"Anyway, friends stick by each other."
He had first met Walsh on the set of the 1998 Francis Bacon biopic Love Is The Devil.
"We hit it off straight away," he says.
"He's done a number of classic music videos for bands such as Massive Attack and I always believed he had it in him to make a great movie."
Walsh struggled to raise the £5.5million financing for Flashbacks Of A Fool.
It was only when Craig not only agreed to star in the wake of his Casino Royale success, but to be executive producer as well, that the project took off.
It had taken seven years to come to fruition, but it was only in the last two-and-a-half years, since Craig landed the James Bond role, that backers showed any real interest.
"I was shameless in exploiting my connection," says Craig.
"It worked, though. I'd made a promise to Baillie a long time ago that we would make this film together, and I was able to keep my word."
This week, at the premiere of their labour of love - Craig could have commanded £5million for a Hollywood movie, but industry gossip is that he chose to work for his friend for peanuts - it was interesting to watch his body language as he worked the crowds.
He might have been happy to promote the film, but he certainly wasn't comfortable.
He resembled a reclusive uncle who has been press-ganged into showing his face at a family gathering out of duty only, but clearly wishing he was somewhere else.
Later - sipping from a bottle of Corona beer - he visibly relaxed and laughed and joked with people.
But no doubt he was pondering the joys of one day being able to sink back into obscurity in the same way that his character Joe Scott does - albeit reluctantly, in Scott's case - in Flashbacks Of A Fool.
Except, in Craig's case, it would be a voluntary act, a deliberate move rather than the consequence of an embarrassing, drugfuelled fall from grace.
As a lover of theatre work and small independent films, not to mention his solitude, it would be less a case of skidding off the rails as moving quietly to an acting branch line.
As Craig says: "I don't want to leave a big mark. I want to succeed at what I'm doing, but that doesn't necessarily mean leaving a huge impression."
Especially if it means giving up the role he likes best: keeper of his own counsel.
• Flashbacks Of A Fool (15) is released in cinemas today.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1773
I don't know what the question is, but Daniel Craig is the answer
Flashbacks Of A Fool
Flashbacks Of A Fool
AS the lights were dimming for the beginning of Daniel Craig’s new movie, a female voice behind The Sneak said: “If he doesn’t get naked I won’t be happy.”
She didn’t have to worry. In a matter of frames the man also known as 007 was enjoying a threesome and showing off his well-toned body.
Anyone who loved Casino Royale because of Craig’s infamous swimming trunk shot will wet themselves over his portrayal of womanising, washed-up, cocaine-snorting actor Joe Scot. And those who admire Craig’s acting will also be pleased, because the often-serious star shows he can do biting humour.
But they will be disappointed that he only appears in a third of the film, which is a nostalgia trip into the Seventies.
The main plot is the seduction of a teenage Scot (Harry Eden) by needy, married neighbour Evelyn (an excellent Jodhi May), which has terrible consequences.
This tale of regret is strong on dialogue but never really grips and it is unlikely to leave you with many flashbacks of the film once you have left the cinema.
Although, maybe a few women won’t be able to get the sight of Craig’s buttocks out of their heads.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sh ... 056407.ece
AS the lights were dimming for the beginning of Daniel Craig’s new movie, a female voice behind The Sneak said: “If he doesn’t get naked I won’t be happy.”
She didn’t have to worry. In a matter of frames the man also known as 007 was enjoying a threesome and showing off his well-toned body.
Anyone who loved Casino Royale because of Craig’s infamous swimming trunk shot will wet themselves over his portrayal of womanising, washed-up, cocaine-snorting actor Joe Scot. And those who admire Craig’s acting will also be pleased, because the often-serious star shows he can do biting humour.
But they will be disappointed that he only appears in a third of the film, which is a nostalgia trip into the Seventies.
The main plot is the seduction of a teenage Scot (Harry Eden) by needy, married neighbour Evelyn (an excellent Jodhi May), which has terrible consequences.
This tale of regret is strong on dialogue but never really grips and it is unlikely to leave you with many flashbacks of the film once you have left the cinema.
Although, maybe a few women won’t be able to get the sight of Craig’s buttocks out of their heads.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sh ... 056407.ece
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007Mania
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- Contact:
Re: Flashbacks Of A Fool
Misha wrote:Although, maybe a few women won’t be able to get the sight of Craig’s buttocks out of their heads.
Only a few? 
Oh, Mr. Bond!
"Nur du und ich... und 400 Papageien."
"Nur du und ich... und 400 Papageien."
Re: Flashbacks Of A Fool
007Mania wrote:Misha wrote:Although, maybe a few women won’t be able to get the sight of Craig’s buttocks out of their heads.
I can't wait to see this scene. I can only hope I can't get it out of my head. Maybe now the reporters will have something to talk about besides the blue trunks. This will probably dog him just as badly. What a great friend he is though...I'm sure he went as far as he did in this scene to get people into the theaters for Baillie.
My books!
Actor Ewan McGregor Speaks Out About His Cancer Scare
""McGregor is currently filming the movie "I, Lucifer" with co-star Daniel Craig. He resides in London with his wife and three daughters.""
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010721015
""McGregor is currently filming the movie "I, Lucifer" with co-star Daniel Craig. He resides in London with his wife and three daughters.""
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010721015
"They're going to shoot in Gargnano and Limone until 25 april. Daniel Craig is resting in London after filming in Siena and Chile, but he'll be available to shoot some reverse shots if the weather is good. It's almost sure he'll be in Carrara between april 25 and may 13, where they'll film some important scenes in the very famous quarries of marble, with a flying camera (I think they'll use cables)."
spoilertv-movies.blogspot.com/2008/04/quantum-of-solace-opening-scene-details.html
spoilertv-movies.blogspot.com/2008/04/quantum-of-solace-opening-scene-details.html
Glad he is fine.JoniJoni wrote:Actor Ewan McGregor Speaks Out About His Cancer Scare
""McGregor is currently filming the movie "I, Lucifer" with co-star Daniel Craig. He resides in London with his wife and three daughters.""
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010721015
So, is it back on again with Daniel and "I, Lucifer"?
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Germangirl
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It seems to me not very likable, that this film is being shot right now, because Daniel wouldn´t be able to shoot anything but Bond till the end of June and if Ewan is filming right now - with a two or even three months gap in between - sound not really logical.sharmaine wrote:If so....I would LOVE to see that! Those two would be quite the dynamic....I imagine lots of interesting dialogue.
But then, we never know for sure.
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
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PAMELA BRAMMER
- Posts: 490
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News titbits
According to Screenrush.co.uk:
Flashbacks of a Fool DVD out 4th August 2008 (UK)
Pam
Flashbacks of a Fool DVD out 4th August 2008 (UK)
Pam
Never regret anything that makes you smile!