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Empire Magazine May 2008 features Daniel
Moderator: Germangirl
full interview for your info. There's also a review but I'm not reading that till I've seen the film, and there's an add in the magazine for Film 24 (a new tv channel, don't know where it's available), where there's going to be interviews apparently with Daniel and Baillie - full listings at www.film24.com it says.
Daniel Craig interviewed in Empire – May 2008 Edition
The cape town skyline is breathtaking, with Table Mountain rising high up into the clear blue sky. To get to the city’s heart, though, you have to take a short drive down the modern, grey highways past the brightly coloured townships that somehow look jauntier than the slums they actually are. It could be the setting for a James Bond movie, but there’s something about Cape Town that doesn’t quite lend itself to that. Though it has its problems it doesn’t have the oppressive feel of other South African cities – it’s more like a big laidback commune. A half-built flyover that was abandoned due to lack of cash still stands; the locals use if for abseiling.
Daniel Craig, who, for now, is Jame Bond, thinks Cape Town is probably one of two places where he could go out and see a movie incognito. But Craig isn’t here as Bond: he’s here with his best friend, former promo director Baillie Walsh, making a film that was written fo him and that takes place both in modern-day California and ‘70s seaside Britain.
I’ts a sunny June morning when Empire gets to the set, as stunning hillside mansion with an unbeatable beach view, and Craig is filming the opening scenes of Flashbacks Of A Fool, in which his character, Joe Scott, phones a woman calles Sister Jean to buy some “tickets”, causing his hippie housekeeper Ophelia (rapper Eve) no end of disgust. Wesoon twig that these are not actually tickets. They are….wait a minute…Ohmigod….JAMES BOND IS BUYING DRUGS!
Joe Scott is a Hollywood has-been at the age of 40, and soon he’s going to receive a call that will change his life, transporting him back to his youth (the teenage Scott is played by Harry Eden) and the nightmare experience that set him on the road to ruin.
“Its about lots of things” says writer-director Walsh between set-ups. “It’s about the way our early life informs the rest of our life. It’s about the way everyone covets the idea of celebrity when it’s not necessarily such a good thing, and it’s about how hard it is to see yourself sometimes. I mean, here’s a man who has everything and yet has nothing – he’s the most unhappy wankhead you’ve ever met.
“But what’s very interesting form me,” Walsh grins, “is where wer’re at now, at the point where we’re actually making this film, because, since Casino Royale, Daniel has become a very famous person. I mean, Daniel obviously isn’t Joe Scott – he’s a much nicer person, and much smarter – but I can’t help thinking about how it’s going to play.Are people going to wonder, ‘Is this real?’”
Whether or not he’s fully conscious of such thoughts, there are certainly glimpses of the real Craig in his performance today; the outfit he’s about to put on, a white shirt and jeans, is from his own wardrobe, while on Joe’s stairwell there’s a huge photo of Craig, in tears, from a 2004 book by Sam Taylor-Wood called Crying Men. There are echoes of Scott in Craig’s personal life, too: like Scott, he lived with his mother in his teens, near the Merseyside ‘resort’ of New Brighton, leaving home at 16 to join the National Youth Theatre. Like Scott, he’s reaching middle age (40 in March), and as a youngster he was a big music fan. But the thing that intrigues us most is Joe Scott’s line of work. “He’s a movie star, he’s made a lot of money and he’s been very successful,” Craig tells Empire, “but he’s a fuck-up. He’s losing friends rapidly because he actually doesn’t care about anybody. He doesn’t particularly care about himself, so he’s taking too many drugs, and he’s drinking too much, and he’s in a cycle of self-destruction.”
Yet unlike Joe Scott, Daniel Craig’s glory days are still most likely ahead of him. So isn’t it a bit soon to be playing a has-been?
“Why?” he asks. “It’s never to early to be a has-been!” He laughs. “But that’s not the relevance. The important thing for me was always that, if you’re not looking after yourself, things will spin out of control. The story is very simple. Joe has driven himself right into a corner, and I kind of relate to that. I can understand wanting to hide away from everything, because people seem to be staring. It does get you down a bit.”
Does that happen a lot?
“What people staring at me?” he asks, a little surprised to have to say it.
Yes. Surely it’s worse since Casino Royale?
“It’s happened,” he shrugs,”but it’s all good. That’s whey it seemed fun to do this film, to play around with that image. Who knows, maybe I will be something like Joe Scott in a few years time. Never say never! There’s not a lot of point in being unduly optimistic about this business. It’ll turn around and bite you on the arse – that’s just the way it is. But I mean, I liked the character when Baillie first wrote it, and I like it even more now that I can go, ‘Ah maybe we can push it – play with the dark side a bit more.’”
Craig’s dark side is certainly to the fore when we meet again in January at London’s Mandarin Hotel, ten days after the start of shooting on Bond 22 – aka Quantam of Solace. He’s wearing a fantastic Prince of Wales check suit, with an immaculately turned tie. What’s the occasion, we wonder? “Seeing you cunts,” he ripostes, making charming light of Her Majesty’s press corps. “Nah, I had to do TV interviews this morning.”
He’s seen the finished Flashbacks now and says the time he spent in Cape Town feels, fittingly, like a fever dream. “It looks like another land,” he muses. “What it’s supposed to look like is that endless summer we all had when we were kids.” He pauses. “But with that much sex, though?” He laughs. “I don’t remember that! Maybe in my mind…”
Still he thinks the story’s core values have merged intact. “What’s interesting is that Joe has everything. Everything’s there, and that’s the big tragedy. Even later on, he has Ophelia, who’s probably the love of his life, standing there saying, ‘I will be there for you whatever, ever though you’re a fucking mess.’”
He catches himself. “Cor, hang on a minute….’Fucking, fucking’ – sound like fucking Les Dawson!” He dissolves into guffaws. “At least I can swear now! When I was doing the TV stuff they kept saying, ‘this is pre-watershed, please don’t swear.’ And now all I can think about is the swear words in my head! It’s like having Tourette’s!”
The reason for Craig’s rude health is that Bond 22 is finally happening, after months of merely talking about it. “I feel really good now,” he grins. “Up until Christmas it was a bit kick-bollock and scramble because things were still coming together. But now we’re filming, we’ve just got to get on with it. Any problems we had have gone now, and we’ll have a ton more in three months time. But it’s going the way I’d like to see it go. I’m very excited about the idea of saying, ‘Okay, we’ve started something – what happens now?’ It has to be an original story because there’s nothing left – there are no more of Ian Fleming’s books. We’re not going to do Live And Let Die this year!”
Bond’s quest for vengeance on Vesper Lynd’s killers will take him through Europe and South America and, with any luck, might even topple Casino Royale’s almost $600 million haul. When the tux is off again, Craig will continue to juggle projects like Ed Zwick’s sobering World War II drama Defiance and, perhaps most importantly, smaller films like Flashbacks Of A Fool.
“It’s not a conscious decision to react against something,” he says. “I’m not going to do something because I think it’s a good panacea to Bond. I did Flashbooks Of A Fool because I believed in it, and I believe in Baillie. But it does help, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
Why’s that?
He smiles, perhaps thinking of Joe Scott. “I guess it makes me remember why I do what I do.”
Flashbacks of a Fool is out on April 18 and is reviewed on page 57
Daniel Craig interviewed in Empire – May 2008 Edition
The cape town skyline is breathtaking, with Table Mountain rising high up into the clear blue sky. To get to the city’s heart, though, you have to take a short drive down the modern, grey highways past the brightly coloured townships that somehow look jauntier than the slums they actually are. It could be the setting for a James Bond movie, but there’s something about Cape Town that doesn’t quite lend itself to that. Though it has its problems it doesn’t have the oppressive feel of other South African cities – it’s more like a big laidback commune. A half-built flyover that was abandoned due to lack of cash still stands; the locals use if for abseiling.
Daniel Craig, who, for now, is Jame Bond, thinks Cape Town is probably one of two places where he could go out and see a movie incognito. But Craig isn’t here as Bond: he’s here with his best friend, former promo director Baillie Walsh, making a film that was written fo him and that takes place both in modern-day California and ‘70s seaside Britain.
I’ts a sunny June morning when Empire gets to the set, as stunning hillside mansion with an unbeatable beach view, and Craig is filming the opening scenes of Flashbacks Of A Fool, in which his character, Joe Scott, phones a woman calles Sister Jean to buy some “tickets”, causing his hippie housekeeper Ophelia (rapper Eve) no end of disgust. Wesoon twig that these are not actually tickets. They are….wait a minute…Ohmigod….JAMES BOND IS BUYING DRUGS!
Joe Scott is a Hollywood has-been at the age of 40, and soon he’s going to receive a call that will change his life, transporting him back to his youth (the teenage Scott is played by Harry Eden) and the nightmare experience that set him on the road to ruin.
“Its about lots of things” says writer-director Walsh between set-ups. “It’s about the way our early life informs the rest of our life. It’s about the way everyone covets the idea of celebrity when it’s not necessarily such a good thing, and it’s about how hard it is to see yourself sometimes. I mean, here’s a man who has everything and yet has nothing – he’s the most unhappy wankhead you’ve ever met.
“But what’s very interesting form me,” Walsh grins, “is where wer’re at now, at the point where we’re actually making this film, because, since Casino Royale, Daniel has become a very famous person. I mean, Daniel obviously isn’t Joe Scott – he’s a much nicer person, and much smarter – but I can’t help thinking about how it’s going to play.Are people going to wonder, ‘Is this real?’”
Whether or not he’s fully conscious of such thoughts, there are certainly glimpses of the real Craig in his performance today; the outfit he’s about to put on, a white shirt and jeans, is from his own wardrobe, while on Joe’s stairwell there’s a huge photo of Craig, in tears, from a 2004 book by Sam Taylor-Wood called Crying Men. There are echoes of Scott in Craig’s personal life, too: like Scott, he lived with his mother in his teens, near the Merseyside ‘resort’ of New Brighton, leaving home at 16 to join the National Youth Theatre. Like Scott, he’s reaching middle age (40 in March), and as a youngster he was a big music fan. But the thing that intrigues us most is Joe Scott’s line of work. “He’s a movie star, he’s made a lot of money and he’s been very successful,” Craig tells Empire, “but he’s a fuck-up. He’s losing friends rapidly because he actually doesn’t care about anybody. He doesn’t particularly care about himself, so he’s taking too many drugs, and he’s drinking too much, and he’s in a cycle of self-destruction.”
Yet unlike Joe Scott, Daniel Craig’s glory days are still most likely ahead of him. So isn’t it a bit soon to be playing a has-been?
“Why?” he asks. “It’s never to early to be a has-been!” He laughs. “But that’s not the relevance. The important thing for me was always that, if you’re not looking after yourself, things will spin out of control. The story is very simple. Joe has driven himself right into a corner, and I kind of relate to that. I can understand wanting to hide away from everything, because people seem to be staring. It does get you down a bit.”
Does that happen a lot?
“What people staring at me?” he asks, a little surprised to have to say it.
Yes. Surely it’s worse since Casino Royale?
“It’s happened,” he shrugs,”but it’s all good. That’s whey it seemed fun to do this film, to play around with that image. Who knows, maybe I will be something like Joe Scott in a few years time. Never say never! There’s not a lot of point in being unduly optimistic about this business. It’ll turn around and bite you on the arse – that’s just the way it is. But I mean, I liked the character when Baillie first wrote it, and I like it even more now that I can go, ‘Ah maybe we can push it – play with the dark side a bit more.’”
Craig’s dark side is certainly to the fore when we meet again in January at London’s Mandarin Hotel, ten days after the start of shooting on Bond 22 – aka Quantam of Solace. He’s wearing a fantastic Prince of Wales check suit, with an immaculately turned tie. What’s the occasion, we wonder? “Seeing you cunts,” he ripostes, making charming light of Her Majesty’s press corps. “Nah, I had to do TV interviews this morning.”
He’s seen the finished Flashbacks now and says the time he spent in Cape Town feels, fittingly, like a fever dream. “It looks like another land,” he muses. “What it’s supposed to look like is that endless summer we all had when we were kids.” He pauses. “But with that much sex, though?” He laughs. “I don’t remember that! Maybe in my mind…”
Still he thinks the story’s core values have merged intact. “What’s interesting is that Joe has everything. Everything’s there, and that’s the big tragedy. Even later on, he has Ophelia, who’s probably the love of his life, standing there saying, ‘I will be there for you whatever, ever though you’re a fucking mess.’”
He catches himself. “Cor, hang on a minute….’Fucking, fucking’ – sound like fucking Les Dawson!” He dissolves into guffaws. “At least I can swear now! When I was doing the TV stuff they kept saying, ‘this is pre-watershed, please don’t swear.’ And now all I can think about is the swear words in my head! It’s like having Tourette’s!”
The reason for Craig’s rude health is that Bond 22 is finally happening, after months of merely talking about it. “I feel really good now,” he grins. “Up until Christmas it was a bit kick-bollock and scramble because things were still coming together. But now we’re filming, we’ve just got to get on with it. Any problems we had have gone now, and we’ll have a ton more in three months time. But it’s going the way I’d like to see it go. I’m very excited about the idea of saying, ‘Okay, we’ve started something – what happens now?’ It has to be an original story because there’s nothing left – there are no more of Ian Fleming’s books. We’re not going to do Live And Let Die this year!”
Bond’s quest for vengeance on Vesper Lynd’s killers will take him through Europe and South America and, with any luck, might even topple Casino Royale’s almost $600 million haul. When the tux is off again, Craig will continue to juggle projects like Ed Zwick’s sobering World War II drama Defiance and, perhaps most importantly, smaller films like Flashbacks Of A Fool.
“It’s not a conscious decision to react against something,” he says. “I’m not going to do something because I think it’s a good panacea to Bond. I did Flashbooks Of A Fool because I believed in it, and I believe in Baillie. But it does help, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.”
Why’s that?
He smiles, perhaps thinking of Joe Scott. “I guess it makes me remember why I do what I do.”
Flashbacks of a Fool is out on April 18 and is reviewed on page 57
Last edited by Ang on Thu Mar 27, 2008 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Germangirl
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Thanks a lot - articles like that brings to terms, what he is really thinking about life and work and helps to measure articles, that just Blaaa or go the press way with him.
The top notch acting in the Weisz/Craig/Spall 'Betrayal' is emotionally true, often v funny and its beautifully staged with filmic qualities..
yeah he's a proper rude boy! and what a "kick-bollock and scramble" is when it's at home I have no idea and I'm a native!!Lu wrote:Ang, thank you so much for posting that! I agree, it is one of the better articles I've read, where we get to see the intelligent, thinking Daniel. Nice vocabulary...panacea...heh heh.
But there he goes using the "c" word again.It really offends my southern girl sensibilities.
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StarryDannyFan
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Daskedusken
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Lu wrote:But there he goes using the "c" word again.
I've looked up in the dictionary the "c" word (not that it is necessary
) and I found a translation into German which is not that nasty. It also means "Sauhund", something like "swine"I prefer to believe that he uses it in this context, because he uses the plural and calls the journalist this name!
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SmittenDramaKitten
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...Have brought the magazine. Will read it later. They also review FOAF and only give it two stars. In summing up, they say...
"An array of individual successes can't support the crushing weight of the confused screenplay. Not a complete loss by any means though, and Walsh is a talent to keep an eye on."
I don't think reviews are much cop. I have never seen a really bad DC movie. Even the questionable ones have something to keep the viewer thinking or guessing.
"An array of individual successes can't support the crushing weight of the confused screenplay. Not a complete loss by any means though, and Walsh is a talent to keep an eye on."
I don't think reviews are much cop. I have never seen a really bad DC movie. Even the questionable ones have something to keep the viewer thinking or guessing.