Neil Purvis and Robert Wade Interviwed by Empire Magazine (Spoilers)

Ian Fleming's YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN and Geoffrey Household's ROGUE MALE are described as inspirations.

The interviewer sure loves that word 'diabolical'.

Interesting that they were responsible for a lot of the stuff people are pointing at as highlights, and how rooted their thought process is in the novels.

Its also interesting to hear some of the anecdotes about Tamahori, EON and product placement, and the subtle digs at Dana Stevens and Bruce Fierstein.

Vesper wrote:

Interesting that they were responsible for a lot of the stuff people are pointing at as highlights, and how rooted their thought process is in the novels.

As ever, it seems that some fans automatically assume that P&W must have been responsible for all the elements in the film that don't work, while all the good stuff must have been the creation of the more famous and acclaimed John Logan/Paul Haggis/whoever. :roll:

I've never understood why P&W have always been the whipping boys for whatever's wrong with Bond. How do we know who wrote which bits of the screenplays?

From what I gather, P&W are talented writers who know their Fleming.

Loomis wrote:

Vesper wrote:

Interesting that they were responsible for a lot of the stuff people are pointing at as highlights, and how rooted their thought process is in the novels.

As ever, it seems that some fans automatically assume that P&W must have been responsible for all the elements in the film that don't work, while all the good stuff must have been the creation of the more famous and acclaimed John Logan/Paul Haggis/whoever. :roll:

I've never understood why P&W have always been the whipping boys for whatever's wrong with Bond. How do we know who wrote which bits of the screenplays?

From what I gather, P&W are talented writers who know their Fleming.

I'm on the same page. Logic alone says if they were half as bad as everyone thinks they are, EON wouldn't keep hiring them. We can now firmly lay the invisible car at the feet of Tamahori. Along with the Bond/Vesper scenes in Casino Royale and the TWINE melodrama, evidence is at least stacking up to support the notion that they are not terrible.

64 drafts of Casino Royale are out there. I'd love to compare the original romance to the Haggis scripts.

Surely there's a book (or a book series) to be written about the Bond films' progression from script to screen? That'd be a pretty easy sell to the converted surely?

A fantastic interview. Lots of interesting tidbits there. 60-something drafts of CASINO ROYALE? These guys have to be tireless workhorses. No wonder EON has enjoyed working with them.

Very interesting that they'll be working with Chan-Wook Park, of all directors.

I hope they remake DAD next.

Vesper wrote:

The interviewer sure loves that word 'diabolical'.

Interesting that they were responsible for a lot of the stuff people are pointing at as highlights, and how rooted their thought process is in the novels.

Its also interesting to hear some of the anecdotes about Tamahori, EON and product placement, and the subtle digs at Dana Stevens and Bruce Fierstein.

Maybe I'll go back and listen to the whole interview, but at 45 minutes it's a bit long for me. Is there no transcript out there?

I did catch the first few minutes of the interview and their comment about Dana Stevens, but while it may have come across as a dig, I think it was more a reflection of the fact that putting the directors wife in the position of doing rewrites on TWINE is awkward. Based upon memory of reading the different drafts of TWINE, it seems like the only thing Dana helped with was to reorder a few scenes and beef up Elektra. The failure to punch up the Christmas character, by any of the writers or the director, seems like a team failure to me.

Vesper wrote:

I'm on the same page. Logic alone says if they were half as bad as everyone thinks they are, EON wouldn't keep hiring them.

That is presupposing EON were able to judge good writing from poor writing, which I am sure they are not. By the same rationale you might argue that EON are illiterate in terms of script writing/evaluating, since they chose to let Hackis rewrite and ultimately mess up the CR script (what Purvis calls 'polishing'), (assuming they would have had the balls to dump everything Hackis has written in case they were versed in screenwriting, and unhappy with his work).

As far as I am concerned, they need to go. It shouldn't be hard to find some talented screenwriters who love Fleming. EON watched and loved this crappy film they were responsible for (Plunkett & McLean, or whatever it was called), and then approached them. They should take a different approach and sample writers who are self-proclaimed lovers of the novels.

I too would love to read everything about the scriptwriting processes, at least of the 60s films and the Craig era.

Manhunter wrote:

Vesper wrote:

I'm on the same page. Logic alone says if they were half as bad as everyone thinks they are, EON wouldn't keep hiring them.

That is presupposing EON were able to judge good writing from poor writing, which I am sure they are not. By the same rationale you might argue that EON are illiterate in terms of script writing/evaluating, since they chose to let Hackis rewrite and ultimately mess up the CR script (what Purvis calls 'polishing'), (assuming they would have had the balls to dump everything Hackis has written in case they were versed in screenwriting, and unhappy with his work)...

It doesn't necessarily boil down to the powers that be at EON's ability to judge good or bad writing; it boils down to their undisputed talent for course correction (even Babs, for all her personal peccadilloes re: the franchise, and the flack she gets for them, knows how to steer the ship). P&W have been a part of three films that, aside from the B.O., had rather mixed reactions and legitimate criticisms leveled at them that EON has recognised when they've regrouped to do the next one. If P&W were a factor they would've been out on their arses along with the various directors or script doctors who've also gotten the boot over the past decade.

Vesper wrote:

Surely there's a book (or a book series) to be written about the Bond films' progression from script to screen? That'd be a pretty easy sell to the converted surely?

Just the stuff on the various drafts of GOLDFINGER in that small square little making of book suggests there are oodles of information to be mined. Personally, I'd love to take a look at Maibaum's papers (which that book references a lot.) He comments on Dehn's drafts as well as including his own.

I'm thinking Eon would not be big on it, because they don't seem big on exploring the path not taken. Support for that position? Well, a recent one would be how they keep not including the Forster commentary on QoS. If it is a frank and honest commentary, it might actually put him in a better light and the producers in a lesser one. Not saying for sure, but it's possible.

Yet he recorded the commentary with Wilson (as he is in every Bond director's commentary, except Spottiswoode IIRC).

Really? That's too "BigBro is a'watching" for me. They could always edit out stuff afterward, but the idea of having that censorious presence alongside might really irk.

Personally I want someone to go through all the drafts of CR 67. I mean what the hell happened there? Were David Niven and Woody Allen ever meant to be in that movie? At what point did Feldman lose it?

Probably when he fired Sellers ... that played havoc with continuity. Either that or when John Huston gave up on directing and just went hunting.

Have heard lots of weird stories about that movie.

trevanian wrote:

Either that or when John Huston gave up on directing and just went hunting.

Was there any directing to give up on? I seriously think that the Castle McTarry scene is one of the worst scenes I ever seen in my life. No joke. Can't believe the guy who did the Maltese Falcon directed that.

I wish there was more about Gregory Ratoff's attempts at CR. I recall that Jeremy Duns found a script written in the 1950s without James Bond (*insert jab at Craig here*). Interesting stuff.

I still hold that EON aren't able to tell what is quality writing and what isn't. They kept Perverse & Weird because they liked them personally and loved working with them. It is easy to fire people who hardly contributed to their scripts like Stevens. They wrote most of TWINE, the whole of DAD, the primitive CR that got completely ruined by Haggis whom EON also chose and let write most of QOS, and SF is full of faults as well.
I'm glad they will leave the show, as it stands.
Also, it's obvious that any other sane producers would have reacted similarly when so many critics and fans complained about DAD.
In fact, there is a fair chance many of them would have done much better than EON did with a faithful CR adaptation.

Manhunter wrote:

EON also chose and let write most of QOS

Actually their work wasn't even used. Forster rejected their script.

Yes, I suspect Skyfall is actually in parts, using parts dropped from their QOS script.

The construction of Skyfall could basically be Bond keep going after Quantum, and Silva being the head of Quantum, right after CR.

I believe CR and SF makes for the perfect double parter.

P&W were actually very good, they were just bogged down by directors with crap ideas and style, until Campbell came back, and now Mendes.

Python wrote:

Manhunter wrote:

EON also chose and let write most of QOS

Actually their work wasn't even used. Forster rejected their script.

With the "whom" I intended to refer to Haggis. I wanted to express that EON made another wrong decision in hiring him for CR and then letting him return.
Maybe my phrasing wasn't precise.