without me having to think of some clever line, is that
“Skyfall” did really well and broke all sorts of records and
was a massive success. Then we had to do another one
– which for all of us, the director Sam Mendes included, felt incredibly daunting. What the fuck are we going
to do? Once we started, we realised we couldn’t think
about “Skyfall”. We had to think about this film.’
'So if that was bells on, there’s more of everything in this
film. It felt completely the right thing to do. We’ve got the
character of Moneypenny back, and Q, and now Ralph Fiennes is
playing
M, so it
was, like:
right, let’s
get all of
them into
the story.
Things
started
building from
there.
Everyo n e ’ s
b e e n
banging
on to me
about the
gadgets.
“Where
are the
g a d gets?”
Before it hasn’t felt right, and it’s not like we’ve made
this one heavily into gadgets, but we’ve snuck a lot of
stuff in. So, yes, it’s got more bells!’
There was more humour in ‘Skyfall’ than in ‘Casino
Royale’ or ‘Quantum of Solace’. Will that continue
with ‘Spectre’?
‘The humour in “Skyfall” was conscious. I’d be lying if I
said it wasn’t. I just think there’s room for it. Especially
when you’ve got someone like Sam Mendes at the helm
who is the truth police – and I’m the truth police too.
We’re always asking: is this real? Then the humour can
happen. But it’s not gag writing. They’re not the kind of
movies I want to make. Really, really, really good gags
are few and far between. Those writers are out there,
but they’re rare. Look at people like Seth Rogen and
people who make those movies, a lot of that is improvisation. They’re funny people and I’m not used to doing
that sort of thing. But we’ve got people like Ben Whishaw
and Rory Kinnear who are very easy with humour. But,
yes, short answer: we tried to put more humour into this
movie!’
Were you involved in bringing Sam Mendes back to
direct?
C OVER STORY
‘Yes, I was begging him. Begging him. They offered him
loads of money, of course, but I was also begging him
to do it. They wanted to make the movie