A collection of director Lee Tamahori interviews

21-Jul-2002 • Die Another Day

MKKBB Magazinehave published a collection of quotes from various interviews with "Die Another Day" director Lee Tamahori.

The New Zealand director, whose past films include Once Were Warriors, The Edge, and Along Came A Spider, was quoted as saying that he had been a big fan of the Bond movies for most of his life: "I can still remember buying the From Russia With Love soundtrack when I was fifteen years old. To me, the Bond movie is a kind of impregnable fortress of film-making". It used to be about girls, gadgets and a good-looking spy. Now it was about the same things but with the extra ingredient of `big action`: "It is a timeless thing and is constantly evolving". Tamahori held no illusions about the huge demands of supervising five seperate units, but added: "... that`s the pressure you put up with to join one of the most illustrious clubs of directors in film history".

Tamahori pointed out that there are some facets to the character of Bond that everyone has grown up loving, but highlighted Judi Dench`s `M` famously calling 007 a prehistoric relic from the Cold War. But he defended the Bond character`s values: "If some of those seem to be anachronistic and antediluvian, so be it. We try and reshape those and fit them into a modern idiom...".

Tamahori asserted that you now needed "more juice" in the series, and paid credit to DAD`s scriptwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who have strived to enrich Bond by putting a "modern spin" on the story, no matter how outrageous the stunts and action have become.

The Cinescape interview saw Tamahori keen to reassure Bond fans that, despite the large amount of computer generated graphics required in the film for a massive action sequence, the movie also contains masses of "real" action, courtesy of second unit director Vic Armstrong. Tamahori also commented that he was: "... jamming in dozens of references to all the old movies, homages for those who love them". Halle Berry`s Ursula Andress bikini sequence, shot in Spain, was especially praised by the director: "She did it brilliantly!".