Bond star Daniel Craig
looks grumpy (and
for good reason)The trouble surrounding the production of “Quantum of Solace,” the next James Bond film, isn't dying down.
Bond fan site MI6 [1] has chronicled a recent slew of mishaps and blowups.
A couple weeks ago, a crew member accidentally drove an Aston Martin into a lake. Six days later, a stuntman was seriously injured while filming a high-speed chase.
On Saturday morning, a 58-year-old crew member, working in Austria, was found stabbed. He suffered deep cuts to the head and hands after a domestic dispute and was reportedly in critical condition Sunday.
Sunday also brought news that soul singer Amy Winehouse and producer Mark Ronson had a falling out and work on their proposed theme song for “Quantum of Solace” has ground to a halt.
This is troubling news, but I'm not giving up hope on
QoS just yet. One of my favorite Bond films, (in fact, my favorite of the Sean Connery-era flicks), is
“You Only Live Twice.” [2] It's a movie that turned out great despite many similar misfortunes, including:
• an aerial photographer losing his leg after it was sliced by a helicopter blade,
• five key members of the production narrowly escaping death when they missed a flight that wound up crashing into Mt. Fuji,
• actor Jan Werich being fired five days into the shoot and replaced by Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, Bond's archrival,
• Blofeld's fluffy white cat being scared out of its wits by pyrotechnics and hiding in the soundstage's rafters for days,
• and Sean Connery's resignation at the end of production, after being continuously harassed by Japanese fans and reporters. I tell ya, those lousy reporters ...
(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)