Skyfall Part One

Hello, Ross Sutherland here. You are listening to the podcast, Imaginary Advice. This podcast is a forever expanding anthology of writing experiments, all written exclusively for this show. This month's experiment is... Yes, I would say this is the hardest thing that I have ever attempted for the podcast. It's nice that even after 10 years, I can still find new ways to... screw myself over yeah this was um this was very very hard to write but on top of that it is also very very stupid

And that is a real sweet spot for me. A project that requires a huge amount of work to basically make something that is utterly dumb. That is a Venn diagram of my career in a nutshell, basically.

but quickly before we get into the story itself let me quickly just plug my patreon please help me keep making this show i'm trying to get my support up to the level of a minimum wage job help me get there patreon.com forward slash ross g sutherland or alternatively you can make a one-off donation to the show by going to buymeacoffee.com forward slash imaginary advice

Okay, let's get started. Now, I don't know about Christmas in other countries, but here in the UK, traditionally at Christmas time, there's always a couple of Bond films on the telly over the holiday. So I thought for the Christmas episode of the podcast, I would pay homage to this holiday tradition. So this is a story that is designed... To be listened to in sync with the 2012 motion picture Skyfall. It's a fictionalised director commentary.

For that film, that is also a story in its own right. Now, my initial plan was to produce the whole story in one go, put it out as a singular episode. But it turns out, right, Skyfall, it's a long film. Too long. you might say. So instead, while I'm still working on the back half, I've decided to split this piece in two, which also I think does make it more palatable as an audio piece, I hope.

So it's going to be two episodes, both of which will be about one hour ten each. Now to enjoy this audio piece, it is not essential that you watch the movie at the same time.

I think it works fine just as an audio work, but you will pick up on some additional stuff if you play it alongside the film. I appreciate... there's a lot of additional commitment on your side just to listen to a fucking podcast i'll leave it up to your judgment choose your own adventure folks you've got to choose your own adventure

For those who want to sync the film up, here's how it's going to work in a minute. There's going to be a countdown followed by a beep. If you press play on the movie at exactly the same time as the beep, you should be synced to the recording. I appreciate not everyone has a copy of Skyfall knocking about the place. Sadly, the streaming version on Prime has adverts injected into it, which is a bit of a kick in the balls, I will say.

My local charity shop has an entire shelf of Sky Falls. They're all going for £1.50 each, which I suppose is at least... Okay, look. It's way, way too late in the day. for me to now start worrying about the actual mechanics of how the fuck people are going to listen to this thing that ship has sailed so hard already

We are over the horizon, my friends. So I'm just gonna have to leave that problem with you. Just please don't do anything insane like buy a 30 quid 4k edition just to hear this dumb fucking story because I would never forgive myself for that. This story contains additional music by Jeremy Wormsley. Thanks, Jeremy. Four audio credits are included in the show notes. Part two of this story will follow in January.

due to the insanely convoluted, semi-improvisational way the story has to be written. I'm not committing to an exact release date for part two until I am 99% finished, but I will update in due course. But mid-Jan, I think. As I said... This is by far the hardest, most complicated thing I've ever tried on the podcast, at least for some time. Sometimes I just get a ridiculous idea into my head and I can't let it go. And sadly, I can't seem to learn from previous mistakes.

either if anything as i get older i'm getting worse i'm just a slag for pain it's the only explanation okay just before we get started Quick content warning. This story contains multiple references to drug use, extreme violence, sex, and suicide. So have fun, guys. Have fun. I hope you enjoy it. You sick little fucks.

And Merry Christmas too. Merry Christmas. Okay, so the countdown's starting now. Press play on zero. Here we go. Three, two, one. Hello, this is Trevor Lang. director of the motion picture Skyfall or the original director I should say before I was replaced by my colleague Sir Sam Mendes Thanks to the good people at MGM Studios in collaboration with the Scottish Prison Service. I have been granted temporary parole to record.

this special director's commentary, which I believe will be on the new 4K edition. A little bit out of focus, this opening shot. I will cop to that. Still getting my sea legs, if I'm honest. This was the first day of filming. People said that I was crazy for wanting to shoot the entire film chronologically. But it is much better. for the actors and also there wasn't a script so I couldn't jump around even if I wanted to. All I had was a napkin that I'd shown to the broccolis.

that said, in all caps, SPY MOVIE? And the broccolis, thankfully, were... excited enough by that to get the ball rolling. And we worked out the rest of the details on the fly. So when we shot this... opening set piece in Istanbul. We were really launching ourselves into the unknown. Before we go any further though, let's talk about Danny Craig here, magnificent actor.

First day on set, I was a little nervous to meet Danny. We'd only met once briefly at the Broccoli house before we were on the opposite ends of the camera here. So... Just before the first take, I decided to corner him on the way back from the lavvies and I pushed him against the wall and I said to him, Look, you, I appreciate you don't know me from Adam. All my previous films are centered around the teen beach party genre. It's true. I know it looks like.

I got this job purely because I roll with the broccolis. But trust me, I know my shit. And I know you know your shit. So I just want to reassure you. that this is going to be a fun collaborative set. We are going to have a really, really good time telling this story together. Whatever story that might turn out to be. Who knows at this point, eh? Not only that, though, but I promise you the next 133 days is basically going to be the coolest...

craziest holiday either of us has ever been on. And if you want to get into some shit while we're out here, we can... Get into some shit, you know? Because I am a fucking wild man when I get off the leash. All you have to do is say the word. We can off-road, if you know what I'm saying. You and me, if you want, we can go to the dark side. If you want to get in Willy Wonka's great...

Glass elevator. I can make that happen. You want to forget who you are out here? I can make that happen, man. We can get into some real trouble out here. two years of therapy just to re-establish a stable emotional baseline kind of trouble. At any point, just say the word, yeah? And you and me, we are absolutely out on the town fucking beast mode. Do you understand? Anyway, I looked deep into those beautiful eyes of his and I said that to him.

And Danny didn't say anything back in return, which is kind of his style. He was a cool customer. He just nodded. Nothing too demonstrative, but... Through that, I knew that that was his way of saying, absolutely. You go for it, Trev. If you lead, I will follow. And I've got to say that. instant support from Dan, that reassurance really did give me the confidence to really go for it out there. Take bigger, bigger risks.

Both in relation to the film and, of course, the other stuff. And obviously there were terrible consequences to some of the things that I did over those 133 days. Things that...

destroyed my career, booked me in prison, and will likely haunt me for the rest of my days. But, nevertheless, I will never forget that first proper conversation with Dan at the start of this whole journey where he put his trust in me he instantly saw my passion my honesty my drive to explore the limits of human consciousness And he empowered that. And that meant so much to me. And I'm not trying to say that it was Danny's fault for encouraging me. Not at all. I take full responsibility.

For everything that went wrong out there, it was all me. None of that had anything to do with Daniel Craig. And you know what? There is actually a very good possibility that I wasn't talking to Daniel Craig at all. And that... In actual fact, I'd cornered his stunt double, Dawid, who's from Gdansk and only speaks perfunctory English. It's his fourth language after all. So if that's the case, then I guarantee. He didn't understand a single word I was saying. Nevertheless, I felt empowered.

This is quite a long action sequence, isn't it? First the Range Rovers, then the motorbikes, now on the train. If you think it's too long to watch, imagine how long it took. to shoot the fucking thing. Hated every second of this. Oh, except this day, actually. We had these amazing chicken baguettes for lunch. I actually remember Craig saying to me, mmm, I like chicken. Now, this day was better flatbreads, I think. Sushi lunch this day.

This was kind of dull, I think. Can't remember that day. That one's Misaka. That's Gina Pasta. Oh. pizza rolls they were awful the day we squibbed Craig was a um mushroom risotto I think some kind of grain noise He caught his cheese. It was quite forgettable. What was that? Jack-o'-lanterns filled with taramasalata. Maybe that was some sort of special occasion. That was quiche. That was crab legs. Duck pancakes. Bratwursts.

Just toast that day. Meatballs, eggnog, mini crepes, sherbet dibdabs. Jesus, months and months of my life are literally passing in front of my eyes here. It's enough to give you a panic attack, it really is. I mean, really. What were we thinking? This whole sequence is like the... ranting mind of a demented pensioner not that i myself got too much into the weeds regarding the technical execution of this stuff i just bring everyone together for a meeting every morning

And say something like, today, Skyfall is going to do a big jump. And then he's going to walk forward five paces. Sometimes I throw in what I called a vibe word. like Laguna or Embassy. And then I'd pretty much clock off for the day and the crew would get to work bringing my vision to life. Sometimes afterwards, people would... come by the cabin and say to me, you know that the name of the main character is James Bond and not Skyfall? To which I would say,

You know. Fuck off. I've been friends with the broccolis since I was a baby. I know the name of the main character is James Bond. It's James Bond, codename, Skyfall. This is very basic stuff. The fact that some people on set didn't know that is kind of shocking.

And yet I'm the one always treated like an idiot. And I don't want to sound paranoid, but I definitely got the impression that sometimes people were deliberately... not consulting me about creative decisions because they didn't actually think I'd ever directed a film or knew anything about the Bond franchise, which is utterly absurd. I absolutely love. All the James Bond films. Like, um... Well, there's too many to name, isn't there? Um... Doctor No. Never Been Kissed. Um...

God, what's the one with goose in the title? The goose one. All of them. All of them. I love them all. I worship. Unfortunately, in prison. They don't have any of the Bond films. They only have one DVD, and it's Koyan Skatzi. So, haven't seen the Bond films in a while, sadly. Lots of cutting back and forth here to MI6 in London. Dame Judi Dench looking pissy as fuck. Wonderful actor. Take the shot, says Em. And so Moneypenny with the sniper rifle.

tries to shoot the baddie off the train but spoiler she hits skyfall skyfall then falls through the sky bit of a theme of the movie there does he fall to his death Could that be the end of the film? Well, maybe. To be honest, when we shot it, we didn't know. We'd been shooting by that point for three months in Istanbul. I genuinely thought...

that maybe by that point we had enough in the can to wrap up the film. But no, as it turns out, everything we had done up to that point only got us to the fucking opening credit sequence. It was about that point in production that I decided that I was going to intentionally foster some kind of debilitating. alcohol addiction let's flash back now to 2010 back in England

when I was doing vague pre-production work for the film. I probably should have been working on the script, if I'm honest, but at the time, my... priority was going go-karting with Adele. It was all part of an elaborate wooing campaign on my part too. bring Adele into the project. Adele is a private person and rarely takes a meeting with a stranger. But she can't say no to a go-kart. So if somebody formally challenges her to a race, she simply has to accept.

I rented out this enormous race circuit in Milton Keynes. And sure enough, Adele turned up with her heavies. All of them dressed in these custom gold rally fatigues. Actually, she even had sponsorship for her racing team. Dell Computers. Anyway, I accidentally ran over her witch doctor. Dreadful accident. He had neglected to stand in the designated safe zone. And... I came off the track at quite a speed and ostensibly smeared this poor witch doctor into the tarmac.

By a miracle, he lived. He was touch and go for a few weeks, but I hear he's now made a full recovery. Adele, to her credit, didn't hold a grudge. I mean...

She won the race, which probably helped. Also, I did agree to hold on to all of the witch doctor's drugs so we didn't get confiscated by the police. I thought that was the least I could do. That night... I went back to my hotel and decided that I was going to take one of the witch doctor's pills, which turned out to be a capsule of a drug called... dmt within about 20 minutes the walls of my hotel room dissolved away and i basically experienced

that night what would turn out to be a prophetic vision in my mind's eye i saw a crumbling house bombarded with what looked to me like giant sperm instantly I knew that this house would be my final location and Something terrible was waiting for me there, upon a set washed in blood, waiting to erase me. When I finally came around for my vision, I discovered, to my horror, that I'd climbed inside the wardrobe and done the little wee in there. Utterly mortifying, really.

And I think this is one of the reasons that I blocked out the whole psychedelic episode for so long. Totally forgot about it. Until of course, it all came true. But that wasn't until much later.

Periodically, throughout my stretch in prison, I've asked myself if I'd paid proper attention to that prophetic vision of mine, would I have done things differently? Would I have perhaps left the project before it even started? If I knew that at the end of the production, I would face this blood-soaked reckoning.

And if I'm being honest, I have to say, probably not. I would probably have just used that information to get myself to that blood-soaked reckoning a little faster. Because let's be honest, the film is way too long. And if I already knew what the ending was going to be, I probably could have shaved about 40 minutes off the runtime. I think that would be a good idea. The Prime Minister's concerned.

So we have the introduction now of Ralph Fiennes' character, Mallory, M's boss. That sounds like an evasion. Forgive me, but why am I here? Three months ago, you lost the computer drive containing the identity of almost every NATO agent embedded in terrorist organizations. Rafe's a wonderful actor, an exquisite human being. who simply by being his perfect self inadvertently makes everybody else feel like an utter piece of shit. It's excruciating, actually, being in his presence.

When your current posting is completed, you'll be awarded GCM. A little story about Rafe. While we were setting up for this scene, Rafe was in the garden playing a... Quick game of five aside with the crew, keeping up morale, which of course he does effortlessly, according to my gaffer. He scored a hat-trick. Then, just as Rafe was coming back in from the garden, he got a text.

to say that a painting of his that he'd painted had just been sold for a million pounds at Sotheby's, which he'd already arranged to be anonymously donated to a children's hospital. Oh, I can't. Now, if all these London scenes feel a little bit like padding, you'd be right.

I initially brought the crew back to London so I could have a couple of cheap weeks while I worked out the rest of the story. But sadly, rather than work out the rest of the story, I reconnected with my drug dealer friend, Christopher. My one big creative decision that I'd made so far was to kill James Bond, and now that was out. Broccolis told me I had to reverse it, so fine. But now I was stuck in this narrative cul-de-sac. But I had to film something, so...

i did a bunch of stuff with judy so here we are with em and her laptop butler laptop butler is showing em that mi6 has been hacked and that M's Office Computer at MI6 is the source. Laptop Butler here, of course, played by Roy Kinnear, fresh from playing Hamlet at the National. And I think that experience... carries straight into his role here so now the butler's laptop has also been infected with this lame Terry Gilliam style animation

Hackers are sort of the modern equivalent of Monty Python, I think. They both have that same combination of being extremely silly whilst also being deeply unpleasant misanthropes. It was actually Judy who suggested we use this film to draw attention to Britain's long history of war crimes carried out by our intelligence services. I actually found the idea so compelling.

i suggested we immediately go and blow up the mi6 building that idea of mine eventually got watered down to us pretending to blow up mi6 as a scene in the movie Still better than nothing. And now we cut from this fiery earth-shattering explosion to a sexual explosion, i.e. intercourse. Dan Craig. Mid coitus with a woman. Danny boy, Danny boy. The pipes are calling. So yes, we are now back with Skyfall himself.

No longer dead. Not anymore. He's just been laying low these three months, shagging his way through a Turkish beach community. The film crew had only just left Turkey a few weeks earlier. So, um, yeah, they were pretty pissed that I now wanted to go back again and shoot an extra week. But, well... Once the Broccoli's and I came collectively to the decision to not kill James Bond in the opening 10 minutes of the film, it just felt necessary to add in this little beat here.

to paper over the new change in direction. Almost the entire crew in this shot here. Sadly, most of the people in this shot ended up testifying against me in court. But this day was a good day. Look at this scorpion here. God. Magnificent actor. Let me just briefly return to that editing decision from a few minutes ago.

where I cut directly from an exploding building in London to the climactic moment of a sex scene. Because discovering that juxtaposition was... quite revelatory for me on a personal level making art is always a journey of self-discovery i had no idea that blowing things up would have such a profound effect on me in a erotic sense. I found that I was quite... beguiled sexually by the image of spontaneous eruptions of fire and smoke.

particularly if I was in some way responsible for the eruption. It's called pyrophilia. I know that now. It's quite tragic, really, because... Most pyrophiliacs go through their entire life without ever knowing that they even have the condition. It's just an aspect of one's personality that one simply doesn't learn about. oneself until one finds themselves, you know, directing a Bond film. So all these feelings are regrettably awakening within me throughout this shoot.

I will admit, I did actually talk to my crew about the possibility of these coffins here draped in Union Jacks, whether they could be rigged to explode and blow up M here. Thankfully, I was so out of my mind on cocaine during this period that my creative requests mostly came out as a kind of... incomprehensible cackle so a lot of this stuff went graciously unnoticed even at the time i knew my judgment was off i was self-aware enough

to recognise that I had a problem. So to protect the film from this growing kink of mine, I decided to put some additional guardrails. in place and by rails yes i mean cocaine which i had found in large enough quantities would prevent me from any kind of sexual proclivity. So whenever I felt the sudden sexual urge to blow something up, I would simply...

pop back to the hotel for a quick cold shower and a drug binge, and then I would be straight back on set to direct our magnificent actors. Like this wonderful bit of sparring between Danny and Judy here. Skyfall sneaking into Em's house to call her a bloody bitch. God, this is real. Electric cinema, yeah. Speak for yourself. Ronson didn't make it, did he?

Actually, I don't think I was on set for this. I guess I must have been back at the hotel that day, bravely, you know, fighting my sexual perversions. I am sorry to go on about this stuff. I'm just trying to share my side of the story which was somewhat mangled by the courts and the British press. I just feel one doesn't get credit. for all the explosions one doesn't set off. People tend to fixate on the small amount of explosions that actually happen.

Put your things into storage. Standard procedure on the death of an unmarried employee with no next of kin. In case you hadn't noticed, production has moved once again back to London. But this time I felt like I had more of a plan going forward, which was this. I thought, what if rather than jumping?

straight to another fancy international location and kicking off our high octane espionage plot what if rather than that what if for the next hour of the film skyfall basically just hung around waiting to be sent on a mission and then we can just fill that runtime

with various conversations with his colleagues saying, hmm, you look a bit peaky, Skyfall. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to go on a mission after all. And that might seem like a... unconventional structure for a spy film but i had three very good reasons why i thought this should be the direction um first reason was

I saw this as a kind of intentional mirroring of my personal experience making the film. There were lots of questions circulating regarding my competence. And so I wanted to use my arts.

to explore all of the emotions that that was stirring up i could have just written a sad poem in my journal but you know i had this billion dollar sandbox at my disposal am i seriously not going to use this incredible resource as a therapeutic tool to make me feel better about myself my second reason for keeping bond off work in london was well i was becoming

increasingly worried about potentially losing control of myself libido wise if we attempted any more big action sequences so i just thought it was safer if maybe i steered the rest of this Bond film towards something more conversational, more philosophical, something a bit closer to My Dinner with Andre, for example. My third and final reason, though, for keeping

The crew here in London for as long as possible was really from a practical standpoint, I needed to stay local. Since returning to London, I'd become quite... ensconced in the city particularly in relation to organized crime i'd racked up a rather significant amount of debt due to the various And so I came up with an arrangement through... which a portion of the replica firearms that we had made for the film would be donated to a local crime family

known as the Funny Bastards. Absolutely delightful bunch of lads. Young guys, very entrepreneurial. The name Funny Bastards, I believe, is due to their... close association with laughing gas. absolutely love this scene really wish i'd been there on this date skyfall is having a psych evaluation running a little bit of fun word association Now, this draft plays fine, but I do still prefer my original draft of Bond's responses. If I remember correctly, it was something like... Gun.

Penis. Agent. Penis. Woman. No cry. Heart. Break hotel. Bird. Shack. M. And M's. i.e. the sweeties sunlight bored moonlight bored murder interested country dancing skyfall hello delivered in a kind of unhinged way. And then M on the other side of the two-way mirror was supposed to say, Christ, I wouldn't... trust that little skank to bat his own eyelids which was something i actually overheard judy say about me just a few days earlier judy was probably a little bit shocked too

see her words from a private conversation suddenly appear in the following day's pages, but what can I say? I know a good line when I hear one. As I said, I was trying to use this production as a cipher for my own contemporaneous experience. So, in fact... Lots of the horrible things the people were saying about me made it into the script. I actually wrote a scene in which Mallory, the Ralph Fiennes character, calls Bond an incompetent coke weasel.

I also decided to shoot a scene where we saw Bond snorting coke off a framed picture of the Queen and then go watch The Lion King on the West End. whilst totally off his face and accidentally evacuate himself during the song Hakuna Matata.

She's ready for you. It's quite subtle but if you squint you can sort of identify the autobiographical elements beneath the surface. I can't remember if any of those scenes made the final cut. Well, we'll see. Stealing all the replica guns from the set was a little bit trickier than I'd anticipated.

all of the weapons were kept in a gun safe which was itself kept inside a special room with a combination lock and both of those combinations were known only to our on-set armorer but i thought to myself what if for the numeric combination they've just i mean they wouldn't be stupid enough to have just used as the combination 007 But they had, so that certainly made things a bit easier. Here's the plan as I presented it to my gangland friends. I said to them, listen.

I'll be your inside man, but you guys have to come on set to get the guns yourselves. I'm a professional storyteller, so I know how to create a good cover story that will give you guys access to the set. And for that story, we're going to play on your two main assets. Asset number one, some of you guys are very, very young looking. Most of you guys are still teenagers after all. So let's pick.

a handful of guys from your organization the youngest looking guys to do this job asset number two your chronic addiction to nitrous oxide means you guys always have a ton of balloons on you at all times Nothing says innocent more than a child holding a bunch of balloons. So let's get these young lads, hand them a bunch of balloons each, put them in a nice shirt. We're not going to have any problems.

So when your delegates arrive at the security gate, get them to ask for me. I'll sign them in as kids from a Make-A-Wish Foundation. I'll walk them on set. if they want they can even do a quick meet and greet with danny and dame judy not rafe because we'll be here all day but then at some pre-arranged time I'll give them a tour of the fuse box in the basement. They can then tie me up, kill the power, and then they'll have a good six minutes or so to pop into the armory and shove.

down their baggy trousers as many replica weapons as their heart desires and then they can you know see themselves out there's no Security footage of the crime? I can plead ignorance of the whole heist and claim I was duped to. You'll get your guns and we'll consider my debt paid. I will admit the gangsters were a little unsure about the potential risks to begin with, but a storyboard did it all out for them and that put their minds.

at ease somewhat sadly though it turns out I'm not very good at storyboarding and due to a couple of mistakes made On my part, the gang regrettably ended up turning up 12 hours early for the heist. Also due to a communication breakdown. Rather than a small delegation of the gang, the entire... criminal organisation turned up at the gates. All 300 members in nice shirts, festooned with balloons. Oswam led to believe that the balloons were not filled with air, but you know, chuckle gas.

But of course, at the time, I was not at Waterloo Tunnels to walk them past security. I was still busy shooting this scene. out on location. And because I have a no phones policy on sets, I had absolutely no idea about the extremely upsetting events. that were simultaneously unfolding on the other side of the city. I was just laser focused on these wonderful performances from Danny and Benjamin here.

Fantastic watching these two guys go at it. And of course, getting to film inside the gorgeous National Gallery. What a treat. It's like a palace where... The royal owners have been executed, the furniture destroyed, and now the peasants get to just hang out inside, making excuses just to be there, even though it's... boring and there's nothing to do. My initial plan was to have Dan and Ben sit in front of the painting The Ambassadors by Hans Holborn the Younger because of that wonderful hidden

memento mori, which felt like a nice motif, appropriate somehow. But Danny and Benjamin wanted to use a turner and worked out this whole exchange. So I said, fine, I haven't written any scripts anyway. It's hard to know which in your pajamas. Unbeknownst to us, this was the exact moment that a gang of some 300

teenage criminals forced their way onto our Waterloo set and were proceeding to burn the entire place to the ground. I don't know if you can imagine being in the shoes of the people on set that day to suddenly... find oneself surrounded by adorable looking children from the make-a-wish foundation who all then suddenly start huffing on their teddy bear balloons and throwing molotov cocktails judy dench i heard had to scramble under a bit of loose carpet

Seeing as I'd already given them the combination, they still managed to steal all the replica guns and all 300 lads somehow managed to flee the scene before any emergency services arrived. No fatalities, thankfully. But my life was very much in danger, you see, because I hadn't been there in person to walk the boys in and facilitate the cover story. The gang...

still believed that I had essentially welched on our arrangement. So the word was that the funny bastards have now put me on their kill list. I was to be murked on sight, which, yes, is as bad as it sounds, sadly.

So hearing that, I thought maybe this would be a really great moment in the script for Bond to go and do something on the other side of the planet. So we moved production to Shanghai, which was about as far as I could get from both the British police and the huge criminal gang. that I'd just armed to the teeth. Skyfall. Having a lovely midnight swim here. Penny Craig was pretty sick of me by this point. I mean...

He was already being forced to improvise most of the script. I think he also probably suspected my involvement in the teenage fire assault upon our multi-million pound London set. Look at Dan, giving me the evil eye there. Eyes of a strangler. I'm not sure whether Dan was picking up on my guilt or... My arousal. I hate to say it, but this is the burden of the pyrophiliac. One simply cannot help one's horniness around a magnificent blaze like that.

I mean, I was obviously mortified, absolutely wretched with guilt and fear. Also, I was terrified about the potential repercussions. And yet, I was also feeling... Very erotic. I couldn't help myself and Dan might have. You might have picked up on that. Of course. The biggest shame about the fire attack was that... No one bothered to turn on any of the cameras. We could easily have worked that whole escapade into the story. I'm absolutely sure of it. One hates to...

Have one's livelihood go up in flames and not even have a camera running. Damn barely said it. words to me for the entire time we were in Shanghai so I basically said to him fine don't want to talk don't talk at all we'll do the entire sequence without any words see how much you like it then you can just tit about like Charlie Chaplin for a couple of weeks

when the light on Danny's gun lights up. Look at this little smile here. Ooh. Ooh. Baddy shot someone. Oh, no. Sad face. Maybe guns aren't funny. after all brilliant what incredible non-dialogue scenes shakespeare in action I flew in the baddie from the Istanbul sequence and I said to him, we're just gonna shoot you and Danny wandering around for a few days. Roger's gonna make it look like both of you are trapped inside a giant pinball table.

Work the rest out amongst yourselves. I'm off to the State Security Bureau to request asylum status as a political refugee. Because, as I mentioned, I was a little apprehensive about returning to Britain. Plus, I really liked China. I'd happily relocate, but I didn't have time to go through the official green card process. So, a thought. selling state secrets might be a quick way to secure a residence and maybe get the MSS to pay for it as well.

And the thing about making a Bond film is you have a lot of very official looking military documents just knocking about the place. And perhaps this is a good moment for me to shout out our magnificent prop department. Fantastic bunch of artists. Incredible eye for detail. Always working through the nights because at 2am I've called somebody up and said, Oi, tomorrow I need a... I don't know, to put an example out of thin air.

ultra realistic mi6 dossier containing information on every british counterintelligence agent currently embedded in the people's republic of china something like that so anyway i wasn't on set for a lot of this whole sequence i was mostly um sitting in a waiting room over at the sssb waiting for someone to process my spanking new Chinese passport. Now you must believe me, at the time, I genuinely thought, my plan too.

sell spy information to a foreign power was an incredibly good idea as good as any creative idea that i'd had for the plot for skyfall it wasn't until much later that i realized It was actually the same idea as the plot for Skyfall. God, I just sort of, I did know that I heard it somewhere before. I mean, it's no big deal, really. It's not a crime to plagiarize yourself, is it?

I'll tell you what, it is a crime now. Fraud and conspiracy to commit espionage under the Official Secrets Act. Those are crimes. So maybe I shouldn't have been quite so cavalier with my creative license.

In the end, the Chinese secret police didn't give me a passport. They just kept me trapped in their waiting room for three days without food or a toilet whilst they ransacked my hotel room. Eventually, they did release me from their building on the understanding that I... threw myself down their fire escape a couple of times and i was happy to oblige they did follow me though uh the secret police i i ended up sort of running

shrieking through the city, fearing for my life. Anyway, eventually I lost them, and at that point it was safe to finally return here to the set. I was a little bit hysterical. when I arrived, you know, babbling, rolling around on the floor like a baby. Sheer terror. Shockingly though, not one member of the crew had noticed that I'd been missing for the last three days.

Which was a little bit galling. However, I've got to say, I think they did some of their best work on the film while I was away. I still love what they came up with here. We may not have used my choice of painting. the gallery scene but how's about this for a painting with a hidden memento mori all it takes is for the viewer to slightly alter their perspective and suddenly what do they see within the paint's butts bang death this was all invented by

my DOP, Roger Deakins. He came up with this whole assassination sequence. But apparently, Roger tells me that he initially got the idea for it from a drug-fuelled rant of mine. uh on the plane when we were flying out here apparently i was shrieking at him about how all art is secretly about death and

Yeah, I've no memory of saying any of that, but Roger took it in and... It's incredible, really, to see the... persistent thoughts of one's own demented brain reflected back sober crisply powerfully i felt as if roger had pulled something from my unconscious into my waking mind and

watching back the dailies of this moment i found myself starting to obsess over this concept art that secretly contains a death Those of you that have read about me in the papers probably know where this is heading, but this is the moment when I first began to formulate the possibility of Using this motion picture of ours to, what is really no nice way to say it, to conceal a real life killing.

Just as a still life painting might contain a skull to remind us that one day we will die. Could a motion picture, I wondered, contain within it a real life death one that could only be seen from certain angles with certain eyes but it would be there for those Who knew where to look? A real-life death as a message. A reminder of human fragility. of our mortality. It was a... an unconventional idea. Perhaps a little...

Dare I say it, a little art house. But this was something I just kept turning over in my mind as the shoot continued on to the Macau gambling district. That's where we are now.

In a casino hotel in Macau, Danny and the wonderful actor, Naomi Harris, having some flirty pants. By this point, I'm happy to say that... I had managed to curb the majority of my drug taking. China, after all, has some of the most stringent anti-narcotics laws in the world. Just the ambient amount of cocaine. found in my beard back in England would be enough to get me executed for trafficking in China. So much to the relief of my crew, I was no longer a drug-addled mess.

Of course, I was now in withdrawal, permanently covered in sweats and invisible beetles. And without drugs in my system 24-7, my pyrophilia was reawakening. I was beginning to have quite disturbing, elaborate sexual fantasies about having sex with burning buildings. Not inside, with. And I was unable to sleep.

Or eat. And I was still utterly terrified to my core that the Chinese secret police were about to, you know, pull me off the street, take me into a secret facility and then drop me into a giant food blender. So I was still inebriated around the clock, basically, to try and take the edge off it all. I'm embarrassed to share that...

These guys had to do this scene multiple times because I kept forgetting not to talk. I just kept thinking that it was just the three of us hanging out together in a hotel room and having a chat and so I'd... just strike up and say something like, oh, shall I put a CD on? And then everything would stop and Danny would yell at me. Oh, Trevor, this is a dramatic scene. Did you forget again?

And I'd go, oh, yes, sorry, sorry, my mind was wandering again, got a lot on my plate, sorry about that. And then Danny would pace about and punch a couple of wooden beams and then we'd start all over again. And I did have a lot on my mind, to be fair. I knew it was only a matter of time before either the British authorities or my gangland friends or the Chinese secret police caught up with me.

And the only thing protecting me from my enemies was this film, really, through the funds and the means it provides. I can stay on the run for the time being. But it was like being on this melting ice flow. The budget was dwindling. One way or another, we were going to have to wrap in five, six weeks. And no matter where I'd escaped to, wherever I was.

when the music finally stopped i would be royally killed or arrested basically so this is what got me thinking if my life was already going to be over when the film wrapped why give someone else the pleasure of taking my life if it's going to end i should be the one to end it and also

while i have it i should use my power as director to really make it a bloody good suicide i can use this bond film i thought to engineer an incredible end to myself using whatever influence i have remaining over the story i can create an incredible set piece to facilitate my death

What's more, I can get it on film and more than that, I can get it in the film. If I engineer my suicide so it happens in a shot so expensive that it would be impossible for my successor to edit around the footage. it would end up in the film. This was the idea, I suspect, that had been percolating in the background of my brain ever since I took on the project. Now, at last. I realized its purpose. Skyfall was to be my coffin. Yes, but on the screen I would live forever. Mostly in infamy.

Nevertheless, it would be the Easter egg to end all Easter eggs. A folk legend that, of course, everyone would deny that broccolis would make sure no one ever spoke of it. But yet. the rumour would remain. So here we are on the gaming floor of our Macau casino. Skyfall now. Finally coming face to face with our female anti-hero character, Severine, played by Bernice McClure, who is a wonderful actor.

Do I use that phrase too often? Wonderful actor? Maybe. I just think acting, all acting, is wonderful. Somebody in front of you pretending to be someone else. What's not to like? So, um, we've just seen Skyfall collect a large suitcase of money. I wanted to use real bills for this scene, but the broccoli's requested. that we use fake cash instead. In fact, the Broccoli's insisted that the money should be purposefully bad replicas to prohibit any potential risk.

of the prop being stolen or misused. So I guess the broccolis were on to me by that point. A little like our friend in Shanghai. I did feel... a little bit personally victimized by that decision. Because as you might imagine, a big suitcase of free money would absolutely get me out of my current

life-threatening situation. I could bribe my way out of China, pay my way off that Merc list back in England, pay my way clear of any connection to the Waterloo fire and still have enough left to buy myself. Nice super yacht or a zoo, maybe. But no, no, we had to use fake bills with Woody Woodpecker's face on them. Technically, I directed this scene, but I think I was mostly just hiding behind the monitor with my notebook, trying to come up with a fantastic way to kill myself.

Because I wanted to factor my suicide into the background of some future action set piece, I ended up doing the most amount of story development that day than I did for the entire rest of the shoot. actually worked out some future scenes for once. Specifically, I came up with this idea for a big action sequence that I wanted to set on the Japanese island of Hashima.

Now, if you've never heard of Hashima, it's basically an island-sized ghost town. Once it was a mining community, it was abandoned in the 70s, untouched ever since. And now it's this crumbling ruin. It looks... positively post-apocalyptic, a wonderful atmospheric place for one to attempt suicide, particularly given the budget that we could spend on the whole thing. So I came up with a scene that we could shoot there.

that could also potentially conceal my death. And then I passed it on to the crew to work out the rest of the details. Obviously, I kept shtum about the whole suicide business.

In general, it helps for a director to hold some stuff back, lest it jeopardize the whole scene. Of course, it was deeply unwell. at the time and I feel quite sorry for this past version of me that was seriously considering ending his life and the fact that I had turned my suicide into this grandiose cinematic gesture only made it harder for me to recognize the error of my ways. It's hard to locate reason within art because art creates its own reason. And so...

I found myself quite seduced by this creative project of mine that I'd mapped out in my little notebook. At the center of it all, I'd lost hope, you see. What I failed to realize at the time... is that there's always hope fundamentally so one never knows what the future might bring but those days filming in macau for some reason I just couldn't imagine a future. Until one night, after we'd wrapped filming for the day, when I won.

185 million dollars on the Baccarat table I should point out that's Hong Kong dollars converts to about 20 million British sterling Now I had put up about a million pounds of the film's budget on the table to begin with, but that still meant I was up about 19 million. A quite unbelievable turn of events.

I spent the rest of the night in the back office of the casino, filling out forms, going through the tedious verification process. So it was actually about 7am when I finally received the cashier's check for my winnings. And I was offered a security detail to escort me straight to the bank to deposit it. But I was already due on set by then, sadly. And I did also really want to... Rub it in some people's noses. So I said to the casino, it's cool ads. I'll take the check in myself later. Anyway.

I get on set and I see Danny. He's limbering up for this Komodo dragon fight scene here. FYI, we weren't allowed to use a real Komodo dragon. for this scene of the film so sadly instead we had to use cgi but so the actor still had something to react to in the space where the komodo dragon should be i placed a

Large Argentinian rattlesnake. Little tricks in filmmaking, like this, really do make all the difference. So anyway, in between setups... I took Danny to one side, check in hand, and I said to him, Look, I know I have been an incoherence. mostly antagonistic presence on set throughout this process. A dead weight at best. You've all had to carry me, do my job for me. I appreciate that. I really do. And yes, if you're wondering.

I am personally responsible for the destruction of our Waterloo set. Also, this entire production is now being monitored by Chinese intelligence. You might not know that, but we might all be at risk. And that's my fault too. I think you already had your suspicions. Well, you were 100% correct. I'm just being a straight shooter here by telling you this, okay, Dan? Just respect my candor, okay? Respect it.

because i'm not just owning up to my mistakes here i am promising you that i am going to fix everything that i've broken and then i handed danny the check and i said to him Read that because with this, I am going to make everything right. This is me showing you that you can put your trust in me again. So do you trust me? Danny looked at the check, and then he looked at me, and he nodded, and I thought we understood each other.

So when Daniel Craig suddenly started screaming, I was confused. And that was when I realized that I had just been bitten by an Argentinian rattlesnake. That had somehow slithered off its mark. And I had to be rushed to a hospital to receive a critical anti-venom treatment.

Got myself stuck on a ward for 48 hours, which meant I didn't get back behind the camera for this bloody shower sex scene, which would be my idea in the first place. Anyway, when I was in hospital, I thought, leaving my cheque in the possession.

of Hollywood actor Daniel Craig was probably one of the safest places that I could leave something valuable. But when I caught up with him back at the hotel that night, he acted like he had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. What check, Trevor? What? heartfelt confession of all your wrongdoings I told him don't play fucking games I literally saw you complete an extremely acrobatic action sequence

And I walked over to you. You were eating a chicken sandwich. And then we had that conversation. And then I passed you the check. And then I was bit by a snake. Dan was like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm vegan. I hate chicken sandwiches. That was the point when I just started screaming because liking chicken is one of the few things I know about Daniel Craig. I had no idea what was going on anymore. Dan then bops me on the nose.

Down I go, utterly stunned. And then Dan says, we're done. He says, he's going to go tell the Broccoli's that he wants me off the project. I'll get to direct the scenes on Hashimer Island next week. But after that... I am going to be officially relieved from my duties and he's going to make sure of it. Next thing I know, the crew are separating us and both Danny and I are getting frog-marched into separate taxis to the airport. You see...

Whilst we'd been finishing up on Macau, the second unit had also been working hard, prepping for the scenes I'd written for Hashima Island. Although if the crew really knew what I had been building... Perhaps they'd have been less in a hurry to get there. Here they are, Skyfall and Severin, in this beautiful boat. heading out towards this dead island construction of mine. They're supposed to be heading to the lair of the main villain of our story, the man behind all the pain.

I remember being on the other side of the camera here, looking at Daniel Craig and wondering, Why are you doing this to me? Why are you torturing me like this? I had so many questions. But there was one thing I knew for certain. I was still the one telling the story. For now, the story was still mine to tell. And I would write my way. to a happy ending. I would not let this film kill me by suicide or any other means. I had fleetingly seen a path to happiness.

I didn't care how convoluted I had to make the second half of this Bond film. I was going to get what I wanted. However, that was probably going to involve murdering Daniel Craig. Yes. It was definitely going to involve murdering Daniel Craig.