It seems everyone has once dreamed about making a James Bond movie, and the allure is easy to understand. A dashing hero, sexy dames, exotic locales, colorful villains and larger than life stories are great canvases to paint on, and everyone from Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino has flirted with and thought about what they’d do with 007, and so too has Wes Anderson.
The director recently joined Ralph Fiennes for an extensive, ninety-minute TimesTalk about his upcoming “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and Anderson shared his concept for a Bond movie, admitting he doesn’t generally get calls to do blockbuster movies. “They go to Sam Mendes; they didn’t go to me,” Anderson said. “I had this [Bond movie] I wanted to do called ‘Mission: Deferred.’ This was a few years ago. James Bond. The cold war is over, and there’s no gig … and the gadgetry is like he has a great coffee machine…so I never got the call.”
It seem like a perfectly Anderson-y approach, presenting a man with proven talent, trying to find his way in a world that changed around him. You can find that character in almost everyone one of the director’s films. But with 007 now a billion dollar franchise, no one is going to take a risk at a total reinvention of the character, especially if he’s down and out with no gadgets (the horror!) so this is one you’ll have to keep dreaming about.
Anyway, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” opens on March 7th. You can find plenty of info about the making of the movie in the talk below and also check out two TV spots for the film. Btw, Pitchfork is streaming “The Grand Budapest Hotel” soundtrack in its entirety here.