Nothing surprises us anymore about Quentin Tarantino. So the fact that he wanted to make his own version of one of the best-selling franchises of all time, and drunkenly demanded it doesn't faze us in the least. Pierce Brosnan was at the receiving end of Tarantino's incapacitated rant, and we sort of feel sorry for him.
Brosnan revealed an interesting little tidbit of information on a live watch along of his famous Bond movie, GoldenEye, reports Esquire. Apparently when Brosnan was 007, he had an encounter with Tarantino, in which the famous director tried to persuade the actor to star as Bond in his version of the spy thriller.
From 1995 to 2002, Brosnan had the joy of playing James Bond, but it was after GoldenEye in 1995, that he got the strange proposal to star as Bond in Tarantino's own version. Brosnan revealed that Tarantino went as far as to have his people get in touch with Brosnan's, but the actor got to have a one-on-one interlude with Tarantino himself, and apparently a lot of alcohol was consumed.
"It was after Kill Bill Vol. 2, and he wanted to meet me, so I went up to Hollywood one day from the beach, and I met him at the Four Seasons," Brosnan explained in the watch along. "I got there at 7pm, I like to be punctual. 7:15 came around, no Quentin, he was upstairs doing press. Someone sent over a martini, so I had a martini, and I waited till 7:30, and I thought, where the heck is he? Word came down, apologies, so I thought, okay, I'll have another martini."
It wasn't until Brosnan was "fairly smokered" that the director showed up and wanted to join in on Brosnan's drinking. After a short bit of time both of them were drunk as skunks together, and Tarantino couldn't stop talking about his proposal to take Brosnan on as Bond. In fact, he even got a little raucous about it, in the small hotel bar, but there was nothing to be done about it apparently.
"He was pounding the table, saying you're the best James Bond, I wanna do James Bond, and it was very close quarters in the restaurant and I thought, please calm down, but we don't tell Quentin Tarantino to calm down," said Brosnan.
"He wanted to do James Bond, and I went back to the shop and told them but it wasn't meant to be. No Quentin Tarantino for James Bond," Brosnan continued. "That would be a good one to watch."
In fact Tarantino did a lot more than drunkenly shout about how he wanted Brosnan in his Bond film. The director even went to 007's creators estate to ask for the rights to make his own film, WhatCulture.com reports. When he went to Ian Fleming's estate, who penned the Bond book series, he had in mind the rough idea of where he wanted his version to go.
He imagined his Bond film to be set in the 60s but still have Brosnan play Bond, even though the actor had already been portraying him in the recent installments set in the 90s. If Eon, the production company who owned the rights at the time, wouldn't budge on wanting to leave the plot in its continuity with the rest of Brosnan's Bond films, Tarantino was willing to set his film in the present.
Tarantino also had an idea to make his Casino Royale even more old school, by filming it in black and white. The film would have even been invaded by Tarantino's favorite American actors at the time, Uma Thurman who he wanted to play Vesper Lynd and Samuel L. Jackson to play Felix Leiter. Vesper Lynd was of course later played by actress Eva Green, and Felix Leiter was played by Jeffrey Wright.
According to The New York Daily News, Tarantino said, "(I would) have it take place after the events of "On Her Majesty`s Secret Service" – after Bond's wife, Tracy, has been killed. I want Bond to be in mourning when he falls in love with Vesper Lynd, the woman in the novel."
But shortly after, all of Tarantino's efforts were for nothing, because Daniel Craig was cast as the new bond and Martin Campbell, who directed GoldenEye, reprised his directorial spot in his version of Casino Royale. Tarantino's bid for the movies was crushed, but is it really a surprise?
Out of the 11 Bond movies, not once has an American director taken on a Bond film. In fact most of them are British, as is the cast for that matter, considering it is a story based on the Queen's Secret Service. The production company and Ian Fleming's estate no doubt wanted no part in a very much American-ized version of Bond.
We can never really know for sure what kind of film Tarantino would have made but it would have been interesting to say the least, especially if he was so adamant about making it. Instead, we can all wait patiently for Daniel Craig's last Bond movie, No Time To Die, to come out.
