Sam Mendes, quoted at Collider:
I think that [George] Lazenby [in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service] was dealt a pretty cruel hand because he was following [Sean] Connery who they just did a home run the first time they got to bat. Connery was a great piece of casting; he was iconic in the role. And then they asked him to do strange things which I thought spoke a little bit of their insecurity, for example, right at the beginning, he turns to camera and says to camera, “That wouldn’t happen with the other guy.” You know? The first time I saw the movie, I was like, “You’ve got to be joking! You can’t do that to the poor man!” But it was too… they were playing almost embarrassment, almost apologized for having a new Bond and I thought that was wrong, and I thought what they got right was Casino Royale. There was a kind of “We don’t need Q, we don’t need Moneypenny. We’ve got this character. We’re going right back to basics. He’s real, he’s in a real situation. Let’s start all over again.” I thought that was very refreshing.
That’s why I mentioned the word in the press conference, “regeneration” rather than “evolving,” because I feel it is like, you know, we have Doctor Who… there’s a geek answer… we have Doctor Who and I was brought up on the idea of Doctor Who, who at the end of his final episode, he dissolves and a new actor pops up and he regenerates and it’s a whole other character: sometimes it’s an old man, sometimes it’s a young man, but he just changes. I’ve always loved that idea.
(“James Bond with TARDIS” digital manipulation by yours truly. Click here for a larger version.)
(If you stumble across a cool Doctor Who thing, feel free to email me with a link.)
