During a recent interview with Deadline, Sam Mendes discussed his latest Bond film, Spectre, which is currently number one in theaters.
On his version of “Day of the Dead”: “I assure you, we cleaned it all up. Day of the Dead is like your version of Halloween, only it’s a purer form, a celebration of the dead and the people you’ve lost. It’s not a funeral, or a wake, and there’s nothing morbid about it. People set up shrines around the streets to their loved ones. The only other time they had 120,000 people filling the Zocalo was for a Justin Bieber concert.”
On his vision of Bond: “Well, it does go back to Casino Royale, where the most difficult work on this current version of Bond as a character was done by Martin Campbell, and in the casting of Daniel Craig. The key factor there was, they worked on a script from an Ian Fleming novel, which they had never really done, not like that. And in that one movie, they eradicated camp. They eradicated Q, and Moneypenny. There were no self-reflexive jokes and no sense he was there with one foot inside and one outside the movie, simultaneously. That had been the lifeblood of the franchise for 20 years, Roger Moore through to Pierce Brosnan. Bond became this eyebrow-raising, knowing figure, unaffected by any kind of emotional journey. Those were wonderful action adventures that spanned the globe and Bond was the glue, but he had no emotional journey. And then suddenly, the character bled, literally and metaphorically, and fell in love with somebody and lost them. It was kind of creation of how Bond became hardened as a younger agent and after that never looked back. Quantum Of Solace was the second half of that story, and by the end of that he’d fully gotten over her.”