By
the time I make it down to the Tiber that first night in Rome—after an
overnight flight, after Customs, after clearing the complicated Italian
on-set security—it’s nearly midnight and I’ve just missed the shot.
A
giant crane is planted at the top of the stairs that lead down to the
river. Its outriggers spans most of the blocked-off roadway, its
ten-story boom extends over the water, its winding drum is whirring. At
the end of its line, emerging from the water tail-first, like a giant
hooked tarpon, is the impossibly gorgeous, smoky silver, Aston Martin
DB10 sports coupe, purpose built as a one-off (well, ten-off) by Aston
design chief Marek Reichman in collaboration with director Sam Mendes,
just for “Spectre,” the 24th James Bond film, and the 12th featuring the venerable British sporting luxury brand.
Water
pours out of its baleen grille, and I wonder if this is an intentional
or accidental byproduct of the movie’s central chase scene, a sequence
that also includes, among other double-dares, tearing through a Vatican
Piazza at 100 m.p.h. and launching down four flights of stairs.
At
least three other DB10s line the damp cobbled path next to the river. A
“stunt gadget” car—a drivable version loaded up with all the hardware
and Q-installed goodies—is being moved back into position upriver. A
“pod” car with a giant metal armature mounted on top—including steering
wheel, mirrors, and gas and brake pedals, allowing it to be operated
independent of the “driver” who can then focus on acting—sits backed
against the high wall. A “hero” car, pristine and used for rolling and
staid beauty shots, is parked alongside it, its custom wheels shimmering
in the wake-refracted moonlight.
Also
present are various versions of the baddie’s car. Aligned with the
brand’s villainous marketing messages, this is a Jaguar. Maintaining the
focus on bespoke vehicles, it’s also not a production vehicle, but a
radical concept—2010’s handsome hybrid, electric, gas turbine
C-X75—albeit revised and resuscitated.
“They’ve
got V-8 engines in them, from the F-Type,” stunt coordinator Gary
Powell tells me. “The originals, the real ones, are actually a lot
heavier because they’ve got batteries and electric motors and all that.
They’d probably get exploded if we went down the stairs. So they built
us these from the ground up.” (“Nobody really wants the hybrids close to
water,” action vehicles technology coordinator Neil Layton adds,
later.)
Uncertain
of the accuracy of these statements, but not willing to take any
chances, I retreat to a high perch on the opposite bank as the crew
resets the shot. The plot point here, so far as I can discern, is that
one of the bad guy’s henchmen, the mountainous Mr. Jinx played by pro
wrestler David Bautista, is chasing Bond through the city. They end up
running top speed on this riverside promenade, and, approaching a stone
barricade, Bond faces a difficult choice.
Diminishing
the dramatic excitement somewhat, the chase is not being filmed in
sequence. Tonight, we’ll see just Jinx’s initial antagonistic approach,
and Bond’s ultimate response. As the stunt-Aston is winched onto a ramp
hidden behind the ersatz wall, and the Jag is rolled back upriver, out
of sight, I examine the spectacle—one of the year’s biggest movies being
filmed in the heart of Rome—and note the absence of paparazzi.
When
I ask about this, I’m told that there are over 600 people working on
this production, half of who are dedicated to keeping people from
approaching the shoot. With nine cameras and their concomitant
operators, a dozen emergency technicians idling in the drink on Skidoos,
two-dozen handlers dedicated to moving the picture cars around, and
this immense security apparatus, it is not surprising that productions
like this cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, it is kind of
shocking that they don’t cost more.
I
hear the Jag’s vengeful crackle before I see it, but when it finally
appears, it is on fire. No one is running toward it, so I assume this to
be intentional. It races upriver and as it approaches the wall, an
explosion goes off under the waiting Aston, a lift engages, and the DB10
is launched into the air. I won’t spoil the surprise of what happens
next. But in the aftermath of all this wizardry and mayhem, the
priceless Jaguar sits, still burning. About thirty seconds later,
someone drags over an extinguisher and puts it out.
When
creating the latest installment of one of the world’s longest running
and most profitable movie franchises, car chases and crash-ups do not
happen in an ad hoc way.
“I
see a script very early on,” says stunt coordinator Gary Powell, a
veteran of six prior Bond films. “And then we start planning things.
With these movies, it’s always, no one’s really done anything of this
scale here before. So one of the biggest questions is, are they going to
let us do it?”
In
the case of Spectre, Powell worked very closely with director Sam
Mendes to explore ideas and bring them to life. “Let’s say there’s a car
chase in the original script. Sam sort of gives us his vision of what
the chase needs to be, and it sort of progresses from there. We come up
with ideas, what we’d like to see the cars doing. Then come over to look
at locations that would be nice to use.”
In
order to guarantee that his ideas remain fresh, Powell has to stay
current on his action movie viewing. (We ask if he’s ever seen a film
stunt and wondered, how did they do that? His answer, “No.”) He also has
to stay on top, if not ahead, of contemporary audience trends.
These
days, that means limiting the use of computer generated imagery (CGI).
“Bond has always been big, spectacular, and a little bit different. So
we keep that in mind, but we try to keep it as real as possible, gritty,
because that’s what the new audience likes.”
The
cars are then designed and constructed to meet the needs of the stunts.
They’re equipped with more compliant and longer-travel suspension to
allow for off-brand use like drifting downstairs or across Roman
cobbles. They’re fitted with roll cages for stiffness and driver safety.
They’re given quick-change brackets to allow the rapid swap of dented
body panels. They’re even, like the Jag, given entirely new drive
trains.
But
the real reason people go to see a James Bond movie is for the gadgets,
so the most compelling modifications are those added by Neil Layton.
His rather ponderous official title is Action Vehicles Technologies
Coordinator. But, in honor of the gizmo chief at Mi6, I refer to him as
Real Q.
Bond’s
DB10 is outfitted with all the latest technology. Inside the cabin,
there’s a beautiful squared off racing wheel with a keyless fingerprint
recognition starter, like on an iPhone. There’s a set of precise Swiss
watch-like analog gauges. There’s the requisite ejector seat button
affixed to the top of the gearshift. (“What do you use to test that,” I
ask. “Cheeky journalists, mostly,” Layton says.)
But
it’s the row of unpolished, Frankensteined switchgear on the center
console I’m most interested in. “In the film, the car is a
prototype—Bond takes it out before it’s complete,” Layton says. “I’ve
had to visually emphasize the fact that these switches are not
production ready, so they look pretty crude.”
These
buttons control the Aston’s weaponry, including rear-mounted
flamethrowers and pneumatic double barrel machine guns. Layton takes us
around back, opens the trunk, and shows us how everything is plumbed to
be discrete, functional, and integrated. “As you can see, it’s not just a
case of chucking in a couple of tubes, putting pipes out the back, and
saying, this is your flamethrower and your gun.”
Everything
is proper. For example, since the machine gun barrels exit from behind a
centrally mounted Aston trunk badge, Layton and his team needed to move
the boot latch to the side. But they didn’t just insert a basic
replacement. “It still has the capacity to power closed.” He
demonstrates. “So we’ve kept the refinements of the Aston brand.”
Layton
informs us that Daniel Craig is quite experienced at high speed
driving. “Any excuse for him to go out in a fast sports car and have a
couple fun days,” he says. But while Craig might have the chops to
appear more confident behind the wheel than Barbara Stanwyck in Double
Indemnity, when you see Bond driving, or believe that you see him
driving, chances are, he’s not actually driving. Mark Higgins is.
The
three-time British Rally champion has worked on a number of previous
Bond films, and though he doesn’t exactly share Daniel Craig’s build
(who does?), when he’s dressed in a black Tom Ford suit and Omega
Seamaster watch, as he is when he sits down with us on set, he—or, at
least, his hands and arms—can work as a decent facsimile.
Higgins
sees a number of key differences between racing and technical driving.
“You’re not quite on the limit in film. You’re trying to be
consistent—you’re working to the cameras and what’s around you. And
safety is paramount, with seventy people about. With rallying and
racing,” he says, “you’re pushing, maybe, a little bit more.”
Still,
he’s proud to be able to take his children to see the finished movies. I
suggest that it must be fun to show off during these family outings, to
point at the screen and whisper to the kids, That’s me, that’s your
dad. But this can apparently come with its own set of complications. “I
didn’t do that in the last one [Skyfall],” he says, “because I was
Naomie Harris for most of it.” [the actress who played Moneypenny]
After
a day of wandering around Rome, I return to the shoot the following
night. The temperature has dropped, and drinking cool Moretti and
lukewarm pizza doesn’t help. Neither does the involuntary shudder I
suffer every time someone hoists a bottle or a slice and says, “When in
Rome.” Or the helicopter, which is racing down the river in practice
runs, churning up wind. A giant lit camera rig is attached to its nose,
and every time it passes overhead, it makes me feel like the subject of
police surveillance.
Adding
to this sensation is the kerfuffle directly behind me. A local Italian
news crew is attempting to shoot the stunt from the sidewalk, and
seemingly all 300 of the on-set bouncers are clustered around them,
using their bodies to block their access. Somehow, someone asks me to
join this endeavor.
I
knit my brow. It seems impossibly ironic that, in a world where most
civilians have video cameras in their pockets, and governments routinely
monitor the movements and activities of their citizens, secrecy can be
maintained only by a film about a world-famous super spy, backed by a
massive publicity budget. “I’m kind of on the side of a free press,” I
say.
The
chopper shot finally happens. Nine times. In the non-linear fashion of
film production, it’s the missing middle section of the previous night’s
action: the Jag chasing the Aston at speed.
When
performing their run, the cars are just ten feet apart. I imagine Mark
Higgins inside the DB10, wearing his Bond costume, holding the car
steady, checking for the position of the C-X75 behind him as he
carefully reaches out to flick the jerry-built switch that operates the
flamethrowers.
Fire
shoots from the rear of the Aston in elegant but potent threads. The
chopper sweeps past the cars, head on. Its rotors fan the flames, as do
the winds off the river, and the velocity of the cars
themselves—millions of dollars in priceless supercars, at risk, at
speed, and on fire. They leave fleeting tracers in the Roman night.
Magic.
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