The American comedy director who turned down James Bond: “I thought the script was terrible”
It took 25 movies and 59 years for the first James Bond movie directed by an American to be released, but it could have happened more than three decades earlier if the filmmaker in question hadn’t been presented with such an awful, awful script.
Whether or not it’s been intentional or not, although it might have been during Cubby Broccoli’s day, since he turned Steven Spielberg down twice after he volunteered his services, it took an awfully long time for the brain trust behind the 007 franchise to hand the reins over to someone born in the States.
Of course, it wasn’t an exclusively British operation, with New Zealanders Martin Campbell and Lee Tamahori, Canada-born Roger Spottiswoode, and German-Swiss Marc Forster all getting the job at one stage or another, with the next one hailing from the Québécois Denis Villeneuve.
One out of 26 is still an infinitely small number, especially for one of Hollywood’s most monolithic film sagas, and the only thing more outlandish than an American taking the reins on a Bond flick in the 1980s was an American who’d made their name in the comedy genre taking the reins on a Bond flick in the 1980s.
On paper, there was absolutely nothing about John Landis that made him seem like a suitable candidate for 007. By the end of the decade, his filmography included Animal House, The Blues Brothers, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places, Coming to America, and Three Amigos. All good and successful pictures that made money, but not what anyone would call an audition tape.
He did have previous, though, having been hired to develop a script for The Spy Who Loved Me in the late 1970s, which was thrown out by Broccoli for being too critical of the Catholic Church. More than a decade later, and with Timothy Dalton having replaced Roger Moore, he was back in contention.
“He was about to make Licence to Kill, and they offered me the movie to direct,” he recalled. “We got into a disagreement about the script, because I thought the script was terrible. The bottom line was that I was afraid at that moment to do it, because the director really has no power on a Bond film at all.”
Landis liked Broccoli, their relationship went back a long way, and he knew he’d been offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. On the other hand, his career was in a strong enough position where he didn’t necessarily need a Bond film on his CV, and he was aware that he’d be forced into shooting a script that wasn’t fit for purpose.
“At the time, I was thinking, ‘Boy, what the fuck am I gonna do?'” he admitted. “Because there’s no way this can become a good movie.” The answer was simple; he said no, and more than 30 years would pass before an American landed a 007 blockbuster for the first time, with Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die making history in that regard.
