The new James Bond film Spectre is almost here, and despite the 007 franchise’s famous stylish insouciance and flippancy, it takes itself with deadly seriousness. People employed by it are expected to take the party line at all times. Which is why we’ve had the spectacle of two of its most famous actor-representatives cracking under the strain of pretending that this latest Bond film is the most important thing in their lives. First Bond himself, Daniel Craig, snapped he’d “rather slash my wrists” than reprise the role. To the supposedly fascinating question about who should play 007 next, he replied crisply: “I don’t give a fuck.” He went on: “If I did another Bond movie, it would only be for the money.” As for Christoph Waltz, who is playing the villain, he recently spoke about the intolerable experience of being asked by journalists to mark his Bond experience out of 10. He cocked his thumbs and gave a ghastly, mocking grin: “Eleven out of 10!” I always enjoy Bond movies but of course they are daft, and you need very intelligent actors to play them with just the right twinkle in the eye. But the promotional machine insists that these intelligent people pretend to be glassy-eyed devotees in the cult of Bond and all its luxury-brand sponsors, for the benefit of journalists and hype-merchants who are themselves pretending. Perhaps the Bond cast will just freak out, en masse, on the red carpet and start screaming their hatred of Bond – like 12-year-old piano prodigies forced to practise 17 hours a day who end up deliberately smashing their fingers in a car door.
Exit stage fright
Opera stars Corinne Winters and Rhian Lois are appearing in English National Opera’s new production of La Bohème, and capable of unleashing notes of sublime purity and power. When they were interviewed on Radio 2 this week they said something that got my attention. Interviewer Claudia Winkleman asked if they get nervous, and the instant answer was yes, of course. They talked about how you have to face the nerves, let the nerves out, own the nerves. Well, if these brilliant artists claim they get nervous, fair enough. But that’s what all superb stage performers say: oh, I get really nervous, you never stop being nervous and the day you do, you start getting sloppy, etc. And I think … oh, come off it. You’re not nervous. Excited, keyed-up, sure. But “nervous” is for people who aren’t good; “nervous” is what I would be if I tried singing opera. It’s the same with garrulous talkers who utterly command the room. They claim to be “really shy”. Established stage stars confess to being “nervous” as a way of pre-empting charges of big-headedness and appeasing the showbiz gods. It could be true sometimes I suppose, although I remember Ben Elton’s routine about stars who always declaim that they are “sick with nerves” before the show. He pointed out that, in reality, nerves do not have that exact effect on the physiology and that even Prince, half an hour before going on stage, was in the loo, his sparkly underwear around his ankles.
Poetic horror
The literary critic Jonathan Bate has managed to enrage the widow of the late Ted Hughes, Carol, with his much-acclaimed biography of the poet laureate. She is furious at what she sees as a string of errors, particularly the assertion that, after his death, his body was being brought home to Devon from London and those accompanying it stopped off for a “good lunch” with the hearse outside.
My one encounter with Hughes was when I attended a dinner for the Arvon Foundation some time in the 1990s and actually asked him afterwards for a mini-interview. An unthinkable impertinence. Just inches away from that legendary, handsome-granite face, turned impassively in my direction, I could think of no way of introducing myself and instead blurted out my view that his greatest poem is Do Not Pick Up the Telephone, which I said was the nearest poetry has come to the world of the horror film. Hughes said nothing, but after a second or two conceded a faint wintry smile, and then turned and pointed to Carol, who was in a glamorous gown. “Look at her,” he said to me. “Isn’t she remarkable? Could you believe that earlier today she was striding across Ilkley Moor?” While I was trying to think of a reply, they swept out. I wouldn’t want to cross either of them.
