Paul Duncan is the author of The James Bond Taschen book. For an episode of the From Tailors With Love podcast I got to ask him what was the process like and what was it like being in the James Bond archives.
Below is some transcription from the interview.
The making of..
I have self published magazines purely as a hobby, and I asked Taschen to distribute one of the projects I was working on. They said no but called me in for an interview. They invited me in and after 4 hours they eventually asked if I’d be interested in editing a big book on James Bond. This was around 2001.
I realised this was not a story about James Bond the central character, but also a story about the making of the movies and being made as a family enterprise. In order to show case this I had to use all the voices of those involved.
Inside The James Bond Archives
It was something I discovered over 2 years. There was one draw for Dr No, two draws for From Russia with Love and a whole filing cabinet for Goldfinger and it just went on exponentially for that. I was making it just before and during Skyfall.
I was finding that for Casino Royale there wasn’t room in the James Bond Archives for Casino Royale. There was a whole other warehouse. It’s storage. I went to Los Angeles because United Artists who had ties with Danjaq, their archive was bought by MGM. Now MGM have their own archive so I went to look at that. Danjaq are based in Los Angeles and they have another warehouse.
I’d be in rooms with boxes and boxes that are over 50 years old. You think its glamorous but it’s not, but it’s fascinating. You go through it, find pieces of paper that haven’t been touched in 50 years. From that you build up a complete other world. – Paul Duncan.
Listen to the podcast
You can download the podcast and listen to the full interview (episode 24), available on iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify.
Update
The James Bond Taschen Book now features updates from No Time to Die and will be released in April 2021 to tie in with the release of the film.
Follow Paul Duncan on Twitter here.
Disclaimer
The featured image on the post is a generic warehouse, not taken from within the James Bond Archives. The other images are sourced from the Taschen online catalogue.
