More bad luck for the James Bond camp

Bond star Daniel Craig
looks grumpy (and
for good reason)The trouble surrounding the production of “Quantum of Solace,” the next James Bond film, isn't dying down.

Bond fan site MI6 has chronicled a recent slew of mishaps and blowups.

A couple weeks ago, a crew member accidentally drove an Aston Martin into a lake. Six days later, a stuntman was seriously injured while filming a high-speed chase.

On Saturday morning, a 58-year-old crew member, working in Austria, was found stabbed. He suffered deep cuts to the head and hands after a domestic dispute and was reportedly in critical condition Sunday.

Sunday also brought news that soul singer Amy Winehouse and producer Mark Ronson had a falling out and work on their proposed theme song for “Quantum of Solace” has ground to a halt.

This is troubling news, but I'm not giving up hope on QoS just yet. One of my favorite Bond films, (in fact, my favorite of the Sean Connery-era flicks), is “You Only Live Twice.” It's a movie that turned out great despite many similar misfortunes, including:

• an aerial photographer losing his leg after it was sliced by a helicopter blade,
• five key members of the production narrowly escaping death when they missed a flight that wound up crashing into Mt. Fuji,
• actor Jan Werich being fired five days into the shoot and replaced by Donald Pleasance as Blofeld, Bond's archrival,
• Blofeld's fluffy white cat being scared out of its wits by pyrotechnics and hiding in the soundstage's rafters for days,
• and Sean Connery's resignation at the end of production, after being continuously harassed by Japanese fans and reporters. I tell ya, those lousy reporters ...

(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)