A Real Militia Ran The James Bond Crew Out Of Russia While Making GoldenEye
Martin Campbell's "GoldenEye" is one of the most important films in the history of the James Bond franchise. The series had been mothballed for six years after the box office disappointment of "License to Kill" in 1989, which brought the two-film Timothy Dalton era to a premature halt. While producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson searched for Dalton's successor, the world went through a rapid metamorphosis. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, precipitating the end of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Cold War was over. The West won. Where did Bond fit in this new world order?
Old hostilities die hard, especially in spy fiction, so it's no surprise that screenwriters Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein (working from a story by Michael France) concocted a Russia-centric adventure revolving around an electromagnetic weapon that would plunge the Cold War victors into a global financial crisis. It is, in classic Bond fashion, a globetrotting tale that whisks our hero from one locale to another, but the film's centerpiece sequence is a tank chase through the streets of the recently rechristened Saint Petersburg (from 1924 to 1991, it was known as Leningrad). The one-time Soviet metropolis was now open for business to the world, and the Bond creative team was hot to feature it in their first post-Cold War adventure.
The only problem: the city's minders wanted them to pay through the nose for the pleasure.
Enter the Saint Petersburg militia
According to Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman's "Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond," the production's bold plan to film the majority of the tank chase in Saint Petersburg seemed to be a done deal. According to then Executive Vice President of MGM/UA Jeff Kleeman:
"We had all of our permits. We had all of our arrangements. Every film has security. You go to a film shoot in Los Angeles, you're going to see some off-duty cops hanging around, just watching, making sure nothing gets stolen, nobody gets messed with. It's all taken care of. For Russia, we had very heavy-duty security. We had heavily armed military guys who traveled with us wherever we went."
The production, however, hadn't expected the Saint Petersburg militia. Because no one expects the Saint Petersburg militia.
"Our Russian security, as soon as they see the Saint Petersburg militia, they get in their cars and they leave," said Kleeman. "The militia explains that they have orders to shoot anybody who tries to roll film." This surprised the Bond crew. They'd acquired their permits and had their security detail arranged. But the Saint Petersburg militia had other ideas, as did the city's mayor.
Per Kleeman:
"The mayor said, 'I granted these permits before I fully understood the extent of what you were doing. Now that I see the extent, I realize we have not charged you enough.' Our fixer said, 'How much are you thinking?' The mayor said, 'I think we need three million dollars more.' The fixer said, 'That's a problem, because I'm only authorized to give you $30,000 more.' The mayor said, ”ll take the $30,000.'"
Shooting London for Saint Petersburg
The production suspected there was another shakedown to come (this is, after all, the Saint Petersburg militia), so they set up shop at London's Leavesden Studios, where they had the run of the shop. According to Campbell:
"I was five days behind on 'GoldenEye' and we had to pull back with the budget and everything else. The idea was first and second unit were going to Saint Petersburg. They came to me and said, 'How are you going to sort this all out?' I don't think I was actually five days behind, but it was the equivalent in money of five days behind, because of other stuff that had gone over budget. So I said, 'Okay I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll build Saint Petersburg here at Leavesden.'"
The second unit shot key stunt sequences in Saint Petersburg with the tanks, but the bulk of the chase was captured at Leavesden. Amazingly, it was cheaper to fabricate Saint Petersburg on the backlot than shoot in the actual city. Having watched "GoldenEye" several times, I can't tell you what's location and what's Leavesden. It's a thrilling Bond set piece that runs neck-and-neck with the opening of "The World Is Not Enough" as the high point of the Brosnan era. It's a shame the films weren't better, but surviving the Saint Petersburg militia is a triumph in its own right.