British GQ - 04.2020

Photographs

Alamy; Tram Kolluri – MGM; UPI Media

‘ You know we fake it, don’t you? The

only person who didn’t was McQueen.

But I was allowed to doughnut the DB5’

atera was a national embarrassment

for Italy in the 1950s because its

Paleolithic caves were still inhabited.

Now, many of them house boutique

hotels and the city is a Unesco World Heritage site. But today

it has a problem: a wind has whipped up and it’s coating the

cobbled road that snakes through the Sassi area with a fine

dust. There’s not a whole lot of grip and that makes life difficult

for high-speed driving, of which there has been rather a lot.

The second unit on the new James Bond film, No Time To Die,

has been here for two weeks already, shooting the pre-credit

chase sequence for this intensely anticipated new film. It is

the first contemporary action movie to be allowed to film in

Matera (costume dramas are less needy), a negotiation that

took nine months and saw the production crew cover crit-

ical sections of the ancient walls in protective metal plate

cloaked in plasterboard.

The Bond operation is part invading army, part family.

One of the longest-running, most lucrative film franchises in

entertainment history also attracts the best people, with a

hard-won knack for problem-solving and improvisation. Lead

stunt coordinator Lee Morrison figured out that dousing a

tricky surface with fizzy drink would improve traction while

he was doubling for Matt Damon during a rooftop bike chase

in The Bourne Ultimatum. “Rooftop riding is slippery. A foot

chase in a hospital is difficult too. And American shopping

malls,” he tells me.

The sugar is working on Matera’s stone, too, as we stand

overlooking a piazza the crew have anointed “Doughnut

Square”. It’s obviously not its offi-

cial name, but it describes what Bond

does in his Aston Martin DB5 moments

after being cornered by a phalanx of

bad guys and T-boned by a Range

Rover. We watch them spray 007 with

gunfire in a relentless fusillade. His

reply is authentically, deeply Bond

and will make you smile. The attention

to detail in this scene is off the scale;

it takes three hours to set up for a

POV shot that’ll be intercut on-screen

with a few other angles for maybe

No time to DRIVE?

When it’s a DB5,

Bond says otherwise...

From classic Astons to new Defenders, No Time To Die’s range

of rides could be the 007 franchise’s best yet. GQ joins the film

set in Italy for a slice of the automotive action. Story by Jason Barlow

04-20CarsBond_3432424.indd 92 04/02/2020 18:25

102 GQ.CO.UK APRIL 2020