A first-time stuntman foiled by 007 and Madonna

“I’d sit down if I were you,” said the old waiter. “It’s going to be a long day.” He wasn’t a real waiter, of course -- just one of the many extras for “Die Another Day,” the latest Bond movie. He was in his late 60s, at a guess, and had been around Pinewood Studios for a good many years. I took his advice; after all, I was a first-timer, invited on the set as one of the “stunt artists” needed for the scene in Bond’s gentleman’s club, off St James’s. The club was introduced in the 1955 Bond adventure “Moonraker” and fortuitously christened Blades. In the new film, Bond goes there for a fencing lesson and ends up fighting for his life.

“Background action,” shouts the assistant director. I start to move across the set, as rehearsed. Pierce Brosnan resumes his pose on the fencing strip. Opposite him glowers Toby Stephens, real-life son of Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith, but now Gustav Graves, shortly to be bent on world domination (what else?) but for the moment intent only on separating Bond’s head from his body.

How had I found myself an extra on , the latest movie in the Bond franchise? I was close to finishing my book on the history of swordplay, and had phoned my old fencing master, Bob Anderson, to ask if he was supervising the fight scenes in any new movies, and if so could I come watch. He explained that he was fight master for a new Bond. “But you can’t come and watch,” he’d told me, and before I could remonstrate he added, “You can be in it.”

Anderson is not any old fight master. He began as a double for Errol Flynn in the 1953 swashbuckler “Master of Ballantrae,” and in the years since has worked with nearly every leading actor in Hollywood. He was even a Darth Vader stunt double in the second “Star Wars” movie, and more recently he oversaw the fights in “The Mark of Zorro” and the “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

For “Die Another Day,” he trained the cast for weeks to make them look like fencers, and carefully devised a five-minute fight sequence for Brosnan and Stephens, going through the club’s corridors and onto a specially constructed terrace. Stephens ends up in a fountain.

Brosnan, 48, has doubles to do his swordplay stunts, but he and Toby Stephens still have to look convincing. Before each take, the actors sprint on the spot, and huff and puff as if about to run an Olympic trial. Engagingly, Brosnan takes it all with a grain of salt. On the second day he comes over to talk, and I suggest he watch out against moving his front foot too far to the left, as it will look odd on film, even to non-fencers. He immediately goes into a riff about how all the Irish Brosnans are fatally pigeon-toed and can’t walk straight to save their lives: He sets out to show how his pigeon-toed ancestors crossed the street, leaving us in stitches.

It is terribly hot inside the studio, and parts of the set are dangerously close to the arc lights. Sure enough, around 7 p.m. the automatic sprinklers come on, drenching the terrace section. Filming is called off for the day. Miraculously, the next morning the whole set has been restored, everything in place.

The fight scene has reached the point where Bond and Graves go crashing into one of the suits of armor. This involves multiple takes from a variety of angles, and at one point, when -- for the umpteenth time -- I have walked over to one of my fellow stunt artists, Nick Bell, a onetime national foil champion, he says sotto voce, “Aren’t we a bit overqualified for this?”

Among the cast there is one constant topic of conversation: Will Madonna show up? She is said to have put off her one scene time and time again, adding thousands to the budget, but the studio can hardly do without her -- she not only sings the title song, her cameo appearance is needed to buck up European sales.

In the end she is slated to appear on the last day of filming -- well into July, and the movie has to open in November. The whole set is “closed” -- no visitors, definitely no press. The dressing rooms are shut off from other cast members, who gossip about her fee, said to be half a million pounds for one day of shooting. She is 44 now, a mother of young children: How will she look?

Eerie arrival

At 8 a.m. I am backstage looking at the previous day’s rushes on one of the monitors when I become aware of an eerie silence on set. Soon the reason becomes clear: Madonna -- Mrs. Ritchie (not “Madge,” the nickname she abhors) -- has arrived. She wanders nonchalantly across the fencing room dressed in a black Versace outfit that includes a figure-hugging corset, which Bond will later be asked to do up for her. Her black leotard is so skintight it looks like cling film. Her arms, muscular as a gymnast’s, are bare, and as she saunters across stage she casually licks a red lolly. Everyone is looking at her.

A few minutes pass, then Brosnan appears, and the two stars eye each other, like boxers weighing who has the heavier punch. Madonna is playing the part of Verity, the club’s head coach. Originally, she was to have been one of Bond’s ex-girlfriends, but she chafed at being his castoff, and on-set gossip has it that she rewrote both her lines and his, remodeling herself as a lesbian, beyond Bond’s reach. She brightly refers to “my innuendo scene,” and it is soon clear why.

I am positioned just off camera as Bond strides in and asks if he can have a lesson from her. Madonna is standing with her back to him, observing Miranda (Rosamund Pike) fence Graves, but turns to answer him. Bond points his epee at her, and when she raises her own sword to parry, he evades it. “I see you know how to handle your weapon well,” Madonna says appreciatively, catching his blade and pushing it away. “I have been known to raise my tip from time to time,” Brosnan replies.

Madonna, though physically adept, has trouble with the moves, and the scene requires several takes. As the two stars stand around waiting for the camera to be set up again, they talk easily. What subject do they discuss so avidly? They are comparing notes about old people’s homes. Then Madonna turns to fencing. “Have you had a go at this?” she asks. “It’s great. Gives you a wonderful workout.” Brosnan looks unconvinced.

“Right. Next take,” an assistant director breaks in. By now, after several attempts, Madonna is handling her epee with real deftness. When the director finally says he is satisfied, she walks past me and I say, inanely, “You could become a good fencer, you know.” She gives me the briefest of glances.

“Gee, wow!” she says.

It is 5 p.m. and she has been on set for eight hours. Now it’s a wrap. Within three months a London reporter will write, “Fencing has suddenly become fashionable.... Madge has put the official seal of cool on the sport.” And Bond? I ask him where he is off to, now that filming is over. To the South Pacific with his family, he says. No filming, just sun and sand. “Won’t that upset your fencing training?” I ask. “Fencing?” he says and laughs, “I don’t plan to handle a sword ever again, if I can help it.”

Richard Cohen is the author of “By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions,” published recently by Random House.