Pierce Brosnan's First Scene As James Bond Was A Hilarious Disaster

In 1995, James Bond filmmakers suddenly found themselves as a loss. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Communist regime fell in the Soviet Union in 1991. The Cold War was over, and Russia was no longer the free-floating "enemy" they once were. And without Soviets to exploit as action movie villains, screenwriters suddenly lost one of their best stock "bad guys." Russians were always bad guys in movies, but now they could no longer be. Action heroes couldn't be depicted punching Russians in the face, presumably in the name of protecting the Western World from Communism. Indeed, if the Cold War was over, what was the point of even having action heroes? Well-armed super-spies like James Bond now has no function. The concept of Agent 007 became dated overnight. 

But Eon Productions wanted to see if it was still possible to make a James Bond movie in the years after the Cold War, and came out with "GoldenEye" in 1995, the first of four films to star Pierce Brosnan in the role. That film had many scenes wherein Bond's mere function was questioned, while the villains were merely aging Soviets who recalled the good ol' days. It was like an ironic, wistful goodbye to the Cold War. Brosnan, by the way, is the best James Bond, and I will hear no arguments to the contrary. 

Brosnan was capable, charming, tough, and sexy as Bond, of course. But, as Brosnan revealed in a recent interview with Stephen Colbert (Transcribed by EW), he didn't always hold his gun — a Walther PPK — properly. He was fine with exploring the themes of a dated James Bond, but he was still required to fire a gun like Bond did in all the other 007 movies ... and he couldn't. It seems that a recent bout of hand surgery caused his finger to stick out like ... well, like a sore pinky. Brosnan, thinking fast, had to use a bandage to tape it in place. 

The first scene that Brosnan filmed for "GoldenEye" was a sequence where he went to visit a Russian gangster and former KGB agent named Valentin Dmitrovich Zukovsky, played by Robbie Coltrane. Valentin was walking around his own nightclub, not yet open, preparing for a night of business when James Bond appeared from behind a curtain and held a gun to his head. Valentin was not really all that scared, able to recognize the gun, the Walther PPK, by its sound and the feeling of its barrel. He knew it was James Bond, and that he wasn't in immediate danger. 

Brosnan, it seems, had trouble holding the gun properly, and a close look at the photo above can see that his pinky is a little skewed. Brosnan recalled shooting the scene thus: 

"The very first shot is the camera following Robbie Coltrane, and he comes behind a curtain, and I point the gun to his head, and he says, 'Only three men in the world own that weapon, and I've killed two of them.' So we went for the take ... and my finger went, 'Toot!' — like this." 

"Toot," in that it stuck straight out. Extending one's pinky is fine when sipping tea, but a little too dainty for James Bond to be holding a gun. Brosnan admitted that he tried to squeeze his finger back in place on his own, but that it popped out in the second take as well. For the third, he had a solution: "I got a Band-aid and I stuck it to the gun, And that was it! Problem solved! Got through the day's work." Brosnan said that he was wearing a split for 12 weeks prior to "GoldenEye" after slicing a tendon during a home accident. The first day of "GoldenEye" was his first day without it, and that's why he had such problems with his pinky. Sometimes even multimillion-dollar blockbusters can be saved with a mere adhesive bandage.