20 Things You Didn’t Know About Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)
3. “Turn Right!” “No, Left!” “Who’s Driving?”
Roger Spottiswoode was inspired by Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935) in handcuffing James Bond and Wai Lin together in Saigon. He separately asked Pierce Brosnan and Michelle Yeoh to get onto the motorcycle first to ensure their brief conflict at the outset of the subsequent chase.
Spottiswoode placed Double-0 Seven and Wai Lin on a motorcycle to deliberately avoid competing with the memorable tank chase in GoldenEye. For the sake of variety, Vic Armstrong chose a heavy BMW R1200C Cruiser over a lighter-weight motocross bike and tailored the chase to its strengths.
French motorcycling expert, Jean-Pierre Goy [who rode the Batpod in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and contributed to SkyFall (2012)] doubled for Pierce Brosnan, whilst Wendy Leech represented Michelle Yeoh.
Goy refused safety wires for the 44-foot leap over Carver’s Eurocopter 350B A-Star helicopter from a 45-foot-high balcony, so the aircraft’s rotors were added optically in post-production (alike scenes where the helicopter chases Bond and Wai Lin through the Vietnamese streets). The motorbike carrying Goy and a Wai Lin mannequin sailed over the helicopter and landed in a 20-foot-high pile of cardboard boxes on the opposite rooftop.