javier bardem says the skyfall scene where the villain feels up james bond was his idea. we owe this man everything.

Photo: Lyn Fairly Media, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via The Hollywood Reporter and Variety, with The A.V. Club

Fourteen years later, we have a name for the hero of Skyfall, and it is not James Bond.

Javier Bardem sat down for a Screen Talk at the BFI London Film Festival on Sunday and explained where Raoul Silva's famous chair scene came from. Him. "I said, 'Listen, all the villains have done everything to destroy the world, but what about becoming personal? What about something besides destroying the world? [Like] he wants to have sex with Mr. Bond?'" he said, per The Hollywood Reporter, which was in the room. Sam Mendes, he said, was "so open to what I was proposing, which had to do with the sexuality of the guy," and told him: "I'll talk to the studio and get back to you."

the scene, for the three of you

Silva has Daniel Craig's Bond tied to a chair. He unbuttons Bond's shirt, runs his hands down his thighs, and offers, "Well, there's a first time for everything." Bond, still tied up and somehow winning: "What makes you think this is my first time?" (Scene as described by Variety and The A.V. Club.) An entire generation of gay men has that exchange memorized, and some of us have used it.

"The studio was very brave," Bardem said. "I think that scene lasts in the memory of the audience." His theory of why it works is the most precise piece of Bond criticism anyone has offered: the point was to put Bond somewhere he had never been. "The way he comes out of it is brilliant," he said.

what bardem did not say

Several sites ran this as Bardem "confirming the first openly queer Bond villain." He did not use the words gay or queer in either outlet's account. He said the character wants to have sex with Mr. Bond, and he admitted he was "nervous" walking onto a Bond film at all. Honestly, the plain version is better. The man walked into a franchise built on Bond seducing everyone in sight and asked: what if someone seduced him back?

Bardem is in London with two films in the festival, Bunker, with Penélope Cruz, and The Beloved. The rest of us are going to go rewatch one scene.