(March 9, 1954–     ): American playwright and screenwriter who contributed heavily to GoldenEye. Unfortunately, he received no credit on the final film. Wade first came to prominence in 1980 with his play Key Exchange, which was later adapted as a movie for 20th Century Fox. Wade is better known for his screenwriting work on the films Working Girl (1988), True Colors (1991), Mr. Baseball (1992), and Junior (1994). He first met Bond producer Barbara Broccoli in 1990 and attended her wedding to producer Fred Zollo. In August 1994, he was hired to do a rewrite on GoldenEye.

Wade was sent to London, and for five weeks—seven days a week—he worked on the script while holed up in the Eon Productions office in Piccadilly Circus (next to the Hard Rock Café). Wade was asked to work on the character of James Bond, who in the previous drafts of the script was more reactive than active. “I went to the bookshelf at Eon,” says Wade, “and picked up three of the original Fleming novels. I would work from eight to six every day, and then I’d go home and read the books. It helped a lot. James Bond is a fatalistic action hero, and we wanted to give him the edge that Connery once presented when he did Bond. I had to make sure that Pierce Brosnan’s Bond was a direct descendant of Connery’s. When you read the Fleming novels, you see that Bond is always getting the crap beat out of him. He’s a real character, not a comic book hero, but unless you center the action around him, he becomes a mechanic.”[1]

Wade also streamlined the plot of the film. A long interlude in a St. Petersburg weapons bazaar was reduced to a single scene. Wade, appropriately, also gave his surname to Bond’s CIA contact in Russia, Jack Wade. Since he had pressing screenwriting duties with producer/director Ivan Reitman on the comedy Junior, Wade was unable to finish his work. Bruce Feirstein took over the rewrite.

[1] Kevin Wade, telephone interview by Steven Jay Rubin, June 17, 1995.