Nobody does it better, p.3
Nobody Does it Better, page 3
JOHN LANDIS
I love the fascination with hardware. You can see a big close-up of a digital watch; the gadgetry in Bond is like Star Trek or Dick Tracy. We don’t think twice about it now. You don’t remember the first time you ever saw GPS was Bond tracking Goldfinger’s car.
GUY HAMILTON
You always have to keep a solid foot in reality. Bond is always playing with things that are just conceivably possible. We played with a laser beam when nobody had yet found a use for it. You must never go into things that don’t exist.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
(cowriter, Dr. No)
We objected to the way that Fleming had it. He had Bond put on a circular saw which was supposed to cut him in half. We thought that was The Perils of Pauline, so we came up with the laser beam. And then later, in Diamonds Are Forever, we found out during research that the first laser beam had been projected not through a ruby, but through a diamond, and that’s how we got the diamond satellite in the sky idea that projected the beam.
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
The first Bond I saw in a theater was The Spy Who Loved Me.
JEFF KLEEMAN
When I saw The Spy Who Loved Me, there was the Jet Ski, which was something I had never heard of before in my life. But six months after the movie came out, there were Jet Skis actually being marketed and sold. It made me believe that the best Bond gadget, as we learned to phrase it, is 30 seconds into the future. It’s not ten years away or five years away, it’s a gadget that feels exciting and fresh to you. That you could imagine that maybe in six months might be around, which is why the invisible car in Die Another Day doesn’t work for me. The Spy Who Loved Me taught me about what makes a great Bond gadget versus what doesn’t. When I saw the invisible car, I didn’t think in six months those are going to be available in showrooms.
MATT SHERMAN
(creator, BondFanEvents.com)
It’s a crazy thing. The first film I can ever recall seeing on television was Goldfinger. I was five years old and the family hushed quietly to watch Bond on TV. I still remember that as the film started, I watched a gold hand and body appear on screen with mysterious figures moving over their surfaces. The film was shown out of sequence by ABC Television, eliminating the title sequence as too violent for television with its electrocution scene, so we started with the titles set to song.
JOHN CORK
(film historian; author, James Bond: The Legacy)
My first introduction to James Bond, which did not make me a fan, was in the summer of 1965, the rerelease of Dr. No and From Russia with Love. I went and saw it with my mother, at a place called the Capri Theater in Montgomery, Alabama. I remember only one thing from that, and that was the water catching on fire at the end of From Russia with Love. I turned to my mother and asked her how come the water was burning and she told me, “Well, James Bond leaves gasoline all over the water, and he lit the gasoline on fire, and it’s the gasoline that’s burning.” I remember that and this moment of feeling like that’s so cool and smart.
But it wasn’t until Live and Let Die came out in the summer of 1973 when I was 11 years old that a friend of mine and I got on our bicycles, and it was the first time I ever rode my bicycle to see a movie. We saw that movie, and that’s when I became a James Bond fan.
RICHARD SCHENKMAN
My parents felt I was too young to see the films, so I didn’t actually get to see one until a summer rerelease of You Only Live Twice, which I got to see on a rainy day, thanks to the sleepaway camp I attended in Fleischmanns, New York. That made me a fan for life. A couple of years later, in the run-up to the release of Diamonds Are Forever, they were rereleasing all of the films in double features, so I got to catch up on the entire series in very short order. Meanwhile, my friend Bob Forlini was a longtime fan who had read all the books, so he lent me his collection and I read them all, in order, over the course of that summer in sleepaway camp. I just inhaled them. I always thought that because I consumed all the movies and all the books at virtually the same time, it affected the kind of Bond fan I became.
JEREMY DUNS
(author, Rogue Royale)
There was a kind of hype about a comeback when GoldenEye came out, and Pierce Brosnan finally got the job, and that contributed largely to that film’s success. So I went to see GoldenEye, and that’s probably when I became more of a Bond film fan.
S
(sound editor, Die Spy Kill Kill)
Bond movies struck a certain narrative formula that made them the longest-running film series in the world for a reason. There were several trademark things that you only really got from Bond films. He was never just an action star; he’d use charm and wit as he dispatched goons in often hilarious ways. Early Bonds had a lot of detective work in them as well. He wasn’t just handed the villain on a platter all the time.
FRED DEKKER
I think there are five great Bond movies and all the other ones are trying to capture whatever they have: Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Casino Royale. All the rest of them, as much as I love them, some more than others, are all are trying to capture some element of one or all of those five.
DANIEL CRAIG
(actor, “James Bond”)
Director Marc Forster and I had a long conversation when he came on to do Quantum of Solace. We’re both big fans of the early Bonds, but also of the movies that they spawned in the ’60s. They had a direct effect on movies all over. One of the biggest things that the early Bond movies did was to go on location. That was unusual at the time. If they were Hollywood movies, usually they shot on a back lot and created sets, which were beautifully done, but when Bond went to Japan, it was shot in Japan.
JEFF KLEEMAN
I really loved You Only Live Twice and I attribute a lot of that to writer Roald Dahl, rightly or wrongly, because I felt like it pushed the envelope in some ways of what a Bond movie could be.
FRED DEKKER
It’s affected my aesthetic about architecture, interest in Japan and Asia, and then the more obvious stuff, which is everything that Bond is. It so rocked my world that I’ve never been the same since.
S
You Only Live Twice was my first Bond, and I still love it to absolute bits.
TOM MANKIEWICZ
At the time Diamonds Are Forever and Live and Let Die were being made, Bond movies were the event. Then you had the Raiders of the Lost Arks and the Star Wars, and Bond had to compete on a different level.
E
(editor, Die Spy Kill Kill)
I’ve got a soft spot for Octopussy … and The Spy Who Loved Me is one of the best as well. GoldenEye is the best modern Bond film.
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
My favorite Bonds are From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, The Spy Who Loved Me, the opening scene of Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, GoldenEye, and Casino Royale.
S
As much as I love Casino Royale and have it in the top five, the Daniel Craig films after that one have just lost the magic touch for me.
TOM MANKIEWICZ
James Bond started as a kind of a tough-ass secret agent, then the pictures became, as I say, pieces of entertainment. Then they lapsed into almost being like Disney films, where it was all special effects and so on. The hard narrative was gone with Moonraker. Then they tried to get back to a tougher Bond.
S
Bond presents a certain wish fulfillment for people about either a guy they’d like to be or be with, but there are loads of movies that do that. I think the main draw was that, much like a beloved TV show, you knew the formula and knew what you were going to get would be reliably entertaining. And that formula saw Bond comfortably through right up to around Licence to Kill, where they started experimenting a lot more, for better or worse.
TIMOTHY DALTON
Every story is a different story and different from the other, in terms of both style and content. For example, Dr. No and Moonraker. How would you compare From Russia with Love to A View to a Kill? I think the valuable question to ask is did you enjoy your two hours in the movie theater?
RICHARD SCHENKMAN
I just thought he was the coolest guy. I loved the witty repartee, I loved the gadgets, the fights, and just how slick, confident, and smart Bond was. And from the books I loved his self-destructive streak, the toll that his work took on him, and the gritty realism of the earlier books especially. And I loved the sex. For example, getting to run a finger over an erect nipple—something Bond did pretty frequently in the books—was well in my future, but I sure liked how it felt to read about it.
CHARLES ARDAI
(editor, Hard Case Crime)
In the books, Bond is a rather unlikable fellow: bitter, angry, violent. The filmmakers had to retain the violence while amping up the man’s charisma and appeal. Somehow he had to enter the chrysalis of adaptation and emerge as Sean Connery. Not a small transformation.
PHIL NOBILE, JR.
1962’s Dr. No offers lo-fi, smaller stakes than you might expect from a movie that launched a 55-year film series, but Connery was never better in the role than he is here. Thirty-two years old, all sex and danger, Connery immolates the then-stereotype of the wan, prim-and-proper British film hero, invents the action star and maybe the action genre, and changes film history forever. The early Bond films are glossy, old-school bits of cool, their budgets doubling and tripling with each successive entry, their plots growing more and more outlandish to match, but at the center of each is Sean Connery’s absolute sea change of a protagonist, a predator in a dinner jacket, too cool for any room in the world.
FRED DEKKER
Even as an eight-year-old, I knew that Sean Connery was a movie star. It was the first time I looked at somebody on-screen and then wanted to act like them out in the street when I left the theater. I think that was the generation that idolized Connery Bonds as the male role model.
JOHN CORK
Because the last three Bond novels were written after Connery was cast as 007, Fleming made minor concessions to Connery’s Bond. He gave 007 a Scottish background, for example. But just as importantly, [director] Terence Young was devoted to transforming Fleming’s Bond into a cinematic character. That involved some changes, but Young and Connery captured the elegance, humor, irony, and brutality of Fleming’s writing with Connery’s performance.
ARMYAN BERNSTEIN
(producer, Spy Game)
A friend told me a story about how he was with Sean Connery when he was visiting Los Angeles and had locked himself out of his apartment. Instead of asking the building manager to open the door to his condo, Sean climbed outside on a balcony and jumped from one balcony to the next, four floors up, until he got to his apartment. He could’ve just gotten the key, but that wasn’t Sean. He was James Bond.
WOODY ALLEN
(director, Annie Hall)
I was aware of James Bond. I saw the first picture, Dr. No, but unlike friends of mine, I had no interest in it or James Bond after it. I may have seen one more James Bond picture, perhaps marooned somewhere in a foreign city with no movies to go to. But I’m not a James Bond fan, never have been. After Dr. No, I may have seen one more of the pictures under duress, but I don’t go see them because I’m not interested. I did have dinner and play cards with Sean Connery, whom I liked very much. I found him to be a charming, lovely guy, and a fabulous actor in other pictures. But I never had any interest in James Bond movies.
YAPHET KOTTO
(actor, “Kanaga/Mr. Big,” Live and Let Die)
Most of my favorite Bond pictures are all Sean Connery films. It was there in all of the movies that Connery did. It’s always there with him. Even in Never Say Never Again, it’s there. He is James Bond.
JOHN GLEN
Sean had a bit of a grievance against the Bonds for some reason, and yet he was fantastic as Bond. It made him. He set the standard, without a doubt.
ROBERT SELLERS
There are conflicting stories about Connery’s attitude regarding accepting the role of James Bond. He has said it was like a car fanatic being given a brand-new Jaguar car; then there are reports that he took advice from his wife-to-be Diane Cilento, a serious and acclaimed actress, about whether or not he should accept the part.
CHRISTIAN SLATER
I got to work with Sean Connery when I was a kid. I did The Name of the Rose with him, and I worked with him again on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when he played the king. So I’ve always been pretty much awestruck in his presence and found him to be a phenomenal guy. To get the chance to work with James Bond was quite thrilling.
ALBERT R. BROCCOLI
Ian Fleming is responsible for what we put on the screen. Harry Saltzman and myself, when we first started—being Americans—saw Bond as a more macho kind of guy and yet he had to be British. We were very lucky in finding the type we thought Americans would like as Bond when we came across Sean. When I first met him, it was at a cocktail party, and he appealed to me as a very natural type. We thought he would be good for it.
JOHN LANDIS
[Director] Terence Young was the one who took Connery to his tailor on Savile Row. This whole snobbery was from the books, but they’re not very good books. It was like Playboy magazine. This false sense of class. He had to have the best of everything: the best cars, the best girls, the best clothes, the best drink.
RICHARD SCHENKMAN
I’m hardly the first person to theorize that one’s favorite Bond is directly linked to the actor who was playing Bond when you were first exposed to the character.… I mean, we all love the music of our early teen years, no matter how terrible it may have been. Having said that, my favorite Bond remains Sean Connery. Crucially, Connery had a strength and swagger that suited the character. He was physically imposing; you felt that if he hit you, you’d stay down, movie magic or no. The sparkle in his eye sold the humor, but he was deadly serious when the moment called for it, and indeed some of my favorite Connery scenes included the visible transition, as the character realized this was not a time for jokes.
ALBERT R. BROCCOLI
When Sean left our office, and walked across the street, we knew from the way he walked and the way he talked that he was the best possibility. And we presented him to United Artists at that time, for pictures and tests, which, actually, he didn’t want to do, so we tricked him. We told him we were testing some of the girls when we tested him. United Artists said, “Well, you’d better try somebody else,” and, of course, we didn’t. We said, “No, we’re going to do it with this fellow.” Later on, Fleming said, when he met him, “I don’t think he’s right.” Then, after talking to him for a while, he said, “I like him, he’ll do.”
JOHN CORK
George Lazenby looked the part, had the arrogance, had the charm, had the physicality, but his weakness was that he wasn’t an actor. He fell victim to playing the part of an actor playing James Bond. He figured out exactly how to act to get the role, but that is very different than knowing how to act in the role.
MATT GOURLEY
(cohost, James Bonding podcast)
I remember as a kid specifically getting the VHS of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and watching it on home video. This guy’s being called Bond throughout, and it took me half the movie to realize that Connery or Moore wasn’t showing up in this one, that this guy was James Bond. Even my dad didn’t really remember it. We’re like, “Is he, like, an impostor? They’re doing an imposter for a bit and then Connery will come out and kill him?” Then realizing, “Oh, no. This guy played Bond one time.”
PHIL NOBILE, JR.
Someone had to be George Lazenby. Had Moore taken over from Connery, Moore might have been the one-and-done. Let’s be honest: Lazenby was never going to succeed, at least not in the public’s mind. Sean Connery owned the role, becoming a household name over the course of five Bond films between 1962 and 1967. The franchise made him a star, but he had grown bored of the part and resentful of the piles of money he was making the producers. When he split, Eon Productions forged ahead, convinced that the franchise was bigger than just one actor. They weren’t wrong, but this kind of seismic shift couldn’t help but have casualties, and George Lazenby was on the front line. Lazenby’s one-and-done turn awoke audiences to the idea that the role could and would be recast, opening the door for Roger Moore and the others. But someone had to go through that door first, and that person was always going to take the bullet. Saint George of Lazenby laid down his life as Bond so that the series might live.
JEFF KLEEMAN
Each actor who’s taken on Bond successfully has brought a slightly different kind of Bond to the screen. And that’s one of the tricks when you move an actor into an established role, which is how do you tailor the role to the new actor while still keeping the role recognizably the role?
GEORGE LAZENBY
(actor, “James Bond”)
I can’t believe I got James Bond. Never acted before and had never been an actor. I guess that made me more sure of myself. I’m happy because I’ve had a great life. I went up motocross racing and doing stupid things that people who aren’t concerned with acting do. I have great kids and had a lot of fun hanging around the edges of things. If I wanted to work as an actor, I could’ve worked a lot. But I found that a lot of time, actors just hang around. And I like to do things.
LEWIS GILBERT
(director, The Spy Who Loved Me)
Roger Moore is a totally different person from Sean Connery. I directed Sean in You Only Live Twice and they’d already made five by then. He really wasn’t very much like Ian Fleming described Bond. I think Sean played Bond in his own image. It’s like Charlton Heston playing Moses, and I think it was true of Sean Connery’s Bond. When Roger came, he didn’t try to play Fleming’s Bond, he was always forced to play Connery’s Bond. I think this was something of a mistake.
ALBERT R. BROCCOLI
Ian’s concept of Bond was, in fact, Roger Moore: the school tie, Etonian type.
