Nobody does it better, p.44
Nobody Does it Better, page 44
JANE SEYMOUR
(actress, “Solitaire”)
Michael Billington’s dream in life was to be James Bond. And so he would constantly preen himself in front of the mirror and talk every day to all of us on the set of The Onedin Line about how one day he was going to be James Bond. I mean, that was literally all he could ever talk about. So when he heard I was going to meet them on Live and Let Die, he pretty much lost it. He went, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” I couldn’t tell anyone for two weeks I was cast, but Michael would ask me every day, “How’d it go? Did you get it? Did you hear anything?” I couldn’t tell him I got the part. Eventually, when I got the part, everybody else on the show was really sort of upset and complained that I was dead to them, but Michael was very excited, because he was that much closer to being a Bond himself. He would eventually have a relationship with Cubby’s daughter, Barbara Broccoli, for many years, and unfortunately he died rather tragically. So he got as close to being Bond as you could be without being Bond.
JOHN GLEN
When Cubby told me I had to find a new Bond, I thought to myself that I’ve got to remind the audience of the history of Bond. Of course On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was very much on my mind, so I wrote a scene to introduce a new Bond involving the gravesite of his wife, Tracy, him bringing flowers to it, and then devised the helicopter action scene that would follow it. The whole point was to introduce a new Bond. That was my way of doing it, but of course when Roger agreed to do the film, I thought, “It’s actually a very good sequence, isn’t it, to remind the audience of Bond’s past? Why not?” So we kept the introduction, and it’s a nice touch with Roger putting the flowers on the grave.
This would be one of the last moments in the series acknowledging the fact that Bond had been married, and his wife killed by Blofeld. The only other mention would come in a conversation between Bond and Felix Leiter’s new bride, Della, in Licence to Kill. It’s certainly the most potent since The Spy Who Loved Me, in which Barbara Bach’s Major Amasova brings it up, triggering one of Roger Moore’s finest moments of acting subtlety in response. With the reboot of the franchise with 2006’s Casino Royale, the marriage to Tracy has been removed from canon, and therefore there are no other references.
JOHN GLEN
The original idea was to keep the continuity of character and reveal the new Bond in an exciting situation.
ROBERT CAPLEN
(author, Shaken & Stirred: The Feminism of James Bond)
It’s actually an important moment, because I think Tracy’s death is a watershed moment in the Bond cinematic franchise for a couple of reasons. Most importantly, it offers continuity in a world in which various actors have portrayed Agent 007. Especially in the early years, continuity after Connery’s departure was essential, and producers went to great lengths to ensure that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had elements of past films to keep the franchise moving forward. Then, in Diamonds Are Forever, Bond’s initial pursuit of Blofeld is out of revenge for Tracy’s murder, again ensuring continuity in a franchise that again experienced a change in actors. Adding reference to Tracy during Roger Moore and Timothy Dalton’s tenures links past missions to the present, despite the personnel change, and reminds viewers that Bond remains constant.
LISA FUNNELL
(author, For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service ends on such a tragic and devastating note that you feel that loss. I like the fact that subsequent films, even though they’re more episodic and stand alone, really brought that loss through to show us maybe this is why James Bond is less attached to these women, because he doesn’t want to go through that again. For me, I think that that’s such an important moment with Tracy being killed and to see, especially in Licence to Kill, Bond’s sorrow. Tracy died in 1969, so you’re talking 20 years later at that point. Many people might not have even seen that, and yet to bring it back to that moment and to show that sorrow and to have Bond fight for the honor of Della, who also died, but also fighting for his wife that died, is an interesting thread to keep bringing through and connecting.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
Quite frankly, I would have liked to see more of it threaded through the pictures. But the tone of the pictures was different in the middle part of the saga.
MICHAEL FRANCE
(cowriter, GoldenEye)
There’s a moment in GoldenEye when Alec Travelyan comments on whether or not all those vodka martinis drown out the sound of all the women Bond couldn’t save. The first version of that line was to the woman he couldn’t protect, meaning Tracy. I would have loved for that to go in, but I guess it gets a little tricky to keep referring back to a movie that, then, was from 25 years earlier. But I like when the films have made references to Tracy, because it gives depth and backstory to Bond and a darkness you really need. And it always really works.
LISA FUNNELL
What they did with Tracy is almost what they would do with Vesper Lynd in the Daniel Craig–era films, where her presence lives on. She dies in Casino Royale, but in Quantum of Solace she’s still there. You have the Vesper martini, you have the Algerian love-knot necklace, you have the Vesper theme. You have Bond being so lovesick on her that he’s getting drunk on these martinis just to consume her. You see that presence that just lasts all the way through almost to Spectre, where you have those tapes he finds, where he can watch the interview with her and he’s like, “No, I’m fine. I’ve moved on.” That’s a film arc of being heartbroken and lovesick over the loss of someone in a more continuous way, whereas in the earlier films that type of lovesickness is separated and fragmented, and almost like how you skip stones—skipping it over and across. But this is more of a condensed way, showing that the loss of someone who you truly love has that type of an impact and might then make you more of a cold-hearted spy. Tracy was the first example of this, Vesper the second.
ROBERT CAPLEN
Another reason for referencing Tracy—also linked to the continuity theme—is to reveal Bond’s sensitivity and vulnerability. Despite Bond’s frequent callousness and apathy, he has an emotional pressure point that can sometimes reveal itself. Anya Amasova’s clinical recitation of Bond’s personnel file and Bond’s reaction to it humanizes him and demonstrates that Bond is not merely an agent whose entire personality and body of work can be summarized in bullet points.
In the film, a British naval vessel is sunk by an old mine and a classified British targeting computer, the ATAC, is lost at sea. The Havelocks are dispatched to retrieve it, but they are assassinated by a Cuban hit man, prompting their daughter to seek vengeance, like Elektra, while Bond attempts to retrieve the ATAC before the Russians, who are being aided by the treacherous Kristatos, played by Julian Glover.
JOHN GLEN
When détente came in, we lost a bit of our story and our ability to tell spy stories, but there were always other things, other criminals that one can concentrate on.
MICHAEL G. WILSON
I think the films are fairly political. In The Spy Who Loved Me, each side was played off the other until they found out about this and then joined forces. In For Your Eyes Only, General Gogol was quite prepared to take any advantage he could so long as he didn’t get himself in some kind of public involvement. He was very content to work behind the scenes and have the Greek characters get the goods for him to purchase, without involving any Russians, so to speak.
JOHN GLEN
For Your Eyes Only was based on a very good Fleming short story where the girl in a revenge attack tries to kill the chap that killed her father and what have you, and that made a wonderful opening to the picture. The rest of it we made up, pinched a few bits from other Fleming books, but it’s quite an interesting film.
RAY MORTON
Apart from the opening, the story and script contain no fantasy elements at all. The tone of the piece is the most serious since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the humor in the script all comes out of the characters and the situations. A good case can be made that For Your Eyes Only is the most realistic and believable entry in the entire series.
FRED DEKKER
(cowriter, The Predator)
The reset button was hit and, I think, successfully. It’s a crackling thriller. Maybe Roger Moore’s best performance as Bond. It’s a little workmanlike for me. Doesn’t quite have the pizzazz of the other films, but I like that it’s grounded.
SIR ROGER MOORE
(actor, “James Bond”)
The way they’re constructed, they get out first of all a storyline. Then select an art director and the director, and everyone starts wandering about looking for locations, finding places. Then they come back and say “This will work,” and then they change it. A script comes out, and the dialogue is not right, and I jump up and down and say, “I’m the one who’s got to say it!” And it always boils down that we will change it on the floor, and we always do.
JOHN CORK
I think Roger was a very tough actor for a writer. Moore had no problem delivering a line that falls flat for everyone except him. Michael Wilson’s instinct was more toward the nuts and bolts of a plot, and that sometimes pushed against Roger’s instinct to treat the story as a big joke. Michael was always working in a very collaborative environment, partnering with a true great, Richard Maibaum. I think it is a mistake to underestimate Michael Wilson’s contribution to the continued success of the Bond films both as a writer and a producer.
For Your Eyes Only marked the beginning of the collaboration between veteran Maibaum and Wilson, whose role in the franchise would only grow over the coming decades.
RAY MORTON
Maibaum and Wilson became a team when Maibaum was brought back after Moonraker to pen a more down-to-earth and less expensive film that would be more in the spirit of From Russia with Love and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Maibaum began developing the story with Wilson, the film’s executive producer, and eventually they decided to work directly together. The team ended up writing the scripts for all five Bond movies produced in the 1980s, although novelist George MacDonald Fraser contributed an early draft for Octopussy.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
Michael’s a lawyer, an engineer, and a terrific authority on photography and photographs. He’s got one of the best collections in the world of early photographs. He’s an amazing guy. We always listened to anyone, no matter what their ideas are, because you never know when somebody is going to come up with something terrific. I was very pleased working with Michael Wilson.
JOHN CORK
Michael G. Wilson is a fine writer. He is responsible for the pre-credits sequences in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Like every writer, he has his strengths and weaknesses. He was nominated with Richard Maibaum for a WGA award for his work on For Your Eyes Only, and that’s no small honor.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
We were equal collaborators. We did a lot of conferring. When we started out, we did a very full treatment, sometimes 50 or 60 pages long. We didn’t do anything like writing three pages worth of treatment on the back of a letter or anything like that. Cubby liked to know beforehand what’s going to be. We lay it out very carefully. Of course, you may deviate from it if you come up with something better, or if something doesn’t work, but it is laid out very thoroughly beforehand. We discuss it. Sometimes we would sit there and write it together. Sometimes, Michael wrote the first draft, or I would write the first draft, and we gave it to the other fellow and argued about it. There’s an awful lot of arguing that goes on. But you know what they say, if collaborators don’t argue, then there’s one collaborator too many. When you finally settle on something, it’s been through the whole process. Cubby had final approval, of course, and then John [Glen] would sometimes sit in. As I say, it’s a true collaboration. In the final analysis, the writer—or writers—have to sit down and are responsible for putting all the suggestions together.
RAY MORTON
The Maibaum/Wilson screenplays were a bit of a mixed bag. The team had a talent for concocting intriguingly complex plots, although sometimes their plots were too complex: For Your Eyes Only and The Living Daylights are entertaining puzzles, but the plots of A View to a Kill and Licence to Kill are hard to follow, and the storyline of Octopussy is at times incomprehensible. Maibaum and Wilson were comfortable with the more serious aspects of Bond’s world, and their thriller and action sequences are generally quite inventive, but they had little facility for humor and fantasy. Their villains tended to be bland—and there were usually too many of them—and their scripts overlong. For me, their best scripts are For Your Eyes Only and The Living Daylights—relatively down-to-earth and realistic spy thrillers filled with intrigue, clever twists, and exciting action. Their least successful ones are those that tip more in the direction of fantasy and comedy—Octopussy and A View to a Kill. For Your Eyes Only, though, was a smashing debut script from the Maibaum/Wilson team.
JOHN GLEN
I’m versed in Fleming. For instance, I think Goldfinger was a fantastically written book. And the short story that For Your Eyes Only is based on is a wonderfully written short story. I am a great admirer of Fleming. I like his style, and the way he’s written scenes that I’ve portrayed in these films are beautifully written scenes. I’ve stuck to them as closely as I could.
When Fleming died, he had a very limited number of books and had a lot of short stories, and we used every bit of all his written work. We used to go through them each time we had to write a script from scratch. We used to go back through all the old scripts and all the old books and try and find any bits that hadn’t been used in films to try and bring Fleming back into the story, into the mix, and we succeeded in doing that. There are bits and pieces from different books that appear in different films.
For Your Eyes Only is no exception, taking a sequence from the novel Live and Let Die and incorporating it. In the film, once Kristatos is exposed as being the actual villain, he has Bond and Melina keelhauled through the water in the belief that they will ultimately be eaten by sharks (sorry to disappoint you, dude!).
GLEN OLIVER
The editing and overall energy of Bond and Melina being keelhauled was surprisingly arresting for a 007 picture—and represented one of the few times underwater action in the franchise actually had a respectable pulse.
JOHN GLEN
That was a scene which has been in and out of Bond scripts for as long as I can remember. It’s a scene no one really wanted to shoot, except for Cubby. The reason was because it was such a complex sequence to shoot, with no guarantees you were going to get it, because it was a mixture of underwater and above water. It involved four to five units shooting the material. It was very difficult to control and the cost of that part of the operation was very high. I was in Corfu shooting the sequence itself with Roger and Melina on the surface at the precise time the second unit was shooting, with Al Giddings, the underwater part of it in the Bahamas. It was all storyboarded, and it worked absolutely perfectly. That became a feature of all my films, that I would sometimes have three or four different units working at the same time at different locations around the world.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
John Glen is very, very inventive as far as stunts go. He used to be a great cutter, and he sees things in his mind visually in terms of film. When he gets an idea for something, he’d discuss it with us and we’d work on it, but actually he is very influential in that department.
The beautiful French actress Carole Bouquet plays Melina Havelock, the daughter of two marine archaeologists who are murdered by Soviet agent Gonzales after they locate the wreck of the downed St. Georges freighter.
RICHARD MAIBAUM
I thought that girl—Carole Bouquet—was marvelous, and Roger seemed to control himself from trying to be so goddamn funny all the time.
FRED DEKKER
Carole Bouquet is my top tier of Bond Girls. She’s beautiful, but she’s also spunky. A real presence in the movie. I like the Fleming-isms. Dragging them, keelhauling them with the sharks behind them is terrific. The mountain-climbing scene is also really tense and well done.
MAURICE BINDER
(main title designer, For Your Eyes Only)
Roger really is easy, with great gags, and makes everybody feel sort of relaxed, whoever works with him. We were doing these teaser trailers so far in advance, and in the scene with Carole Bouquet and the little Deux Chevaux [automobile] where they go off and he turns to her and says, “By the way, we haven’t been formally introduced, my name is Bond, James Bond.” She looks at him blankly, and Cubby said to me, “This girl, she doesn’t smile. She has such a beautiful smile, and she’s not smiling.” I said, “I know, but that’s the scene.” And I said, “I do have a take where she does smile.” And he said, “Well, why don’t you use it?” And I said, “Well, the dialogue [an outtake] went like this, “By the way, we haven’t met, my name is Bond, James Bond. I guess a little fuck would be out of the question.’” So what I did is, I took the dialogue from the first take and cut just the smile.
The villainy of the film is far more grounded, with no megalomaniacal villains looking to destroy the world this time out. Perhaps the most loathsome of Bond’s adversaries in the film is the seemingly mute Emile Leopold Locque, played by the late Michael Gothard, a deadly killer who gets his comeuppance after he’s dispatched by Bond, who kicks his car off a cliff in retribution over the death of another agent.
