Fleming and Hitchcock: how to turn old news into a `scoop’

This week, the U.K. Daily Mail newspaper had a story it presented as a scoop: that Ian Fleming wanted Alfred Hitchcock to direct the first James Bond movie and he went through novelist Eric Ambler to make an approach to the famed director.

“I say you chaps, what’s the fuss?”

You can view the Mail’s story BY CLICKING HERE. Warning: be prepared to read deep into the story before finding the whole story. But first, here’s an excerpt:

James Bond creator Ian Fleming wanted Alfred Hitchcock to direct the first 007 movie, it has emerged.

A telegram sent in 1959 has revealed one of the biggest ‘what ifs’ in British cinema history and will leave James Bond fans shaken and stirred.

Fleming sent the communique in which he asked Hitchcock to take the helm of the first Bond film through a mutual friend. (emphasis added)

Oh, and here’s the headline (at least on the Web edition):

Revealed: The secret telegram that shows Ian Fleming wanted Alfred Hitchcock to direct the first Bond film (emphasis added)

The “first Bond film” in question was Thunderball, which originated as a film project in the late 1950s. When it fell apart, Fleming turned it into a novel, starting a complicated legal fight. Thunderball would eventually become the fourth film in the series produced by Eon Proudctions and would spawn a non-Eon remake, 1983′s Never Say Never Again.

If you read all the way to the 11th paragraph of the Daily Mail story, you’ll see the article cites the Web site Letters of Note, which IN A MAY 2 POST (or 13 days before the Daily Mail story) produced an image of the telegram sent from Fleming to Ambler about making an approach to Hitchcock.

Letters of Note, meanwhile, credited Robert Sellers’s book, The Battle for Bond, which was first published in 2007, or five years ago, with turning up the telegram.

Letters of Note is a Web site that reproduces images of letters, correspondence, etc., involving famous people. Nor is this the first time, it has dealt with Fleming. Last year, the site presented a copy of a letter Fleming sent to a reader indicating that James Bond survived the end of the From Russia With Love novel. The value Letters of Note brings is that people can view images of the original documents.

The Daily Mail didn’t mention The Battle for Bond until the next-to-last paragraph. Now, the Daily News could have added more value to the story but didn’t.

For example, why did Fleming send a telegraph to a British novelist with a Los Angeles address? Well, even minor research would have shown Ambler was working as a movie and television writer, including the screenplay for the movie The Wreck of the Mary Deare and creating the 1960-62 television series Checkmate. Dig a little bit deeper and you’d discover that Ambler in 1958 married to Joan Harrison, a Hitchcock associate who was a producer on the Alfred Hitchock Presents television show, and had worked with the director even further back, including as a writer on 1939′s Jamaica Inn.

And, finally, digging just a little further back, you’d discover that in the From Russia, With Love novel, the literary Bond takes a copy of an Eric Ambler novel with him to Istanbul (Chapter 13). Adding any or all of these details would have made for a much richer article. Instead, the newspaper takes a revelation from a five-year-old book and tells us how Bond fans will be shaken and stirred.

Not quite.

007 Magazine seeks votes from fans for best Bond film

Graham Rye’s 007 Magazine is seeking votes from James Bond fans concerning which film is the best in the series.

For more information CLICK HERE. Rye is asking participants to list the 22 films in the Eon Productions series plus 1967′s Casino Royale and 1983′s Never Say Never Again and grade each on a 0 to 10 scale. To cast votes, e-mail them to greatestbondfilmever@yahoo.com. Click the above link for more detailed rules.

The deadline is midnight GMT on Sept. 1. The results will be published in October, the 50th anniversary month that Dr. No debuted in the U.K.

Octopussy, a reappraisal

Octopussy, the 1983 James Bond film, doesn’t get love from some 007 fans, particularly those fans who first got the Bond habit from the Sean Connery films of the 1960s. That includes editors from our parent site, HMSS, where a survey of editors gave it no higher than a B letter grade, with mostly Cs and Ds.

Watching it again recently reminds us the film is hardly a lost cause. Granted, it doesn’t have much Ian Fleming content. The author’s Octopussy short story provides the backstory of the movie’s female lead (Maud Adams). An auction scene, is based on another short story, The Property of a Lady.

Still, there are sequences that evoke Fleming. The best example is a sequence right after the main titles, set in East Berlin, where a double-O agent attempts to pass along vital information.

For star Roger Moore, who was 54 when filming began in the summer of 1982, Octopussy was an opportunity. Under other circumstances, Eon Productions might hired a new Bond. Indeed, Eon did screen test American James Brolin for the Bond role.

But going into production, Eon knew it was going to have 007 competition in the form of Never Say Never Again, a Thunderball remake starring Sean Connery. Eon eventually concluded this wasn’t the time for a new actor and brought Moore back. And the “Battle of the Bonds” was underway.

Some actors may have wilted under such pressure. But Moore seems to be thriving. The actor exhibits a kind of cockiness, a confidence that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He out-cheats Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) is a game of backgammon. He later seems to be having a great time fighting off Kamal’s thugs along with MI6 operative Vijay (Vijay Amritraj):

At the same time, when Vijay ends up being the film’s “sacrificial lamb,” Moore/Bond doesn’t laugh it off; he seems quite touched by the loss of a fellow agent. Up to that point, Bond and Vijay had demonstrated good chemistry. As a result, Vijay is one of the best “sacrificial lambs” of the Eon-produced series. Even after the character’s death, Bond is reminded of him while in Berlin. John Barry’s sad music adds to the scene without overpowering it.

Is Octopussy a perfect Bond adventure? No. Its comic elements get too strong at times, in particular a Tarzan yell Bond makes while being hunted in India by Kamal’s men. Later, he gets in and out of a gorilla suit impossibly quickly. Still, there is a sense of adventure, even joy at times. Sequences set in Germany, including an extended action sequence on a train with Bond constantly in peril, tend overall to be more serious than the ones set in India.

A viewer does get the impression that Eon, because of Never Say Never Again, pulled out the stops. At one point, both the two Bond films were scheduled to come out one week apart. Never Say Never Again, however, ended up delayed until the fall of 1983. But Eon had to assume Never would meet its original summer release date.

Octopussy was made by “journeymen” such as director John Glen and screenwriter Richard Maibaum (aided in this installment by George MacDonald Fraser and Michael G. Wilson). They didn’t have the critical acclaim of recent Eon hires. But, looking at it again, Octopussy is miles ahead of films such as Quantum of Solace, which featured a critically acclaimed director (Marc Forester) and an equally critically acclaimed writer, Paul Haggis. But you can actually tell what’s happening in the action sequences (something you can’t say about Quantum). Also, at times, Octopussy has an elegance about it, another aspect Quantum lacked.

For those who don’t like any 007 film with Roger Moore (which includes some of our staff), that’s not enough. For others, Octopussy is a Bond movie that’s easy to take for granted. It shouldn’t be, though. Bond films are harder than they look to make, something “prestige” hires such as Marc Forester and Paul Haggis, should have discovered by now.

007 observations/opinions about Never Say Never Again (1983)

Never Say Never Again has always been an odd duck among the James Bond movies. It’s not part of the film series, yet it has the original film Bond. It’s the only movie that’s an actual remake of another James Bond movie, Thunderball. It’s the one time audiences have really gotten to see how a production company other than Eon Productions would fare making a 007 film; the 1967 Casino Royale was an out-and-out spoof that made no attempt to mimic (much less surpass) any of the Eon series.

Never Say Never Again also spurs debate among Bond fans. Because of that, we offer the following observations and/or opinions:

001. Making a James Bond movie is harder than it looks. Originally, Never was supposed to come out in the summer of 1983 and go up against Octopussy, the 13th film in the Eon series. But the film’s release date got delayed until the fall of 1983 (some of that history can be found by CLICKING HERE), giving Eon’s Octopussy the summer market for itself. (Not that Octopussy didn’t lack for competition — Return of the Jedi came out that same summer — but it didn’t have to worry about a competing Bond film).

Never was a sprawling production, with scenes shot in the south of France and in the Bahamas. While one can critique Eon’s series, you have to concede the company met its commitments once a release date was made. Jack Schwartzman, Never’s producer, apparently found out the hard way that making 007 films isn’t easy. Add insult to inury: after catering to Connery, the star later called Schwartzman “a really incompetent producer” while commenting on a radio show that was filmed and aired later on television. If Schwartzman heard those comments, one supposes he could have called up Eon bossman Albert R. Broccoli to trade war stories about dealing with Connery.

002., Never Say Never Again isn’t any more serious than any other 007 film made between 1971 and 1985. Bond informs Domino that her brother has been killed by SPECTRE chieftain Largo during a campy tango scene played for laughs. Rowan Atkinson provides a preview of the schtick he’d do as Mr. Bean while playing Nigel Small-Fawcett, a British diplomat. Bond defeats an attacker by using his own urine specimen as a weapon. High drama, this is not. It’s on a par with exploding villains (Live And Let Die), stuffing a murderous dwarf in a suitcase (The Man With The Golden Gun) or using a Beach Boys song for an action scene (A View To a Kill).

003. Many 007 fans give Sean Connery a pass for Never Say Never Again. Hey, some fans say, it’s Connery so it has to be good. Problem: Connery was a de facto producer of Never Say Never Again. Without him, the movie doesn’t get made. If Connery wants new writers (Ian La Frencais and Dick Clement? Get them! So if you like Nigel Small-Fawcett, Connery gets part of the credit. If you think Nigel is a silly, over-the-top character? Well, it can’t be Sir Sean’s fault. Can it? Put another way, Connery had more input on Never than he did with any other 007 movie, for good or for ill. But fans tend to concentrate on the former and ignore the latter.

Here’s another way of looking at it. Ask yourself the following two questions: 1) Is Never Say Never Again really better than Moonraker/The Man With the Golden Gun/A View to a Kill? 2) Are you really being honest?

004. It’s inferior to Thunderball. Never is a remake of Thunderball and, thus, begs for that comparison. Thunderball had spectacle (even if it had editing and continuity issues). It even had drama amidst the typical mix of action and humor (Bond telling Domino her brother had been killed as part of SPECTRE’s plot). Never often comes up short in direct comparison to its predecessor, in our humble opinion.

005. If Roger Moore had done Never Say Never Again instead of Octopussy, some of Never’s fans would scream it was too campy. Moore gets blamed by some fans for the tone of the Bond film series from 1973 to 1985. He was the star, so he does bear some responsibility. But he also was doing was directors Guy Hamilton, Lewis Gilbert and John Glen told him to do. Famously, Moore objected to a scene in For Your Eyes Only that called for Bond to coldly kick a car containing a killer off a cliff. Still, he did it, an indication that his input only went so far. Connery’s input on Never (and, for that matter, Diamonds Are Forever, his last film for Eon, where he publicly praised Tom Mankiewicz’s rewrite of Richard Maibaum’s early drafts) suggests he didn’t mind light stuff at all. Would Connery have really minded briefly disguising himself as a circus clown in Octopussy? We’ll never know, but the answer may not be as conclusive as some fans believe.

006. Michel Legrand’s score is a contender for worst 007 score of all time. Michel Legrand could make grown men cry with his score for the 1971 TV film Brian’s Song, he could do a serviceable score for the adventure film Ice Station Zebra, he could do musicals such as Yentl. But he was no competition for John Barry, who scored 11 of the Eon films and established the 007 musical sound, or even the likes of Marvin Hamlisch or Bill Conti, who provided the music for some of Eon’s films when Barry wasn’t available. Good news for Legrand: Eric Serra’s score for Eon’s GoldenEye (1995) does provide Legrand competition for the worst 007 film score so it’s not automatic that Legrand get branded the worst Bond movie composer.

007. Never Say Never Again generates strong arguments among fans. Some fans bristle at the notion of referring to Never as an “unofficial” Bond film (a typical description for Bond movies not produced by Eon) saying that’s an unfair label. POn the other hand some will attack it because how dare anybody other than Eon attempt to make a 007 movie. Now those are broad generalizations but visit a typical Bond fan site message board and it won’t take too much effort to find posts taking either position.

M by the numbers, 1962-present

With the news that Dame Judi Dench says she’s returning as M, it got us to thinking about the actors who’ve played M, James Bond’s boss. Our tally is as follows:

Bernard Lee (Sir Admiral Miles Messevry): 11 films, Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, The Man With the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker. Trivia: First name (Miles) mentioned by KGB General Gogol in The Spy Whgo Love Me. Cameo (sort of): Portrait at MI6 emergency headquarters in The World Is Not Enough (1999), 18 years after Lee’s death.

Judi Dench: 7 films, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Bond 23. Conjecture: the Dench M since Casino Royale is another character (perhaps in a parallel universe) given the Daniel Craig films are a “reboot.”

Robert Brown: 4 films, Octopussy, A View To a Kill, The Living Daylights, Licence to Kill. Possible 5th film: The Spy Who Loved Me Real name: Admiral Sir Miles Messevry (if you assume he succeeded Bernard Lee as M) or Admiral Hargreaves (if you assume Hargreaves succeeded Messevry as M). In any event, Brown appeared as an admiral in The Spy Who Loved Me.

Edward Fox: 1 film, Never Say Never Again (not part of official 007 film series). Implied that Fox’s M is successor to the Bernard Lee M, as least as much as can be implied without starting off a lawsuit between official 007 producer Albert R. Broccoli and Thunderball film rights holder Kevin McClorry.

John Huston: 1 film Casino Royale (1967), spoof produced by Charles K. Feldman. Huston, an important American director, was one of five credited directors on the Feldman-produced spoof.

Only 007 film without an M: For Your Eyes Only (1981). Bernard Lee had died in early 1981. He had been unable to work on the 12th 007 film. Producer Albert R. Broccoli opted not to cast a replacement. Actor James Villiers played chief of staff Bill Tanner, who subbed for M, who we were told was on leave.

Irvin Kershner, director of unofficial 007 film, dies at 87

Irvin Kershner, best known for directing The Empire Strikes Back as well as the “unofficial” 007 film Never Say Never Again, has died at 87, according to an obituary on the entertainment Web site The Wrap. (UPDATE: For a more detailed obit, you can read The New York Times’s account of Kershner’s career BY CLICKING HERE.)

NSNA had a complicated history. It’s a remake of Thunderball (whose 45th anniversary we’ve been writing about). The original book the subject of a court fight between Kevin McClory and Ian Fleming after Fleming did a novel based on scripts of an abandoned film project. Eventually, McClory, having been a partner in the 1965 original film, began efforts to start his own 007 movie based on his Thunderball rights. After years of effort, that film was NSNA, which would bring back Sean Connery as Bond. Kershner drew the directing assignment and it probably didn’t hurt that he had directed the star in A Fine Madness.

The movie generates a mixed reaction among Bond fans. Some just won’t accept anything that’s not part of Eon Productions’ official series. Others love NSNA because Sean Connery came back for one last outing as 007.

One of the memorable scenes in NSNA where Bond dances a tango with Domino (Kim Basinger taking up the role originally played by Claudine Auger). In one sense, it’s typical of NSNA. Fans either love it or hate it, there’s little middle ground.

Happy 80th birthday, Sean Connery

As we type this, it’s Aug. 25 in Scotland, the land of Sean Connery’s birth. So here’s happy 80th birthday, Sir Sean, the first film James Bond.

Connery, of course, helped make 007 a phenomenon. There was that simple, yet powerful, introduction:

There were a number of memorable moments:

Of course, there were some critics:

But seriously, Terence Young, the first 007 film director, once said the three reasons the Bond films succeeded were, “Sean Connery, Sean Connery and Sean Connery.”

That may overlook Young’s own contributions (coaching diamond in the rough Connery about clothing and the right foods), Ken Adam’s sets (his sets make the modestly budgeted Dr. No look expensive) and John Barry’s music. But it was Connery that drew movie goers to theaters to see the film adapations of Ian Fleming’s novels. Fleming himself, initially not liking the casting, grew to appreciate Connery.

Connery had a fabulous film career that extended far beyond James Bond. Still, 007 remains the role that defines that career. And it’s Connery that first made Bond a film hero. Whether it be in action:

Or wooing the opposite sex:

ESPN quotes (sort of) from Never Say Never Again

Woody Paige, a participant on ESPN’s Around the Horn on Feb. 18 cited Never Say Never Again in analyzing the Winter Olympics.

A segment of the show devoted to “competitive banter” dealt with U.S. success this week at the Winter Olympics. “It’s like what Largo said to Bond in Never Say Never Again,” the sometimes goofy Denver Post sports columnist said, “it’s all about total world domination!”

Paige was referring to the scene in NSNA where Bond and Maximillian Largo play an elaborate video game where players try to take over territory (and the loser receives electric shocks). Largo, after winning the early rounds, is bested by 007 when the agent ups the stakes to the rest of the world.

It wasn’t the first time the ESPN show has made 007 references. Last August, host Tony Reali quoted from Goldfinger during banter with Dallas Morning News sports staffer Tim Cowlishaw.

Paige’s 007 quip didn’t help him much. He was the first sportswriter eliminated from competition. ESPN’s Michael Smith ended up the winner, besting Cowlishaw in the final “showdown” segment.

007 press kits part I: Never Say Never Again

In this digital age, press kits seem almost quaint. They were intended to spur movie critics of local newspapers to write and/or review upcoming movies. We have a few press kits for James Bond movies, so here’s a look at a few.

First up: the “unofficial” 007 movie Never Say Never Again, which hit U.S. theaters in the fall of 1983. It was unofficial only in that Eon Productions didn’t produce it. But it had Sean Connery as James Bond, 12 years after his final “official” Bond film, and had a budget comparable to the 13th “official” Bond film Octopussy, which came out in the summer of 1983.

The Never Say Never Again press kit was modest. The folder had a color photograph of Connery/Bond but it had a single publicity still inside, again of Connery/Bond.

Part of the press kit included a 12-page biograph of Connery that began thusly:

Sean Connery checked his diving equipment for the last time, adjusted his mask and slipped under the cool inviting water of the Bahamas. Fifty feet below him, on the sea bed, waited an army of highly skilled underwater film technicians. Blazing lights lit up the murky depths and were reflected back in tiny sparkles off the iridescent shoals of fish that swam with regularity past the cameras. The fish swam in safety. The day before, they would have been more uneasy, as the filmmakers had been wrorking with an all-too-real 12-fot shark — a real killer.

Sounds like somebody wanted to emulate Ian Fleming’s writing.

From another article in the press kit, running a modest 26 pages and itended to give the press critic a feel for the film, began like this:

James Bond, British Secret Servie Agent 007, is dangerous.

In a world dominated by computers and bureaucracy, he is a man whose greatest strength lies in his own intuitions, a man who allows his hunches to take him straight to the heart of the danger and who has the courage and the skill to face the greavest perils — and survive.

So when SPECTRE (Special Executor for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion) holds the world to ramsom with a devastating act of nuclear terrorism, only Bond is able to cut straigh through to the rotten core of the operation.

Of course, the real name for SPECTRE is the Special EXECUTIVE for Counterintelligence, Revenge and Extortion, but hey, it’s an engrossing tale and who are we to quibble?

Other contents included biographes of Klaus Maria Brandauer, Kim Basinger, Max Von Sydnow, Barbara Carrera, Bernie Casey, Alex McCowen and director Irvin Kershner, who was fresh off directing The Empire Strikes Back.

Kershner prepared for the film by re-reading much of Ian Fleming’s work. There he found the key to the tone and texture of Ian Fleming’s work….In the James Bond books, Fleming was very interested in the characters and wrote wonderful dialogue. Those discoveries influenced Kershner’s work on the script.

Also, in the Kersner bio, we were told this:

“Never Say Never Again” will be a Bond picture with its own unique style based not in reality nor in a cartoon world, but in a world where characters operate from a psychological base that is real,” he explains.

Reading it after 26 years, it didn’t seem the quote marks were all in the right place so we present them as they appear in the press kit.

HMSS nominations for most harebrained ideas for 007 movies

The James Bond movie series is remarkable for its longevity (47 years, albeit with a couple of notable gaps in production). But it’s also remarkable for some harebrained ideas that were seriously considered. Our list of five nominations.

1. Considering Adam West, for the role of Bond.

West, the one-time Batman, disclosed in his autobiography that he had been approached for the role in the late 1960s after Sean Connery quit the role for the first time. When we read that, we wondered if West had taken one too many blows to the head from the Riddler. However, this was verified by none other than Dana Broccoli, wife of producer Albert R. Broccoli, in the documentary Inside Diamonds Are Forever.

2. Considering James Brolin for the role of Bond

In 1982, it looked like Roger Moore had retired as 007. Producer Broccoli lined up James Brolin as a replacement. The actor’s screen tests were first publicly shown to fans at a 1994 fan convention in Los Angeles. Broccoli’s stepson, Michael G. Wilson, described Brolin’s approach as “Mid-Atlantic.”

If he meant all wet (as in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean), he was right. The actor’s screen tests were first shown publicly at a 1994 Bond fan convention in Los Angeles. Brolin’s attempt at a British accent were laughable. Meanwhile the rival Bond production Never Say Never Again was gearing up, with Sean Connery on board. Broccoli decided to pony up more money and bring Moore back for his sixth 007 outing in Octopussy.

3. Making Dr. No in the villain’s pet monkey.

Screenwriters Richard Maibaum and Wolf Mankowitz felt Ian Fleming’s Dr. No villain was too much of a stereotype. So they devised a draft where a villain had a pet monkey named Dr. No. Broccoli wasn’t amused, having spent years pursuing his dream of producing movies from Fleming’s novels. So he instructed his writers to go back to the source. Interestingly, Broccoli largely dispensed with the source material after 1969.

4. Having an ending for Goldfinger involving curtains closing.

Screenwriter Paul Dehn, having taken over for Maibuam on Goldfinger, had a draft where we’d see Bond and Pussy Galore in a clinch and then we’d see curtains close on the scene. The curtains would reopen and we’d be told what the next movie would be. In fact, this was the next-to-last draft of the script. Sean Connery, among others, thought the idea was horrible and it was dropped when the final shooting script was written.

5. Using Moonraker as a way to copy Star Wars

Rather than adapt or just update Moonraker, Broccoli and United Artists had an idea that they’d use the title as a way to exploit the Star Wars craze and….oh, wait. They did that, didn’t they? As it turned out, Moonraker ended up the most successful Bond movie up to that time, despite a budget that ran more than 30 percent its original estimate.