Bond 23 to begin filming Nov. 7, The Sun says

Bond 23 is start production on Nov. 7, according to a report in U.K. newspaper, The Sun. The story is brief but contains this passage:

When shooting starts on November 7, the actor will have to switch from a Range Rover to a Jaguar – with both motors on the move.

Jaguar and Land Rover were part of product placement in 2002’s Die Another Day in a deal meant to show off Ford Motor Co.’s European luxury offerings. Gustav Graves was driven to receive his knighthood (after making a showy parachute jump) in a Land Rover while Graves henchman Zao drove a tricked-out Jaguar in a car chase with an Aston Martin driven by Bond (Pierce Brosnan).

Ford sold off Aston Martin in 2007 and Jaguar and Land Rover in 2008. Jaguar and Land Rover are now owned by India’s Tata Motors Ltd.

To read the entire story in The Sun, JUST CLICK HERE.

CBS provides preview of Hawaii Five-0 season finale

CBS, which has been using YouTube as part of its Hawaii Five-0 marketing efforts all season long, uploaded a preview of the May 16 season finale. Wo Fat 2.0 frames McGarrett 2.0, an idea that evokes the plot of an episode of the original Five-O series called The Ninety-Second War.

In the clip CBS uploaded, McGarrett 2.0 is driving his father’s old Mercury, which just happens to be the same model driven by Jack Lord’s McGarrett in the original show. (The original series had Ford Motor Co. vehicles. CBS struck a deal with General Motors Co., which provides the bulk of cars for the new show.) McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) is on the run and needs help:

A brief (incomplete) 007 product placement history

So, Bond 23 will have a record amount of product placement, according to the Sunday Times. Agent 007 isn’t exactly a virgin when it comes to the subject.

In Bond’s debut film adventure, you could see Smirnoff vodka and Red Stripe beer. Then again, Dr. No only had a $1 million budget and was modestly budgeted. The brand name referneces reflected what you’d see in a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming.

Things picked up with the third 007 film, Goldfinger. There were vehicles from Ford Motor Co. (Tilly’s Mustang, Felix Leiter’s Thunderbird, the Ford trucks in Goldfinger’s convoy going to Fort Knox and the Lincoln Continental where gangster Mr. Solo had his “pressing engagement”). Not to mention Gillette shaving products and Kentucky Fried Chicken, evidently Felix’s favorite fast food place while maintaining survellence on criminal masterminds. The film’s director, Guy Hamilton, had this to say to film historian Adrian Turner:

I used to get a little bit angry when Harry (Saltzman) used to come on the set. In the plane scene with Pussy Galore, when Bond haves, the whole thing was a Gillette exercise. You never saw anything like it. There was Gillette foam, Gillette aftershave…I said, ‘Harry what are you doing? It’s eight in the morning, the crew haven’t arrived and your’e dressing a set?’ He’d done a deal with Gillette and we were going to get sixpence to use their stuff.”
(Adrian Turner on Goldfinger, 1998, pages 158-59)

With Thunderball, Ford was even more out in force: Fiona Volpe’s Mustang, not one but two Lincoln Continentals and Count Lippe’s aging Ford Fairlane. Ford did a promotional film, “How to Blow Up a Motor Car,” and Henry Ford II, then the CEO of Ford had a cameo in the movie. For You Only Live Twice, Japanese financial titans had an impact, including television monitors by Sony and Aki’s Toyota (not orignally a convertible but it was transformed into one).

Ford was back in Oh Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Tracy’s Mercury Cougar) and Diamonds Are Forever (Tiffany Case’s Mustang that Bond drove to great effect). GM managed to get its Chevrolet division as the primary auto supplier for Live And Let Die but it appears only one type of model could be supplied. The Man With The Golden Gun had the only 007 appearance for American Motors (later absorbed by Chrysler).

Moonraker is remembered by some fans for excessive product placement. A long Rio sequence has multiple referneces to 7 Up, British Airways and Marlboro cigarettes (including the use of Elmer Bernstein’s theme for The Magnifcent Seven, which Marlboro would use for television commercials in the 1960s). United Artists initially hoped to make the movie for $20 million. The budget came in closer to $35 million, so it’s not much of a stretch to speculate the product placement was a way of finding alternative sources of funding.

Three Pierce Brosnan 007 films (GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough) featured BMW cars.

But Ford once again entered the world of 007. For 2002’s Die Another Day. At that time, Ford had a collection of European luxury brands (including Aston Martin, a long-time 007 favorite), so DAD was a way to promote all of the brands, including a Land Rover SUV that took villain Gustav Graves to Buckingham Palace. Ford even managed to get in a couple of shots of its then-new Thunderbird two-seat car driven by U.S. agent Jinx (Halle Berry) to a big party given by Graves.

The Daniel Craig era has again seen Aston Martin make a splash and Omega watches even got mentioned in a dramatic scene between Bond and Vesper Lynd (Eva Green).

The Sunday Times reported that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony, which are co-financiing Bond 23, want to generate $45 million, or about a third, of Bond 23’s production budget from product placement fees. We’ll see how it goes. The Bond 23 filmmakers will probably get the money. The question is how obvious the product placement will be.

Happy 92nd birthday, Efrem Zimbalist Jr.

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. celebrates his 92nd birthday on Nov. 30. A lot of today’s television viewers either don’t remember EZ Jr. at all or, maybe, notice he supplied the voice of Alfred the Butler in some well-made Batman cartoons. But he held two starring roles on prime-time television in the U.S. almost continuously from 1958 to 1974.

Sample one is from his first television series, 77 Sunset Strip, where he played former OSS agent turned private investigator Stuart Bailey. For much of the series, Bailey was the rock of an agency that employed (either directly or indirectly) a number of colorful characters. Here, in a clip from the second episode, Bailey banters with Kookie (Edd Byrnes), the parking lot attendant next door who’d eventually become a full-time member of the firm:

From 1965 until 1974, EZ Jr. was Inspector Lewis Erskine on The FBI, the Quinn Martin-produced show where Zimbalist sometimes hunted Soviet and Soviet bloc spies. That long-running show also enjoyed a special relationship with Ford Motor Co., which sponsored the series and supplied the many vehicles used for filming. Here’s an original titles sequence from the second season where the Ford logo is incorporated in the main titles. Not only that, but you can view a 1967 Ford commercial. Warning: the sound and video is a bit distorted but it’s a great time capsule.

One reason we like EZ Jr. is, well, he comes across as an adult. We’re now in an age where people act immature well into middle age (see any recent movie with 44-year-old Adam Sandler). EZ Jr. came to age in an era when people were expected to grow up fast. Most Zimbalist performances are subtle but it’s wrong to say he’s sleepwalking through roles. Subtle is something we wouldn’t mind seeing more of these days.

1974: American Motors gets its one chance to be 007’s ride

In 1974, American Motors got its one and only chance to be James Bond’s primary ride.

The film was The Man With The Golden Gun, Roger Moore’s second 007 film. In earlier installments of the Bond film series, Ford Motor Co. (Goldfinger, Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever), then-General Motors Corp., now General Motors Co. (Live And Let Die) and Toyota Motor Corp. (You Only Live Twice) provided the bulk of iconic vehicles. (Aston Martin was a small independent company in the 1960s that really didn’t do product placement deals.)

As The Man With The Golden Gun was in pre-production, Eon Productions went with American Motors, then a distant No. 4 U.S. automaker. Part of the reason: Eon was going to use a signature car stunt that had been performed with an AMC model. In any case, AMC had its one chance to show off its models via a 007 movie. The company would be acquired by Chrysler in the mid-1980s, mostly because Chysler coveted AMC’s line of Jeep sport-utility vehicles.

Here’s a look at a key sequence of Golden Gun where AMC got to show off part of its product line.

1965: the apex of the 007-Ford Motor relationship

Ford Motor Co. has had a long association with the James Bond film series, most recently with Quantum of Solace. But the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker’s involvement with 007 probably peaked with Thunderball.

The company’s cars not only saturate Sean Connery’s fourth 007 outing, but the automaker’s CEO, Henry Ford II (1917-1987), worked as an extra and Ford had what has to rank as one of the most unusual movie promotions for Bond.

First, a sampling of Ford cars that appear in the movie. For the record, we are excluding the Aston Martin DB V. Ford didn’t buy U.K.-based Aston until 1987 and sold it off in 2007. This list is of Ford Motor offerings at the time of production and release.

— “Madam Bouvard” departs the funeral for “her” husband in a Lincoln Continental.

— SPECTRE No. 2 Emilo Largo arrives at the criminal organization’s Paris headquarters in a white Ford Thunderbird convertible. The two-door Tbird, while hardly Ford’s biggest car of the era, looks huge in the narrow Paris street.

— SPECTRE operative Count Lippe tools around in a Ford Fairlane while doing his part for the criminal group’s plan to hijack two NATO military aircraft. Lippe’s Fairlane meets an explosive end, courtesy of rockets from SPECTRE hitwoman Fiona Volpe’s motorcycle.

— Bond, nearly killed while inspecting Largo’s yacht underwater, swims ashore and ditches his wetsuit. He thinks he’s lucky when a baby blue Mustang pulls up. But it’s driven by Fiona (Luciana Paluzzi) and Bond isn’t sure whether he’s going to survive the drive as the SPECTRE hitwoman gets the Mustang up to 120 mph.

— Bond drives a light blue Lincoln Continental to Largo’s Palmyra estate for lunch. A rental car? Was Bond looking for more room after driving the Aston so much? Were Ford executives relieved to see Bond, and not the bad guys, driving one of their cars?

— Bond, after a pleasant interlude with Fiona, is captured by SPECTRE. They take him in a Ford station wagon until they hit congestion from the Junkanoo festival. The disruption gives Bond a chance to escape.

This wasn’t all of Ford’s involvement. The company produced A Child’s Guide to Blowing Up a Motor Car, in which a British chap takes his godson to watch the filming of a scene from Thunderball. The scene is where Fiona (actually a stutman subbing for Luciana Paluzzi) shoots rockets at Count Lippe’s Fairlane (here driven by stuntman Bob Simmons). The audience can view how special effects man John Stears (who’d win an Oscar for his efforts on Thunderball) prepares gasoline-soaked rags, which will be ignited to create the explosion and make it look like the handiwork of rockets. Unfortuantely, this gives the god son unfortunate ideas…

The Ford promo had gone unseen for decades until TWINE Entertainment’s The Thunderball Phenomenon was produced in 1995 as part of a special VHS issue of Thunderball and Goldfinger. The featurette remained as part of DVD issues but the entire Ford production is now part of two-disk Thunderball sets.

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QoS: Ford Motor Co. press release

Ford Motor Co., before the U.S. release of Quantum of Solace had marketed the subcompact Ka driven by Olga Kurylenko. But the Ford vehicles that got the most screen time were a few Edge wagons. Ford put out another press release to highlight the appearance of the Edges. To read it, just click, HERE .

QoS vehicle product placement report

No spoilers here with less than 48 hours before Quantum of Solace is released in the U.S. However, one of our editors attended an advance screening and provides this product placement report.

Eon had publicized the fact that Bond would drive an Aston Martin again. So, no surprise there. Ford Motor Co. has emphasized its redesigned Ka subcompact would be in the film. Ford’s biggest contribution was a number of Edge crossover wagons, which got more film time than the Ka.

A former Ford brand, Land Rover, also shows up in the film. Ford sold the brand, along with Jaguar, to Tata Motors of India earlier this year.

Chicago Tribune slideshow on James Bond cars

The Nov. 9 Chicago Tribune includes photos of cars (and other transportation) featured in James Bond movies. They’ve been restored and maintained by the Ian Fleming Foundation under one of its vice presidents, Doug Redenius.

Thanks to the Internets, you don’t have to go to Chicago to see them. Just click click HERE.

And you can read about Doug’s 007 collection in the current issue of HMSS by clicking HERE.

QoS: More with Olga Kurylenko and Ford

Ford Motor Co., not content to just having Olga Kurylenko at the Paris Motor Show, issued a press release this week introducing us to the Quantum of Solace actress. Afterall, we’re reminded, Olga is the first person to drive a Ford Ka. And the redesigned Ka will be in Quantum of Solace.

You can read for yourself at the Ford media Web site:

http://media.ford.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=29294

We’re guessing our friends at the Ian Fleming Foundation are already plotting to get their hands on the car.