‘Little things’ that are bothersome about NY Post 007 story

Tom Hiddleston in Marvel’s The Avengers (2012)

Lt. Columbo used to remark that “little things” bothered him. So it is with this week’s New York Post story proclaiming that Daniel Craig is very close to coming back for another turn as James Bond.

It’s not so much that Craig might actually be close. It’s no secret Eon Productions boss Barbara Broccoli just loves the guy as 007. Rather, it’s the glee that the Post’s unidentified sources exhibit in criticizing would-be Bond Tom Hiddleston.

Over the years, Eon has tested many actors as 007 who didn’t get the role. The roster includes Sam Neill, James Brolin, Michael Billington and John Richardson among others.

In various histories about the film series, you don’t see much evidence of Eon criticizing such actors.

Yet, if the New York Post series is to believed, sources supposedly in the know are yakking their heads off about how bad a choice Hiddleston was.

The source added, “Plus, Barbara Broccoli doesn’t like Tom Hiddleston, he’s a bit too smug and not tough enough to play James Bond.”

British actor Hiddleston’s cringe-making romance with Taylor Swift sealed his fate with Bond producers, we’re told, followed by his self-righteous Golden Globes speech, pontificating about his trip to South Sudan, and how Doctors Without Borders “binge-watched” his series.

The Post story, in turned, outlets spurred such as The Ringer (How Tom Hiddleston Lost the James Bond Franchise in Three Easy Steps), The Birmingham Mail (Daniel Craig’s James Bond Future has FINALLY Been Revealed) and Cinema Blend (Why Tom Hiddleston Was Allegedly Ruled Out as James Bond) weighing in on Hiddleston’s supposed short comings.

The Post doesn’t specify just how many sources it supposedly had for its story. It doesn’t specify how the sources came to know all this. (Sometimes, when relying on unidentified sources, reporters use phrases such as “with direct knowledge of the situation” to indicate the sources do know what’s going on.)

But if the Post’s sources are really in the know, they would need some kind of access to Barbara Broccoli. If not talking to her directly, they’d have to see memos, emails, whatever. If they don’t have that kind of access, how much knowledge to they actually have?

Consider this: You’re an actor. You go in to test for Bond. Later, people who claim to have inside knowledge are talking to the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column quoting the Bond boss how inadequate you are.

That’s the kind of thing, over time, might make one think twice about auditioning for such a role. It wasn’t just tabloids that said Hiddleston was in the running to play Bond last year. The Bond fan publication 007 Magazine said on its Facebook page in June 2016 that Hiddleston had been tested.

Even if Craig, 49, comes back for Bond 25, Eon is going to have to have auditions eventually if it wants to continue the Bond film series.

Again, the Post’s story is unconfirmed. Still, that hasn’t stopped fans and some entertainment websites as taking it as gospel. If the Post story is true, that might indicate there’s risk (to an actor’s reputation) as well as potential reward with the Bond role. If it’s not true, well, there’s been some wasted time.

“It was a lot of little things,” Lt. Columbo used to say. “Little things.”

UPDATE: A reader flagged to our attention that Justin Kroll, a Variety film reporter, commented about this on Twitter on April 5, a day before this post was published.

Alright enough is enough I gotta squash some of these petty rumors about Hiddleston and Bond

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) April 5, 2017

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While there is nothing is official, the Page 6 report of Craig coming back for Bond seems to be heading in that direction

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) April 5, 2017

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That said, this whole Broccoli thinks Hiddleston is Smug playing into the decision is ridiculous because Craig has an option to return

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) April 5, 2017

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Hiddleston didn’t lose anything cause of his character because he didn’t have anything to lose in the first place

— Justin Kroll (@krolljvar) April 5, 2017

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1994: Bond convention held in LA to revive 007 interest

Advertisement for 1994 James Bond convention

In the fall of 1994, James Bond hadn’t been on movie screens for more than five years. A new 007, Pierce Brosnan, had been cast. But production on GoldenEye, the new Bond film, wouldn’t begin until early 1995.

So, in October 1994, a James Bond convention was held in the Los Angeles area to help revive interest in Ian Fleming’s gentleman agent with a license to kill. Creation Entertainment, which produced Star Trek conventions, was hired to put on the show.

The blog was reminded about all this in an exchange of posts with @Stringray on Twitter. An advertisement for the event was produced saying that former screen 007s Roger Moore and George Lazenby would be present.

Before the show, Roger Moore canceled. As it turned out, he had planned to go to present the first GoldenEye Award to Eon Productions co-founder Albert R. Broccoli. The veteran showman, however, had health issues and would not attend.

Still, Lazenby, and other actors who had appeared in Bond films, were present. So did two stalwarts of the early 007 films: special effects man John Stars and editor Peter Hunt, who also directed On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. There was also a showing of Goldfinger at the Academy of Motions Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Some of the highlights:

— Peter Hunt showed a clip from Dr. No and then asked the audience to name the flaws. Hunt said something to the effect that the editor knows the mistakes of a movie better than anyone. The editor’s job, he said, is to speed the audience through this without noticing.

In this case, the clip was early in the movie when Bond is picked up at the Kingston airport by “Mr. Jones,” really an operative for Dr. No. The mistake? the color of the car’s dashboard changes in the sequence.

–George Lazenby admitted he made a mistake by not doing any Bond films after Majesty’s. His comments, as I recall them, were pretty brief. But he didn’t try to rationalize his actions.

–Two of James Brolin’s Octopussy screen tests were shown.

One was from the Octopussy script when Bond comes into the office of Penelope Smallbone on his way to see M. We’re told in the scene that Miss Moneypenny had retired and Smallbone was the new secretary.

The other was from the script of From Russia With Love that takes place in Bond’s hotel room in Istanbul. Maud Adams played Tatiana opposite Brolin’s Bond.

I had recalled reading accounts in the early 1980s that Brolin supposedly was in running to play Bond for the movie. I was skeptical. Then, Roger Moore was cast for his sixth turn in the role and I dismissed all that. The screen test footage showed there was something to it after all.

— A short video was shown about what to expect in GoldenEye. A new Aston Martin was supposed to be in the movie (it wasn’t, a BMW ended up being substituted in a product placement deal). Also supposed to be in the movie would be saws attached to helicopters (these would show up in The World Is Not Enough).

Creation Entertainment would do another Bond convention a little more than a year later, the Sunday before the U.S. premiere of GoldenEye.

UPDATE (7:25 p.m. ET): Reader Steve Oxenrider provided THIS IMAGE (or see below) of the convention schedule. Bruce Glover of Diamonds Are Forever also made an appearance as did Richard Kiel, Lynn-Holly Johnson and Gloria Hendry. Various authors about Bond, including Raymond Benson (he had not yet written his first 007 continuation story), also were there.

Schedule for 1994 James Bond convention

 

Octopussy’s 30th: Battle of the Bonds, round 1

Poster with a suggestive tagline.

Thirty years ago, there was the much-hyped “Battle of the Bonds.” Competing 007 movies, the 13th Eon Productions entry with Roger Moore and a non-Eon film with Sean Connery, were supposed to square off in the summer.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. In June 1983, Eon’s Octopussy debuted while Never Say Never Again got pushed back to the fall.

Producer Albert R. Broccoli was taking no chances. He re-signed Moore, 54 at the start of production in the summer of 1982, for the actor’s sixth turn as Bond. It had seemed Moore might have exited the series after 1981’s For Your Eyes Only. Broccoli had considered American James Brolin, and Brolin’s screen tests surfaced at a 1994 007 fan convention in Los Angeles. But with Never Say Never Again, a competing 007 adventure starring Connery, the original screen Bond, the producer opted to stay with Moore.

Also back was composer John Barry, who been away from the world of 007 since 1979’s Moonraker. Octopussy would be the start of three consecutive 007 scoring assignments, with A View To a Kill and The Living Daylights to follow. The three films would prove to be his final 007 work. Barry opted to use The James Bond Theme more that normal in Octopussy’s score, presumably to remind the audience this was the part of the established film series.

Meanwhile, Broccoli kept in place many members of his team from For Your Eyes Only: production designer Peter Lamont, director John Glen, director of photography Alan Hume and associate producer Tom Pevsner. Even in casting the female lead, Broccoli stayed with the familiar, hiring Maud Adams, who had previously been the second female lead in The Man With the Golden Gun.

Behind the cameras, perhaps the main new face was writer George MacDonald Fraser, who penned the early versions of the script. Fraser’s knowledge of India, where much of the story place, would prove important. Richard Maibaum and Broccoli stepson Michael G. Wilson took over to rewrite. The final credit had all three names, with Fraser getting top billing.

As we’ve WRITTEN BEFORE, scenes set in India have more humor than scenes set in East and West Germany. Some times, the humor is over the top (a Tarzan yell during a sequence where Bond is being hunted in India by villain Kamal Khan). At other times, the movie is serious (the death of “sacrificial lamb” Vijay).

In any event, Octopussy’s ticket sales did better in the U.S. ($67.9 million) compared with For Your Eyes Only’s $54.8 million. Worldwide, Octopussy scored slightly less, $187.5 million compared with Eyes’s $195.3 million. For Broccoli & Co., that was enough to ensure the series stayed in production.

Hype about the Battle of the Bonds would gear back up when Never Say Never premiered a few months later. But the veteran producer, 74 years old at the time of Octopussy’s release, had stood his ground. Now, all he could do was sit back and watch what his former star, Sean Connery, who had heavy say over creative matters, would come up with a few months later.

JUNE 2011 POST: OCTOPUSSY, A REAPPRAISAL.

Eastwood as 007? Just one of the worst James Bond film ideas that were seriously considered

The Express newspaper in the U.K., on its Web site, has run a short item that Clint Eastwood says he was approached by 007 producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman about playing James Bond after Sean Connery quit the role.

The California-born star was approached by Bond bosses to play the superspy when Sean Connery quit the franchise, but he turned the role down.

And Eastwood insists he made the right decision – because he didn’t want to see the iconic character portrayed by an American.

He says, “I thought James Bond should be British. I am of British descent but by that same token, I thought that it should be more of the culture there and also, it was not my thing.”

There aren’t many additional details presented. But, as the Cinema Retro Web site says, if this is true, it probably happened between the release of 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, where Broccoli and Saltzman seemed convinced they needed an American 007.

If that’s the case, it only one example of the worst James Bond movie ideas that were seriously considered. By that, we mean ideas that were REALLY, REALLY close to being reality, at least closer to reality than 007 fans would prefer. Among the others:

— Considering Adam West for the role of Bond (source: the documentary Inside Diamond Are Forever and West’s autobiography).

— Signing John Gavin to play Bond in Diamonds until United Artists (principally executive David Picker) decided that Connery should be approached one more time; Picker’s gambit paid off and Gavin was paid off on the contract he signed with Broccoli and Saltzman.

— Considering Burt Reynolds to play Bond. This was primarily director Guy Hamilton’s idea. But in the period from 1970 into 1975, Hamilton had more influence on the Bond franchise except for Broccoli and Saltzman.

— Considering James Brolin to play Bond, to the point of having him screen tested in either 1981 or 1981, in the period between For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy, when it appeared Roger Moore would retire from the role. In the documentary Inside Octopussy both co-producer Michael G. Wilson and director John Glen claimed Brolin had a great screen test. But when some of our staff saw the screen tests at the 1994 007 fan convention in Los Angeles, Brolin came across as laughable.

— Passing over Julie Christie, one of the best British film actresses of the 20th Century, because her breasts were too small.

— The decision to both reverse filming of Ian Fleming’s novels On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and You Only Live Twice PLUS throwing out the plot of Twice altogether.

With the former, there are some quirks that fans just have to overlook and with the latter, the film producers tossed a wonderful story down the toilet. Twice screenwriter Roald Dahl has been quoted as saying the novel’s story was unfilmable. Really? At its core, Fleming’s novel is Bond’s ultimate “personal” mission where he finally settles accounts with Blofeld. Meanwhile, 1989’s Licence to Kill, 1995’s GoldenEye, 1999’s The World Is Not Enough, 2002’s Die Another Day, 2006’s Casino Royale and 2008’s Quantum of Solace all featured varioations of the theme “This time — it’s personal!” If Eon Productions actually makes another James Bond movie, we’re hoping it won’t be personal just because this theme is getting tiring and none of Eon’s attempts on theme have matched Fleming’s original.

Nominations for most harebrained 007 movie ideas

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.