Having been lobbied by all sorts of people to include particular films - Walter Hill and Martin Scorsese's PA amongst them! - Ishiguro says he has had to hold firm on certain criteria for his selection. As well as making judgements about quality, he has rejected any films with memorable train sequences where the films aren't mainly set on the train.

Having said that, Ishiguro twice gave an honourable mention to FRWL (without any prompting by Bond fans in the audience!) He praised FRWL for staging a fantastic train sequence, with the greatest ever fight scene set on a train.

Though FRWL is excluded, the season does include Jerzy Kawalerowicz's 'Night Train' (Poland, 1959), a thriller made and set behind the Iron Curtain...

I asked Ishiguro a question about how significant the sense of a destination is in train-movie narrative, compared with the dramatic exploration of situations in transit, and I said I presumed this varies from story to story. He observed that the significance of the destination does indeed depend on the particular film; the train journey is sometimes a metaphor for our journey through life.

---

On to the evening's screening... Josef von Sternberg's 'Shanghai Express' is really the mother of all train movies. While the hero of the piece, Clive Brook's British Captain Harvey, is exactly the stiff, four-square kind of chap that FRWL's Captain Nash would have turned out to have been - i.e. not-Bond - Marlene Dietrich has amazing screen presence as 'Shanghai Lily'. As Ishiguro pointed out, von Sternberg uses the pretext of the idea of shifting light and shadow during a train journey to illuminate Dietrich's face in alluring ways. But it's up to Dietrich's equally exotic carriage companion and 'coaster', Hui Fei (Anna May Wong), to knife in the back the villainous Chang (with whom TND's rogue but little-seen General is a namesake).

---

On Bond... After FRWL, other OO7 films with trains are, of course: LALD, TSWLM, OP, GE, CR06, SF, SP and NTTD. YOLT and SF include underground trains. Have I missed any?

It's a solid streaming service if you don't have it. They have interesting collections of films every month.

Among that much celebrated pantheon of James Bond films planned but never made is one proposal that became particular legendary. Partly because it became lost for years and subjected to much speculation during that absence, but mainly due to one of its authors being none other than Gerry Anderson. 

If made, it would have seen the king of the futuristic Supermarionation joining forces with the producers of the biggest action movie franchise of that decade, and many more since. Or so Anderson hoped at the time. 

The unearthing of a long since buried screen treatment by Gerry Anderson and his regular co-writer Tony Barwick has shed new light on what had been intended as the seventh James Bond film that eventually became Diamonds Are Forever, but could well have been Sean Connery starring in Moonraker! And that was one of a fair few aborted movies of Ian Fleming’s 1955 James Bond novel. 

In fact, Fleming had conceived of Moonraker becoming the basis of a film even before he wrote it. His 1953 first Bond novel, Casino Royale, had been adapted for American Television the following year and the movie rights then sold to Gregory Ratoff. Alexander Korda showed interest in Live and Let Die, though was not sure if it would translate well into a movie. Fleming informed him that his planned next Bond adventure would be more filmic. 

Fleming actually began working on Moonraker as a Bond screenplay, having mulled over the plot of a nuclear rocket dropped on London ever since the war and the threat of the German V missiles. He then decided to adapt the scenario as his third 007 novel, though styled to have more potential as an exciting movie. 

The plot concerns Sir Hugo Drax, a self-made multi-millionaire industrialist originally from Liverpool and who is developing a revolutionary nuclear missile for the Ministry of Defence called the Moonraker, an advanced rocket that can withstand the ultra-high combustion temperatures produced by its engine and thus increasing its range. 

In expanding his screenplay to fill the length of a novel, Fleming added a set up whereby Bond is assigned to investigate suspicions that Drax cheats at cards, which M finds curious for a man of his wealth. Bond takes on Sir Hugo at the card table and beats him at his own game, using his both his skill and a deck stacked in his favour. 

Suspicion grows further when a Ministry of Supply security officer working at the Moonraker project in Kent is mysteriously shot dead. M sends Bond to replace him and there he discovers that Drax’s personal assistant, Gala Brand, is in fact a Special Branch police officer also working undercover.

As events dangerously unfold, it turns out Hugo Drax is in fact a stolen identity. The man is actually Graf Hugo von der Drache, the German commander of a Werewolf commando unit and not from Merseyside after all. His intention is to avenge the defeat of the Third Reich by fitting a Russian supplied nuclear warhead on the Moonraker for its planned test flight, but actually have it obliterate London. The story climaxes with Drax imprisoning Bond and Brand beneath the launch pad of the Moonraker to be incinerated by its blast off, while he and his henchmen flee the country in a Soviet submarine. However, the pair escape and redirect the rocket’s giros to fire into the sea, destroying the submarine and all on board. 

Published in April 1955, Moonraker differs from other Bond narratives in being set entirely within England, much of the action taking place at Drax’s base located between Dover and Deal on the south east coast of England. In another departure, Bond does not get the girl in the end, Gala revealing after the completion of their mission that she is engaged to a fellow Special Brach officer and the novel closing with her walking away from our hero. But the potential for visual cinematic action was definitely present.

INTERESTING DEVIATIONS

American actor John Payne was the first to show interest in a Moonraker film, paying Fleming a monthly option of $1000, until learning the film rights for the previous two novels were not available. With little prospect of a series, he lost interest after nine months. 

The Rank Organisation then bought the rights and Fleming tried to get things going by composing his own 150-page film treatment of the novel with some interesting deviations. Miss Moneypenny was dropped, Bond’s head of department is no longer called M and he now has an ally in cockney Special Branch officer, Tosh. 

This did nothing to move Rank, who continued to sit on the property with little sign of moving forward. Fleming was still free to sell adaptation rights to other media, beginning in 1956 with an adaptation for South African radio starring Bob Holness as James Bond, then later it became a Daily Express comic strip which ran from 30 March to 8 August in 1959. 

It was also during 1959 that Fleming retrieved the movie option back from Rank. By then, he was realising the benefits of pulling together the screen rights to all his Bond novels as a single package and forming a possible continuous film series, rather than one by one to different studios as Raymond Chandler had done with his Phillip Marlowe books. With Moonraker back in the fold, it became part of the deal made with Harry Saltzman in 1960, who then went into partnership with Albert R. Broccoli as EON productions.

Rather than follow the chronology of the novels, Broccoli and Saltzman selected each source text as and when it suited their purposes. As a result, Moonraker would find itself waiting its turn as later Bond titles were filmed first. In 1969, as On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was completing production, the wait looked finally over.

SPACE-THEMED PLOT

The space race was on everyone’s mind by this point with the Apollo missions and their imminent moon landings, and EON thought it timely for Bond to revisit a space-themed plot as they had previously done so with the movie version of You Only Live Twice in 1967. Out of the remaining novels at their disposal, Moonraker offered the most promise in meeting the planned approach, but Saltzman felt somebody with more experience of producing high action science fiction with lots of futuristic hardware should be brought in.

Gerry Anderson was certainly the undisputed master of that particular genre in the British film and television industry at that time. His sci-fi Supermarionation shows including Thunderbirds, Stingray and Captain Scarlet increasingly broke new ground in model effects spectacle and exciting story telling. But no one was more excited than Anderson himself when he got the unexpected call. 

“What happened was Harry Saltzman called me and said, ‘Can you come? I would like to see you’. I came and he said, ‘Gerry, I want you to produce the next Bond film, Moonraker; here is the book’. I almost took off and went into orbit!” 

For Gerry Anderson this was opportunity knocks as he yearned to graduate into movies and real actors. He had produced and directed the low budget 1960 B picture Crossroads to Crime for Nat Cohen while trying to get Supercar off the ground, but was then back to puppets for the big screen Thunderbirds movies released in 1966 and 1968. It was in that latter year he made his first move into live action adult sci-fi with the movie Doppelgängeraka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, and this fostered the TV series UFO which was in production when Saltzman made the call.

Upon reading the Fleming novel he was being asked to adapt, Anderson felt it to be “terribly outdated” and “frankly not very exciting.” So he decided to bring in one of his most trusted writing collaborators, Tony Barwick, who had worked on all of Anderson’s television shows from Thunderbirds onwards. Together they contrived to rework Fleming’s plot into something more bang up to date with plenty of special effects action and delivered an 84 page screen treatment. 

CLOSE TO ITS SOURCE

Despite Anderson’s feeling towards the novel, their storyline remained surprisingly close to its source, being set mainly in England, and Dover in particular, though with added pre credit scenes in Brazil and some later moments at Drax’s Caribbean based oil refinery. He also retained the novel’s main chase sequence where Bond is pursued by a black Mercedes on the roads of Dover and ends up releasing huge rolls of newspapers from a truck to force it off the road. 

As in the Fleming text, Drax is described as having long red hair and mutton chops moustache, but now apparently in a wheelchair. He is developing the Moonraker for the British government, which also makes him a potential security risk when suspicions about cheating at cards prompt M to have Bond investigate. This initially results in a card game on the flashier location of Drax’s private jet rather than at Blades as in the novel. 

This was the key to Anderson and Barwick’s adaptation. To track the original Fleming narrative while at the same time augment it with more ambition and spectacle. There would also be, of course, added gadgetry from Q branch including an exploding cigarette lighter, a watch that fires a tranquillising dart and a one-man submersible in which he is chased by dolphins armed with mines! 

Bond’s investigation leads him to Drax’s base underneath the English Channel, where he joins forces with Gala Brand, who is actually referred to in the treatment as Gala Bond in what is presumably a typo. Either way, Bond discovers a radiation exposure system kept in Sir Hugo’s office, which points to something more going on with his Moonraker programme and suspicions are proved correct. 

Drax’s actual intention is to orbit the rocket around the Moon and blackmail the world into multilateral disarmament. Once launched, the Moonraker will become self-automated and its sensors scanning the globe for any traces of nuclear missile activity. First sign of any nation initiating a nuclear attack and its warhead will automatically be fired back to Earth and destroy the entire world.

However, behind this Sword of Damocles threat is an even bigger ambition. With the nuclear powers held at bay, Drax intends to fire another atomic missile into space from inside a super tanker, its target being the Moonraker and resultant explosion strong enough to irradiate the Earth and wipe out its population. The only survivors would be Drax himself and a selected few who have regularly exposed themselves to radiation so their bodies have built up immunity to it. Not surprisingly, his chosen are physically perfect specimens to form a master race, confirming his credential as a Nazi interloper. 

The final section of the movie would have taken place on board Drax’s quarter mile long super tanker and involve a motorcycle chase across its deck. Bond and Gala would end up trapped a watertight hold as the tanker’s stern is sunk in order to raise the bow section out of the water and some 90 degrees up in the air to launch the missile (like Skydiver in Anderson’s UFO). Bond tries using his shoe to bust the porthole without success, but then the door bursts open with the water pressure and the pair manage to escape. 

With Drax’s plan defeated, the climax was to be back at his subterranean base where he reveals a fail-safe plan. He will detonate Moonraker’s warhead while it is still in programmed position and blast the moon out of orbit (sound familiar?). Suffice to say, Bond kills Drax by flooding his HQ and, unlike the closure of the novel, ends up in the passionate arms of Gala on board a ship. “Have you got a licence for this?” she says as he kisses her. “Yes. And for this too,” he replies as they clinch and the end titles roll.

HOLDING OUT FOR MORE

Gerry Anderson presented the written proposal to Harry Saltzman, who called him back later the same evening to say he thought it brilliant and must have Cubby read it. However, Anderson declined an offer of £20,000 to buy the treatment from him, deciding to hold out in the hope he would get to produce the film himself for EON, as Kevin McClory had done with Thunderball, or at least direct.

Presumably, Cubby did not share Saltzman’s enthusiasm for the proposal as Anderson never heard back from either of them. The final confirmation came with the release of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) and its end credits declaring Diamonds Are Forever to be the next adventure, not Moonraker. 

However, Diamonds would also feature the bad guy operating an orbiting weapon of mass destruction, while an earlier version of the screenplay had it located within a super tanker. And as with the Anderson/ Barwick treatment, the villain’s stated intention is to force nations into nuclear disarmament and establish world peace, but in fact has an ulterior motive. Presumably, Gerry considered these plot coincidences not substantive enough to be worth pursuing any legal action. Not yet, anyway.

Gerry Anderson got on with completing UFO and one of its stars, Michael Billington, became courted by EON as a possible future James Bond, maybe at Anderson’s own suggestion. This was followed by the international based crime series, The Protectors, the nearest Gerry would get to Bond territory. Then came Space:1999 for which he re-purposed his ‘moon blasted out of orbit’ idea as its central premise. However, that was not the only element of his Moonraker treatment to end up resurfacing. 

Fast forward to 1976 with Cubby Broccoli now solely in charge of the Bond franchise and about to embark on a new 007 adventure but only having a title at his disposal. 

Fleming had stipulated the text of his novel The Spy Who Loved Me should not be filmed as he considered the story a failure, but Cubby loved its title and got clearance for using it to headline a totally original screenplay. Writers were invited to submit potential scripts or treatments and it is with 

some of these that the Gerry Anderson and Tony Barwick Moonraker scenario was to get confused over the years. 

Firstly, there was a submission by comic book writer Carey Bates actually made a couple of years earlier when he was trying to break into screen-writing. He composed a Moonraker screenplay in which Hugo Drax steals a British nuclear submarine from its Clyde base and hides it in Loch Ness near his base at Urquhart Castle. Drax threatens to deploy its arsenal in destroying European cities if his ransom demands are not met, and is aided by a pair of twins as henchmen. One called Pluto, who is a heavy smoker, and his brother Plato, an alcoholic. 

Bates also proposed the return of Tatiana Romanova, now a KGB agent who works with Bond on the case as Russia is also threatened, 007’s cover being hired as Drax’s chauffeur. Given that, in From Russia with Love, Tatiana had helped Bond steal a Soviet Lektor and defected to the West with him, one can only assume her assassination of the SMERSH traitor Rosa Klebb proved redeeming in the Kremlin’s eyes, whereas otherwise she would have been shot! 

Continued…

I saw 'Niagara' this afternoon at BFI Southbank, as part of a Marilyn Monroe season, and it occurred to me that, Fleming's novel aside, there are also some noteworthy if fleeting points of connection with various Bond films, which came along later. Beginning with FRWL, Terence Young's exciting boat chase perhaps echoes the climactic pursuit in 'Niagara' of a stolen boat by a police vessel: not so much in terms of situation or spectacle, but in terms of moments of imagery - where shots of Sean Connery and Dianela Bianchi looking back at the SPECTRE boats channel Joseph Cotten and Jean Peters turning to look at the patrol boat pursuing them. The most obvious Bond connection is, however, between the image of Cotten's boat plunging over the Niagara Falls, with Cotten still aboard (Peters' character manages to escape in time, by clinging to a rock, as Cotten scuttles the boat) - and Jaws (Richard Kiel) plunging over the Iguazu Falls in the Amazonian sequence in MR (1979). There are also parallels with the bayou chase in LALD (1973). Cotten steals the boat from a hick who moors vessels for trade, and the ensuing police pursuit (much less spectacular than in LALD) involves a detective and ranger-style officers in cars and on walkie-talkies as well as the patrol boat. There's even a comedy middle-aged stout character caught up in it, Don Wilson as Jess C. Kettering (J. W. Pepper, anyone?), though by this stage in the action he's no longer playing it for laughs: there's real jeopardy when Cotten and Peters are caught in the drift towards the cascade. A further connection is between the coded eroticism of Peters, on deck, splashed by copious spray as the boat sequence intensifies, and Barbara Bach drenched in seawater as she and Roger Moore escape from Stromberg's Atlantis in TSWLM (1977). Like Bach - or like Denise Richards in the submarine at the climax of TWINE (1999) - Peters is soaked as the attractive heroine in peril. Structurally, 'Niagara' positions her in contrast to Monroe, who plays a scarlet woman as alluring as any femme fatale in the Bond films. When Peters is rescued from the waves-buffeted rock by a Coast Guard helicopter lowering a rope chair, we may think forward to TB (1965), in which a wetsuited Connery and Claudine Auger launch into the sky for the end credits. But I wouldn't want to overstate the similarities. 'Niagara''s action is more constrained; Peters' allure is conservative - she plays a wholesome 50s wife - and if Monroe's character is conniving in the glamorous bombshell mode which was subsequently picked up in Bond, the sequence where her vengeful husband (Cotten) murders her is darker and more harrowing than the throwaway deaths of OO7's villainous vamps.

'Niagara' is an effective romantic suspense thriller, Monroe's breakout film. It's intelligent enough to imbue the Niagara Falls with metaphorical significance - by contrast with, say, that Iguazu Falls sequence in MR, which is just another set piece in a stunt-saturated romp. Yet 'Niagara' points the way towards the kind of spectacle which the Bond films would develop and perfect, as indeed do a number of other landmark films of the 50s.

In 'Niagara' the location itself is a star of the film; the Cutlers (Peters and Casey Adams) are sightseeing on a delayed honeymoon, and the doomed, mutually abusive Loomis couple (Cotten and Monroe) are also tourists. "Trips around the cascade via boat, the Horseshoe Scenic Tunnels, and caves around the Falls have all been made integral parts of the script." ('Variety', 21 January 1953 - as cited in the BFI's programme notes.) In keeping with other travelogue Bond films, MR likewise presents its exotic locations as holiday destinations - Rio, Sugar Loaf Mountain and Venice, etc. The difference is that, in Bond, the plot gives OO7, his enemies and allies their spy-movie pretexts for touristic-style travel: they're on missions.

With Skyfall, what bothered some people was the fact that Bond is portrayed as an ageing agent who's been around, whereas the Casino/Quantum story arc shows him only at the start of his career, not yet seasoned and lacking the experience one can expect from a fully operational man in complete control of his emotions (indeed, it was often said that a film was missing between QOS and SF).

What do you guys think about the theory suggesting that SF is set within the classic timeline (1962–2002), and that even though it is Craig playing Bond, he is in fact embodying the Bond of Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton and Brosnan? There is indeed no reference to the events or characters from CR/QOS, and this could explain why, at this stage, Bond is regarded as a relic of the past, given that he has always been the same iteration if we disregard the first two films of whay we use to call the "Craig era".

The conversation at M’s house (you've been playing it long enough, we both have), the gadget-laden DB5 from GF, the new Q replacing Llewellyn/Cleese (hence the remark about the exploding pen in GE), Mallory succeeding M, who herself had been in post since GE, Bond’s return to his homeland...

Bond would thus literally be a figure from a bygone era, the sole survivor (along with Tanner, to a certain extent) of a time at MI6 when the old team (Messervy, Moneypenny, Boothroyd, female M, Robinson, R...) was replaced by a new one (Fiennes, Wishaw, Harris). The only disruptive element would be the Moneypenny disclosure at the end of the film, but this problem could be solved by assuming this Moneypenny is just related to the original one (niece/daughter, etc.), who, like Messervy and Boothroyd before her, would have left the service after DAD, leaving the post vacant and eventually filled by one of her relatives who has initially been taken on as a trainee field agent.

Watching SF through this lens, I find that not only does it fit perfectly, but it also lends the film an even more powerful symbolic significance, particularly as a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the series. And it fully justifies the gunbarrel sequence at the end: the legend never dies, and the "iconic" Bond is very much back after being shattered.

One could obviously view the film as the standalone it was supposed to be within the reboot when it was released. But personally, I really enjoy thinking it has nothing to do with the rest of the Craig timeline but actually belongs to the "golden" era. And guess what, I'm starting to love the film considering it this way.  

BRAVE NEW WORLD 😉

I am back with a new theory for you all to think about. This time I will take a look at Silva in SF and see how his character backstory fits in almost perfectly across the Dalton and Brosnan timelines therefore arguing that the films are all linked in a chronological timeline.

Here we go...

When Bond first meets Silva in SF, Silva reveals that he was an agent working in Hong Kong between 1986 and 1997 also mentioning that he was the favourite of Judi Dench's M. In TLD, Robert Brown's M mentions that he will recall 008 from Hong Kong. I deduce that Silva was the original 008 in TLD since what he says in SF fits in nicely with M's line.

Dench becomes the new M around 1994 or 1995 but there is no reason why Silva would not continue working for her from Hong Kong. It is possible that after she left Hong Kong he started to show more resentment towards her and the service considering that Bond came back into the service in 1995 in GE and so Silva became jealous of the two. This would explain why Silva says that the situation in SF is about himself, M and Bond.

His service time ending in 1997 also fits in nicely with the events of TND. It is possible that Silva is the one aiding Elliot Carver providing him with secret information on the Chinese military. I deduce that towards the end of TND, Silva is found out by MI6 and handed over to the Chinese. The Chinese government subsequently establish good relations with MI6 following the events of TND after eliminating Elliot Carver and supposedly arresting General Chang as well.

These good relations are further echoed by Chang helping Bond in DAD. (I know though the Chinese are not completely trustworthy of Bond since they attempt to spy on him through the closet mirror in his hotel room!)

Silva being betrayed by Dench's M during the events of TND and seeing Bond "die" then return to active duty after failing all of his assessment tests in SF neatly explains why Silva behaves the way he does in Skyfall.

Apologies if there is already a discussion about this. Please point me in the right direction if it is the case.

Spectre is unique in the film series as it is the only Bond film that opens with a caption as part of the film narrative. This caption reads:

The dead are alive

Does anyone know why it was put in the film? I know its meaning can be interpreted in different ways but I am interested to see what people think of this caption and what it possibly means to them,

I am working on a bit of Bond literature at the moment and I am keen to see what Bond fans think of this caption.

CHRIS KNIGHT INTERVIEWS CHRISTOPHER LEE

The most interesting, and some might say the only interesting aspect of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. the newest picture in the James Bond series, is Christopher Lee’s performance as Scaramanga. a million-dollar hit man who kills with a golden bullet. I visited Lee at Pinewood studios last July while work on the film was in progress. He looked fit after a strenuous stint of location shooting in the far east, and in good spirits. We discussed in his dressing room his work on the film and the recent good fortune his career has enjoyed. Lee was offered the part of Scaramanga by director Guy Hamilton over lunch at London’s White Elephant and accepted after reading the script that same afternoon. He calls the character a ’’contre-Bond,” an anti-hero of great stature able to deal with the famous secret agent on an equal footing. Lee admitted laughing¬ ly: "It's amusing to me that finally I shall be playing in a James Bond film due to the fact that Ian Fleming was my cousin and always said I ought to be in them!’’

CFQ: Were you recognized and accepted as a star in Bangkok and the far east where this film was shot?

LEE: I’ve now, thank God. reached a point in my career where there isn’t a country I can go to where I’m not recognized. They had all seen my films—well, not all of them, fortunately for that, but a great many of them. Everybody knew me, simply because I’ve been in pictures that have been world-wide successes, and it’s getting even more so with pictures like THE THREE MUS¬ KETEERS and this film. It should be even more so with this film because, thank God, for once I do look like myself. I even take off my clothes, which is something I never thought I’d have to do in a film! As you probably know, I have a third nipple. It's in the book.

CFQ: Did you pattern your performance as Scaramanga on the Ian Fleming book?

LEE: No. The character in the book is a great ox of a man. He’s really just a thug. He has no charm at all. He’s extremely unpleasant. He’s just a thug who kills with a golden gun, and there is nothing more to him than that. In fact, it's one of the least well-written characters of all Flem¬ ing’s books. The way the character comes out in the script is infinitely superior, infinitely.

CFQ: What’s it been like to work on a Bond picture?

LEE: The thing that impressed me most on this picture is the tremendous level of production, which is quite staggering. Even after THE THREE MUSKETEERS, which was a super, star-studded, colossal sort of thing. I’ve never seen anything like this. Money is. literally, no object. I have never seen money spent as it has been on this picture. It's because it's the only film that's made today in the cinema which is an absolute, lOOfir certainty before they even make it. They know it's going to make millions, it’s going to make huge profits, so they don’t mind. So it’s wonderful to work in a picture where this occurs because there is never any question of can we afford this, should we spend a bit more time there, and pay for this and pay for that—do it! You have a free hand. It’s carte blanche .

That has got to come over on the screen, be¬ cause of the exotic backgrounds, the incredible sets, plus the fact that, for probably the first time in a Bond film, the people in this picture are peo¬ ple and not card-board cut-outs or caricatures. They may be a bit bizarre, but at least they are believable.

The other thing that impressed me is the won¬ derful good humor of Roger Bond, as I call him, or Roger Moore. He’s tremendous fun to work with. It’s twenty-six years since I worked with Roger in a film. I did IVANHOE with him, one of the television shows, but twenty -six years ago I did TROTTIE TRUE in the gardens of this studio and he and I were stage-door Johnnies with one line each.

And the director, whom I’ve known for many, many years. I’ve never worked for as an actor, but Guy Hamilton got something out of me in this picture which I’ve never been able to show on the screen. In his own words, he got the spook out of me. He got the Dracula out of me. Because, ob¬ viously. I can become very menacing, rather heavy, if I’m not careful, even with ordinary lines, because I’ve done it so often. And he’s get¬ ting me to do this picture in such a light way that you can hardly believe this man is as lethal as he is. He's getting me to smile. He’s getting me to laugh, which I must admit. I don’t find very easy to do as an actor. But he's getting the lightness of performance out of me. the contrasts. This man isn't just a straight, down - the - middle, conven¬ tional heavy. He's got things out of me that no other director has ever either had to get or want¬ ed to get. or even tried to get.

CFQ: Are there any of the other Bond villains you would have liked to have played?

LEE: Oh yes, the first one. The first one was modeled on Fu Manchu. I know that because the author told me. I would have liked to have played Dr. No. but I think if I had played it, having seen that a very fine actor could make nothing out of it by virtue of the story, the direction, or whatever, it’s probably just as well I didn't. Dr. No is a conventional, emotionless, straight-faced heavy. Wiseman was a marvelous actor. He wasn't able to do anything because he wasn't required to.

The best Bond heavy, of course, unquestionab¬ ly, is Goldfinger. Not only because it was a very well-written part, and a very interesting and en¬ tertaining role, but because Gert Frobe played it beautifully.

If the producers decide that Scaramanga is too good a character to loose, they'll bring him back. It's always possible to bring people back, as I know only too well, to my sorrow.

CFQ: Do you feel this film is going to be a peak in your career?

LEE: No. Certainly not. I think it’s going to do something immensely important in my career. What is the peak of your career? Is it the best picture you’ve ever been in? Is it the best part you've ever played? Is it the most successful pic¬ ture or is it the best performance you ever give? The peak of your career could be your last film, after which you just quietly fade away at the age of eighty or ninety. That could be your peak. It’s something you can’t possibly fortell.

I would say it's certainly the film, with the exception of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, in which 1 will get the greatest exposure. In terms of changing what is laughably called an image, which really isn’t an accurate one, it will be of immense value to me. I did the last Dracula two years ago and as you know I don't intend to do it again. I’ve done no horror pictures since then, not really. HORROR EXPRESS is not a horror film, certainly not for me. Since then I’ve done THE WICKER MAN, which is superior in many respects. THE THREE MUSKETEERS, a huge, big picture, which is going to make a vast amount of money, and now this.

You could say that the beginning of a new ca¬ reer for me as an actor began with THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and steadily that particular diversification broadened out from that point. This means that because of the level at which I am established as an actor, and the ex¬ posure I'm getting from films that are certainly going to make a lot of money. I’m obviously going to be offered an enormous amount of pictures now of a different type. I'll always be the villain. I'll always be the heavy. This doesn’t bother me one bit as I’ve said many times because they’re al¬ ways the best parts, the most interesting, the ones you remember, and the greatest fun to play.

It’s not a question of being a success like Kar¬ loff or Lugosi or Chaney, although I don't neces¬ sarily put myself in that category. It would be more important to be a success like a Rathbone. or Rains, or Veidt. which I’m now doing. I think I'm combining in the kind of parts that I’m play¬ ing the two areas in which these great actors worked. Not just a graveyard epic, but a thriller as well as an action adventure type of picture in which one may well be playing the villain of the piece. It doesn’t mean to say that I will never do another horror film. It does mean to say that hopefully they will all be good if I am going to do them, and that I won’t do any more indifferent ones. If I do get offered a horror picture, it's got to be a damned good picture and a damned good part.

That Lee's interest in horror films is still keen is evidenced by the fact that a co-production arrangement is now (lending between Hammer Films and his own Charlemagne company to film Dennis Wheatley’s TO THE DEVIL A DAUGHTER in which he would star. Lee owns the screen rights to all of the occult novels of Dennis Wheatley and feels that the chemistry which worked superbly well in "the great days of Hammer" can work well again. "They need some successful films." he pointed out. referring to financial problems at the once thriving horror film studio. But while the sun may be setting on the career of Hammer Films. Christopher Lee’s star is newly rising. His performance as Scaramanga in THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is among the best work he has done: stylish screen villainy.

1) Diamonds Are Forever (first Bond I ever saw, in the theatre, as a kid)

2) Tomorrow Never Dies (loved Michelle Yeoh as the Bond girl)

3) The Living Daylights (OMG once I got the Blu ray it was over & over)

4) Goldfinger ('Nuff said)

5) Never Say Never Again (yeah, not a great film, but I was so into it when it came out & the CED was cheap so I watched it a lot)

6) License To Kill (love the movie, but it hurts in places, not a fully happy visit)

7) Man With The Golden Gun (pure nonsense fun)

8) You Only Live Twice (pure nonsense fun)

9) SPECTRE,

tied with the last two.

The James Bond Films

In 1956 or 1957, when I was in England writing for Cubby and Irving Allen, Cubby gave me two of the James Bond books to read. I read them and liked them enormously. Cubby was very excited, too, but Irving Allen didn't share his enthusiasm. So Cubby put them aside. It’s my personal opinion now that that was a wise thing to do, because with the censorship of pictures that existed then, you couldn’t even have the minimal sex and violence that we eventually put into the pictures. They just wouldn't have been the same.

Later, when Irving Allen and Cubby broke up, Cubby got together with Harry Saltzman, who had an option from Ian Fleming, and he and Cubby joined forces. Cubby went to New York and convinced the United Artists board of directors to give him and Saltzman what eventually amounted to $1 million to make the first picture. I didn’t know Saltzman at the time, but Cubby told him about me, and I was asked to go over there and write the first James Bond script.

Thunderball was actually the first; we decided it was the one to start with. I finished a first draft, and then Kevin McClory jumped up with a lawsuit against Ian Fleming, claiming he wrote the novel after they’d done a screen treatment together. So we put Thunderball aside until that was settled and decided to do Dr. No. I was then in London, after having finished the first draft of Thunderball, so I began to write Dr. No with Wolf Mankewitz. Cubby and Harry didn't like our first treatment, so Wolf bowed out; and I went on to do the first draft of the screenplay. Later, after I left, a novelist named Aubrey Mather (Jasper Davis is his real name) did some work on it with a girl playwright, Joanna Harwood.

On From Russia with Love they had Len Deighton start, and he did about thirty-five pages; but it wasn’t going anywhere, so they brought me in. I did the screenplay and got a solo credit on it. Joanna got an adaptation credit, because she worked some with the director, Terence Young, and made several good suggestions. I was a little put out that she was given an adaptation credit because I didn’t think she deserved it, but there are always politics in these things.

On Goldfinger I did a first draft. Harry Saltzman didn’t like it, and he brought in Paul Dehn, a good writer, to revise. Then Sean Connery didn’t like the revisions, and I came back to do the final screenplay. That was the first time that happened: where I was followed by someone and then called back to finish up.

I worked on Thunderball again and got a solo on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is one of the best of the Bonds despite Lazenby. After I did the first script on Diamonds Are Forever, I left and Tom Mankiewicz came on. They liked his work, so Tom stayed on to do Live and Let Die. Then they used Tom again on Man with the Golden Gun. He had a disagreement with Guy Hamilton, and I was asked to come back and rewrite that. Then, on The Spy Who Loved Me I did the first draft, followed by Christopher Wood, who also wrote Moonraker. Gilbert, the director, liked his work; I didn’t. Then, after Moonraker I began to work with Michael G. Wilson, an unusually versatile, talented young man, and we did For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, and A View to a Kill.

I’ll tell you something about a James Bond script. How many scenes would you think are in the Octopussy screenplay, for instance? Over one thousand! Whereas it’s rare that scripts have more than two hundred or three hundred scenes. Sometimes directors don’t want the writers to break it up to such an extent, but I always do. I figure, you’re fooling yourself and everybody else if you don’t do that. It’s pretty well worked out in advance—especially with men like John Glen and Peter Hunt, who were great editors. You can’t take short cuts. (I remember once, when I was doing the script for one of my favorite early pictures, Ten Gentlemen from West Point in 1942, I wrote, “Then follows the Battle of Tippecanoe.” And Darryl Zanuck noted in the margin: “Who are you kidding, kid?”)

Basically, in a way, the pattern of the story is the same in all of the Bonds, and I think that is one of the attractions of the pictures. You have that engine working, the James Bond syndrome—with all the conspicuous consumption, the luxurious locales, the beautiful women, the larger-than-life villains. We’ve carried it much further than Fleming. Bond is absolutely dedicated and devoted to serving Queen and country; he never questions what he does or the morality of it. In an article he wrote, Charles Champlin says that Bond is the man who rides into town to set things right, and he calls him the Musketeer. Well, I told you: the Dumas books had a helluva influence on me.

Ian Fleming

I met Ian Fleming several times while he was still alive, but I did not speak to him about screenwriting. He didn’t seem very interested. He didn’t have script approval, but as a matter of courtesy we gave him the scripts to read. He would make minimal notes in the margin, in very tiny handwriting, that usually dealt with questions of protocol—what Bond called M in the office as opposed to what he called him at their club, things like that.

He did say to me once, “The pictures are so much funnier than my books.” He was a little bemused and a little obtuse about it, I thought, because he really didn’t understand that we were trying to make them funnier. That was the thing we changed most about his books as far as the pictures were concerned. We made Bond more humorous, throwing away those one-liners that are now obligatory in Bond films.

Fleming was strange about the books. I think he got bored with the Bond stories after a while, especially after On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, on which he really did a superb job. As a novel I think it’s the best of them and the one we had to do the least with to make a good motion picture script. It was a solid novel, more of a serious effort than most of his books, which are really one hundred pages of brilliant exposition and then some good, swift action.

I told this to Fleming once, “There is an untransferable quality in your writing.” It’s all very well; Fleming writes two and a half pages describing the fish underwater, the beautiful waving weeds, the colors—but, what the hell, it's just a pretty piece of celluloid when you see it on the screen. In other words, we had to popularize to a great extent. I won’t use the word vulgarize, because we’ve tried very hard, and Cubby has tried very hard, to keep the pictures from being vulgar. If someone suggests something that is really vulgar, he’ll wince. Partly the difference is in going from a kind of cult audience to a mass audience. It was only a cult audience of readers that kept Fleming alive for a long time before the pictures really discovered him. As books, they were not caviar to the general.

A Pretense of Seriousness

Penelope Gilliatt once said that Bond films were “modern mythology.” In my opinion, they started this whole larger-than-life approach to action-adventure pictures. There have been others, of course; and Burt Lancaster always ribs me about imitating the style of The Crimson Pirate [1952]. But I do think the Bond pictures started this whole cycle, and then everybody else climbed on the bandwagon. That’s not generally accepted. I think Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981] was, except for having a wonderful gimmick (the ark itself), a kind of Bond picture. The action, the villains, the unexpected!

You know, Hitchcock once told me, “If I have thirteen bumps in a picture, I think I’ve got a picture.” A bump is something like someone says, “I’m looking for a man who has a short index finger,” and a totally unexpected guy says, “You mean like this?” That’s in The 39 Steps. After Dr. No Cubby, Harry, and myself decided that we weren’t going to be satisfied with thirteen bumps in a Bond story, we wanted thirty-nine.

As a writer I think one of my contributions to the Bonds is that I maintained a pretense of seriousness. I took them seriously, the way Cyril [Hume, Maibaum’s early screenwriting partner] took the Tarzans, as if they were really happening, although of course such things don’t. There are no secret agents like Bond; secret-agenting is really a pretty dull business most of the time, despite all the legends and the myths. But I took it seriously, and I learned something quickly: the audience is willing to be lenient about what is real and what is not real. They will allow you to be humorous, and then they will allow you to strike the humor and be serious for a moment as long as they are being entertained. Any time you are not serious about it, the picture suffers.

Then, I think, my work on the first four films set the pattern and had something to do with the character of Bond—his humor, his savoir faire. I know I insisted on the elegance of the villains—especially after I saw how great Joseph Wiseman was in Dr. No. “You disappoint me, Mr. Bond; you are nothing but a stupid policeman.” I tried to add a touch of elegance to the dialogue, and some of the directors didn’t approve. Terence Young would say, “Oh, for chrissakes, stop writing Chinese, Dick.” I wanted Bond to have some of that elegance too and not to be the monosyllabic hero that, for example, Harrison Ford is in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He has not a flicker of class or humor, even though he is supposed to be an educated anthropologist.

I feel, about dialogue, Chinese or not, that I try to use words that are proper from a semantic standpoint. And, of course, I object when what I consider to be a good line is omitted. In Octopussy, for example, when Bond goes clandestinely into East Germany, M says, “Take care, 007.” My line for Bond’s reply was, “I promise to look both ways before I cross the street, sir.” It put a father-son relationship between him and M. All gone! The line was cut, I suppose, because Roger [Moore] didn't like it. But a star can say any goddamned thing he wants really. You know what William Goldman says in Adventures in the Screen Trade, that a star is a person no one ever contradicts. He has to be pampered even when it hurts the scene.

Of course, directors also change dialogue. Terence Young is a writer too, but I groaned each time he threw in his favorite cliche, “Easy come, easy go.” But there are always some added lines that are funny, lines I ruefully wish I had thought of. That is one of my strong points as a collaborator: I have a tolerance of other people’s ideas and am able to select the good ones and fight like hell against those I think are bad. I am able to take an idea someone else has thought of and go beyond it.

In retrospect, I’ve had a great deal of fun doing the Bonds, although the fun was mixed up with many problems that had to be solved, problems that look so simple once they are solved. Once I become involved in a Bond film, I get fascinated all over again with the difficulties and the possibilities. In between, I keep saying, "Well, I’d like to do another Bond, but to try and think up a new caper, something we haven’t done…” But something new always comes up. And, of course, I’m well paid.

…I haven’t written a stage play in thirty years. Every now and then I get a possible glimmer, but I haven’t been able to overcome my block. Did you happen to see the letter I sent Time magazine about writer's block? They had an article about it that suggested a cure: “Don’t try to write, just go for a long walk, have a drink, and then see a James Bond picture.” So I wrote to Time and said, “I was pleased by the suggestion to see a James Bond movie to cure writer’s block. Any thoughts about how to cure mine?”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes: What you have read is part of a much larger interview with Richard Maibaum that covers his education, playwriting career, and screenwriting/production jobs at MGM and Paramount. If there's any demand for the rest of the interview I can add it to this thread.

Maibaum's memory is inaccurate in one area. "Aubrey Mather" was actually Berkely Mather, whose real name was John Evan Weston-Davies, not Jasper Davis. Mather also performed uncredited script work on [i]From Russia With Love[/i] and [i]Goldfinger[/i]. He had been recommended by Ian Fleming, who had loved Berkely's novel The Pass Beyond Kashmir.

The editor of Backstory adds the following note of interest to the appendix: “Interestingly, considering Maibaum's credentials as a staunch liberal, there is a political attack from the right on the Bond themes, ‘Updating James Bond’ by Richard Grenier, in the June 1981 issue of Commentary. Maibaum penned a fierce reply, but it was never published.” I’d love to read it!

For more on with Maibaum, consult his Starlog interview from 1983 and an unpublished interview conducted at the time of The Living Daylights. The book Speaking of Writing collects several of Maibaum's articles and speeches, along with a lengthy, never-before-published interview on the Bond films.  

Recently I have noticed that two official Bond films Octopussy and Goldeneye seem to share a number of similarities with the two non-official Bond films Casino Royale 1967 and Never Say Never Again. I know if you analyse the films in detail you notice a lot of similarities between them which are coincidental but I realise that there seem to be a lot of similarities between these films:

Octopussy and Casino Royale 1967

• In both films Bond has a new M and a new "Monepenny" type assistant is introduced
• In both films Bond is chased by a mobile explosive device - the milk truck chases Bond in his Bentley in CR67 and the missile chases Bond in the arostar jet in OP
• The main female character in both films is the head of a large organisation - Vesper Lynd in CR67 and the title character in OP. Both of these characters have oversized beds
• In both films, backstories of Bond's past are brought up which have nothing to do with the rest of the film - in CR67 many characters talk about Bond's past. In OP Bond talks at length of his mission to track down Major Dexter Smythe
• Both films have auction scenes
• Bond goes to India in both films
• In both films, similar gadgets are depicted - Tremble talks about a pen that contains poison in CR67, Bond is given a pen that unleashes acid in OP. Bond also mentions that the pen "would be perfect for a poison pen letter" which is a similar line used in CR67. Also in both films a watch with a crystal TV is depicted
• Both films depict circus performers
• Both films depict "stuffed" tigers
• Both films have scenes set in East and West Germany

Goldeneye and Never Say Never Again

• Bond has a new M and is being evaluated in the beginning of each film
• Bond drives a "classic" car in each film - the Bentley in NSNA and the Aston Martin DB5 in GE
• Both films have similar gadgets - exploding pen and laser watch
• In both films, Q blows up targets using explosive pens in his lab
• In both films, Bond mistakes a normal objects in Q's lab for gadgets - in NSNA he picks up the sinus cartridge and in GE he picks up Q's sandwich
• Both films portray an eccentric female brunette villainess who has a somewhat raunchy sex scene in each film
• Bond goes to the French Riviera in both films
• The theme of betrayal from a close friend comes up in both films - in NSNA Domino is betrayed by her lover Largo. In GE, Bond is betrayed by his former friend Trevelyn

As I said already, some of these were likely coincidental but I think some of them were definitely deliberate like the gadgets for example. Was it the case that EON were trying to prove something to McClory in each case? OP was going against a non-official Bond film so did EON decide to include elements from the other non-official Bond film to make a point that the official series could get away with using ideas from CR67?

And then a similar thing happened with GE in 1995. EON decided to copy ideas from NSNA as a point to show that ideas from that non-official Bond film could be included in the official series? Was it done to irritate McClory?