DAF question
Jarvio
EnglandPosts: 3,395MI6 Agent
I re-watched DAF on TV last night and something (albeit trivial) is kind of confusing me...
Why do they fly to LA? What use does LA have to the plot? Because they immediately drive to Vegas anyway, and the rest of the film is set in Vegas/Nevada thereafter (until the oil rig), so what's even the point of LA?
Also, in the scene where they go back to the airport to check on the diamonds in that circus cuddly toy, is this airport scene back in LA again? Or is it at the Vegas airport?
A bit confused here ... Was there just no Vegas airport in 1971 or something?
1 - LALD, 2 - AVTAK, 3 - OP, 4 - LTK, 5 - FYEO, 6 - DAF, 7 - TSWLM, 8 - NTTD, 9 - DN, 10 - GE, 11 - SF, 12 - OHMSS, 13 - TMWTGG, 14 - TLD, 15 - YOLT, 16 - MR, 17 - GF, 18 - DAD, 19 - TND, 20 - TWINE, 21 - SP, 22 - FRWL, 23 - TB, 24 - CR, 25 - QOS
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Comments
Bond takes a plane to Las Vegas in the book, in 1956.
It's DAF: it's not meant to make sense. All that matters is Connery is playing the role again...
8. SF 9. NTTD 10. AVtaK 11. TMwtGG 12. LtK 13. TSWLM 14. TND
15. GF 16. MR 17. YOLT 18. LaLD 19. SP 20. DAD 21. TWiNE
22. DN 23. TB 24. QoS 25. DaF
Also upon further research, the Vegas airport opened in the 40's. So the mystery remains
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
"I give up, James. I know the diamonds are flown to LA, but why?"
"Punctilious, Dr Leiter!"
I think Bond is a bit like Shakespeare in this regard: it's all a question of genre and entertainment. In his English historical plays, Shakespeare as dramatist has a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to his source, Holinshed's Chronicles: he simply wants the audience to enjoy the ride and not to pause to query plot holes in the plays, inaccuracies or sleights of hand involving elided time or condensed geography. That's not to say that looking into quibbles and inconsistencies isn't fair game beyond the ride...
Another way to answer the question is to suggest that, in the original cycle of Bond films, a tendency developed to pack in as much globetrotting as possible, even when straining narrative plausibility. The 60s and early 70s were a time when foreign holidays began to boom, becoming accessible to more and more people, so the spectacle of 'Bond Arriving' at different locations was amplified for the enjoyment of international audiences: obviously, the more destinations there were in a film, the greater the number of arrivals. So why not reference LAX as well as Vegas, while we're in the States? Perhaps there's even a coded message in the LA namecheck, reinforcing the PR that what we're getting in DAF is a Hollywood showbusiness-style Bond - a *star*. (The phrase 'Bond Arriving' was coined by Mark O'Connell, in 'Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan', to refer to that staple of the Bond films, an enduring element of the series.)
To return to Shakespeare... Having once seen 'Richard II', 'Henry IV Part One', 'Henry IV Part Two' and 'Henry V' back-to-back at Shakespeare's Globe (inconsistencies and all), I'd say that the experience must be akin to watching the first four SPECTRE Bond films as a quadruple bill, with Bond as a very rough equivalent of both Henry Bolingbroke/Henry IV and Prince Hal/Henry V. ("You only live twice, Mister Bond!") (Here's hoping that The Prince Charles Cinema gets around to screening a Bond all-nighter, with exactly that line-up. Sorry to be skipping GF! Of course, the challenge would be to stay awake during TB - the bloated 'Henry IV Prt 2' of the four original SPECTRE movies!) Following that, OHMSS would have to be a tragedy and DAF a comedy, or possibly a magical Last Romance.
As Amazon may well be asking right now: "James, how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?"
As Bond might reply, if he were Prince Hal during the hiatus: "Yet herein will I imitate the *sun* / Who doth permit the base contagious clouds / To smother up his beauty from the world, / That, when he please again to be himself, / Being wanted, he may be more wondered at." (Henry IV, Part One)
Another very rough parallel between those two - in the novel MR Bond muses about his compulsory retirement at age 45. Henry was retired rather permanently at that age.
I love that little parallel between Bond's retirement age and the age at which Henry Bolingbroke/Henry IV died.
🙂🙂🙂
A quick Google search shows that there were no direct flights from London to Las Vegas until 2000, so Los Angeles would have been the closest international airport.
Ahh I forgot to consider direct flights. Thanks for the info
1 - Moore, 2 - Dalton, 3 - Craig, 4 - Connery, 5 - Brosnan, 6 - Lazenby
Oops, yes! Apparently direct flights from Holland to Las Vegas were possible in 1971 but less frequent than today, so a multi-leg journey through a hub like Los Angeles would have been more typical...
Yes. I went to Vegas in the 1980s and we went via LA. Fleming's Bond takes an internal flight to Vegas as he was already in the country.
I watched DAF too last night. Usually in the bottom two of my rankings despite some classic scenes, and I think Wintt and Kidd are excellent. But last night, I actually really enjoyed it. Think it's moved up to bottom three (or Top 22!😊)
Great info, guys. Assumed it was just one airport standing in for the other, but now we see that DAF is a film crafted with meticulous care, and why it's bound to go through its inevitable re-evaluation renaissance. The film already has, with me - it went from 'just okay' to 'a lot of fun'.