A History of James Bond

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the shir That You
<v Speaker 1>Can't Be Serious podcast. Im D James D and I
<v Speaker 1>am here with my buddy Jason Colvin. Actually we're doing
<v Speaker 1>this via zoom. I am in the Bahamas where it's
<v Speaker 1>a breezy eighty degrees and Jason is sweating his balls
<v Speaker 1>off in India.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, that is correct, sir, shaken not stirred.
<v Speaker 1>All right. We are here to talk about the competition
<v Speaker 1>of the James Bond of the sixties against the James
<v Speaker 1>Bond of the seventies in movies that occurred in the
<v Speaker 1>eighties Sean Connery Roger Moore head to head in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty three.
<v Speaker 2>This summer, there was some amazing things happening in the movies.
<v Speaker 2>We had Return of the Jedi, National Lampoon's Vacation. We
<v Speaker 2>had your favorite movie, Jaws three D.
<v Speaker 1>We had Trading Places. I saw Boobies for the first time.
<v Speaker 1>It was a wonderful, wonderful year. But yes, I'm happy
<v Speaker 1>to be back in nineteen eighty three. Again.
<v Speaker 2>This was an incredible thing to hear that two Bond
<v Speaker 2>movies were going to be in theaters, not at the
<v Speaker 2>same time, but relatively close, Like what four months apart.
<v Speaker 2>I can remember being a kid going what are you
<v Speaker 2>talking about? I can see Bond in June and Bond
<v Speaker 2>in October? Right, it's fantastic. Absolutely, sign me up.
<v Speaker 1>I can have. I actually have a memory of walking
<v Speaker 1>by the old movie theater in Central Mall, Fort Smith, Arkansas,
<v Speaker 1>seeing the poster for Never Say Never Again and saying
<v Speaker 1>to my dad why is this movie called Never Say
<v Speaker 1>Never Again? And my dad telling me, well, I'm pretty
<v Speaker 1>sure that Sean Connery said he would never play James
<v Speaker 1>Bond again, and now he is, and so that's probably
<v Speaker 1>why the movies named this. I was like, there's another
<v Speaker 1>guy who plays James Bond.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, right, So do you remember your first Bond experience?
<v Speaker 1>No, I mean it was I mean, that's that memory
<v Speaker 1>right there is the first like vivid, I can say, yes,
<v Speaker 1>that happened. But James Bond was just kind of a
<v Speaker 1>part of childhood. I mean, my dad loved the movies
<v Speaker 1>and they would come on TV all of the time,
<v Speaker 1>and so I just saw them, you know, they were
<v Speaker 1>just all out there and I just saw him. Bond
<v Speaker 1>was just out there and he was cool. And I
<v Speaker 1>would see the movies as they came on, yeah about you?
<v Speaker 2>Well yeah, so I remember very vividly in nineteen eighty one,
<v Speaker 2>my friend he's like, now you gotta go see four
<v Speaker 2>Year Eyes Only. And I'm like, what what is four
<v Speaker 2>Year Eyes Only? He's like, it's the new James Bond movie.
<v Speaker 2>And I'm like, who is James Bond. I don't know
<v Speaker 2>who James Bond is? Right?
<v Speaker 1>Oh?
<v Speaker 2>Wow?
<v Speaker 3>OK?
<v Speaker 2>And he's like, you what you know You've got You're
<v Speaker 2>gonna love James Bond. We got to go see it.
<v Speaker 2>And so we went and saw four Year Eyes Only.
<v Speaker 2>And I was an instant James Bond fan. So four
<v Speaker 2>Year Eyes Only for me is not only the best
<v Speaker 2>Roger Moore movie, but it's kind of my home movie,
<v Speaker 2>you know what I mean. And so that's the one
<v Speaker 2>I go back to, is for your Eyes Only. So
<v Speaker 2>when Octopus he comes out two years later. In that
<v Speaker 2>two year period, ABC used to have the Sunday Night movie.
<v Speaker 2>They would show like The Spy Who Loved Me and
<v Speaker 2>Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever, and I would just slowly
<v Speaker 2>acquire these movies, and so by the time Octopusy shows up,
<v Speaker 2>I am ready for a new James Bond movie.
<v Speaker 1>That's awesome. You know, as time goes on, you get
<v Speaker 1>the introduction of Timothy Dalton, you get the introduction of
<v Speaker 1>Pierce bros And I can still remember having conversations with
<v Speaker 1>my friends when we knew that Roger Moore wasn't going
<v Speaker 1>to be the James Bond anymore, of you know, hey,
<v Speaker 1>it needs to be that guy from Remington Steel. He
<v Speaker 1>is the perfect guy for James Bond. Yeah, And then
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't him, and everybody was outraged, and I think
<v Speaker 1>I was like, I'm not going to go watch those movies.
<v Speaker 1>I'm upset because they didn't make Remington Steel James Bond.
<v Speaker 1>That's just wrong. And then by the time that he
<v Speaker 1>actually that Pierce Brosen and becomes James Bond, I was
<v Speaker 1>just like, he is the best James Bond who had
<v Speaker 1>the worst scripts to work with. There were some bad
<v Speaker 1>computer graphics going on in those movies. The scripts weren't
<v Speaker 1>super good. But he was a really great James Bond
<v Speaker 1>without much to work with.
<v Speaker 2>That is true. However, he started off with a really
<v Speaker 2>good one. One GoldenEye, in my opinion, is a good
<v Speaker 2>Bond movie, and so he had all that good credit
<v Speaker 2>in the bank and the next bunch of them were terrible.
<v Speaker 1>They were really bad. And gold and I I mean
<v Speaker 1>that was the introduction of James Bond into the video
<v Speaker 1>game world too, which I mean GoldenEye was fantastic. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't I watched the movie, but I loved the video game.
<v Speaker 1>That's awesome.
<v Speaker 2>That is very true. Maybe my favorite home video game
<v Speaker 2>of all time. My friend's like, hey, I gotta show
<v Speaker 2>you this cool video game. I'm like, listen, dude, I
<v Speaker 2>got a job and I got a wife. I don't
<v Speaker 2>have time for video games anymore. I played for like
<v Speaker 2>thirty seconds. I'm like, I'm buying this tomorrow.
<v Speaker 1>How old are you, dude?
<v Speaker 2>I'm I am. I am old, but I am not
<v Speaker 2>as old as Sean Connery or Roger More in of
<v Speaker 2>these two movies or the record. Let's go ahead and
<v Speaker 2>get that out there, because that's an important factor when
<v Speaker 2>we discussed these two movies. Yeah, Sean Connery was fifty
<v Speaker 2>two when he did Never Say Never Again. He had
<v Speaker 2>taken twelve years off.
<v Speaker 1>YEP.
<v Speaker 2>Diamonds Are Forever was in nineteen seventy one. He was forty,
<v Speaker 2>but he looked like he was about fifty two.
<v Speaker 1>He has an old look. About him.
<v Speaker 4>He does.
<v Speaker 2>He does octopusy. Roger Moore was fifty five. He's three
<v Speaker 2>years older than Sean Connery. Most people don't really realize that.
<v Speaker 1>He has a younger looking face. He just does. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>Roger Moore just has a younger looking appearance about him.
<v Speaker 1>Maybe it's the receding hairline that Sean Connery has. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>it's the wrinkles. I can't really Maybe Roger Moore has
<v Speaker 1>a good plastic surgeon. I'm not real sure, but but
<v Speaker 1>Roger Moore always seemed to be younger, even though he
<v Speaker 1>was actually about three years older than you.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so today we're ultimately going to compare Never Say
<v Speaker 2>Never Again from nineteen eighty three to Octopussy nineteen eighty three,
<v Speaker 2>Connery versus More Battle of the Bonds, and it's gonna
<v Speaker 2>be great. But really, the interesting stories here are kind
<v Speaker 2>of the behind the scenes stuff. So if you say
<v Speaker 2>to yourself both of those movies sucked, hang on, because
<v Speaker 2>there is some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes
<v Speaker 2>of these movies.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, there are much better James Bond movies out there
<v Speaker 1>than Never Say Never Again and Octopussy, But we chose
<v Speaker 1>these two because it was the summer of Bond versus Bond.
<v Speaker 1>That's right, and the story there is an impressive one.
<v Speaker 1>Let's you want to jump into the history a little bit.
<v Speaker 2>Let's I'm ready to get into it. Let's go.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So our story begins back in nineteen oh eight
<v Speaker 1>with the birth of Ian Fleming. A year later we
<v Speaker 1>have the birth of Albert R. Broccoli, nicknamed Cubby Broccoli
<v Speaker 1>by his family. A few years after that, in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>fifty team we have the birth of Harry Saltzman, and
<v Speaker 1>then nine years later we have the birth of Kevin
<v Speaker 1>mcclury mcclury Kevin mccluy. Obviously the most important figure in
<v Speaker 1>this is Ian Fleming. He was born to a wealthy family,
<v Speaker 1>grew up in wealth, and then of course, a few
<v Speaker 1>years after his birth, World War One begins and tragically
<v Speaker 1>his father dies in World War One. This comes into
<v Speaker 1>play with the character of James Bond. Later in the
<v Speaker 1>early movies, you don't really get his history. He's a
<v Speaker 1>very two dimensional character, but later on, especially with the
<v Speaker 1>Daniel Craig version, you get some of that backstory, which
<v Speaker 1>includes him being an orphan.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, yep.
<v Speaker 1>So he ends up going to Eton for college, where
<v Speaker 1>he meets and intensely dislikes a gentleman named Scarmannga.
<v Speaker 2>Who is that right?
<v Speaker 1>Are you kidding me? No, I'm not kidding The scar
<v Speaker 1>Manga is named after a guy that he hated in college.
<v Speaker 1>I don't think he had three nipples, but yes, that's
<v Speaker 1>where that name comes from. And he writes his first
<v Speaker 1>story there.
<v Speaker 2>Let's let people in on the joke. If you are
<v Speaker 2>a just basic, not very intricate James Bond fan, you
<v Speaker 2>may not recognize that name. That is the villain from
<v Speaker 2>the movie The Man with the Golden Gun, and he
<v Speaker 2>does have three nipples, played by Christopher Lee, which more
<v Speaker 2>impersonates him by putting on a fake third nipple, which
<v Speaker 2>is a very weird point in that movie. Keep going, okay,
<v Speaker 2>you mean mid nubbin teddler being and Scaramanga.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, right. So, so, while while Fleming is in college,
<v Speaker 1>Broccoli his family has moved to the United States. They
<v Speaker 1>introduced broccoli seeds to the US, according to his obituary
<v Speaker 1>in the New York Times. I don't know how accurate
<v Speaker 1>that is, but you know, let's go with it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean telling me that broccoli is named after Cubby
<v Speaker 2>Broccley's relatives.
<v Speaker 1>That's what it sounds like from the from the oh
<v Speaker 1>bit in the New York Times. Yes, they're the ones
<v Speaker 1>that brought the seeds over. They're from Italy, and broccoley
<v Speaker 1>is is based on the Italian words. And so who
<v Speaker 1>am I? I'm just a guy here. I just I
<v Speaker 1>reported as a reader. That's all I can do. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>all right? And then Saltzman is running away from his
<v Speaker 1>home and joining the circus. I'm not kidding, literally joining
<v Speaker 1>the circus. Okay, all right, this is an interesting bunch
<v Speaker 1>of characters. And then I guess, I guess McClure is
<v Speaker 1>learning to scuba dive. I'm not sure what he's doing
<v Speaker 1>at this time. So Ian Fleming, he goes to college
<v Speaker 1>and then does some does some journalism work, and then
<v Speaker 1>World War Two starts to happen and he becomes due
<v Speaker 1>to the at the behest of his He becomes an
<v Speaker 1>assistant to a gentleman named Admiral Godfried, who is in
<v Speaker 1>charge of all of like the secret operations of the
<v Speaker 1>UK during World War Two. And Godfried basically tells Fleming, hey,
<v Speaker 1>you are a super creative guy. Use that creativity to
<v Speaker 1>think up stuff. To help us, and there's I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he actually thought up a plan in order to get
<v Speaker 1>control of the Enigma machine. His idea was to have
<v Speaker 1>a UK pilot fly a German plane and crash it
<v Speaker 1>in the ocean near a German ship so that the
<v Speaker 1>ship will come over and try to save them, and
<v Speaker 1>then the pilot then takes over the boat and they
<v Speaker 1>get access to the Enigma chine. That was his plan.
<v Speaker 1>For several years, he's involved with this type of espionage,
<v Speaker 1>type of creative service, and that's what is the seed
<v Speaker 1>for all of his stories. I mean, he basically said
<v Speaker 1>ninety percent of his stories are based upon facts and
<v Speaker 1>the other ten percent or him just making some stuff up.
<v Speaker 2>That's really cool, you know, Thunderball and never say Never again.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, that's knocking on the door of being familiar
<v Speaker 2>territory to the plot lines of those two movies. Okay,
<v Speaker 2>that's amazing, keep going.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So he at some point tells somebody, you know,
<v Speaker 1>when I'm done with all of this, I am going
<v Speaker 1>to write the greatest spy novel that has ever been written.
<v Speaker 1>And so he ends his time with Admiral Godfried, who
<v Speaker 1>becomes kind of the basis of m later on, and
<v Speaker 1>then he ends up renting this place down in Jamaica
<v Speaker 1>called GoldenEye.
<v Speaker 2>GoldenEye where Sting wrote Every Breath You Take and all
<v Speaker 2>of synchronicity. Basically, yes, it's incredible.
<v Speaker 1>So he didn't write He did not write his first
<v Speaker 1>Bond book until he was forty three years old. That's edible, man,
<v Speaker 1>it's insane. It's a year younger than I am right now.
<v Speaker 1>I mean it's like very get busy starting a podcast
<v Speaker 1>or something. So during this time that he's doing all
<v Speaker 1>of this cool stuff, broccoley starts working for Howard Hughes
<v Speaker 1>after he takes over the movie The Outlaw. You know
<v Speaker 1>The Outlaw. If you don't know the movie, you know
<v Speaker 1>the picture of Jane Russell profile with her amazing like
<v Speaker 1>torpedo cleave Yebi's going on there, I am familiar, keep going.
<v Speaker 1>He becomes a part of that movie with Howard Hughes
<v Speaker 1>when Howard Hughes takes over for Howard Hawks when he
<v Speaker 1>got fired. This will come into play later on. And
<v Speaker 1>so Saltzman has been in the circus and he's like
<v Speaker 1>in vaudeville, and so he at some point becomes interested
<v Speaker 1>in James Bond. Likes the character and he buys the
<v Speaker 1>rights to the character of James Bond. Broccley wants to
<v Speaker 1>buy the rights to the character of James Bond, but
<v Speaker 1>then finds out that Saltzman already has them. He through
<v Speaker 1>a mutual friend, meets up with him and they decide
<v Speaker 1>instead of you know, Broccoli says, I want to buy
<v Speaker 1>the rights from you. Saltzman says no, but I will
<v Speaker 1>form a company with you, and that company becomes Ion Productions,
<v Speaker 1>which is the company that is responsible for almost all
<v Speaker 1>of the James Bond movies. So Ian Fleming in this time,
<v Speaker 1>this was nineteen sixty one that they bought the rights
<v Speaker 1>to James Bond. He unfortunately, about three years earlier, thought hey,
<v Speaker 1>it'd be a great idea to make James Bond into
<v Speaker 1>a movie, huh. And he thought that because he had
<v Speaker 1>recently met a guy named Kevin mcclury, and Kevin mcclury
<v Speaker 1>was this guy who was an avid scuba diver, an adventurer.
<v Speaker 1>So McClory had also been had become involved in movies.
<v Speaker 1>He had been an assistant to John Houston and had
<v Speaker 1>worked on the African Queen Ulan Rouge and ended up
<v Speaker 1>being an assistant director on Moby Dick, which starred James Mason,
<v Speaker 1>who we will learn later was one of the original
<v Speaker 1>people considered to be James Bond in the first James
<v Speaker 1>Bond movies. Oh all right, cool, right, So this guy
<v Speaker 1>he was, he got he hooked up with Elizabeth Taylor.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this is not this is no you know
<v Speaker 1>con man. This is a guy who's in the industry
<v Speaker 1>and romancing the starlets.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, now, wait a minute. Kevin McClory dated Elizabeth Taylor
<v Speaker 2>in her prime. Is that correct?
<v Speaker 1>Yes, that is correct. He dated her and actually got
<v Speaker 1>engaged to marry her.
<v Speaker 2>Anybody who can date Elizabeth Taylor in her prime has
<v Speaker 2>kind of got it going on. All right, keep going.
<v Speaker 1>So Unfortunately, Kevin McClory had come in nineteen fifty eight
<v Speaker 1>and talked to Ian Fleming and said, hey, I think
<v Speaker 1>that this James Bond character would be a great character
<v Speaker 1>to have in the movies. And Ian Fleming was like, cool,
<v Speaker 1>let's do that. Yeah, and so and so they together
<v Speaker 1>started working on a movie script. Movie script had multiple names,
<v Speaker 1>including James Bond of the Secret Service.
<v Speaker 2>And Longitude seventy eight West.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, yeah, that's a terrible, terrible turble. It's a terrible title.
<v Speaker 2>That's like, that's like saying I'm gonna do a movie
<v Speaker 2>about Disney World. I'm gonna call it main Street USA.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I mean, that's a terrible title.
<v Speaker 1>All those things aside, Fleming, mcclury, and a guy named
<v Speaker 1>Jack Winningham all worked together. They put this script together.
<v Speaker 2>In nineteen fifty nine, Fleming met with mcclury and Wadingham
<v Speaker 2>to have a script conference and that's when they actually
<v Speaker 2>Fleming is the one who changed the title from Longitude
<v Speaker 2>seventy eight West to Thunderball. January of nineteen sixty, McClory
<v Speaker 2>visits Fleming at GoldenEye to tell him he's working on
<v Speaker 2>the final script for this thing, and you know, Flemy's
<v Speaker 2>just like, okay, yeah, I keep going. So once they
<v Speaker 2>sit down and talk about the final script, he goes
<v Speaker 2>away to kind of finalize things. Fleming sits down at
<v Speaker 2>his desk at GoldenEye and writes Thunderball based on that script.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and just to I mean, just to let you
<v Speaker 1>know how Fleming worked. It was unlike most authors work.
<v Speaker 1>He was producing a book every single year, I mean,
<v Speaker 1>from Casino Royal on. He issued a book every year,
<v Speaker 1>and he would go he would go have a swim
<v Speaker 1>in the morning out at GoldenEye. He'd have a swim
<v Speaker 1>in the ocean. He would come back and have a
<v Speaker 1>breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. He would sit down
<v Speaker 1>at his old typewriter and he would crank out the pages.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, just type NonStop. Didn't review it, didn't look
<v Speaker 1>at it. I mean, there was there's no meticulousness about this.
<v Speaker 1>He was just right, right, right, right right. And so
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure that at the point that they are, at
<v Speaker 1>this stage where he's got this outline in his head,
<v Speaker 1>there's no question that he should have known better than
<v Speaker 1>to write a book based upon what they have already
<v Speaker 1>talked about and not give any credit to anybody.
<v Speaker 2>It's really not smart on Ian Fleming's part. And I
<v Speaker 2>hate to say that because he's the author of a
<v Speaker 2>lot of these stories that I love so much, but man,
<v Speaker 2>he just wasn't very bright on how he decided to
<v Speaker 2>go about well.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he his lifestyle I think was very similar
<v Speaker 1>to James Bond, and I think he had this kind
<v Speaker 1>of bulletproof attitude about him that he could probably do
<v Speaker 1>whatever he wanted to do and get away with it,
<v Speaker 1>just because of the life that he had led, and
<v Speaker 1>unfortunately he was wrong in this particular circumstance.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, So, Kevin McClory gets a hold of an early
<v Speaker 2>copy of this not called Thunderball, and when he reads it,
<v Speaker 2>he's like, what the crap? This guy has stolen my ideas.
<v Speaker 2>And when they had got together, of course, there's lots
<v Speaker 2>of drinking, lots of talking, lots of discussion, and it
<v Speaker 2>becomes hard to sort out who thought about what, and
<v Speaker 2>so so mccluy sued to keep the book off the
<v Speaker 2>shelves just to.
<v Speaker 1>Let you know, I mean, we don't want to paint mcclury.
<v Speaker 1>I've given him kind of the evil introduction a couple times,
<v Speaker 1>but he's not necessarily the bad guy in this particular scenario.
<v Speaker 1>Like Ian Fleming got together with Jack winning him and said, hey,
<v Speaker 1>how about we just kind of kicked this guy out.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, he had his motivation was to get this
<v Speaker 1>guy out of the picture, and Whittingham didn't fall into
<v Speaker 1>that plan. And ultimately, when Thunderball came out, mcclury said, hey,
<v Speaker 1>have you seen this, and Jack quitting him like yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And so they both sued him. It was at the
<v Speaker 1>High Court in London. As you said, that happened on twentieth,
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty three, and the case was settled in nine days.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what it was like back in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty three, but a case getting settled nine days after
<v Speaker 1>it got filed is amazing.
<v Speaker 2>That's pretty open and shut, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So, and I mean, just to let you know
<v Speaker 1>who was probably the culpable party here, Fleming paid mcclury
<v Speaker 1>damages of thirty five thousand pounds. He also paid his
<v Speaker 1>court costs, which was fifty two thousand pounds, and mcclury
<v Speaker 1>got the future versions of the novel credited as based
<v Speaker 1>on a screen treatment by Kevin mcclury, Jack Whittingham, and
<v Speaker 1>Ian Fleming in that order. Like, I mean, that's freaking huge.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>But what we also need to know, and this is important,
<v Speaker 1>some people make decisions under certain types of stress. In
<v Speaker 1>the middle of that nine days, Ian Fleming had a
<v Speaker 1>freaking heart attack.
<v Speaker 2>Among the things, like you said that McClory won, he
<v Speaker 2>also had the right to make Thunderball as a movie.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, he won the screenplay treatments, and that was something.
<v Speaker 1>Here's here's an interesting thing. Now. So this is nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty three, so they work together in nineteen fifty eight.
<v Speaker 1>The first Bond movie comes out in nineteen sixty two.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, Doctor No.
<v Speaker 1>Doctor No comes out in NICECC sixty two. This is
<v Speaker 1>nineteen sixty three year later, so we I mean, they
<v Speaker 1>all know Doctor No is a big hit. Kubby Brockley
<v Speaker 1>is involved with the movie at this point. Harry Saltzman
<v Speaker 1>is involved with the movie at this point, and so
<v Speaker 1>they say to him, yes, you can have the screenplay
<v Speaker 1>rights to this particular storyline, and then you are allowed
<v Speaker 1>to reproduce it ten years from now. So here's here
<v Speaker 1>are the two possibilities that I see as a legal
<v Speaker 1>analysis on this one. For them to give up not
<v Speaker 1>only hey, we're going to give you the screenplay now,
<v Speaker 1>but we're gonna let you reproduce it every ten years.
<v Speaker 1>There's only two possibilities. Either they thought this thing, the
<v Speaker 1>story is going to be over in ten years and
<v Speaker 1>nobody's going to care, right, or they thought we're going
<v Speaker 1>to be so financially successful in ten years after making
<v Speaker 1>all of the Bond stories and movies that we've got,
<v Speaker 1>that we're going to be rich enough to stop him
<v Speaker 1>from doing this, you know, or some sort of remake
<v Speaker 1>of the Thunderball, and ultimately that's kind of what ends
<v Speaker 1>up happening.
<v Speaker 2>It's very very interesting. It's very interesting. It seems to
<v Speaker 2>me that they are trying to give McClory everything they
<v Speaker 2>can to kind of make him go away, pacify him
<v Speaker 2>with film rights, remake rights. And I was telling you
<v Speaker 2>that McClory, it's all this credit for Thunderball, but there's
<v Speaker 2>some question about whether or not he gets credit for Spector.
<v Speaker 2>Which Spector. You know, Spector's huge, I mean, Bond's bad
<v Speaker 2>main bad guy. Is spect the.
<v Speaker 1>Key bad guy. I mean that the the through the
<v Speaker 1>series you get you get a movie in the twenty
<v Speaker 1>first century named spect I mean it's and you look
<v Speaker 1>at all of the all of the spoofs, any of
<v Speaker 1>those things, it's always got Specter involved, right, I mean absolutely.
<v Speaker 1>If you look at Austin Powers and Number two and
<v Speaker 1>Doctor Evil, that is all Spector, right, right. And then
<v Speaker 1>you know the chairs that are all lined up. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>so you watch Thunderball and you see you see Number
<v Speaker 1>two walk in with his eye patch, and they all
<v Speaker 1>go to the chairs and the guy who's hidden behind
<v Speaker 1>the screens petting his little cat is a white cat.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just all from Thunderball.
<v Speaker 1>It's all from Thunderball. So the fact that Kevin mccluy
<v Speaker 1>has got the rights to this particular storyline is huge
<v Speaker 1>because this particular storyline is a main factor in so
<v Speaker 1>many of the Bond films.
<v Speaker 2>And yeah, specifically, Spector was the bad guy in Doctor No,
<v Speaker 2>the bad guy in From Russia with Love. It's mentioned
<v Speaker 2>in Goldfinger. So they don't want him to have any
<v Speaker 2>claim on revenues from those previous movies that are huge successes.
<v Speaker 2>But just to clarify, Specter is a group of bad
<v Speaker 2>guys that they needed to create that wasn't the Russians,
<v Speaker 2>And it wasn't the mafia, wasn't the Germans this, and
<v Speaker 2>it wasn't the Germans, right, this nefarious group of bad guys.
<v Speaker 2>The inspector stands for Special Executive for Terrorism, revenge, Extortion.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and the introduction of Specter in Thunderball is fantastic
<v Speaker 1>because it's just this meeting of evil characters who are like,
<v Speaker 1>it's like a business meeting of criminals. It's and it's not.
<v Speaker 1>It's it's fantastic. And then one of the guy. You know,
<v Speaker 1>there's two guys who were responsible for some sort of
<v Speaker 1>I think it's like a drug deal or something like that. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>And the headman of Spector says, yes, but basically you've
<v Speaker 1>been cooking the books. And one of the guys is
<v Speaker 1>like what no, and the other guy's like, yeah, everything's cool,
<v Speaker 1>We're cool. And that cool guy's just zapped dumped and
<v Speaker 1>he's gone.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, and he goes under and he's like, I'm very
<v Speaker 2>badly burned, but oh no, I'm sorry. That's awesome power.
<v Speaker 2>So I get him confused a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>Bells of omens.
<v Speaker 2>But the bad guy you before we get off of this.
<v Speaker 2>So Specter is a very important piece in this. Obviously thunderball.
<v Speaker 2>They got their butts kicked in court. McCrory took him
<v Speaker 2>to task on that one. But Blofeld is in play
<v Speaker 2>as well. Blofeld is like if somebody sued George Lucas
<v Speaker 2>and they won the rights to Darth Vader, right, Blofeld
<v Speaker 2>is the number one bad guy, the head of Specter.
<v Speaker 2>He's the bald guy that strokes the cat in all
<v Speaker 2>the movies, right, right, And that they wanted to make
<v Speaker 2>sure that Kevin McCloy didn't get ahold of that guy.
<v Speaker 1>And just as a side note, in the Austin Powers movie,
<v Speaker 1>the character of Number two is played by the actor
<v Speaker 1>Robert Wagner, who when they were trying to decide who
<v Speaker 1>the new James Bond would be after Timothy Dalton, they
<v Speaker 1>were looking at him and he was like, no, I'm
<v Speaker 1>too American. You should just go ahead and give that
<v Speaker 1>to Pierce Brosen.
<v Speaker 2>And speaking of Americans, I'm gonna throw a little plug
<v Speaker 2>in here for Octopus real quick.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So obviously when Never Say Never Again is remade, which
<v Speaker 2>Never Say Never Again, for those who don't know, is
<v Speaker 2>a remake of Thunderball based on Kevin McClory's ability to
<v Speaker 2>remake that movie every ten years. So I did that,
<v Speaker 2>would Never Say Never Again?
<v Speaker 1>Right?
<v Speaker 2>Connery comes takes the role at age fifty two. Roger
<v Speaker 2>Moore is three years older than him, so when he
<v Speaker 2>is in Octopus, he's fifty five right. So after for
<v Speaker 2>your eyes only, Roger Moore said, I want to retire.
<v Speaker 2>I'm too old to do James Bond anymore. And so
<v Speaker 2>you can actually YouTube James Roland does his screen test
<v Speaker 2>as an American James Bond, and I was telling you
<v Speaker 2>he doesn't even play with an English accent. He is
<v Speaker 2>doing it as mister coole American. Think George Clooney, you know,
<v Speaker 2>just cool and classy American.
<v Speaker 1>So Sean Connery is not the first actor to ever
<v Speaker 1>portray James Bond, and Doctor No is not. It was
<v Speaker 1>not the first novel. So why wasn't the first novel
<v Speaker 1>the first James Bond movie? Well, actually it was right.
<v Speaker 1>The first time that James Bond is ever portrayed on
<v Speaker 1>the screen is on a TV show called Climax, in
<v Speaker 1>an episode called Casino Royale. The actor that portrays him
<v Speaker 1>is Barry Nelson, who hasn't been in pretty much anything
<v Speaker 1>else that you probably would have heard of except The Shining.
<v Speaker 1>He is the guy who sends Jack Nicholson off to
<v Speaker 1>the hotel with.
<v Speaker 2>Oh are you serious?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? Yeah, So he plays this, He plays this James
<v Speaker 1>Bond character, but he plays him as an American, and
<v Speaker 1>so that let's see in Fleming know, hey, Bond might
<v Speaker 1>be good for the screen. Which then in nineteen fifty five,
<v Speaker 1>a year later, he sells the rights to Casino roy
<v Speaker 1>Al to a guy named Greg Radoff. Okay, and he's
<v Speaker 1>a producer. Now he's thinking, Okay, they're gonna make Casino
<v Speaker 1>roy Al. I know a movie. The only problem is
<v Speaker 1>Greg Radoff and his writer, whose name is Lorenzo Simple,
<v Speaker 1>who to let you know his experience. He wrote Three
<v Speaker 1>Days of the Condor and he wrote the early version
<v Speaker 1>like the sixties versions of Batman with Adam West. But
<v Speaker 1>Greg Radoff and Lorenzo Simple look at James Bond and
<v Speaker 1>they go, this character is stupid. There's no way that
<v Speaker 1>anybody would believe that a man could say the stuff
<v Speaker 1>to women that he's saying right now. So what we
<v Speaker 1>need to do is we need to change the character
<v Speaker 1>into a woman, and we're going to call her Jane Bond. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So fortunately before all of that happened, Greg Radoff dies
<v Speaker 1>and greg Radoff's attorney slash agent, Charles Feldman, buys the
<v Speaker 1>rights to Casina Royale from his widow and he gets
<v Speaker 1>together with Howard Hawks. I told you he'd come back
<v Speaker 1>in Howard Hawks and he says, Okay, we need to
<v Speaker 1>make this movie. We need to make this book into
<v Speaker 1>a movie. Casina Royle need to make this book into
<v Speaker 1>a movie. And they were going to hire Lee Pucket
<v Speaker 1>as a writer, and they were going to hire Carrie
<v Speaker 1>Grant as James Bond. Now I know you've heard of
<v Speaker 1>Carrie Grant, but do you know who Lee Puckett is?
<v Speaker 3>No?
<v Speaker 1>Tell me well, remember in our Raiders of the Lost
<v Speaker 1>Arc versus Back to the Future episode where I talk
<v Speaker 1>to you about George Lucas telling Lawrence Casten, Hey, I
<v Speaker 1>had this lady writing the Empire strikes back for me,
<v Speaker 1>but then she died. Yes, Lee Puckett, Wow, yeah, Wow.
<v Speaker 2>That's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>So Charles Feldman has the rights to Sina Royale, which
<v Speaker 1>is why it never got made by Eon Productions as
<v Speaker 1>a Bond movie. They started with Doctor No, and then
<v Speaker 1>they went through all of their pieces and then you know,
<v Speaker 1>we're talking about the time and history where two James
<v Speaker 1>Bond movies were going head to head. But it's not
<v Speaker 1>the first time that this ever happened. The first time
<v Speaker 1>it ever happened was in nineteen sixty seven when.
<v Speaker 2>And Casino Royale went against You only lived twice.
<v Speaker 1>So Casino Royal is a James Bond movie, but it's
<v Speaker 1>a spoof, right, It's a satire and it stars David Niven,
<v Speaker 1>who was you would know. I mean our age group
<v Speaker 1>would know him as the villain, if you'll call him that,
<v Speaker 1>in The Pink Panther. But David Niven was one of
<v Speaker 1>the guys who was originally considered to be James Bond.
<v Speaker 1>David Niven, Carrie Grant, James Mason, who I mentioned before,
<v Speaker 1>were the guys that they wanted to be James Bond
<v Speaker 1>before they ultimately settled on Sean Connery. But then nineteen
<v Speaker 1>sixty seven happens. David Niven's like, yeah, let's go ahead
<v Speaker 1>and do this thing. And so they make this movie
<v Speaker 1>Casino Royale that's got him and Peter Sellers and several
<v Speaker 1>other famous actors, and it's all this who's the real
<v Speaker 1>James Bond kind of storyline, and it's all supposed to
<v Speaker 1>be comedy, which was appropriate, But that's the first time
<v Speaker 1>that two Bonds went head to head in the same year.
<v Speaker 2>So back to Thunderball, when and Kubby Broccley and Harry
<v Speaker 2>Saltzman are making this movie and they see that Kevin
<v Speaker 2>McClory is going to be a royal pain in the butt,
<v Speaker 2>A fly in the white meant a monkey in the wrench.
<v Speaker 2>I can't wait to do Diehard. But yeah, they make
<v Speaker 2>him producer of the movie Thunderball, hoping again to pacify
<v Speaker 2>this guy so he will go away. Even though he's
<v Speaker 2>got in his back pocket he can remake Thunderball every
<v Speaker 2>ten years. So they put him in charge of filming
<v Speaker 2>underwater scenes.
<v Speaker 1>Right. He was the scuba diver. And that's why this
<v Speaker 1>movie is so that underwater scenes are such a big
<v Speaker 1>factor in this movie is because Kevin McClory was a
<v Speaker 1>big scuba diver and he's like, hey, I really want,
<v Speaker 1>you know, underwater scenes to be a big part of this.
<v Speaker 1>And so back in the sixties, those underwater scenes were amazing.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, nobody had done that stuff except in like
<v Speaker 1>the TV series Flipper.
<v Speaker 2>But that's why Thunderball, when you look at it today,
<v Speaker 2>it is like watching a movie in slow motion because
<v Speaker 2>everything's underwater. Yeah, the fight scenes are very slow motion,
<v Speaker 2>you know, so.
<v Speaker 1>Right right, So it's interesting, you know, that's that is
<v Speaker 1>a factor of looking you know, we're eighties kids, and
<v Speaker 1>so we're looking at what was going on in the
<v Speaker 1>eighties back and we're and we're thinking, okay, Thunderball, little
<v Speaker 1>slow with the I mean, why are we spending so
<v Speaker 1>much time? And then the union water scenes but that's
<v Speaker 1>because of our perspective. Right. It's interesting. I mean we've
<v Speaker 1>gone through we've gone through several different steps where Ian
<v Speaker 1>Fleming is just trying to get this thing to become
<v Speaker 1>a movie. From my perspective, I'm just thinking, how do
<v Speaker 1>you not How does a studio not immediately go, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>this is a fantastic character and this needs to be
<v Speaker 1>a movie. It didn't happen until until JFK Yeah listed
<v Speaker 1>From Russia with Love as one of his top ten books.
<v Speaker 1>That was the push that Broccoli and Saltzman were looking
<v Speaker 1>for to get their movie made, and that's what led
<v Speaker 1>to the studio going to green lighting Doctor Now. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>It also caused the novels to explode of Ian Flemings.
<v Speaker 1>Right, So, starting with Doctor No we had studios that
<v Speaker 1>wanted a big name. They wanted Carrie Grant, they wanted
<v Speaker 1>James Mason. But the problem is Carrie Grant says, I
<v Speaker 1>don't want to do more than one movie, and James
<v Speaker 1>Mason says, I don't want to do more than two movies.
<v Speaker 1>And then they get to David Niven and he's like, no,
<v Speaker 1>I'm now I'm not really interested in doing more than
<v Speaker 1>three movies. But ultimately they decide we want to get
<v Speaker 1>an unknown actor to play the part of James Bond,
<v Speaker 1>and so they're going through several actors and one of
<v Speaker 1>the guys that comes through is this unknown guy who's
<v Speaker 1>only been in this kind of weird little movie called
<v Speaker 1>Darby O'Gill and the Little People and was in the
<v Speaker 1>chorus for like South Pacific or something. Yeah, but Saltzman
<v Speaker 1>says that when he walked in, it was his walk
<v Speaker 1>that got him the part. He's this big man but
<v Speaker 1>walks with such poise like a cat, and he said
<v Speaker 1>that only this is Saltzman. Harry Saltzman said that only
<v Speaker 1>Sean Connery and Albert Finnie are the only two large
<v Speaker 1>guys who walk in this way and would have been
<v Speaker 1>appropriate for this part. Which is ironic because in the
<v Speaker 1>early eighties, just before Never Say Never came out, Sean
<v Speaker 1>Connery was actually looking at becoming Daddy Warbucks in the
<v Speaker 1>movie Annie. And I mean he really wanted it. He
<v Speaker 1>loved the play. He wanted to be in the movie,
<v Speaker 1>but he was unsure about his singing ability. He even
<v Speaker 1>took voice lessons, but they basically said, you got to
<v Speaker 1>tell us now, are you in or are you out?
<v Speaker 1>And he's like, I'm not sure. And at that point
<v Speaker 1>they said, never mind, We're gonna go to with Albert Finnie,
<v Speaker 1>who couldn't really sing anyway.
<v Speaker 2>He was terrible.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, so it didn't matter. It was still a wonderful
<v Speaker 1>movie with a terrible singing Daddy Warbucks. Sean could have
<v Speaker 1>been that guy. How weird with life have been at
<v Speaker 1>that point?
<v Speaker 2>Wow?
<v Speaker 1>But they they back in the early sixties. They land
<v Speaker 1>on Sean Connery who who was a casket maker? Ye,
<v Speaker 1>who was a lorry driver. He had done all kinds
<v Speaker 1>of things. And oddly Kubby Brockley had also been a
<v Speaker 1>casket maker. I don't know, maybe that's the connection they
<v Speaker 1>found anyway. Ian Fleming hated the idea of Sean Connery
<v Speaker 1>being James Bond. He would refer to him only as
<v Speaker 1>that lorry driver. But then when Doctor No came out
<v Speaker 1>and it was a massive success, Ian Fleming was like, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>I like Sean Connery. It's all right.
<v Speaker 2>You know, we weren't alive obviously in the nineteen sixties,
<v Speaker 2>but the nineteen sixties are kind of known as having
<v Speaker 2>spy mania, right, So the Bond movies take off Thunderball
<v Speaker 2>is the first movie ever that they showed round the
<v Speaker 2>clock twenty four hours a day because they had so
<v Speaker 2>many people waiting in line to watch this movie.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, Jason, let's jump back in. Let's talk about some
<v Speaker 1>kind of staples for the James Bond movie formula. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So the first movie that came out in the James
<v Speaker 1>Bond series that we consider a cannon film is Doctor No. Right,
<v Speaker 1>we talked about some of the things that came before,
<v Speaker 1>but Doctor No is the first of the Eon Productions,
<v Speaker 1>the first Sean Connery Bond movie, and it has as
<v Speaker 1>the beginning scene the silhouette, the gun barrel, the turn
<v Speaker 1>and shoot that is iconic for all Bond movies. And
<v Speaker 1>when this first came out, the barrel and the silhouette,
<v Speaker 1>everybody started applauding at that scene before anybody knew what
<v Speaker 1>was going on with James Bond. But you know what,
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't Sean Connery.
<v Speaker 2>I know, that's amazing, huh it.
<v Speaker 1>Was Yeah, it was a stuntman named Bob Simmons. It
<v Speaker 1>was not Sean Connery in that first gun barrel scene.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, here's a little side note to Bob Simmons. All right,
<v Speaker 2>the guy who did the gun barrel scene. I think
<v Speaker 2>for the first three movies, he is the guy at
<v Speaker 2>the beginning of Thunderball that's dressed in drag that James
<v Speaker 2>Bond pulls the that's a man baby and punches him
<v Speaker 2>right in the face. That's the guy who does the
<v Speaker 2>gun barrel scene.
<v Speaker 1>That was a woman they had a woman, is a woman,
<v Speaker 1>A woman, a woman right until Bond punches her square
<v Speaker 1>in the jaw. Oh my gosh.
<v Speaker 2>So yes, the gun barrel scene is absolutely a critical
<v Speaker 2>part of the Bond cannon, which you don't get at
<v Speaker 2>the beginning of Never Say Never Again. And really Doctor No,
<v Speaker 2>the first movie out of the gate, you didn't have
<v Speaker 2>that pre sequence scene and they're still kind of feeling
<v Speaker 2>their way a little bit before they kind of nailed
<v Speaker 2>down the formula right.
<v Speaker 1>And just as an interesting connection, Doctor No was released
<v Speaker 1>the same day as the Beatles first single, and then
<v Speaker 1>there's this kind of a weird Yeah, there's this kind
<v Speaker 1>of weird competition. And then even in James Bond, at
<v Speaker 1>some point he's he makes the comment about I can't
<v Speaker 1>remember the quote, but it ends with it's like listening
<v Speaker 1>to the Beatles without ear muffs on.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's in Goldfinger. Yeah, yes, James Bond.
<v Speaker 1>Is too cool for the Beatles, right, So it wasn't
<v Speaker 1>until Goldfinger that we got that full formula of the
<v Speaker 1>beginning scene with like Bond always seduces a lady, he
<v Speaker 1>kills a bad guy, he gives his witty one liner,
<v Speaker 1>and then the music and the silhouettes begin, and as
<v Speaker 1>it turns out, the Goldfinger soundtrack actually outsaw the Beatles
<v Speaker 1>that year's Finger came out gold Finger.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, so there's a lot of things to the formula
<v Speaker 2>which I'd love to discuss maybe at the end when
<v Speaker 2>we kind of do final judgment. But yeah, you have
<v Speaker 2>the pre gun barrel sequence, right, the gun barrel, You
<v Speaker 2>have the theme song, opening credits.
<v Speaker 1>Still, what of naked Ladies?
<v Speaker 2>Octopus? He kind of pushes the envelope on this. You know,
<v Speaker 2>you have gadgets and babes, bad guys and henchmen.
<v Speaker 1>Don't don't forget the cool cars.
<v Speaker 2>We've already argued about this on a previous podcast about
<v Speaker 2>what the coolest James My car.
<v Speaker 1>Was, and I maintain I maintained my position it's the
<v Speaker 1>Aston Martin.
<v Speaker 2>But and then at the end we're going to compare Bonds.
<v Speaker 1>With that formula. You had a lot of people who thought, wow,
<v Speaker 1>this is just something that we can make fun of.
<v Speaker 1>So there was tons of talk shows like David Frost
<v Speaker 1>would make fun of Bond routine Lee back in the
<v Speaker 1>UK and his co host later got her own show,
<v Speaker 1>Millicent Martin, and she would do these Bond spoofs as well.
<v Speaker 1>And one of the actors that she got to play
<v Speaker 1>Bond in her spoof was someone you might have heard of.
<v Speaker 1>His name is Roger Moore.
<v Speaker 2>Oh really, I'd love to see that man.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's great. It is a great one. It's they're
<v Speaker 1>trying the comedy out and he's still Bond. I mean
<v Speaker 1>it's ten years before he becomes Bond, but he's still
<v Speaker 1>Bond in this goofy wow like late night TV bit So.
<v Speaker 1>Thunderball is the ninth book and Ian Fleming series. It
<v Speaker 1>is the eighth full length Bond novel and it was
<v Speaker 1>first published in the UK by Jonathan Cape on March
<v Speaker 1>twenty seventh, nineteen sixty one. It was the novelization of
<v Speaker 1>that script that we talked about. After the lawsuit, McClory
<v Speaker 1>gained the literary and film rights for the screenplay, while
<v Speaker 1>Fleming was given the rights to the novel, although it
<v Speaker 1>had to be recognized as being quote based on a
<v Speaker 1>screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack whitting him and Ian
<v Speaker 1>Fleming in that order.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's interesting you and I talked off air. Kubby
<v Speaker 2>Brockley and Harry Saltzman had to move up the production
<v Speaker 2>of Thunderball or else Kevin mcluy was going to do
<v Speaker 2>it without them. So the interesting thing to me as
<v Speaker 2>a Bond fan is Thunderballs the fourth movie made. But
<v Speaker 2>that wasn't the original slate. We were supposed to get
<v Speaker 2>on Her Majesty's Secret Service as number four, which means
<v Speaker 2>that Sean Connery would have played instead of George Lasmbie
<v Speaker 2>the Bond from that movie.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of interesting, right, Yeah, this lawsuit is not an
<v Speaker 1>insignificant thing. I mean, Ian Fleming had a heart attack
<v Speaker 1>during this short lawsuit. He had a heart attack in
<v Speaker 1>the middle of it. And then yeah, just a little
<v Speaker 1>while after, just August of nineteen sixty four, nine months
<v Speaker 1>after the trial is over, he has another heart attack
<v Speaker 1>and dies at the age of fifty six. So they
<v Speaker 1>make that movie, and then in nineteen seventy six, Ten
<v Speaker 1>years later, mcclury announces he wants to produce an original
<v Speaker 1>James Bond film. The title that he wants to use
<v Speaker 1>is Warhead Warhead eight or James Bond of the Secret Service.
<v Speaker 1>But the project gets hampered by the Fleming Trustees and
<v Speaker 1>the Eon Producers filing lawsuits, right, and he gets slowed up.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, this is nineteen seventy six, and we know
<v Speaker 1>Never Say Never Again doesn't come out for another seven years.
<v Speaker 1>He was not able to get the title of James
<v Speaker 1>Bond of the Secret Service. They did stop him from
<v Speaker 1>doing that because it was too close to the title
<v Speaker 1>of Her Majesty's Secret Service.
<v Speaker 2>Now here's the interesting thing to me. Obviously, with Never
<v Speaker 2>Say Never Again, you get Sean Connery back in the role.
<v Speaker 2>But before he sort of had him there, he needed
<v Speaker 2>a Bond, so he was going after Richard Burton, and
<v Speaker 2>he went after George Lassabie. That would have been interesting
<v Speaker 2>to see George Lassabie back in that role after nineteen
<v Speaker 2>sixty nine is Her Majesty's Secret Service with Orson Wells
<v Speaker 2>as Blowfield.
<v Speaker 1>Right, Eon Productions was looking at other actors to play
<v Speaker 1>in Octopussy and then when Sean Connery finally says, okay,
<v Speaker 1>do it again. Ion Production says there's no way we
<v Speaker 1>can come out with James Brolin. And so at that
<v Speaker 1>point Roger Moore, he had fulfilled his contract and was
<v Speaker 1>on a movie by movie Basis, and he was ready
<v Speaker 1>to be done, but they convinced him to come back
<v Speaker 1>and do Octopussy.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you can't take on Sean Connery in some rogue
<v Speaker 2>James Bond movie, some new guy, right, right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>as early as like you said, nineteen seventy five, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>seventy six, he's getting this together. In nineteen seventy eight
<v Speaker 2>he works on James Bond of the Secret Service, hoping
<v Speaker 2>to get orson Wells as blow felled. Richard Attenborough as
<v Speaker 2>the director, and they were hoping to go up against Moonraker.
<v Speaker 1>Right, and Richard Attenborough, of course we know later on
<v Speaker 1>later on goes on to become the grandfather in Jurassic Park,
<v Speaker 1>the park owner's right, who they had originally considered for
<v Speaker 1>that role. Mister Sean Connery. Yeah, and then James Brolin,
<v Speaker 1>of course, is the key actor in the movie West World,
<v Speaker 1>which was written and directed by Michael Crichton.
<v Speaker 2>Also plays p w in Peeman's Big Adventure.
<v Speaker 1>Well that we can't leave that out, and obviously James
<v Speaker 1>Bond like performance.
<v Speaker 2>But here's where it gets really interesting to me. So
<v Speaker 2>when Kevin McClory starts organizing this idea of going up
<v Speaker 2>against Moonraker and I'm gonna kick their button. They're going
<v Speaker 2>to be sorry they did this to me. He calls
<v Speaker 2>Sean Connery and so he calls him up and says, listen,
<v Speaker 2>you're the best Bond ever. You know what he does.
<v Speaker 2>We need your insight. Why don't you come over and
<v Speaker 2>help us and be a consultant on our script, which
<v Speaker 2>we know is a big smoke screen, just to kind
<v Speaker 2>of lure him back in. Right, play the role.
<v Speaker 1>Again, right, And so the way that they ultimately land
<v Speaker 1>on the title that they land on is once he
<v Speaker 1>accepts the role, his wife says to him, I thought
<v Speaker 1>you said you were never going to do another James
<v Speaker 1>Bond movie again, and he's like, well, I feel like
<v Speaker 1>I need to do it again, and she says, well,
<v Speaker 1>never say never again, and she actually receives credit in
<v Speaker 1>the closing credits for the title of the of the movie.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, before we get to never say it ever again.
<v Speaker 2>An octopusy and thank you for hanging around. It's taking
<v Speaker 2>us a long time to get here. But there's a
<v Speaker 2>couple of interesting tidbits in the other Bond movies before
<v Speaker 2>we get to this point. Okay, so the Spy who
<v Speaker 2>Loved Me, you're going up against this guy named Stromberg
<v Speaker 2>that was originally supposed to be Blowfeld, but because of
<v Speaker 2>all these legal issues, they didn't want something to happen
<v Speaker 2>to spy he Loved Me, so they just changed the
<v Speaker 2>specter and Blowfeld they took that out. So that's why
<v Speaker 2>Stromberg acts exactly like Blowfield. And at the beginning of
<v Speaker 2>four Yar Eyes Only, there is a scene where Bond
<v Speaker 2>is visiting his dead wife's grave, who was killed on
<v Speaker 2>Our Majesty's secret service. He gets in a helicopter and
<v Speaker 2>his helicopter is taken over by a guy in a
<v Speaker 2>wheelchair with a bald head and you know, stroking the cat.
<v Speaker 2>You don't never see his face, and he never names himself,
<v Speaker 2>and it's clearly supposed to be Blowfilm. He's taking control
<v Speaker 2>the helicopter and he's gonna kill Bond. So Bond escapes,
<v Speaker 2>takes back control of the helicopter, picks this guy up
<v Speaker 2>and he takes him and he dumps him down this
<v Speaker 2>humongous chimney, and it's basically like we're killing Blowfield. Double birds.
<v Speaker 3>To you, Kevin McClory, we haven't really talked about what
<v Speaker 3>happened when Sean Connery stopped doing the Bond movies and
<v Speaker 3>Roger Moore took over.
<v Speaker 1>There was a big backlash at the idea of having
<v Speaker 1>more takeover, and I realized we have that George Lasmbie
<v Speaker 1>thing in the middle there. Right when this happened in
<v Speaker 1>eighty three, there was kind of this big like all
<v Speaker 1>of those people who had been Roger Moore haters were like, ah,
<v Speaker 1>finally the real James Bond is back, right, Yeah, But
<v Speaker 1>as we find out that movie did not do as
<v Speaker 1>well as Octavius did.
<v Speaker 4>That's right, all right, everybody, Now that you know the
<v Speaker 4>history of these two movies, join us next week when
<v Speaker 4>we will get into the comparison of Never Say Never
<v Speaker 4>Again in Octopus.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you so much for joining us. We will see
<v Speaker 1>you next week.