Battle of the Bonds

<v Speaker 1>Hello everybody, and welcome back to the shir That You
<v Speaker 1>Can't Be Serious podcast. IMD James D and I am
<v Speaker 1>here with my buddy Jason Colvin. Actually we're doing this
<v Speaker 1>via zoom. I am in the Bahamas where it's a
<v Speaker 1>breezy eighty degrees and Jason is sweatness balls 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?
<v Speaker 1>Right? Oh? 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.
<v Speaker 1>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 Brosen. I can still remember having conversations with my
<v Speaker 1>friends when we knew that Roger Moore wasn't going to
<v Speaker 1>be the James Bond anymore, of you know, hey, it
<v Speaker 1>needs to be that guy from Remington Steel. He is
<v Speaker 1>the perfect guy for James Bond. Yeah, And then it
<v Speaker 1>wasn't him, and everybody was outraged, and I think I
<v Speaker 1>was like, I'm not going to go watch those movies.
<v Speaker 1>I'm upset they didn't make Remington Steel James Bond. That's
<v Speaker 1>just wrong. And then by the time that he actually
<v Speaker 1>that Pierce Brosen and becomes James Bond, I was just like,
<v Speaker 1>he is the best James Bond who had the worst
<v Speaker 1>scripts to work with. There were some bad computer graphics
<v Speaker 1>going on in those movies. The scripts weren't super good.
<v Speaker 1>But he was a really great James Bond without much
<v Speaker 1>to work with. That is true.
<v Speaker 2>However, he started off with a really good one. One GoldenEye,
<v Speaker 2>in my opinion, is a good Bond movie, and so
<v Speaker 2>he had all that good credit in the bank and
<v Speaker 2>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 got to
<v Speaker 2>show you this cool video game. I'm like, listen, dude,
<v Speaker 2>I got a job and I got a wife. I
<v Speaker 2>don't have time for video games anymore. I played for
<v Speaker 2>like 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 in these two
<v Speaker 2>movies or the record. Let's go ahead and get that
<v Speaker 2>out there, because that's an important factor when we discussed
<v Speaker 2>these two movies. Yeah, Sean Connery was fifty two when
<v Speaker 2>he did Never Say Never Again. He had taken twelve
<v Speaker 2>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. He does.
<v Speaker 2>He does Octopus. Roger Moore was fifty five. He's three
<v Speaker 2>years older.
<v Speaker 1>Than Sean Connery.
<v Speaker 2>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 Roger
<v Speaker 1>Moore always seemed to be younger, even though he was
<v Speaker 1>actually about three years older than Yeah.
<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 going
<v Speaker 2>to be great. But really, the interesting stories here are
<v Speaker 2>kind of the behind the scenes stuff. So if you
<v Speaker 2>say to yourself both of those movies sucked, hang on,
<v Speaker 2>because there is some interesting stuff going on behind the
<v Speaker 2>scenes 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's
<v Speaker 1>you want to jump into the history.
<v Speaker 2>A little bit, let's I'm ready to get into it.
<v Speaker 2>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.
<v Speaker 2>Kevin mcclury.
<v Speaker 1>Obviously the most important figure in this is Ian Fleming.
<v Speaker 1>He was born to a wealthy family, grew up in
<v Speaker 1>wealth and then, of course, a few years after his birth,
<v Speaker 1>World War One begins and tragically his father dies in
<v Speaker 1>World War One. This comes into play with the character
<v Speaker 1>of James Bond. Later in the early movies, you don't
<v Speaker 1>really get his history. He's a very two dimensional character,
<v Speaker 1>but later on, especially with the Daniel Craig version, you
<v Speaker 1>get some of that backstory, which includes him being an
<v Speaker 1>orphan yep. So he ends up going to Eton for college,
<v Speaker 1>where he meets and intensely dislikes a gentleman named Scarmanga.
<v Speaker 1>Who is that right? Are you kidding me? No, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not kidding The scar Manga is named after a guy
<v Speaker 1>that he hated and college. I don't think he had
<v Speaker 1>three nipples, but yes, that's where that name comes from.
<v Speaker 1>And he writes his first 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 part in that movie.
<v Speaker 1>Keep going, okay, you mean mind nubbin.
<v Speaker 2>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>Telling me that Broccoli is named after Cubby 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 broccoli
<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 machine. 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
<v Speaker 1>inc it's insane. It's a year younger than I am
<v Speaker 1>right now. I mean, it's like very get busy starting
<v Speaker 1>a podcast or something. So during this time that he's
<v Speaker 1>doing all of this cool stuff, Broccoli starts working for
<v Speaker 1>Howard Hughes after he takes over the movie The Outlaw.
<v Speaker 1>You know The Outlaw. If you don't know the movie,
<v Speaker 1>you know the picture of Jane Russell profile with her
<v Speaker 1>amazing like torpedo Cleevebi's going on there, I am familiar,
<v Speaker 1>keep going. He becomes a part of that movie with
<v Speaker 1>Howard Hughes when Howard Hughes takes over for Howard Hawks
<v Speaker 1>when he got fired. This will come into play later on.
<v Speaker 1>And so Saltzman has been in the circus and he's
<v Speaker 1>like in vaudeville, and so he at some point becomes
<v Speaker 1>interested in James Bond likes the character, and he buys
<v Speaker 1>the rights to the character of James Bond. Broccley wants
<v Speaker 1>to buy the rights to the character of James Bond,
<v Speaker 1>but then finds out that Saltzman already has them. He
<v Speaker 1>through a mutual friend, meets up with him and they
<v Speaker 1>decide instead of you know, Broccolay says, I want to
<v Speaker 1>buy the rights from you. Saltzman says no, but I
<v Speaker 1>will form a company with you, and that company becomes
<v Speaker 1>Ion Productions, which is the company that is responsible for
<v Speaker 1>almost all of the James Bond movies. So Ian Fleming
<v Speaker 1>in this time, this was nineteen sixty one that they
<v Speaker 1>bought the rights to James Bond. He unfortunately, about three
<v Speaker 1>years earlier, thought hey, it'd be a great idea to
<v Speaker 1>make James Bond into a movie.
<v Speaker 3>Uh huh.
<v Speaker 1>And he thought that because he had recently met a
<v Speaker 1>guy named Kevin mccluy, and Kevin mccluy was this guy
<v Speaker 1>who was an avid scuba diver and adventurer. So McClory
<v Speaker 1>had also been had become involved in movies. He had
<v Speaker 1>been an assistant to John Houston and had worked on
<v Speaker 1>The African Queen Ulan Rouge and what ended up being
<v Speaker 1>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 was he hooked up with
<v Speaker 1>Elizabeth Taylor. I mean, this is not this is no
<v Speaker 1>you know, con man. This is a guy who's in
<v Speaker 1>the industry 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
<v Speaker 1>names 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 that's like saying, I'm gonna do a movie about
<v Speaker 2>Disney World, I'm gonna call it main Street USA. You know,
<v Speaker 2>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 mclury and Waddingham
<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 at GoldenEye to tell him he's working on the
<v Speaker 2>final script for this thing, and you know, Flemy's just like, okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I keep going. So once they sit down talk about
<v Speaker 2>the final script, he goes away to kind of finalize things.
<v Speaker 2>Fleming sits down at his desk at GoldenEye and writes
<v Speaker 2>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 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 shelves.
<v Speaker 1>Just to let you know, I mean, we don't want
<v Speaker 1>to paint mccluy. I've given him kind of the evil
<v Speaker 1>introduction a couple times, but he did he's not necessarily
<v Speaker 1>the bad guy in this particular scenario. Like Ian Fleming
<v Speaker 1>got together with Jack winning him and said, hey, how
<v Speaker 1>about we just kind of kicked this guy out. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he had his motivation was to get this guy out
<v Speaker 1>of the picture. And Whittingham didn't fall into that plan.
<v Speaker 1>And ultimately, when Thunderball came out, mcclury said, hey, have
<v Speaker 1>you seen this, and Jack whitting him like yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>so they both sued him. It was at the High
<v Speaker 1>Court in London, as you said, that happened on November 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. 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. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>Doctor No, Doctor No comes out in NCC sixty two.
<v Speaker 1>This is nineteen sixty three year later, so we I mean,
<v Speaker 1>they all know Doctor No is a big hit. Kubby
<v Speaker 1>Brockley is involved with the movie at this point. Harry
<v Speaker 1>Saltzman is involved with the movie at this point, and
<v Speaker 1>so they say to him, yes, you can have the
<v Speaker 1>screenplay rights to this particular storyline, and then you are
<v Speaker 1>allowed to reproduce it ten years from now. So here's
<v Speaker 1>here are the two possibilities that I see as a
<v Speaker 1>legal analysis on this one. For them to give up
<v Speaker 1>not 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's going to be over in ten years and nobody's
<v Speaker 1>going to care, right, Or they thought we're going to
<v Speaker 1>be so financially successful in ten years after making all
<v Speaker 1>of the Bond stories and movies that we've got, that
<v Speaker 1>we're going to be rich enough to stop him from
<v Speaker 1>doing this, you know, or some sort of remake of
<v Speaker 1>the Thunderball and ultimately that's kind of what ends up happening.
<v Speaker 1>It's very very interesting. It's very interesting.
<v Speaker 2>It seems to me that they are trying to give
<v Speaker 2>McClory everything they can to kind of make him go away,
<v Speaker 2>pacify him with film rights, remake rights, and I was
<v Speaker 2>telling you that McCloy go it's all this credit for Thunderball,
<v Speaker 2>but there's some question about whether or not he gets
<v Speaker 2>credit for Spector.
<v Speaker 1>Which Spector. You know, Spector's huge, I mean.
<v Speaker 2>Bond's bad main bad guy.
<v Speaker 1>Is spect the key bad guy. I mean that the
<v Speaker 1>the through the series you get you get a movie
<v Speaker 1>in the twenty first century named spect I mean it's
<v Speaker 1>and you look at all of the all of the spoofs,
<v Speaker 1>any of those things, it's always got Specter involved, right,
<v Speaker 1>I mean absolutely. If you look at Austin Powers and
<v Speaker 1>Number two and Doctor Evil, that is all Spector, right right.
<v Speaker 1>And then you know the chairs that are all lined up.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, so you watch Thunderball and you see you
<v Speaker 1>see Number two walk in with his eye patch, and
<v Speaker 1>they all go to the chairs, and the guy who's
<v Speaker 1>hidden behind the screens petting his little cat is a
<v Speaker 1>White Cat. I'm just all from Thunderball. It's all from Thunderball.
<v Speaker 1>So the fact that Kevin mcclury has got the rights
<v Speaker 1>to this particular storyline is huge because this particular storyline
<v Speaker 1>is a made your factor in so many of the
<v Speaker 1>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 1>But just to.
<v Speaker 2>Clarify, Specter is a group of bad guys that they
<v Speaker 2>needed to create that wasn't the Russians.
<v Speaker 1>And it wasn't the mafia, wasn't the Germans.
<v Speaker 2>This, and it wasn't the Germans, right, this nefarious group
<v Speaker 2>of bad guys. 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 Specter 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 he's.
<v Speaker 2>Gone yes, and he goes under and he's like, I'm
<v Speaker 2>very badly burned, but oh no, I'm sorry, that's awesome power.
<v Speaker 2>I get him confused a little bit. Bells of Olmons,
<v Speaker 2>but the bad guy, you wait before we get off
<v Speaker 2>of this. So Specter is a very important piece in this.
<v Speaker 2>Obviously thunderball. They got their butts kicked in court. McCrory
<v Speaker 2>took him to task on that one. But Blofeld is
<v Speaker 2>in play as well. Blofeld is like if somebody sued
<v Speaker 2>George Lucas and they won the rights to Darth Vader, right,
<v Speaker 2>Blofeld 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 mcluy 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 You should just go ahead and
<v Speaker 1>give that to Pierce Brosnan.
<v Speaker 2>Speaking of Americans, I'm I'll throw a little plug in.
<v Speaker 1>Here for Octopus real quick. 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 back, takes the role at age fifty two.
<v Speaker 2>Roger Moore is three years older than him, so when
<v Speaker 2>he is in Octopus, he's fifty five, right. So after
<v Speaker 2>for 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 this Oh are you serious? Yeah? Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So he plays this, He plays this James Bond character,
<v Speaker 1>but he plays him as an American, and so that
<v Speaker 1>let's see in Fleming know, hey, Bond might be good
<v Speaker 1>for the screen. Which then in nineteen fifty five, a
<v Speaker 1>year later, he sells the rights to Casino roy Al
<v Speaker 1>to a guy named Greg Radoff. Okay, and he's a
<v Speaker 1>producer now he's thinking, Okay, they're gonna make Casino roy Al,
<v Speaker 1>I know a movie. The only problem is Greg Radoff
<v Speaker 1>and his writer, whose name is Lorenzo Simple, who to
<v Speaker 1>let you know his experience. He wrote Three Days of
<v Speaker 1>the Condor and he wrote the early version like the
<v Speaker 1>sixties versions of Batman with Adam West. But greg Radoff
<v Speaker 1>and Lorenzo Simple look at James Bond and they go,
<v Speaker 1>this character is stupid. There's no way that anybody would
<v Speaker 1>believe that a man could say the stuff to women
<v Speaker 1>that he's saying right now. So what we need to
<v Speaker 1>do is we need to change the character into a woman,
<v Speaker 1>and we're going to call her Jane Bond. Yeah. So
<v Speaker 1>fortunately before all of that happened, greg Radoff dies and
<v Speaker 1>greg Radoff's attorney slash agent, Charles Feldman, buys the rights
<v Speaker 1>to Casina Royale from his widow and he gets together
<v Speaker 1>with Howard Hawks. I told you he'd come back in
<v Speaker 1>Howard Hawks and he says, Okay, we need to make
<v Speaker 1>this movie. We need to make this book into a movie.
<v Speaker 1>Casina Royle need to make this book into a movie.
<v Speaker 1>And they were going to hire Lee Pucket as a writer,
<v Speaker 1>and they were going to hire Carrie Grant as James Bond. Now,
<v Speaker 1>I know you've heard of Carrie Grant, but do you
<v Speaker 1>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 talked
<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.
<v Speaker 3>Yes, Lee Puckett, Wow, yeah, Wow, that's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>So Charles Feldman has the rights to Seina 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
<v Speaker 1>that in The Pink Panther. But David Niven was one
<v Speaker 1>of 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 Cubby Broccoli and Harry
<v Speaker 2>Saltzman are making this movie and they see that Kevin
<v Speaker 2>mcclurey 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>Yeah, 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.
<v Speaker 1>So right right, So it's interesting, you know, that's that
<v Speaker 1>is a factor of looking. You know, we're eighties kids,
<v Speaker 1>and so we're looking at what was going on in
<v Speaker 1>the eighties back and we're and we're thinking, okay, Thunderball,
<v Speaker 1>little slow with the I mean, why are we spending
<v Speaker 1>so much time? And then the undew water scenes. But
<v Speaker 1>that's because of our perspective. Right, It's interesting. I mean
<v Speaker 1>we've gone through we've gone through several different steps where
<v Speaker 1>Ian Fleming is just trying to get this thing to
<v Speaker 1>become a movie. From my perspective, I'm just thinking, how
<v Speaker 1>do 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 Yet 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>forward 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. He was terrible. Yes, so
<v Speaker 1>it didn't matter. It was still a wonderful movie with
<v Speaker 1>a terrible singing Daddy Warbucks. Seawan could have been that guy.
<v Speaker 1>How weird would life have been at that point?
<v Speaker 3>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? Yeh,
<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 a kind of known as having
<v Speaker 2>spy mania. Right, so the Bond movies takeoff, Thunderball is
<v Speaker 2>the first movie ever that they showed round the clock
<v Speaker 2>twenty four hours a day because they had so many
<v Speaker 2>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.
<v Speaker 1>It was Yeah, it was a stuntman named Bob Simmons.
<v Speaker 1>It 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. Her face
<v Speaker 1>is a woman, a woman, a woman right until Bond
<v Speaker 1>punches her square in the jaw. Oh my gosh. So yes.
<v Speaker 2>The gun barrel scene is absolutely a critical part of
<v Speaker 2>the Bond cannon, which you don't get at the beginning
<v Speaker 2>of Ever Say It 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 were still kind of
<v Speaker 2>feeling their way a little bit before they kind of
<v Speaker 2>nailed 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 is too
<v Speaker 2>cool for the Beatles.
<v Speaker 1>Right, So it wasn't until Goldfinger that we got that
<v Speaker 1>full formula of the beginning scene with like Bond always
<v Speaker 1>seduces a lady, he kills a bad guy, he gives
<v Speaker 1>his witty one liner, and then the music and the
<v Speaker 1>silhouettes begin, and as it turns out, the Goldfinger soundtrack
<v Speaker 1>actually outsaw the Beatles that year's Finger.
<v Speaker 2>Came out gold Finger. Yeah, so there's a lot of
<v Speaker 2>things to the formula which I'd love to discuss maybe
<v Speaker 2>at the end when we kind of do final judgment.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, you have the pre gun barrel sequence, right,
<v Speaker 2>the gun barrel. You have the theme song, opening credits.
<v Speaker 1>So what of naked ladies Octopus?
<v Speaker 2>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 Mont car was.
<v Speaker 1>And I maintain I maintained my position it's the 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 McClory 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 Lasmbee
<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>Said 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 Lasimbie. That would have been interesting
<v Speaker 2>to see George Lassibie 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. Ian 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 blowfeled Richard Attenborough as the director,
<v Speaker 2>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, that's right, who they had originally considered
<v Speaker 1>for that role. Mister Sean Connery. Yeah. And then James Brolin,
<v Speaker 1>of course, is the key actor in the movie Westworld,
<v Speaker 1>which was written and directed by Michael Crichton.
<v Speaker 2>Also plays p w in Peean's Big Adventure, well that
<v Speaker 2>we can't leave that out, and obviously very James Bond
<v Speaker 2>like performance. But here's where it gets really interesting to me.
<v Speaker 2>So when Kevin McClory starts organizing this idea of going
<v Speaker 2>up against Moonraker and I'm going to.
<v Speaker 1>Kick their button.
<v Speaker 2>They're going to be sorry they did this to me,
<v Speaker 2>he calls Sean Connery and so he calls him up
<v Speaker 2>and says, listen, you're the best Bond ever. You know
<v Speaker 2>what he does. We need your insight. Why don't you
<v Speaker 2>come over and help us and be a consultant on
<v Speaker 2>our script, which we know is a big smoke screen,
<v Speaker 2>just to kind of lure him back in right to
<v Speaker 2>play the role again.
<v Speaker 1>Right, And so the way that they ultimately land on
<v Speaker 1>the title that they land on is once he accepts
<v Speaker 1>the role, his wife says to him, I thought you
<v Speaker 1>said you were never going to do another James Bond
<v Speaker 1>movie again, and he's like, well, I feel like I
<v Speaker 1>need to do it again, and she says, well, never
<v Speaker 1>say never again, and she actually receives credit in the
<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.
<v Speaker 1>It's taking us a long time to get here.
<v Speaker 2>But there's a couple of interesting tidbits in the other
<v Speaker 2>Bond movies before.
<v Speaker 1>We get to this point.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, so the Spy who Loved Me, you're going up
<v Speaker 2>against this guy named Stromberg that was originally supposed to
<v Speaker 2>be Blowfeld, but because of all these legal issues, they
<v Speaker 2>didn't want something to happen to Spy Love Me, so
<v Speaker 2>they just changed the specter and Blowfeld they took that out.
<v Speaker 2>So that's why Stromberg acts exactly like Blowfeld. And at
<v Speaker 2>the beginning of Four of Your Eyes Only, there is
<v Speaker 2>a scene where Bond is visiting his dead wife's grave,
<v Speaker 2>who was killed on Our Majesty's secret service. He gets
<v Speaker 2>in a helicopter and his helicopter is taken over by
<v Speaker 2>a guy in a wheelchair with a bald head and
<v Speaker 2>you know, stroking the cat. You don't never see his face,
<v Speaker 2>and he never names himself, and.
<v Speaker 1>It's clearly supposed to be Blowfilm.
<v Speaker 2>He's taking control of the helicopter and he's gonna kill Bond.
<v Speaker 2>So Bond escapes, takes back control of the helicopter, picks
<v Speaker 2>this guy up and he takes him and he dumps
<v Speaker 2>him down this huemongous chimney, and it's basically like we're
<v Speaker 2>killing Blowfeld 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 octopusn't it.
<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 Octopusy.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you so much for joining us.
<v Speaker 4>We will see you next week.