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It was a joke. I didn't mean to offend.
@CrabKey , as someone who has written for EoN, didn’t PWB say it best?: the world can change around Bond, but he himself can’t change all that much.
I think this is the best way to approach the character, and I am guessing this is also EoN’s perspective.
That's impressive @peter. Was your writing something we can see in any of the Bond films?
PWB, as someone who wrote for EoN, said it best….
Nothing I pitched about making May casually involved in a minor way in the plot had anything to do with changing the fundamentals of Bond's character, and it's from the books. We don't need to see how Bond's laundry gets done, unless somebody is doing something to his laundry... these explorations into the corners of Bond's world can breed fun new stories. I'm not saying May is the main character, but she can be involved in an innocent way. I don't want them to introduce May just to damsel-in-distress her, is my main point. She doesn't need more than two scenes in the movie to have a significant impact on Bond and the plot.
And if we're arguing that Bond wouldn't have a housekeeper because "normal people" don't have housekeepers any more, Bond is not normal! He goes on long trips with unknown durations. He would have someone keep up his place. Hell, I live in NYC and have someone wash and fold my laundry for me.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge said something similar
Hasn't Bond adapted and changed over the course of the series?
@LucknFate — thanks for clarifying my clumsy post.
@Benny but there are some identifiable things that remain, and involve consistency in casting as well: a womanizer/seducer, alpha (on a spectrum), fast cars, gambling, skates the line of smart ass/sardonic humour… The differences seems to be how each man interprets and presents these traits…
That's what I love about writing, the various interpretations. I understood you hadn't written for EON.
I think the character's changed in some ways, but then again, "...change all that much" is subjective.
The closest I’ve come to EoN HQ was something of mine was pitched to Gregg Wilson (NOT Bond related; a series based on a famous gangster).
He replied in email. Not positive. Not negative. And…
That was two years ago.
Whilst he could be considered a womaniser, he no longer slaps a woman on the butt or refers to women as 'darling'. Nothing ground breaking as far as sexism goes, but he at least doesn't see women as playthings in quite the same way he may have in the 60's and 70's.
Then I would take the non-Bond version of the script to market and start a bidding war between various movie studios. (Same as what happened with the Oppenheimer script.) AND at the same time would present the Bond version of the script to EON.
I could then show EON how many other companies are interested in the non-Bond version of the script and would tell them that I would love to do the Bond version of it with them. If they still say no, it’s fine, I would then just make the non-Bond (but still Bondian) spy movie with another studio.
Oh wow! You’ve certainly come closer than any of us have!
😂.
It was polite.
Gregg typed my name out, 😂.
And that’s where it ended.
However, the same person who pitched my series, has kept him abreast of the project I’m on now, so, we never give up.
EDIT: and no, I don’t want to write a Bond script. It’s not an ambition of mine.
EDIT 2: and @007ClassicBondFan , @ColonelSun was on the editing team of LTK. And he's a filmmaker and writer. Very talented and a great guy. He's been deep in EoN HQ! Look up some of his posts on this forum.
For me though, it sounds like an idea Christopher Nolan can work with brilliantly and do inventive things with. A complex Bond film.
That’s incredibly fascinating!
But in all honesty, if you were offered a Bond script, would you accept?
I’ve read some of his posts! To me LTK is the most fascinating Bond film from a BTS perspective. Everything from the title changes, to the filming at the haunted Rumorosa, and the films final release just intrigues me to no end, so I’ll definitely be interested to read some of his posts!
@ColonelSun has incredible stories, and I've had the honour of reading some projects he has in active development. He's a tremendous talent, and the stories he has...
As for whether I'd accept script duties on a Bond film, @007ClassicBondFan ... Well to be completely honest, if I was offered the job, that means I'd be blessed with having worked myself up to a small pool of A-plus writers, 😂.
And although the money would be very welcome, I can say, at this moment, I would never want to be the first writer on a James Bond film. No way.
Saying that, I know I would love to be involved in the development of one of these scripts, but more as a two week script doctoring gig, either with character/dialogue, or punching up any action sequences.
So, no, no ambition to be an original creator of one of these scripts, but yes to being one of the doctors on it... If that makes sense?
And my god, I'd love to be in story meetings with all these guys... That'd be incredible.
And I'm sure PWB saw that very same interview, or read it.
BTW, about the CBC interview, that last answer is priceless, specially now.
Edit. I think there’s a quote where said his books were ‘out of step’ with the fiction of the day, but that so were presumably the people that read them.
Maybe. I have to find that quote. I'm sure I came across it at some point, because I've long said that the trick was to have the world change around Bond and have him react to it. I'm sure I didn't come up with that. Did I? :)
Oh well... But, @007HallY, my friend, If he was to be a modern man with modern vices in 1955 why would he keep a 30s Blower? I know the cut of his suits was rather sharp. I guess he was a bit more complex than Fleming anticipated ;)
I suppose if he were a modern man now, we wouldn't recognize our man Bond. What would modern vices constitute? :D
To be fair I didn’t get the exact quote/context correct. Fleming said Bond was a ‘creature of the era’, not a typical man of his time but very much of his time. It makes sense in many ways. He’s a man who travels the world for his job in an era where commercial air travel was becoming bigger than ever, he gambles, sleeps with women without much of a thought of marriage or settling down, and he certainly doesn’t have a traditional black and white view of morality when it comes to his job, or even his country at times. So yeah, I guess in many ways the literary Bond is a product of that post WW2 Cold War world.
But I think you’re right, Bond is probably more complex than Fleming may sometimes have let on. And the truth is many of these qualities - the casual sex, indulgence in gambling/fast cars/materialistic things, his cynicism - could be easily described as ‘symptoms of the era’ today.
You are absolutely right. Symptoms of the era, and of Flemings marriage, and his relationship with his parents and his brother, or the bigger shadow of him, anyway. The man had his ghosts, dead and living. A cocktail for complexity.
I suppose much like what we got during the Craig era and those Fleming novels, Bond in the next film will be a character who lives in a world where he knows that the enemy/the way they operate are different now, that wars for him are not fought on the battlefield but either through shadowy men behind desks, or indeed computers in the modern films (or whatever variation of this). He’s a blunt instrument in this context - where those enemies operate ‘in the shadows’ he’s an agent out in the field, where the villains embrace nihilism, anarchy, destructive potential of wealth or technology, Bond still retains a basic sense of duty and even good and evil (even if he’s aware of the shades of grey in that modern world).
So yeah, I suspect it’ll be a riff on those broad ideas. EON do understand this aspect of Bond I believe.
That was the meaning of the Craig run, with elements present since at least GE. It’s been an increasingly uneasy critique running alongside the traditional Bond. How much further can they take that? Would it even be desirable?
Or is there an ideologically coherent, but still largely recognizable Bond that they can reestablished post-Craig, one not dependent upon nostalgia?
Personally, I doubt it ...
Well ignoring the past would be a mistake.
I don't expect reestablishing Bond will be a problem in the slightest.