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Yes, it's very good. He was able to write in the Fleming style. I think that must be the secret to its success.
That s just it. No one else I have read has managed that, not even Fleming at times.
I only wish that Christopher Wood had written the continuation novels in the 80s as opposed to John Gardner.
He should have written them all. Not familiar with Pearson, Benson, Boyd or Deaver, but the rest have been hopeless.
The only book I didn't get on with of his was Brokenclaw.
Hear, hear! Well said, Barry.
That must have been one of the few continuation-type Bonds you read then, @Ludovico?
Must have been great to have seen that first hand.
I must admit I never connected the Jubilee and the parachute,that makes perfect sense.
Ha ha, I remember getting the novelisation soon after seeing the film for the second time, and being disappointed that it wasn't like the film! Don't know if I finished it or not. Would probably enjoy it a lot more now, but I think I gave my copy away. I'll keep an eye out for it in local charity shops I think.
I'd watch it again if on tonight! :-)
Err, that's what this thread is about!
If The Wizard thinks that Fleming’s first person masterpiece was “run of the mill piece of pulp fiction” he clearly has a very different perspective to PussyNoMore.
That there is a market for this nonsense The Pussy doesn’t doubt. It’s just that with a little creativity, the original source material has so much to offer.
It isn’t for nothing that the Bond film that stands the test of time so well is FRWL. The source is fully respected whilst appropriate cinematic enhancements take it to a different level.
The same approach taken to the rest of the series could have had great results.
Early era Gardner I don't mind (LR, NLF, NDMB and WLOD are decent enough, the others merely average) but post WLOD things take a definite downturn.
TMFB and DIF have some reasonable elements but Brokenclaw, NSF, Seafire and Cold are all absolutely terrible.
Not that I've ever blamed John. He had a lot of issues in later life and if Glidrose were throwing money at him to churn another one out then you can't really blame him.
Clearly. Starting with the definition of the word 'masterpiece'.
If I want to read about a girl's coming of age story and her early fumblings in a cinema I'll turn to Jackie or Mills & Boon.
If I'm reading a Bond novel I want Bond front and centre doing Bondian stuff against Bondian villains in a Bondian setting.
Not two crappy American thugs committing a shitty insurance fraud and Bond conveniently chancing into the action two thirds of the way through. I don't think it's a coincidence after this interesting, but ultimately failed, experiment that Fleming took the criticism on board and really pulled out all the stops with his next novel and gave us a contender for the best Bond book of all.
It's not that it doesn't have anything to offer, perhaps as a TV movie curio, but in 1977 when Cubby was up against the likes of Jaws and Star Wars to have delivered a faithful adaptation of the novel would have been the end of the series.
You, sorry I mean PussyNoMore, make a somewhat disingenuous argument. Yes the best Bond films are FRWL, OHMSS and CR precisely because they stick to the Fleming source material. However in this case it doesn't really apply as the source material is so far removed from a standard Bond adventure.
If Cubby turned up at the cinema with a mundane story about some girl losing her virginity and then Bond turns up and kills two cartoon gangsters in a run of the mill shootout at a motel then United Artists would probably have been within their rights to sue for gross incompetence.
You, or PussyNoMore (are they the same person?), may well be right here, and of course we all dream of Netflix doing faithful adaptations of the whole series one day, but not everything Fleming wrote is perfect for the screen.
The bridge sequence in MR, possibly my favourite scene in all of the literary Bond, is completely unfilmable as the audience really needs to understand the rules of bridge to appreciate its genius. And let's not forget that the screenplay of GF improves upon the novel by having the atomic bomb irradiate the gold rather than remove it.
There are flaws in Fleming's works and whilst TSWLM as written might be interesting to see on screen one day, in 1977, with the series on it's arse, this wouldn't have been so much as what the doctor ordered as what the undertaker ordered.
Apart from anything else, anyone who would rather live in a world where a faithful adaption of this underwhelming book exists rather than Roger Moore saying 'So does England' before skiing off a cliff with a Union Jack parachute needs to have a long, hard look at themselves. A world free of Roger 'nonsense' is a very bleak place indeed.
I always thought that he preferred the third person narrative. ;)
:)) :)) :))
Whoever said this ? PussyNoMore has been at pains to point out that there is room for nonsense. There is no need for The Wizard to throw his wand into the Cauldron.
The subject is how would you improve TSWLM and Pussy’s answer is simple - go back to the book !
Because the point you (or that bloke called PussyNoMore who has hijacked your account) were making is that FRWL stands the test of time because it is based on Fleming material so QED if TSLWM had adapted the novel it would therefore have turned out brilliant. But the actuality is that FRWL is based on Fleming's best material. If TSWLM and FRWL were on a par as novels then your point might hold some water but as they are clearly worlds apart then saying a faithful adaptation of TSWLM would make a great Bond film is as ridiculous as saying QOS would. Whilst all these Fleming experiments are interesting for us fans they're not the meat and potatoes of CR, MR, FRWL and OHMSS that make up the spine of Fleming's oevure. Put simply no one ever became a Bond fan from reading TSWLM, QOS or 007 In NY.
Well I can't comment on that as I haven't listened to it but the highlight of the scene is the moment when Basildon looks at everybody's hands and internalises:
'It was a laydown grand slam for Bond against any defence. Whatever Meyer led, Bond must get in with a trump in his own hand or on the table. Then, in between clearing trumps, finessing of course against Drax, he would play two rounds of diamonds, trumping them in dummy, catching Drax's ace and king in the process. After five plays he would be left with the remaining trumps and six winning diamonds. Drax's aces and kings would be valueluess.
It was sheer murder.'
Now if there's a director out there who can film that and get it across (not to mention all the bidding before hand) to audiences who have no clue about the rules of Bridge then all credit to him but I'd be surprised. Bridge certainly ain't Texas hold em.
Has he? 'At pains to point out there is room for nonsense'?
I don't really see how one can 'improve' the film version of TSWLM by going back to the book as the two stories have nothing in common (except a passing resemblance between the two hoods and Jaws and Sandor). If you're going to use the book then you have to start the film from scratch so 'improve' isn't really an applicable term as much as 'wipe the slate clean'.
I was only very vaguely aware of the novels at the time. I must have been 12 or 13.
Yes, I started to read the Bond novels around that age too. Have you read any of the other continuations?
I agree. Richard Maibaum did grumble about "that interminable thing which went on in the tanker," but that might have been sour grapes about his script ideas going unused. In any case, Pauline Kael was right to assert that "the last 45 minutes [of The Spy Who Loved Me] is a spectacular piece of sustained craftsmanship: you see the faces of imperilled men and you feel the suspense, but you're also drinking in the design of the machinery, the patterned movements, and the lavender tones, the blues and the browns. The lavishness isn't wasted--it's entertaining. For Adam, Gilbert, and Renoir the film must have been a celebration of delight in mechanical gadgetry and in moviemaking itself; the sumptuous visual style functions satirically."
To be fair, Maibaum's original idea for the film was pretty daring, and involved a group of terrorists, comprised of everyone from the Red Brigade to the Weathermen, breaking into Spectre's headquarters: "They level the place, kick Blofeld out, and take over. They're a bunch of young idealists. In the end, Bond comes in and asks, 'All right, you're going to blow up the world. What do you want? ' They reply 'We don't want anything. We just want to start over—the world is lousy. We want to wipe it away and begin again. So, there's no way we can be bribed.'...Rightly or wrongly, Cubby thought it was too political. So many young people in the world support those people that we would have scrambled sympathies in the picture. Cubby is a very astute man." I wonder what Maibaum's original finale would have been like, given his complaints about the Liparus scene.
Until I read more about what was in the unused drafts of TSWLM, the only change I'd make to the film would be either recasting Stromberg or giving him some more character moments. Great Bond films need great, hateful, Satanic villains, but Stromberg comes off as a cold fish. He doesn't seem all that passionate about the sea, and Jurgens and Moore don't set off many sparks in their scenes together.
As for Fleming's original novel, there was of course no possibility of adapting it in 1977--or any other period to be honest. Commercial filmmaking cannot take the sort of risks a novelist can, especially given the expenses and audience expectations involved. Perhaps someday EON will allow a small-scale, modest TV adaptation, the sort of thing that would air on PBS's Mystery.
David Denby?
I thought that bit of the novel was hard enough to read, as I have no clue about Bridge or any other card games for that matter.
Again, this is your chance to say whatever you would have done differently with the film, so things like; plot changes, character additions or subtractions. Anything you like. People will be given the chance to give their responses within 7 DAYS from today (this may change so let me know if you want me to extend the time for longer) until the discussion moves on to the next James Bond film. This will run until we reach SKYFALL as a discussion for SPECTRE already exists.
Looking forward to hearing what you guys think.
Make Jaws less comedic. Why they went that route is beyond me