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I'd say there's something just a bit sad about it...
That's an interesting interview. I suppose it's natural he'd put on that 'act'. I mean, putting one on essentially got him cast as Bond, so why not keep it up?
Wait, this isn't Craig, at least he didn't demanded to get his character killed off. :D :)
Laz: So I was with having fun with these two sheilas at my place, and then I heard a knock on the door. Who was it? It was my next door neighbor. That bird was a stunner, let me tell ya. Anyway, all three of us went to the...
Random guy: Look, I just asked if you had the time!
Laz: Sure, I had the time of my life with them broads!
Agreed!
He's still one of the Bonds and I respect him for that.
Let's stop magnifying this issue, it's already in the past, let's move on.
I agree.
And I'm not even going to say that the man "needs a lesson". If I ever reach his age, I have no doubts that I'll be struggling hard with figuring out what is "okay" and what isn't--in fact, I'm not sure that I am receiving all the relevant memos even today. Times change fast, especially with regard to popular sensitivities. So again, I think someone should have sat down with George for an hour of media-training with updates for 2022.
He never was.
He's a big star in Hong Kong though, but of course those were the days.
Agreed!
George did a fine job in his one Bond movie. OHMSS as an overall package is one of the best movies of the series. I wish he had not been so pigheaded and left the role. But he did and the success and longevity of the series with his successors has left a 'what if' question over his head. He left because he was led to believe Bond would be irrelevant in the 1970s. Ironically here we are in the 2020s and his relevance is only down to Bond. Every Bond actor is defined by that role as their most noteworthy accomplishment as an actor but for George he is the only one for whom it was his only accomplishment.
No matter how much he claims to have no regret over leaving I think the fact he plays up this rebellious macho ladies man personality is like a coping mechanism to express that he didn't have to play a character called James Bond to live that life. Now maybe it is true he bedded over a thousand woman as he says he did. Stories like that are nothing new. He has been telling a story for years of how his falling out with Diana Rigg actually began as a fledgling relationship that soured after she saw him in a stunt tent *having fun* with an attractive receptionist. Implying she was bitter but in a humorous laddish way. Whether it is true or not only he knows. Diana Rigg never dignified that story with a response. But it is the sort of story that made for a fun after dinner speech to a certain kind of audience for a while. It's not the kind of story you should be telling when you are 80 and the other person is dead. George however is like the kid who peaked in high school. He clings to those glory days when he was young and had no idea what lay in store and over time embellishes and probably makes up a lot of things to sound cooler than he was.
For example the story of dating a daughter of a famous Australian cricketer was true. Belinda Fingleton was Jack Fingleton's daughter. He is not lying about that or that she moved to England which led to him moving to England. Do I believe the rest of the story about him confronting her English boyfriend and winning her back after taking her away in his car only for fate to finally end their relationship after he got the Bond role? No I don't. I think that is a case of George deciding to play up his Bond likeness in real life because he also tells stories about how he was having sex with women and even threesomes regularly at the time. He can't have loved Belinda that much clearly. But it makes for a fun story - to a certain audience and when you're not 80.
I think the jury's out on that one a bit though, isn't it? He certainly made what is a strong candidate for the most stupid decision in the history of movies! :)
Has it ever been good manners to go on about who you shagged, diarrhea etc. in front of an audience with kids in? In which case I think I missed those original memos! :D Being polite and appropriate isn't something which has just been invented in this decade.
George thanked Daily Express for The article concerning OHMSS' title about the Queen's death, so how do you feel about this guys?
Kevin Smith built a career out of telling scatological jokes in front of an audience with minors. 😄
Sounds like he's a bit of a dick too then! :D
:)) Ouch!
He sure loves to talk about his man-thing. ;-) But he'd not a bad person.
Silent Bob is not so silent, in real life.
I don't know anything about his shows, but I imagine his audience know what to expect.
Going from recent events he'd probably drunkenly recount an awkward story about how he once got a girl to call him 'the King' in bed or something.
Entirely agree.
He simply wasn't interested in playing Bond for years. He didn't have the patience or the diplomacy for that. In retrospect, he made the right choice for him. Sure, he did it in the worst possible way, as he ended up blacklisted, but he didn't leave the part just because he believed what Ronan O'Rahilly had told him.
I tend to believe what (if I remember correctly) Charles Halfenstein told about the negotiations for a longterm contract which apparently happened after the OHMSS premiere. Lazenby hadn't actually left the part at that point, even if he may have wanted to. But the threat of a second actor leaving the part made Saltzmann quite anxious about the future of the franchise, he agreed to some of the demands, then O'Rahilly tried to push his luck and made some unreasonable requests. Except that, at that point, Broccoli was mad about it, called the bluff and got rid of both Lazenby and O'Rahilly.
"Becoming Bond" gives us a good glimpse into Lazenby's state of mind. He's not very sophisticated, he's impulsive, he had a lot of carnal appetite, he was good-looking and took advantage of it, and made a career as a model.
Like almost any male actor and wannabe actor, or more exactly like almost any guy of his age, he wanted to "be" Bond. And when the part was available, he managed to get it, in a stroke of luck.
But during production, he realized that it was tedious. He had to shoot take after take, the days were long, the producers and the director gave him material that fitted Connery more than his own personality (which wasn't taken into consideration, an issue that Roger Moore faced too on his first two entries), he had been short-changed on his allowance and his fee because he hadn't bothered to really negotiate, etc.
And then, before the premiere, he receives a 50-page (or so) contract draft that would regulate every moment of his life in exchange for being Bond for something close to 10 or 15 years.
Lazenby, having some anti-authority streak, must have been apoplectic when he saw that he couldn't be seen in public with facial hair and when he discovered similar obligations.
He realized that, even outside of the few months he would shoot a movie, his whole life would still be very regulated. So, goodbye one-night-stands, threesomes, doing acid, orgies, etc.
Then, comes the humiliation of discovering at the last minute that his voice had been entirely dubbed for the Hillary Bray segments. As no-one had told him about it.
And it's obvious that he felt trapped. He grew a beard just to defy Harry and Cubby, he told in interviews that he didn't think that Bond would outlast the seventies. And he hired a manager, a rookie who wasn't even 30, to negotiate a multi-million pounds (or Australian dollars, but a million AUD is less impressive) contract on his behalf. If he had been honest with himself, he would have acknowledged earlier that he wasn't a good fit for such a machine, and left on more amicable terms. Instead he let the situation deteriorate, at his own disadvantage (with a touch of passive aggressiveness), and left the part in the worst possible circumstances.
But, as soon as he returned to a certain degree of anonymity and tabloids stopped following him, he got the one-night-stands back, and it may have mattered more to him at the moment.