It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
^ Back to Top
The MI6 Community is unofficial and in no way associated or linked with EON Productions, MGM, Sony Pictures, Activision or Ian Fleming Publications. Any views expressed on this website are of the individual members and do not necessarily reflect those of the Community owners. Any video or images displayed in topics on MI6 Community are embedded by users from third party sites and as such MI6 Community and its owners take no responsibility for this material.
James Bond News • James Bond Articles • James Bond Magazine
Comments
I've read Horowitz's "House Of Silk" and it is completely brilliant. Don't hesitate for a minute - enjoy!
If I ever see it, I will consider picking it up. Thanks for the recommendation, mate!
Agreed, I read Carte Blanche and High Time to Kill, and they're not written by Ian Fleming yet they're still amazing. To be honest, when I read Casino Royale, it's a bit dated and Fleming's style of writing can get me lost and confusing (because it was written in the 50's and carried some 50's slang and lingo which I'm not familiar with), I will admit Fleming was amazing writing Bond and there was some cool quote from the book. When I read continuation non-Fleming Bond novels, I'm able to understand what's going on there better because it was written in English I could undertstand and I don't get lost and confused when I read the continuation novels.
I don't have any problem with Carte Blanche, the plot and the characters are interesting.
Any sell respecting Bond afficianado would surely want Deaver suing for deformation of character.
Our hero chasing a necrophiliac dustbin man in a pair of "Oakley" sunglasses and name checking Jeremy Carkson and M&S en route to prove his Englishness !
Give me a break - IFP have scraped the barrel with this one. Let's hope Boyd gets it right.
I don't see how Bond chasing a bad guy with necrophilia be any different from Goldfinger who has a gold fetish which is freaky from my POV. For goodness sake, Goldfinger in the novel have sex with prostitute that are painted gold or reading gold-jacket covered porno magazine. Sorry, I tend to be open-minded when it comes to Bond novel. My view still stand on Carte Blanche should get a movie adaptation.
One thing I still would like to see is ––although from a former Fleming novel- the attempt of a brainwashed 007 trying to kill M (in The man with The Golden Gun)
While I personally think "Colonel Sun" is one of my top five Bond novels, I don't think it would translate well into a movie, especially not today. The plot of Communist China being out to sabotage a Russian conference is extremely dated, as is Ariadne's communist politics.
I still think Benson's "High Time to Kill" would be a very interesting story to film, I can think of several actors who would be very good in the role of Roland Marquis.
It could be who knows. I know the mountain snowtop in that segment was Chris Nolan's nod to OHMSS (and that was Nolan's favorite Bond film).
Big fan of Deaver,but Carte Blanche to me is not Bond
What lunatic asylun did they get you out of?
I also found other cool poster arts of what post-Fleming novels would look like if they were film:
Now, I'm not saying whether this is true or not but it does provide a tantalizing glimpse into why perhaps EON did not want to use any of the non-Fleming books. If so, then I believe they will stick by Cubby's wishes and will never be filmed by the Broccoli's.
It's quite an enjoyable read and is from The Untold Stories of 007 by writer Ronald Payne, a man who wanted to buy the James Bond empire in the early 90s after Cubby Broccoli announced it was up for sale for the asking price of $600,000,000.
http://www.spywise.net/untold2.html
How ironic since some elements of Gardner's Bond ended up on Bond films:
-License Renewed: Anton Murik's obession of weapon somehow became Brad Whitaker for the Living Daylight. Elektra King having Renard to create a nuclear disaster came from License Renewed (Anton Murik plot of a nuclear disaster with the aid of an infamous terrorist, Franco Oliveiro Quesocriado). Also Max Zorin cheating on horse racing is too parallel to Anton Murik's cheating on horse race.
-Role of Honour: the climax to A View to a Kill is too similar to the climax of the novel both involving blimp.
-Colonel Sun: Colonel Tan-Sun Moon in Die Another Day was originally going to be named Sun-Liang Tan before it was renamed. Also the kidnapping of M in TWINE came from the novel also.
Also Gerard said there were other Gardner's influence on Bond films:
If Cubby didn't like Gardner's and Amis Bond novel then how come some of the Bond films are using elements of Gardner's novel more and more. Also EON allowed Gardner to do novelization of LTK and Goldeneye, if Cubby or people at EON really hated Gardner's Bond novel then why allow him to do novelization of those 2 Bond films. The same goes for any novelization for films (Benson did the novelization of TND, TWINE, DAD). Either Cubby seem to have contradict his thought on post Fleming Bond novels or he must be appealing to Fleming purist by doing that, or Reginald Barkshire who wrote the book and allegedly claim on this idea probably lied and turn out Cubby really liked Gardner's Bond book.
I can't remember where I read that, and whether it is true or not is anyone's guess.
Yes, and there was talk from a PR chap at Pinewood when Amis visited the set of TSWLM in September 1976 that he had heard Col Sun as being talked about for a potential future EON film. See Amis' Collected Letters ed. by Zachary Leader for more deatils. Some say Broccoli (then out on his own after the split with Saltzman) had refused to film Col Sun as Amis refused to do requested reviews/articles on the new Bond film for The Times when asked. He did, however, write a review of the novelisation of said film, which can be found on this site, as I posted it there in the Amis thread on 1983-1995 potential Continuation Bond reviews! Also Broccoli was reluctant to film Col Sun post-1976 as reportedly he was nonplussed due to the fact that Amis was not a fan of Roger Moore's interpretation of the James Bond role (unsurprisingly).
Well if someone like Cubby really hated Post-Flemings Bond novel, then AVTAK, TLD shouldn't have used elements from Gardner novels, I could say the same for The World is Not enough when the plotline sort of resemble License Renewed. If I was Cubby and if I really hate Post-Fleming Bond novels then I wouldn't have used element of Gardner's novel in my Bond films. I could say the same for allowing a author I hate to do novelization of that Bond films. That would be like a racist person giving a speech and using a famous quote from Martin Luther King Jr's speech or a racist caucasian marrying a non-caucasian person. So the person who wrote the article claiming Cubby hate Gardner's Bond novels probably never read Gardner's novel because if he did, why did the author not notice or fail to mention that AVTAK, TLD using element of Gardner's Bond novel.
So from what both of you are saying, it looks like Cubby and Saltzman had thought about adapting some of Gardner's novel and Colonel Sun into Bond films, well that's a revelation. Did Kingley Amis really not like Roger Moore Bond at all, first time I've heard of that. I talk to another person @JWESTBROOK on another topic involving adapting post-Fleming Bond novels, he said this to me:
They have the rights to all the official Fleming, and post-Fleming Bond books. They also have rights to all the films, including CR67 and NSNA. So they could, they just don't.
That was 2002, they got the rights to the books when they got the rights to the Casino Royale title after DAD was released.
Eon don't own the properties of the continuation novels, but they own the rights to adapt them, meaning no one else could make the films. They could if they chose to, and of course someone would have to be paid for it.
We've already seen some of the Bond films using element of Gardner's book and Colonel Sun in some of the Bond films. So it's proof enough that EON may used plot and titles of Gardner and other post-Fleming Bond novels in the future.
http://www.thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/
--Dragonpol.
Shaken, but Not Stirred
Ian Fleming’s ninth novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, was published in 1962. Except perhaps for one short episode, it is not a spy story but a mildly touching thrillerish romance, recounted in the first person by the “me” of the title, a nice French-Canadian girl with an unfortunate sexual history. And a nasty current predicament in an Adirondacks motel. A kindly, capable English policeman called James Bond turns up just over half-way through and sorts everything out. Some male reviewers, though no female ones, assailed the book as “unpleasant” and “pornographic” (we’ve come a long way in fifteen years) while in fact disliking the naively patriotic and anti-Soviet attitudes of author and hero without quite caring to put it that way.
Always sensitive to criticism couched in moral terms, Fleming stipulated that this story of his should never be filmed; the title alone might be used. So it has been. A plot in which the baddies’ grand design is burning down the motel for the insurance (admittedly with the heroine thrown in) would in any case hardly have done for a Bond film of the later 1970s: space stations, laser bombs and global takeovers are de rigueur here. There is plenty of that sort of thing in James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me, which is the book of the film The Spy Who Loved Me, out soon.
Christopher Wood is part-author of the screenplay of this film. His Bond is largely unreconstructed, still drinking shaken dry martinis and still alive in spite of being unable to draw and fire his Walther PPK in under three-fifths of a second (even FBI men are expected to manage in one-quarter). M has gone soft, allowing his desk-top to be specially prepared for a briefing demonstration and looking at Bond not without affection. The new “me” is Major Anya Amasova of SMERSH, a sad come-down from her archetype, Corporal Tatiana Romanova in From Russia, with Love. And the chief heavy, one Sigmund Stromberg, an insane pelagiophilic ex-undertaker endearingly bent on sparking off the Third World War, lacks the presence of Goldfinger or Mr Big.
Enough of comparisons: Mr Wood has bravely tackled his formidable task, that of turning a typical late Bond film, which must be basically facetious, into a novel after Ian Fleming, which must be basically serious. To this end he has, by my count, left out nine silly gadgets and sixteen silly cracks which were in the script. He has also left out, to my surprise, a marvellous fight on a train that challenges comparison with the one in From Russia, with Love. The heavy concerned, a seven-and-a-half-footer with steel teeth, name of Jaws, is the best thing in both book and film. Mr Wood is not always exact: Bond, out skiing, muses that you “can lay for a long time in the bottom of a crevasse”-I doubt if even Bond could manage more than a brief lay in such circumstances. But the descriptions are adequate and the action writing excellent.
What nobody could have cut out is the element of second-sight contingency planning (or negligence) that gets by in a film, indeed is very much part of the style of these films, but obtrudes in a book. Your enemy has an explosive motorbike sidecar ready to launch at your car in case he’s forgotten to kill you for certain and in secret a few minutes before. In case that misses, he has already aloft a helicopter fitted with jets and [sic] canon. Your car is submersible in case you meet such a helicopter while driving on a coast road. In case you submerge your car he has a midget submarine waiting. In case he has you have underwater rocket-launchers.
Later, in his super tanker, which is really a giant submarine-trap, your enemy has a revolving gun-emplacement and four inch armoured shutters with machine-gun slits over his control-room in case the submarine crews he’s taken prisoner and forgotten to kill break out of the “brig” and start trying to take over with spare weapons they find in the magazine, where there’s also enough stuff just lying around to build a bomb that’ll blast through the armour-plate. Second-sight sportsmanship?
And earlier - but forget it. You safely can.
New Statesman, 1 July 1977
Double-low-tar 7, Licence to Underkill
Ian Fleming’s last novel, The Man With The Golden Gun, appeared in 1965, a year after its author’s death. I published Colonel Sun: a James Bond Adventure under the pseudonym of Robert Markham in 1968. The next Bond novel, Licence Renewed, by John Gardner, did not come along till 1981. Here now is For Special Services, by the same author.
Quite likely it ill becomes a man placed as I am to say that, whereas its predecessor was bad enough by any reasonable standard, the present offering is an unrelieved disaster all the way from its aptly forgettable title to the photograph of the author-surely an unflattering likeness-on the back of the jacket. If so that is just my bad luck. On the other hand, perhaps I can claim the privilege of at least a momentary venting of indignation at the disrepute into which this publication brings the name and works of Ian Fleming. Let me get something like that said before I have to start being funny and clever and risk letting the thing escape through underkill.
Over the last dozen years the Bond of the books must have been largely overlaid by the Bond of the films, a comic character with lots of gadgets and witty remarks at his disposal. The temptation to let this Bond go the same way must have been considerable, but it has been resisted. Only once is he called upon to round off an action sequence with a yobbo-tickling throwaway of the sort that Sean Connery used to be so good at dropping out of the side of his mouth. No ridiculous feats are required of him. His personal armament seems plausible, his car seems capable of neither flight nor underwater locomotion, his cigarettes in the gunmetal case have the three gold rings and M calls him 007.
Nobody else does, though. The designation is a pure honorific like Warden of the Cinque Ports; some ruling from Brussels or The Hague has put paid to the pristine Double-0 Section and its licence to kill long ago. Even the cigarettes are low-tar. But these and similar changes would hardly show if he had been allowed go keep some other interests and bits of himself, or find new ones. Does he still drink champagne with scrambled eggs and sausages. Wear a lightweight black-and-white dog-tooth check suit in the country? Do twenty slow press-ups each morning? Read Country Life? Ski, play baccarat and golf for high stakes, dive in scuba gear? What happened to that elegant international scene with its grand hotels and yachts? No information.
One thing Bond still does is have girls. There are three in this book, not counting a glimpse of Miss Moneypenny outside M’s door. The first is there just for local colour, around at the start, to be dropped as soon as the wheels start turning. She is called Q�ute because she comes from Q Branch. (Q himself is never mentioned, lives only in the films, belongs body and soul to Cubby Broccoli, the producer). Q’ute is liberated and a champion of feminism. Luckily she has only two lines, but one of these contains a jovial mild obscenity, and a moment later there comes a terrifically subtle reference to the famous moment in the film of Dr No when Bond said, “Something big’s coming up” [sic, actually TSWLM film] in ambiguous circumstances and got the hoped-for laugh from the first audiences, thus, legend says, turning the subsequent films on to their giggly course. When you consider how much the original Bond would have hated these small manifestations of what the world has become since 1960 or so, you might be led to suspect a furtive taking of the piss, but nothing like it occurs again, as if Gardner, not the most self-assured of writers, had repented of his daring.
Bond’s second girl has the cacophonous and uncertainly suggestive name of Cedar Leiter-yes, kin to that Felix Leiter of the CIA whom sharks deprived of an arm and half a leg in Live and Let Die (1954). Cedar is his daughter, a superfluous and unprofitable device that raises the thorniest of all questions, Bond’s age in 1982. Bond keeps his hands off her throughout, perhaps out of scruple but more likely because only a satyromaniac [sic] would find her appealing. She is described as short - a deadly word. An attractive girl may be small, tiny, petite, pocket-sized and such, but never short. Poor Cedar has no style of presence, no skills or accessories, no colour, no shape. And it is this wan creature whom Bond instantly accepts as his partner for the whole of the enterprise. In a Fleming novel - I nearly wrote “in real life” - Bond would have outrun sound getting away from her. To be accurate, of course, he would have done that even if she had been Pussy Galore or Domino Vitali all over again. He knew all about the way women “hang on to your gun-arm” and “fog things up with sex and hurt feelings”. But then that was 1953.
Bond scores all right with the third of the present trio, Nena Bismarquer, née Blofeld and the revengeful daughter of his old enemy, a detail meant to be a stunning revelation near the end but you guess it instantly. Nena-let me find the place-Nena looks fantastic and has incredible black eyes. Her voice is low and clear, with a tantalising trace of accent. She wears exceptionally well-cut jeans and has that special poise which combines all the attributes Bond most admires in a woman. When she sees him first she gives him a smile calculated to make even the most misogynistic male buckle at the knees. As she comes closer, he feels a charge, an unmistakeable chemistry passing between them. From expressions like these you can estimate the amount of trouble Gardner has taken with the figure of Nena and indeed the general level of his performance. It remains to be said about her that she has a long, slender nose and-by nature, not surgery-only one breast, an arresting combination of defects. Nobody really cares when she gets thrown among the pythons of the bayou. Well, there are pythons on this bayou.
There are two other villains round the place about whose villainy no bones are made from the beginning, Nena’s husband Markus and his boyfriend Walter Luxor. One is fat and cherubic, the other of corpse-like appearance, but neither exudes a particle of menace or looks for a moment as if he would be any trouble to kill, and Nena casually knocks them off one after the other on a late page. The three had schemed to steal the computer tapes governing America’s space-satellites, having fed drugged ice-cream to the personnel in charge of them. Bond, brainwashed by other drugs into believing himself to be a US general, is at the head of the party of infiltrators, but a third set of drugs, administered by a suddenly renegade Bismarquer, brings him to himself just in time. This sounds, I know, like a renewed and more radical bid to take the piss, but seen in the context of the whole book and its genesis the absurdity, however gross, is contingent, mere blundering.
I have suggested that For Special Services has little to do with the Bond films. In one sense this is a misfortune. Those films cover up any old implausibility or inconsistency by piling one outrage on another. You start to stay to yourself. [sic] “But he wouldn’t”- or “But they couldn’t”- and before you can finish Bond is crossing the sunward side of the planet Mercury in a tropical suit or sinking a Soviet aircraft-carrier with his teeth. Hardly a page in the book would not have gone smoother for a diversion of this sort. Why, for instance, does the New York gang boss set his hoods on Bond when all he has to do is ask him nicely? The reader is offered no relief from this bafflement.
What makes Mr Gardner’s book so hard to read is not so much its endlessly silly story as its desolateness, its lack of the slightest human interest or warmth. Ian Fleming himself would have conceded that he was not the greatest delineator of character; even so his people have genuine life and substance and many of them both experience and inspire feeling. So far from being “the man who is only a silhouette” Bond is shown to be fully capable of indignation, compunction, remorse, tenderness and a protective instinct towards defenceless creatures. His girls have a liveliness, a tenacity and sometimes a claim on affection beyond the requirements of formula. Most of the Fleming books also have a more or less flamboyant figure assisting Bond and acting as a foil to him, such as Darko Kerim, the Turkish agent in From Russia, with Love, and Enrico Colombo, the virtuous black-marketeer and smuggler in ‘Risico’. By a kind of tradition, however, perhaps started by Buchan with Dominck Medina in The Three Hostages, the main character-interest in this type of novel attaches to the villain. Mr Big, Hugo Drax, Dr No and their like are persons of some size and power. They are made to seem to exist in their own right, to have been operating since long before Bond crossed their paths, rather than to have been run up on the spot for him to practise on. But then to do anything like that the writer must be genuinely interested in his material.
Times Literary Supplement, 17 September 1982
I have pretty much the same feeling as 0013 about Fleming's continuator. I don't really see the point. In any case, I would rather have them use what we still have of original Fleming material for the movies: the Spangs, Gala Brand, General Grubozaboischikov (spelling?), Mr. Hendricks, Hammerstein, the plot of From a View to a Kill, what's left of TMWTGG, etc. I agree with you about The Hildebrand Rarity, I could see the short story at the base of a movie. The Hildebrand Rarity could be the bait/MacGuffen used to get to an elusive villain fascinated by ichthyology.
I like the Serbia angle but would drop a few sub plots and make the villains much more interesting and less weird frankly.
The book introduces a new cocktail, which is fun and the scene where Bond shoots a man as a test of loyalty to Hydt, has a lot of tension.
Devil May Care has a great title and I do the like the twist of the twins but overall it's not Fleming enough.
What's the deal with the rights to Gardner's novels and EON anyone?
Well, if you mean actually do some of the books justice, then there's a lot of Fleming to adapt still.
Eon just mangled the likes of YOLT, Moonraker, Octopussy, pretty much all the Roger Moore films and Diamonds Are Forever.