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CATCHING BULLETS - Memoirs of a Bond Fan
CatchingBullets
facebook.com/catchingbullets
Introducing a brand new 007 book out September 2012....
CATCHING BULLETS - MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN
by Mark O'Connell
Published by Splendid Books
www.splendidbooks.co.uk
Available September 2012
Foreword by MARK GATISS
Afterword by MAUD ADAMS
From the offbeat vantage point of a teenager whose grandfather was chauffeur to legendary 007 producer Cubby Broccoli, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan is a love-letter to James Bond, Duran Duran title songs and bolting down your tea quick enough to watch Roger Moore falling out of a plane without a parachute.
When Jimmy O'Connell took a job as chauffeur for 007 producers Eon Productions, it would not just be Cubby Broccoli, Roger Moore and Sean Connery he would drive to James Bond - his grandson Mark swiftly hitches a metaphorical ride too.
In Catching Bullets - Memoirs of a Bond Fan - Mark O'Connell takes us on a humorous journey of filmic discovery where Bond films fire like bullets at a Thatcher era childhood, closeted adolescence and adult life as a comedy writer still inspired by that Broccoli movie magic.
“Mark O’Connell is a great new writing talent and we are delighted to be publishing his first book,” says Splendid Books’ Editorial Director Shoba Vazirani. “Catching Bullets is very funny and he brings a genuinely new insight into the Bond film phenomena. “The book is a fascinating journey, in which Mark reconsiders all the Bond films as they fire into his and everyone’s cinema-going memories.”
Furthermore, writer and actor Mark Gatiss - star of the BBC drama Sherlock - has penned the foreword to Catching Bullets. “We are absolutely delighted that Mark Gatiss, who is a huge Bond fan, has written a superbly witty and incisive foreword,” says Shoba Vazirani.
“Author Mark O’Connell has penned a very funny, interesting and poignant book in Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan and Mark Gatiss’ foreword complements it perfectly.”
In addition former Bond girl Maud Adams, who starred with Roger Moore in the 007 film Octopussy has contributed an afterword to the book. “To have Mark Gatiss and Maud Adams flanking the shoulders of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan is a true honour,” says Mark O’Connell.
Order here http://www.splendidbooks.co.uk/books/catching-bullets-memoirs-of-a-bond-fan/
Check out the book on Facebook and writer Mark O'Connell on Twitter @Mark0Connell
CATCHING BULLETS - MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN
by Mark O'Connell
Published by Splendid Books
www.splendidbooks.co.uk
Available September 2012
Foreword by MARK GATISS
Afterword by MAUD ADAMS
From the offbeat vantage point of a teenager whose grandfather was chauffeur to legendary 007 producer Cubby Broccoli, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan is a love-letter to James Bond, Duran Duran title songs and bolting down your tea quick enough to watch Roger Moore falling out of a plane without a parachute.
When Jimmy O'Connell took a job as chauffeur for 007 producers Eon Productions, it would not just be Cubby Broccoli, Roger Moore and Sean Connery he would drive to James Bond - his grandson Mark swiftly hitches a metaphorical ride too.
In Catching Bullets - Memoirs of a Bond Fan - Mark O'Connell takes us on a humorous journey of filmic discovery where Bond films fire like bullets at a Thatcher era childhood, closeted adolescence and adult life as a comedy writer still inspired by that Broccoli movie magic.
“Mark O’Connell is a great new writing talent and we are delighted to be publishing his first book,” says Splendid Books’ Editorial Director Shoba Vazirani. “Catching Bullets is very funny and he brings a genuinely new insight into the Bond film phenomena. “The book is a fascinating journey, in which Mark reconsiders all the Bond films as they fire into his and everyone’s cinema-going memories.”
Furthermore, writer and actor Mark Gatiss - star of the BBC drama Sherlock - has penned the foreword to Catching Bullets. “We are absolutely delighted that Mark Gatiss, who is a huge Bond fan, has written a superbly witty and incisive foreword,” says Shoba Vazirani.
“Author Mark O’Connell has penned a very funny, interesting and poignant book in Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan and Mark Gatiss’ foreword complements it perfectly.”
In addition former Bond girl Maud Adams, who starred with Roger Moore in the 007 film Octopussy has contributed an afterword to the book. “To have Mark Gatiss and Maud Adams flanking the shoulders of Catching Bullets: Memoirs of a Bond Fan is a true honour,” says Mark O’Connell.
Order here http://www.splendidbooks.co.uk/books/catching-bullets-memoirs-of-a-bond-fan/
Check out the book on Facebook and writer Mark O'Connell on Twitter @Mark0Connell
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Comments
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Ask away.
I am VERY pleased with the cover. It is so hard to do something new as you try for something deliberately vintage but the designers really pulled this one out of the metal rimmed hat.
To answer your question, it is now available from the publishers (www.splendidbooks.co.uk), and the likes of Amazon, iTunes, Kindle and all good stockists.
http://www.mi6community.com/index.php?p=/discussion/3171/memoirs-of-a-bond-fan#Item_5
The best thing about being a Bond fan this year is the abundance of new literature we have available to us. The worst in my case is that my wife insists on buying them as Christmas presents from the family so that I get something I want.
This one is already in a drawer ready for Dec 25th and I'm looking forward to it.
But why I really like this book is not just the nostalgic identification, tons of 007 trivia or intelligent analysis of the films, it's the humour that's every page that is both warm and genuinely very funny, the line about "James Bond deflowering more than just Kananga's poppy fields" will keep me chuckling for weeks.
I would recommend this book to everyone on this site because we can all identify with the trials and tribulations of growing up as a James Bond fan, even if we can't claim to have such a fantastic connection to the EON family.
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/film/2012/09/26/gay-author-celebrates-james-bond-just-time-bond-day-and-skyfall
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.476873975676290.111179.407779922585696&type=3
http://www.splendidbooks.co.uk/news/celebrating-50-years-of-james-bond-with-a-great-free-to-enter-competition/
And for all news on CATCHING BULLETS, its great reviews and a look at Harrods' new SKYFALL frontage then check out the Facebook page...
https://www.facebook.com/catchingbullets?ref=ts&fref=ts
DISCLAIMER : No straight people were injured during the making of this broadcast.
(Podcast #61)
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/homolab/id408246771
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/17/james-bond-mark-oconnell-dad
WARNING - the following article may contain traces of Roger Moore!
I don't know what you mean (!?).
No, I too am VERY pleased with the cover. We are getting a few requests now to sell it as a poster.
John Cork (co-author, JAMES BOND - THE LEGACY) has penned a review of CATCHING BULLETS - MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN
FUN, PASSIONATE AND ODDLY MOVING, A MEMOIR THROUGH MOVIES...
Mark O'Connell's memoir-cum-Bond love letter arrives with some heady endors
ements. Barbara Broccoli (producer of the Bond films with Michael G. Wilson) -- "a wonderfully funny and touching memoir" -- and Maud Adams (Bond girl from The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and, if you really know where to look, a cameo in A View to a Kill) -- "warm, funny and only ever complimentary."
Mark comes to Bond from a unique perspective. Like most Bond fans, he was smitten near adolescence, but he had a further connection--his grandfather was the personal chauffer of Albert R. Broccoli, a name that has appeared on every Bond film save two (Casino Royale, '67 and Never Say Never Again). Mark reviews the films mostly in the order in which he saw them, telling an abridged story of his life using the movies as touchstones. This one conceit makes this book stand out above the crowd.
The book is an easy, fun read, but filled with numerous astute observations. Mark, himself a professional comedy writer, enjoys the humor and absurdity of Bond's world, and this shows in his prose. He has fun with language, at one point calling Bond "spychedelic escapism." That can only be read with a smile on one's face! The films are "bullets." A gathering of Bond fans is a "Royale." He refers to the decade of 007's birth as "the 60s(tm)." I've read more reviews and essays on the Bond films than I care to admit, but Mark's passion for (most of) the films and life in general helps this book tremendously. He knows not just about 007, but he knows how to write it down cleverly.
Where the book really takes off is when Mark allows himself to explore his own story and that of his family. Quite frankly, as much as I enjoyed reading his thoughts on the Bond films, I much preferred reading about Mark's journey, his childhood, teen years and his coming into (and coming out in) adulthood. I wish there had been more. The emotional excitement of discovery of a Bond film screening on TV, the hand-drawn posters, the thrill of finding an article in a magazine, Mark describes these wonderfully.
Despite its breezy tone, the book is remarkable accurate in the details. There are a handful of exceptions that I'll note for the purists. Few will notice when Mark attributes a scene setting to "(Felix) Leiter's New York apartment" that it is actually a suite at the Royal Orleans hotel (made famous by a Led Zeppelin song about transvestites and a hotel fire). Fewer will care that one Bond girl's bruises came not from "belt straps," but a whip made from the tail of a stingray. Some will wince when they read a more overt typo, "This is a Bond bullet lensed by the man who shot one of Steven Spielberg's most influential films (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962)." Mark must have intended to write "David Lean." Sometimes, Mark writes a bit past clarity. He notes that Sean Connery "announced his departure before shooting was complete" on You Only Live Twice. Mark is referring to Connery announcing he would not continue to play Bond in future 007 films. Connery did complete filming You Only Live Twice and supported the film. Later, Mark mentions working with an a stuntman "before he went off to die in a submarine for The World is not Enough." If the reader knows the film--and its production history--there will likely be little confusion that the stuntman lived, but still.
Asian geography may not be Mark's strongest subject. O'Connell writes, "When Bond is allegedly gunned down by a Japanese agent," he refers to a scene where a "Chinese girl" (as she is described in dialog) helps stage 007's death in Hong Kong. A quick review of the scene would have even allowed him to correct the dialog from the scene ("very best duck," not, "good duck."). Later, Mark writes about a scene on a Japanese beach in Die Another Day. The scene is set in Korea.
Mark stumbles over the dialog from Licence To Kill when he claims Pam Bouvier wonders why "I can't be your secretary?" The line is reversed; she is asking why Bond can't be her secretary.
Lest anyone be deterred by the above nitpicking, it comes in contrast to some laugh-out-loud fun. Writing about The Man with the Golden Gun, Mark states, "It would be nearly 30 years and The Fellowship of the Rings (2001) before Christopher Lee lived again in a rock with a dwarf kicking at his heels."
In other places, Mark makes acute points. He pins down a key emotional arc issue (such as they are in most Bond films) with GoldenEye. He accurately identifies the best line of dialog ever uttered in a Bond film, and no, it's not the iconic, "Bond, James Bond," but one that when you read what Mark has to say about it, you realize just how right he is. There is even some prescient writing about Judi Dench as M: "if you have Judi Dench as a recurring actor in your series of films, you use her," he states. Then he goes on to speculate about, "turning a 007 film into [a]...road-movie curio where Bond and M pair up for a mission and share driving." This was written before Skyfall, and I would love to have seen the expression on Mark's face when Bond and M started wheeling down the road in the Aston Martin together in that film!
While the book celebrates the Bond films more than analyzes them, occasionally Mark goes off with both barrels, and this is a beautiful thing! Even if you love, for example, the score to GoldenEye, you can also appreciate Mark's viscous pen stabbing away at it. "If there was a bad Sting cover act, then "Experience of Love" would be its encore." "It would be better to have no James Bond Theme than hear it slain on a kettle drum and kazoo for innovation's sake." And it gets better, but buy the book for the rest!
The Bond series has been honored in print many times. Many are large, coffee-table volumes packed with lovely images. Others are serious, academic analyses. There are biographies of key players, production histories and wise-cracking pocket guides. All have their place. Three I have co-authored. But Mark's book stands out for its unique link to the notion of growing up with Bond, of finding your own journey while embracing a hero of your youth. Some anonymous author opining about the virtues of some 80s Bond film can be generic. When one understands the emotional vulnerability of the child who viewed it, and the sense of escape that film offered, it ceases to matter whether you, the reader, enjoyed it or not. When the story is well-told, you understand it.
That is what fiction offers to us at its best - a way to interpret our lives. Fiction is the loves we want, the adventures we can't have, the deaths we will cheat, the lives we will never lead. It is the counter-point to our existence, the dreams we have with our eyes open. Mark captures a bit of that in this love-letter to 007. One feels after reading, that the Bond films aren't bullets, but kisses from a not-so secret lover who comes around every couple of years to add spice to Mark O'Connell's life, and to ours.
Thanks Emilio!
My love of Bond started in the 60s, a little earlier than Mark's, but he beautifully captures what it means to be a Bond fan and the links that the Bond enthusiasm can have with the highs and lows of our real lives over decades.
Highly recommended.
nooo, thank you for writing it, I am reading little by little as I don't want to finish it, and being probably close in age and therefore experience on Bond's, I can totally connect. :)
http://markoconnell.co.uk/?p=335