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Yup, agreed :-).
Could it be that Kevvy's sycophantic flunky is gone now that JP has exposed him/her as a "patent troll"?
Yeah, he made no further comment after what JP posted. Funny that!
Yes, sure, I agree with that too.
OK. Agreed. "Never Say Kevin Again!"
I'd gladly take on that assignment, sir. I'll report back to you when I get the answers!
'Before his collaboration with Ian Fleming, McClory was one of the most in demand young director-producers in Hollywood.' - You sure about that? Remind me again how much 'The Boy And The Bridge' made again?
'Producer Mike Todd hired Kevin for Around the World in Eighty Days. The epic film took three years to make with Kevin directing the picture in Paris, Kuwait, Karachi, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan. When the film’s associate producer, Academy Award winning William Cameron Menzies (Gone With The Wind), developed cancer early on in the production, Kevin was promoted to replace him. The partnership was a great success and McClory quickly became Todd’s right hand man. In deference to the ailing Menzies, Todd asked Kevin to forgo his Associate Producer screen credit. Kevin agreed and in doing so passed up on one of the film’s five Oscars.' - Forwent his Oscar to give it to a bloke with cancer; that's our Kev. What a guy!
'Kevin had been secretly seeing starlet Elizabeth Taylor for some time and following her divorce from Michael Wilding they were free to marry. Todd asked Kevin for an introduction and after a whirlwind courtship McClory was dumped.' - Oh no! What a rotten stroke of luck. Always the bridesmaid hey Kev?
'McClory teamed up with John Steinbeck and Burgess Meredith to begin work on a story for the underwater film.' - Hello! This is a surprisingly candid admission. So the 'original' idea of an underwater action film which was pretty much all Kev brought to the table with Fleming and Whittingham might not have been his all along. Might then the Steinbeck and Meredith families have a claim on some of Kev's 'rights' then? It's a murky old business this intellectual property stuff isn't it Kev?
'As Kevin was editing The Boy and the Bridge , Bryce brought his close friend Ian Fleming to view an early rough cut. Fleming’s literary star was waning' - This couplet is priceless. After 10 minutes of googling I can't find anywhere a single reference to any box office figures for The Boy And The Bridge so to claim Fleming's star was waning right after your own has just turned into a white dwarf seems a bit rich.
'The Irishman told Fleming that none of the books were suited to the screen' - Cubby and Harry begged to differ and the box office for DN, FRWL and GF (not to mention the cinematic brilliance of OHMSS to come), which are all about 85% faithful to the source novels, would seem to concur.
'McClory insisted that they do away with the prohibition on Bond having romantic relations on the job.' - So Bond trying his luck with Solitaire, Gala, Tiffany and Tania (albeit he was under orders there) before the job was done escaped Kev when he was reading Fleming's novels and deciding they were a load of old toss?
"In 1976 it emerged that Broccoli was to use much of Kevin’s property including SPECTRE and Blofeld in his next film The Spy Who Loved Me".
Ok so we're all well aware McClory owned SPECTRE/Blofeld but what else of "Kevin's property" was Cubby planning on using? Anyone?
Oh and this:
"Despite Octopussy’s more favorable release date, it was no match for Never Say Never Again which was a box office smash and remains the better reviewed of the two films."
=))
Does Mr Morgan not realise OP took more money than NSNA and on a smaller budget?
They would probably laugh Morgan out of their room too ;)
The OP box office one is the best. In Mcclory/Morgan work if you can't spin the facts in your favour just blatantly lie.
One film in nearly twenty years. So clearly McClory was a brilliant and sought after Producer just like Morgan claims...
Perhaps if McClory wasn't so hell bent on trying to get a piece of something that didn't belong to him and used his "talent" to produce other films, maybe he could have been remembered for something other than just a bitter and jealous man.
Shame. We barely got to know each other. Did Kevvy suggest that line too?
I'm sure he did. Probably also invented the gunbarrell too. That b***ard Binder must have nicked the idea off him. And he was all ready to hire that new Welsh singing sensation Shelley Bassell until EON came along with their imposter!
Just as NSNA probably helped make OP the better movie, so the unmade Warhead helped TSWLM raise its game.
And I doubt that OHMSS would have been so great as Connery's 4th film, though at least it would make more sense having Bond and Blofeld not recognise each other. In some ways, TB might make more sense coming after OHMSS. Also, TB was slated as the first Bond movie and got bumped due to the screen problems, and I'm happy that Dr No was the first film, history went the right way.
I grew up loathing Kevin McClory, purely from a Bond fan's perspective. That is my beef with the man. He put his own money grubbing interests ahead of the Bond franchise. I am all for business people maxing profits, as that's what they should be doing, but there is also something to be said for artistic merit or even public demand, when it comes to entertainment properties.
IMO there was nothing of any artistic or creative merit to be gleaned from milking the rights to TB beyond the release of the original film and the 10 year license sold to Eon beyond TB.
McClory got fair due, with regards to his involvement with TB and that should have been the end of it.
As a fan I loathe McClory for interfering in the plans to use Blofeld and Spectre in TSWLM.
I think Spy would have been a much better film with Blofeld, rather than the limp Blofeld impersonator Stromberg. If McClory had attempted to renew the rights deal he had with Eon, that might have been an honorable approach, but I am not aware that he attempted any such thing. Rather it appears he wanted to hit a home run with another big Blofeld/TB Bond film of his own.
McClory may have been exercising his legal right to Blofeld and Spectre yadda yadda, but he can't have it both ways. The fall out is that he is mostly universally loathed by Bond fandom. We resent the roadblocks he put in the way of the production company that had been very successfully driving the Bond movie franchise.
McClory's attempts to continue to cash in on his rights with dubious projects and claims is infuriating to the fandom.
What would have been more palatable from a fan's perspective, would have been if McClory had continued to work with Eon in licensing his limited rights to the broader franchise.
This approach would have had artistic merit. IMO true artists put the art first, not the money. If you do things right, often the money follows anyway and in even greater amounts, than if crass commercial considerations had been given first priority.
I am a huge Sean Connery fan, but I do not like the film NSNA. It's a limp Bond effort. Sean looked great, had his moments, but its a generally a flat effort by Sean in a flat Bond film. Flat that is, compared to what Eon was doing with the franchise. ie OP is a far superior Bond film than NSNA is IMO.
Personally I would trade NSNA and wipe it from the record, for McClory continuing to have licensed his rights to Eon.
In that sense, with the benefit of much hindsight, I'd trade NSNA and a less than thrilling performance from Sean for a TSWLM film featuring Blofeld and Spectre.
McClory is rightly villified by fans, primarily for his post 1975 antics.
1) It's not surprising you have a better opinion of McClory than others here : after all, Never Say Never Again is a bit Gustav Graves preparing a James Bond movie in 1980/1981 :) "Budget is not a problem ! Take all the oscars-winning, oscar-nominees actors and technicians you can get, and I want the director of the most successful movie ever of this year".
Indeed list the cast and the crew of NSNA, the number of nominations and wins at the time of the movie is impressive (even Skyfall has less overall). And Irvin Kershner had just done the Empire Strikes Back !
Well, it turns out that stellar cast and stellar crew is not enough (even though I like a lot the beginning of the movie).
2) I won't comment in deep the frontpage paper about McClory, I was involved in a James Bond fan club a long time ago and I know what it means to discuss publicly legal battles in this case :) I just would like to point out one very little part of this paper.
"[Legal right and Sean Connery] were not enough to make this Bond movie a Bond movie. No gun barrel, no James Bond theme, (...)"
Ah, remember, for months, we've kept reading by several posters here how anyone "needing" the gunbarrel and/or the Bond theme in a Bond movie was not really a Bond fan but rather some young stupid lazy moviegoer :) So talking about McClory creates some passion, but also seems to force some to finally remember Bond movies are also made of some iconic elements ! And now the iconic Blofeld is back as a possibility...
3) OP benefited from NSNA ! The "Battle of the Bonds" was discussed quite a lot in the media... And both were very successful at the box office.
But the Bond films became so successful that anyone who had even the smallest claim decided to sue and get a piece of the action. Note that people do not sue when films flop (which DN could easily have done).
When TB script was dropped though, Fleming and his legal, with benefit of hindsight mind you, really should have got Kevin and Jack to sign off on his book. Just to be safe.