MI6 looks back at Lee Goldberg's "Making the James Bond Films" written during the 25th anniversary year of James Bond's cinematic adventures...

Making The James Bond Films (Part 2) - By Lee Goldberg
22nd June 2005

Lee Goldberg interviewed those involved with bringing Bond to the big-screen back in 1987, when the cinematic 007 series was celebrating it's 25th anniversary and the introduction of the fourth James Bond actor... Click here to read Part 1.

"Live and Let Die," besides being Moore's premiere outing, was also the first 007 film noticeably influenced by the competition. It was written when "blacksploitation" movies were the rage, thanks to the success of "Shaft" and "Superfly." So this time, the villains were black, the caper involved drugs, and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney was hired to give 007 a hot title tune. The ploy back-fired. By the time "Live and Let Die" came out in 1973, the blacksploitation craze was dead and the film, by trying so desperately to be trendy, came off looking tired and out-of-step. Only the song was a hit. "The Man With The Golden Gun" came next, and was generally considered to be small-scale and unimaginative in comparison with early 007 films. It performed badly by Bond standards at the boxoffice and took a critical drubbing. Variety, the bible of the entertainment industry, said the film was placid and Bond himself had become stale. "At this rate, the (next) film might be phoned in."

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The James Bond phenomenon, it seemed, might finally be ebbing. Clearly, something had to be done. Producer Albert R. Broccoli bought out partner Harry Saltzman and took on the naysayers with a vengeance. "The Man With The Golden Gun" cost $7 million; for "The Spy Who Loved Me," Broccoli doubled the budget. If "The Man With The Golden Gun" was small in scope than "The Spy Who Loved Me" would be gigantic.

Above: Lee Goldberg

Broccoli turned to the most extravagant Bond film, "You Only Live Twice," virtually lifted the entire plot, and embellished the whole thing with elaborate special effects and gadgetry. The future of 007 was riding on a steel-toothed villain named Jaws, a sports car-turned-submarine, and Roger Moore, who was heartily encouraged to run wild." It worked. "The Spy Who Loved Me" made $78 million, twice as much as "The Man With The Golden Gun." and the critics loved it. "I think after Man With the Golden Gun we started letting a little more of my humour creep in," says Moore. "The first two Bonds I did were a little experimental, but with 'The Spy Who Loved Me,' I think we found the right ingredients, the right level of humour, the right approach."

By now George Lucas and Steven Speilberg were setting box-office records with "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Broccoli apparently felt threatened by the young upstarts, and the special-effects savvy audience they were creating. With "Moonraker," it was as if he was trying to prove he could do it bigger and better than they could.

"Moonraker" was a special effects spectacular involving stolen space shuttles (which were still a few years away from being a reality) and climaxing with a laser battle at the villain's orbiting space colony. It cost $30 million, twice as much as "The Spy Who Loved Me." And while it did out-of- this-world business, $87 million worth, it didn't wow the fans.

"I can understand a Bond purist saying 'God they ruined him,' but I think the Bond films have changed properly with the times," says Tom Mankiewicz, writer of "Live and Let Die," and co-writer of "Diamonds Are Forever," and "The Man With the Golden Gun." "The moment that gadgetry appeared in 'Goldfinger,' the audience went bananas," says Mankiewicz. "It was as if the producers were then under an obligation to make each picture bigger, a little more filled with gadgetry, until the audience came to expect that from Bond." Despite "Moonraker"'s financial success, producers Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, his stepson, realized it was time to bring 007 back to earth. "You try different ways to go and I think with 'Moonraker' we went that direction about as far as we could," says Wilson.

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They tried to reverse the trend by toughening Bond up in "For Your Eyes Only" and concentrating on the espionage rather than the special effects. But it didn't work artisitcally. "We tried to go back to the earlier films with 'For Your Eyes Only,' but we didn't have Sean Connery to make it real." says Maibaum, who co-wrote the script with Wilson. "Roger does what I consider unforgivable: he spoofs himself and he spoofs the part," says Maibaum. "When you start doing that, the audience stops laughing. The most important thing in the Bond pictures is a pretense of seriousness."

The next adventure was "Octopussy," the Bond film Moore feels best exemplifies his approach to 007. "I think we reached a peak with Octopussy, which was very outrageous," Moore says. "What we were saying to the audience was 'Look, you've been seeing these things for 22 years and they are intended to be fun and we want you to laugh with us, not at us."

"The Bond situations to me are so ridiculous, so outrageous. I mean, this man is supposed to be a spy and yet everybody knows he's a spy," Moore adds. "Every bartender in the world offers him martinis that are shaken and not stirred. What kind serious spy is recognized everywhere he goes? It's outrageous. So, I think you have to treat the humour outrageously as well."

Because "Octopussy" was so much a reflection of Roger Moore, it served as a strong counter point to Sean Connery's rival Bond film, "Never Say Never Again." Connery's film was a remake of "Thunderball," the exclusive rights to which Broccoli lost in a lengthy and complicated court battle. "Never Say Never Again" portrayed Bond as an elder agent, put out to pasture by a new regime running the secret service, but he was still as hard-edged as ever. The actual competition between Connery and Moore, now no longer a philosophical issue but a real box-office battle, seemed to put the hotly debated question "who is the real Bond?" to rest. Audiences flocked to see both. And although "Octopussy" beat "Never Say Never Again" at the boxoffice, they were both extremely successful.

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Moore returned for one more, "A View to a Kill," and then said he was finished. "Roger realized it was time for a change," says Wilson, "time to get off the treadmill." The producers didn't argue with him. Suspending disbelief is one thing, but it was getting pretty hard for audiences to swallow a 57-year-old 007. Besides, Moore's pricetag was getting pretty steep -- reportedly over $3 million a picture.

At first, the producers toyed with a radical reaction against the aged, tongue-in-cheek 007 Moore has come to represent. Wilson and Maibaum crafted a story that would take Bond back to his origins, to his very first adventure as a spy.

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"We thought as long as we were changing Bond, why not go for a younger man?" Wilson says. Some younger actors were auditioned, though he won't say who they were, and he co- wrote a detailed story outline with Maibaum. "We had some very good things in it," Maibaum says. "But (Broccoli) felt the audience doesn't pay to see James Bond as an amateur. Naturally, if you tell that story, you have to show him making mistakes and how he learned his trade. It cuts out to many of the things the audience enjoys watching Bond do." So the writers scrapped that treatment and began a new one which eventually evolved into "The Living Daylights." They didn't know who would be Bond, but knowing it wasn't Roger Moore gave them some freedom. "I think with Roger, the films were more of a romp, it was fun action/adventure," says Wilson. Moore admittedly couldn't be ruthless convincingly, so the writers had to take that into account. Now they didn't. Now they could get tough. "Roger brought a certain style to the films, his style, and we had to write scenes a certain way to fit that style."

Timothy Dalton was the first choice for the role, but he was tied up indefinitely with "The Taming of the Shrew" on the London Stage. The producers signed Pierce Brosnan instead, but when NBC renewed his TV series "Remington Steele," he was forced to give up the part. Luckily, Dalton was now available and was quickly hired.

Dalton wants his characterization to come closer to Ian Fleming's literary Bond and be less of a superman and more of a human being. That's fine with the writers. "I happen to think that Timothy Dalton gives us a new lease on life," says Maibaum. "We can go back to the more realistic espionage stories rather than the far out fantasy stories."

But still, it's a James Bond movie, and much of what audiences love about them is the formula they all know so well. How much longer can the formula last before audiences get bored of it?

"We are in the same position as the members of the U.S House of Representatives. Every two years they come up for re-election," Wilson says. "Every two years we come out with a new Bond film. People go to the box-office and vote. We are either voted back in or we aren't."

"There's no reason the Bonds can't go on forever." says Maibaum, "Some characters are immortal -- Robin Hood, The Three Musketeers, Sherlock Holmes ... and now, James Bond."

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Republished courtesy of Lee Goldberg, images courtesy of Amazon associates.