|
I read the first half of the series a number of years ago, then re-read that and finished it late last year and early this year, so I'll follow with interest.
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2018 21:57
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jun 25, 2025 02:11 |
|
|
Fleming was actually opposed to Connery before he saw the movie; his preferred choice was supposedly Richard Todd, but he changed his mind when he saw Dr No which is what convinced him to add in Bond's Scottish heritage.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2018 00:39
|
|
|
Fleming had a number of influences; his plotting and characters, for instance, were quite heavily influenced by adventure writers like John Buchan and Eric Ambler. But I think his prose style is influenced mainly by Raymond Chandler Maybe with a bit of Mickey Spillane, though it's obviously not hardboiled like Spillane was.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2018 19:10
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:The later books definitely take inspiration from detective fiction. The biggest difference is probably that Bond is a dude with very particular tastes obsessed with eating fine food and drink and taking full advantage of his unlimited mission budget, so in between finding clues and interrogating people he’s waxing poetic on fine dining and drinking absolutely dangerous amounts of whiskey. Appropriately enough, there is a point (and it's not a spoiler or even plot relevant so hopefully you won't mind me posting it - I'll delete this if you like since it's your thread) in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where M has a discussion with Bond which somehow leads to Bond remarking that he enjoys reading Nero Wolfe novels. 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 27, 2018 21:05
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:In the films, Miss Moneypenny has gone through as many actor changes as Bond himself. Arguably the most famous depiction is from the late Lois Maxwell, who portrayed her from Dr. No all the way through A View To A Kill. Just as Roger Moore left the role due to being Grandpa Bond at that time, Lois Maxwell was replaced by the younger Caroline Bliss for the two Timothy Dalton films. Pierce Brosnan got yet another modernization with the very appropriately named Samantha Bond, easily recognizable by her short 90s haircut. The current Eve Moneypenny is by far the most dramatic change, a young black woman played by Naomie Harris who actually gets out in the field. Piece of trivia about Moneypenny and specifically about Lois Maxwell: in the mid-1960s, after the Eon movies had made Bond one of what Adam West called "the three B's" of the decade (along with the Beatles and Batman), one of the innumerable parodies was an Italian movie called O.K. Connery, which starred Sean Connery's younger brother, Neil, as a doctor who has to step in when an unnamed James Bond is killed in action. Maxwell played "Miss Maxwell", the agent who recruits him. I mention this largely because she later estimated that she was paid more for this one role than she was for all of her appearances in the Eon movies put together.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2018 17:08
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:While I would normally keep the summary going, I really love how this line is written. Considering that this was Fleming's first ever book and he mostly wrote it in one shot while drinking heavily, the man had a natural way with words. It's interesting to look at his influences. I mentioned Chandler previously, and I think Casino Royale is probably the most Chandleresque of all his books.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2018 14:59
|
|
|
Payndz posted:Fleming was apparently quite heavily into sado-masochism, specifically the 'sado' part. Which makes what he puts Bond through during the series interesting if Bond really is an author avatar. Suppressed switch tendencies, maybe? Sure, they were all into that kind of stuff in all those public schools, weren't they? For instance, while I personally don't believe that David Cameron had anything to do with a dead pig head, surely the fact that everyone's reaction was, "Yeah, I can buy that," is perhaps edifying in its own right. 
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 16:26
|
|
|
"SPECTRE? Really, M; back in Eton, we used to line up three or four of Blofeld's sort, make 'em bend over and use 'em as a toast rack!"
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 21:00
|
|
|
That's very interesting - I hadn't heard of Popov before and the only "real James Bond" that I was aware of was Sidney Reilly.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 21:22
|
|
|
Anyone interested in Reilly who hasn't seen it should check out the ITV series Reilly: Ace of Spies from 1983, starring Sam Neill as Sidney Reilly. It's good stuff.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 9, 2018 23:36
|
|
|
Amusingly, despite being almost as big as the movie, "Skyfall" couldn't quite make it to number one on the UK charts. It peaked at number two, matching the previous series best set in 1985 by Duran Duran, when "A View To a Kill" got stuck at number two behind "19" by Paul Hardcastle (it was Duran Duran's second number-one hit in America after "The Reflex" the previous year). Conversely, "Writing's On the Wall" was the first Bond theme to make it to number one in the UK singles chart! It probably got there because pre-release anticipation for Spectre was huge when it was released, so it enjoyed this massive debut but then sputtered out a bit and despite technically outperforming "Skyfall" by that one measure and equalling it at the Oscars, it really seems like a disappointment in retrospect. It reflects its movie.
Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Jul 18, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2018 22:46
|
|
|
Oh, dear. I think if you rank the five most  things in the James Bond novels, that "sweet tang of rape" thing has to be at the top or near it.(I know you asked for no spoilers, but I could rank what I think are the other four beneath spoiler tags?)
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 17:07
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:My only conditions are "No context" and "Not that one chapter title in Live & Let Die because we need to see that one live." That might be a wee bit difficult but let me see. 5) The death of Doctor No - Doctor No 4) Scaramanga butchers a snake and eats it raw - The Man With the Golden Gun 3) The entire portrayal of African-Americans but particularly that one chapter title - Live and Let Die 2) "Koreans were the only race lower than apes" and "Homosexuals are destroying society" - Goldfinger 1) "The sweet tang of rape" - Casino Royale No doubt there are some I've just forgotten. Those are the most moments for me, though. If any of those gives too much away let me know and I'll delete them.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 17:53
|
|
|
It's interesting how this book is structured. The climax of the story is Le Chiffré kidnapping and torturing Bond and any of the later books would have tied things up fairly promptly afterwards, so all of this denouement really makes it stand apart.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 15:21
|
|
|
That GNR cover is fine until Axl Rose bawls "Gimme some reggae!" and then it is hilarious. This book - I read it years ago when I was too young to really understand racism. I read it again last year and it is one of those books that is racist in such a clueless fashion that it is sometimes more  than just (disclaimer: it is this most of the time).Anyway, I shall look forward to this. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Aug 7, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 23:28
|
|
|
Shirec posted:I assume it's at least not going to get up to HP Lovecraft levels of racism They're both equally racist but Fleming comes off more like your racist grandfather than Lovecraft's mortal terror of everyone who isn't white.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2018 08:12
|
|
|
I suspect Fleming never met many African-Americans. Most of the black people he knew were Jamaican. I think there's a subtle distinction in his attitudes towards African-Americans and Jamaicans which comes through in his writing. To be clear, he's enormously racist towards both of them (when I say subtle, I mean very subtle) but there's a different attitude underlying it. It's actually potentially a worse one because his position seems to be that black Americans have been dealt a bad hand by history and they have the potential to be as successful as whites but black Jamaicans are naturally happier to live under the wise and enlightened rule of the British.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 8, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:The pub menu is an extremely British reference to toad in the hole, a British dish made from sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter. The origin of the name is still unknown and will probably never be known. I wonder if it has some connection to the origin of the term "toady" to describe a sycophant, which I believe derived from the practice of men who would swallow live toads as part of medicine shows (so they could be miraculously "cured" by whatever coloured water the mountebank was claiming would even counteract a toad's poison). Anyway, I think I know what's coming in the next chapter and don't envy you.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 17:08
|
|
|
Darth Walrus posted:I think the origin is much simpler - the original (which used a small piece of beef rather than a sausage) looked like a partially submerged toad. (Disclaimer: I don't like Yorkshire pudding so I've never had one. )
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 17:14
|
|
|
It occurs to me that there's at least one thing this book has over the film adaptation: J.W. Pepper is nowhere in sight.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 13, 2018 16:46
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I like the book version more than the film version, as awesome as Yaphet Kotto is. That office reminds me quite a bit of Bumpy Jonas's headquarters from Shaft. You know which character the novel versions of Mr Big reminds me of a little? Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, who Fleming was familiar with and apparently (though I've no confirmation) enjoyed.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 16:47
|
|
|
It is kind of amusing in itself to see Roger Moore, who seems like the most staid Englishman alive, dropped into the middle of a blaxploitation movie with guys saying, "Take this honky out back and waste 'im!" and he replies, "Waste me? Is that bad?"
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 17:24
|
|
|
Likewise, the action climax of this book is transferred to the film version of For Your Eyes Only.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 14, 2018 19:13
|
|
|
Xotl posted:For authors who weren't interested in that kind of moderating angle (say, with Spillane and Mike Hammer), you're in for quite the alien viewpoint. Hammer, for instance, loathes transexuals; the way Spillane writes about them makes them sound like one of the greatest abominations imaginable. (Hammer actually might make for a neat Let's Read, actually). I have generally enjoyed what Hammer I've read, but a lot of the time it reads like a parody of the kind of hardboiled style developed by Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald etc.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2018 23:08
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:This scene is placed in License to Kill, the second and final Timothy Dalton film. The villain, Sanchez, sends his men to perform the deed while Leiter is on his honeymoon; it also includes the rape and murder of his wife, of course. And the lead henchman was Benicio Del Toro. These days, I tend to assume that the screenwriter wrote the script immediately after seeing Lethal Weapon because it really does feel like a Lethal Weapon movie more than a Bond one. One point I remember confusing me when I first read this book, years ago, was Bond thinking about Leiter as "the Texan with whom he had shared so many adventures." I honestly wasn't sure if there were meant to be other stories that went in between this and Casino Royale because otherwise it doesn't really seem like they've had "so many adventures" together.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2018 17:43
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I'll talk about it more when we get to that story, but For Your Eyes Only was the only Moore film to really step away from the campiness and super suaveness. I can't think of any darker moment for Moore's Bond than this scene. Yes, Moore really disliked that scene from what I recall reading. I think that and the scene in A View To a Kill where Christopher Walken is mowing guys down with a machine gun were two of his least favourite scenes in any of the Bond movies he did.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2018 10:59
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Things Fleming doesn't know Any black people who don't call him, "Sir."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2018 21:53
|
|
|
I like how the subtitle on that later edition cover - "The world's toughest secret agent tangles with America's most ruthless crook" - almost makes it look like some sort of crossover.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2018 20:20
|
|
|
This scene isn't in the film version of Live and Let Die, bit it does reappear in the film version of For Your Eyes Only, when Bond and Melina Havelock are tied up to be dragged over a reef behind the villain's yacht.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 10, 2018 22:17
|
|
|
sebmojo posted:It also has the best Bond assassination attempt ever. Is that the one where Drax's men try to drop the white cliffs of Dover on him? That one's great.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 23, 2018 21:16
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:You don't really see these much any more. They're a casual tie in 1950s Britain, meant more for time out cycling or hunting in the countryside with a tweed suit; because of the way the knitting is done, they're usually flat and rectangular on the bottom and look very odd without your jacket buttoned over it. Combined with the loafers, Bond is taking a distinctively casual look equivalent to showing up for a wedding with no tie, your top buttons unbuttoned, and boat shoes without socks. I am almost certain there's an episode of Miami Vice where Crockett attends
|
|
#
¿
Sep 28, 2018 17:54
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Not necessarily the "Big dude with deformities" thing, but the idea of bad guys being ugly and gross or deformed keeps up. Most likely inherited from pulp fiction like the old Sexton Blake story papers and boys' adventure magazines which Fleming could well have read as a child.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2018 22:51
|
|
|
Before he became a novelist, Fleming was a travel writer for the Sunday Times and also the editor for their international correspondents.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2018 08:46
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Britain was still using the Fahrenheit scale at this time. As a Floridan, the idea of 70 degrees being "quite warm" makes me concerned for the British constitution. And it's not like Fleming wouldn't have had a notion of temperature given how much time he spent in Jamaica.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2018 15:35
|
|
|
"Holly Goodhead" would be the worst Bond girl name if not for the existence of "Plenty O'Toole". "Pussy Galore" is borderline.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
Selachian posted:Christmas Jones says hi. (And yes, I know, moves, not books.) I place Christmas Jones below the other two because her name isn't intrinsically a sex joke, it just sets one up (granted, a really, really, really bad one).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2018 19:33
|
|
|
Servoret posted:Could somebody really go from being a nobody to a knighthood in five years in 1950 Britain? Class stratification wouldn't keep Drax out of M's gentleman's club? Drax is a famous industrialist who is apparently on very friendly terms with the government and it's ultimately the government who decides gets the honours. Although it's a particular form of corruption which is perhaps more readily associated with recent governments, there had been a pre-war "cash for honours" scandal in the early 1920s when it was revealed that a political fixer named Maundy Gregory had sold peerages on behalf of David Lloyd George in exchange for payments into Lloyd George's private war chest. So the idea of someone rich enough just slipping a government minister a few thousand pounds to get his name on the list would have been far from inconceivable to Fleming or his readers.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 3, 2018 23:41
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:Sean Connery had already left the series by the time Diamonds Are Forever was adapted into the next Bond film for a 1971 release, but before On Her Majesty's Secret Service could even be released George Lazenby announced that he was through with the part after one film. Producers began sorting through a large list of actors; Burt Reynolds and Adam West (thankfully) refused on the basis of leaving Bond British and Michael Gambon felt that he wasn't in good enough shape for it. Gambon's reminiscence is amusing: quote:Folklore has it that Lazenby was sacked because On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was so bad, although many argue the film is one of the best. In fact Lazenby, who had been offered a seven-film deal, left after just one as his agent persuaded him spy movies would be passé in the 1970s. Michael Gambon was one of 10 young stage actors interviewed by Cubby Broccoli for the role although the future-Dumbledore passed, telling the producer he was no good for the part as he was “bald, had a double chin and had girls’s tits” to which Broccoli replied: “so has Sean Connery, we just put a wig on him”. Jeremy Brett who would become synonymous with TV’s Sherlock Holmes was also considered revealing: “It's the sort of role you cannot afford to turn down, but I think if I had got it, it would have spoiled me.” While Brett was passed over, American actor John Gavin was signed up for the role, however when Connery was lured back with a mega-money deal Gavin stepped aside (and had his contract paid in full). Ten years later Gavin was appointed US ambassador to Mexico by another actor-turned-politician Ronald Reagan. https://sabotagetimes.com/tv-film/james-bond-the-men-who-couldve-been-007 Also reported in a little more detail by the Telegraph a few years ago: quote:During the casting for Diamonds Are Forever in 1970, Gambon was summoned by Cubby Broccoli, along with a handful of other stage actors, to interview for the part of 007. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/james-bond-spectre/rejected-casting-audition/
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2018 17:41
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Jun 25, 2025 02:11 |
|
|
I believe Fleming chose "James Bond" (which was the name of an ornithologist he admired) it was a completely boring, average name which anybody could have.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2019 00:33
|
|