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 In 1952, a retired British intelligence agent named Ian Fleming wrote a manuscript. Beyond all expectations, the novel that his ex-girlfriend thought was so bad that it should be published under a pseudonym sold out multiple print runs and suddenly became a phenomenon. The film adaptation of Dr. No in 1962 established a media juggernaut that hasn't stopped even now; the James Bond series is now worth an estimated $19.9 billion as of 2015 and spans 24 official films (and 3 unofficial ones), dozens of novels written long after Fleming's death, and 28 video games of such prominence as to change the face of gaming forever with the revolutionary GoldenEye 007. Despite this, I'd argue that the vast majority of Bond fans have left the books virtually ignored. It's not surprising, as they're old books written by an extremely British man. References have been out of date for two generations, action is subdued and often includes excessive detail regarding tense card games, and Bond is only one of the many shockingly racist and misogynistic characters displayed. It's little surprise that fans of a series that's been mainly known for its elaborate gunfights and car chases would rather forget the books existed as anything but a footnote. But I say they're still worth reading. Even aside from serving as the inspiration for one of the biggest fiction franchises in history, they serve as a looking glass into life in the 50s and 60s. The Bond series was a form of escapism for red-blooded British men still living under rationing until 1954. In a world where the average reader has probably never left smoggy England except for war service and is still living off of Spam and brown bread while puttering around in a used Morris, James Bond gets to travel to exotic locations from sea to shining sea, eating all the local cuisine that the audience may have never even heard of and driving rare sports cars in breakneck chases. Despite their reputation as two-fisted manly man quasi-pulp, the James Bond novels are some of the most exquisitely detailed works to ever come out of the 20th century. They almost serve as travelogues with a coating of intrigue, with whole paragraphs dedicated simply to describing the meals characters are eating and exactly why they order their food and drinks the way they do. The globetrotting action serves as a tourist's guide to Turkey, France, New York City, Florida, Japan, and countless other locations. Jamaica, in particular, receives a ton of focus for Fleming's personal reasons. Bond is not merely a window into everyday life and culture 60 years ago, but an example of what kind of life people wanted. How will we do this? At the moment, I only plan to cover the original Ian Fleming novels. I haven't read any non-Fleming books so I'm not sure if they're quite good enough and have the traits that this thread could be focusing on. This is more of a literary criticism thread than a "point and laugh" thread, unlike my prior Let's Reads that exclusively dealt with lovely books. I personally find Fleming's writing perfectly fine most of the time, so there's not much to criticize from that front. That said, feel free to talk about any mistakes or especially good things he does. This thread will have a lot of focus on the detail Fleming fills his books with. I'll be stopping regularly to talk about the food, drinks, cars, guns, and other descriptions of what Bond experiences and enjoys; you could almost consider this a food and drink thread with how much Bond eats and drinks (and holy poo poo does he drink). Along with just the enjoyment of it, it provides historical and local context that Fleming may have failed to provide because he expected anyone in that contemporary setting to recognize it. And yes, this thread will focus on the really bad stuff. Bond is very intentionally written as racist, sexist, and homophobic to a degree that a modern GOP candidate would be unsure of quoting him in public. Fleming blamed this partially on intentionally writing Bond as a not-very-good man and targeting the quintessential tough heterosexual male audience with his books, but they still serve to make Bond unintentionally unsympathetic at times. The books can be somewhat controversial in modern day for how terrible of a hero Bond is, and that's absolutely a topic that should be talked about even if we enjoy the rest of them. Spoiler Policy When it comes to the books, no spoilers. Not even in spoiler tags. Also, no movie spoilers if they match what happens in the books. While some of the movies are adaptations in name only, some of them (especially Casino Royale) angle so closely to the book that having seen the movie means you already know how the plot will go and what the ending twist is. I'd like for any legitimate surprises to stay legitimate. That said, any aspects of the movie that don't happen in the books are free game! I'm sure we all have strong opinions on Moonraker. Also, there will be a few moments where I intentionally spoil something for the purposes of exposition. When I do this, it'll be included in spoiler tags and will be free to talk about as long as you keep spoiler tags on until we reach it. Table of Contents 1. Casino Royale 2. Live and Let Die 3. Moonraker 4. Diamonds Are Forever 5. From Russia With Love 6. Dr. No 7. Goldfinger 8. For Your Eyes Only 9. Thunderball 10. The Spy Who Loved Me 11. On Her Majesty's Secret Service 12. You Only Live Twice 13. Octopussy and The Living Daylights 14. The Man with the Golden Gun 15. Bonus chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Jun 26, 2018 21:29
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Who was Ian Fleming? While ordinarily a long post on the author wouldn't really do much good for understanding the books, to understand Ian Fleming is to understand James Bond, and vice versa. Some have gone so far as to say that Fleming was Bond, though not all agree. Ian Lancaster Fleming was born on May 28th, 1908 (also my birthday!) to a wealthy family that made its money on a merchant bank and a Parliament seat; when his father was killed in World War I, Winston Churchill wrote his obituary. Fleming went to private schools, excelling in athletics but having trouble with academics and his housemaster at Eton for basically behaving like a womanizing playboy. He failed to get into the Royal Military College in 1927 after contracting gonorrhea. Fleming got a job as a Reuters journalist, covering show trials in Moscow and even getting a personally signed letter from Stalin himself apologizing for being unable to give an interview. After some romances and affairs while working in the unsatisfying banking and stockbroking fields, Fleming finally followed in his family's footsteps and was recruited by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence of the Royal Navy, as his personal assistant. He had basically no qualifications whatsoever, but excelled in the role and served as a liaison with all the major sections of British Intelligence. Fleming quickly began writing plans for special operations despite never once serving in the field, from planting faked invasion plans on a corpse to be found to faking a downed German bomber and capturing the Kriegsmarine vessel that tried to rescue the "airmen". Not all of his ideas were awesome, but some were workable enough that other people put similar plans into motion like Operation Mincemeat. Fleming even assisted in creating the blueprint for the office that would eventually become the CIA. The first plan of his to be put into motion was Operation Goldeneye, intended to prevent Spain from potentially joining the Axis and assisting in the invasion of Europe, though it was shortly canceled after it became apparent that Spain wasn't a threat. Fleming also formed 30 Assault Unit (30AU), a unit of special commandos intended to target enemy headquarters in advance of an attack to seize vital documents before they could be destroyed. 30AU saw heavy action in operations all the way through Operation Overlord into the invasion of Germany, though Fleming never actually saw combat with them and fought attempts to utilize them as a generic commando unit; they didn't like him very much. Fleming also served on the target selection committee for the Target Force, or T-Force, which would capture important documents, equipment, and intelligence in recently captured towns (and earned the Danish Frihedsmedalje in 1947 for his work in helping Danish officers escaped the German occupation into Britain). During a 1942 Anglo-American intelligence summit in Jamaica, he fell in love with the island and established a home there: Goldeneye.  Upon his retirement, Fleming returned to work as a newspaper editor and the Foreign Manager for the Kemsley newspaper group, where he took 3 months' holiday in Jamaica every year. It was on one of these vacations at Goldeneye that he decided to write a spy novel, and did so in just 2 months. While initial feedback from friends and family was mixed, he took a chance and published it. The sudden success led to Fleming writing a whole series of books about the worldwide adventures of James Bond. While he suffered criticism, the success (including President John F. Kennedy listing two of the books on his list of favorites) led to attempts to turn the books into films, finally succeeding with Dr. No in 1962. Fleming loved the choice of Sean Connery for the role, to the point of writing in Scottish heritage in the later books. Unfortunately, Bond's habit of heavy smoking and drinking mirrored Fleming's own. On August 11th, 1964, Fleming collapsed shortly after dinner from a heart attack and died the next morning. The Man With The Golden Gun had been completed but still in the first draft, and was reluctantly published in its simplistic, virtually unedited form. -------------- So where does this all come into play with James Bond? The most obvious is that Bond is a spy much as Fleming was a spy. Fleming loved the opportunity to travel the world, eating fine foods on the government's dime and gambling in international casinos and bars. It's unclear right now with currently unclassified documents just how much (if any) action Fleming saw as a spy, and some have brushed him off as a playboy who liked to pretend he was gambling against dangerous foreign agents instead of drunken tourists. Much of the Bond novels come from Fleming's own life experiences and the people he knew. Real soldiers and spies named as an inspiration for Bond include Patrick Dalzel-Job, Conrad O'Brien-ffrench (that last name's not a typo), Duško Popov, Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale, and Sir Fitzroy Maclean. Many of Bond's personal traits come from Fleming as well, from his custom cigarettes to his food and toiletry brand preferences. Fleming's love of Jamaica shows itself in a huge number of appearances all the way from the first book. Even the name of James Bond came from an ornithologist whose book Fleming had; ironically in retrospect, he chose it because it was a very boring, masculine name that would never attract any attention. Even other characters came from Fleming's life. Scaramanga was named after a school bully. Goldfinger was named after architect Ernő Goldfinger specifically because Fleming hated his work. It wasn't just enemies that became villains, as "Boofy" Kidd in Diamonds Are Forever was named after a close friend of his, Arthur "Boofy" Gore, 8th Earl of Arran. The books thus act as a sort of look at what Fleming was like and what he was into. He took "Write what you know" to heart, showcasing his own lifestyle, preferences, and experiences.
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Jun 26, 2018 23:25
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Wheat Loaf posted: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. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZNULYec0WA&t=85s I'd definitely say Connery was the better choice. Todd is lacking the sort of roughness that Connery's face and voice provided that matched Fleming's commissioned sketch of him.
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Jun 27, 2018 02:08
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Casino Royale All of the Bond novels went through a lot of covers as new editions were printed over the decades, but I'll be starting each book with the first edition as conceived and/or approved by Fleming. Casino Royale is a rather subdued intro to James Bond and lacks some of the hallmarks of later books, like wide globetrotting adventurism and pulp-style action scenes and traps. The main plot is centered around high stakes gambling rather than elaborate plots that must be investigated; while later Bond novels take some inspiration from detective fiction by having Bond presented with a case to solve (albeit normally ones of greater stakes than a single dead body), the plot for Casino Royale will be laid out very soon in the book. Rather than requiring Bond to learn what the villain's plan is or how he's getting away with it, the tension comes instead from twists on the basic plot itself: we know what Bond's task is, but not if he'll succeed or what the costs will be. As we read the later books, you'll also notice a rather different characterization to Bond. Fleming conceived of Bond as kind of a lovely person even beyond his backwards views, a government tool struggling to deal with his place in a world where the definition of good and evil changes sides often. While some get through to him, Bond is a stone cold killer and is initially treated as exactly that. This began to change as Fleming's stories became more elaborate and popular, and we especially start seeing changes after the first few films start to overtake the books in prominence in the 1960s and Fleming feels like he should write closer to Sean Connery's portrayal.
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Jun 27, 2018 15:28
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Chapter 1: The Secret Agent I'll be posting the chapter names simply for the sake of one really, really, really awful one in the next book. Trust me, you'll know it when you see it. quote:The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling – a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension – becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it. Fleming hits us hard with a lot of old French casino terminology, from an antiquated spelling of "cashier" to unexplained summaries of how winnings were made. The only game you'll really have to know how to play is baccarat, which is fortunately a very easy game to learn (similar to blackjack) and is explained in full by Bond later in the book. Bond nods to the man guarding the doors of the salle privée (a private gambling room, generally reserved for high stakes) and casually reflects on how hard it would be for someone to rob the Casino Royale. He estimates it would require at least 10 men and probably killing one or two employees, and there's certainly no way Le Chiffre could find 10 killers in France who would never squeal to the cops. quote:As he gave a thousand francs to the ‘vestiaire’ and walked down the steps of the casino, Bond made up his mind that Le Chiffre would in no circumstances try to rob the caisse and he put the contingency out of his mind. Instead he explored his present physical sensations. He felt the dry, uncomfortable gravel under his evening shoes, the bad, harsh taste in his mouth and the slight sweat under his arms. He could feel his eyes filling their sockets. The front of his face, his nose and antrum, were congested. He breathed the sweet night air deeply and focused his senses and his wits. He wanted to know if anyone had searched his room since he had left it before dinner. The numbers that get thrown around in this book seem tremendous, like a 1000 franc tip. Francs were actually heavily devalued in the 1950s, though it can be rather difficult to figure out exactly what any of these numbers are worth in modern dollars. Some research suggests a conversion of 350 francs to 1 dollar in 1950s money, and $1 in 1953 is $9.46 now. Assuming I'm doing my math right, 1000 francs in 1953 would have been equivalent to $2.85 in 1953, or $26.96 in modern dollars. A pretty standard high roller's tip for a concierge. quote:He walked across the broad boulevard and through the gardens to the Hotel Splendide. He smiled at the concierge who gave him his key – No. 45 on the first floor – and took the cable. The telegram is a coded message letting Bond know that the 10 million francs (a little over $270,000 in modern money) he requested that afternoon was on its way to him. Remember how I mentioned that Bond shares Fleming's love of Jamaica after going on an assignment there? For his cover, Bond has chosen to be an employ of Messrs Caffery, the principle import/export firm of Jamaica. His controller, Fawcett, is the head of the picture desk for the Daily Gleaner (another reference to Fleming's newspaper career); he was formerly the bookkeeper for a turtle fishery in the Cayman Islands and volunteered as a paymaster's clerk in a small Naval Intelligence section in Malta. After the war ended, he was recruited by the Secret Service, trained in photography, and planted at the Gleaner. In addition to sorting through news photographs to decide what to put in the papers, Fawcett is now occasionally contacted to perform simple operations with the utmost speed and discretion, receiving a monthly paycheck of 20 pounds (about $530) deposited in his Canadian bank account by a fictitious relative in England. quote:Fawcett’s present assignment was to relay immediately to Bond, full rates, the text of messages which he received at home by telephone from his anonymous contact. He had been told by this contact that nothing he would be asked to send would arouse the suspicion of the Jamaican post office. So he was not surprised to find himself suddenly appointed string correspondent for the ‘Maritime Press and Photo Agency’, with press-collect facilities to France and England, on a further monthly retainer of ten pounds. I wonder if Fawcett has any connection to someone Fleming knew. As you can see, even the start of the book is filled to the brim with details that other authors would likely have considered extraneous. Fleming's writing style at the time, per his own words, was about three hours in the morning and another hour in the evening, without going back and editing anything. After he became a true professional author he would save the details for later drafts and start by submitting a more bare manuscript, but Casino Royale is practically an alcohol-fueled stream of consciousness from Fleming's own experiences and imagination. Bond tears off a notepad page (to avoid leaving a carbon copy for the casino's office) and writes a short thank-you telegram back. He pockets the telegram he got, figuring any spies would easily be able to get a copy of it through bribery or reading the upside-down page in Bond's hands, and takes the stairs instead of the lift. quote:Bond knew exactly where the switch was and it was with one flow of motion that he stood on the threshold with the door full open, the light on and a gun in his hand. The safe, empty room sneered at him. He ignored the half-open door of the bathroom and, locking himself in, he turned up the bed-light and the mirror-light and threw his gun on the settee beside the window. Then he bent down and inspected one of his own black hairs which still lay undisturbed where he had left it before dinner, wedged into the drawer of the writing-desk. Satisfied that his room had not been searched, Bond takes a cold shower and smokes his 70th (!) cigarette of the day. He records his winnings in a small notebook, brushes his teeth, and climbs into bed. quote:His last action was to slip his right hand under the pillow until it rested under the butt of the .38 Colt Police Positive with the sawn barrel. Then he slept, and with the warmth and humour of his eyes extinguished, his features relapsed into a taciturn mask, ironical, brutal, and cold.
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Jun 27, 2018 16:26
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Sperglord Actual posted:Still better prose than the last few 'authors' we suffered through. Yeah, I actually enjoy Fleming's style. The detail especially helps, as these books were meant to showcase all the wonders of the world that ordinary men in rainy ol' England would never get to see. Live And Let Die is an East Coast book that goes all the way from Manhattan to St. Pete and ends in Jamaica.
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Jun 27, 2018 18:53
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Wheat Loaf posted: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. 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.
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Jun 27, 2018 19:17
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Yond Cassius posted:Oh man, I remember reading all of the Fleming books when I was a kid. This is going to be fun. I think the quoted amount Bond gets for his salary is (adjusted for inflation) something like $30,000 a year. He just gets an unlimited expense account on missions, and at the Casino Royale he's specifically being bankrolled by MI6 to gamble. The books show off more of Bond's talent as a card shark where the movies just display gambling as a pastime to add flavor. Proteus Jones posted:I've never read Fleming, but I liked the parts you've quoted so far. His writing conveys a real texture to his settings giving a high-scale casino a real film of grimy desperation in the wee hours of the morning. It's one of those signs that Fleming really was writing a lot of this from experience. He probably spent a lot of nights drinking and smoking and playing cards until he stumbled out at 3:00 AM feeling ready to pass out.
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Jun 27, 2018 19:46
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Wheat Loaf posted: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. So much of Bond is just Fleming and his life. We get a mention of Bond's cigarettes later, and they're the exact same custom blend and paper that Fleming smoked. He also smokes and drinks the same as Fleming did; it's no wonder the author died of a heart attack so young at 70-80 cigarettes a day. "Smokes like a chimney" is an understatement. Sometimes chimneys aren't being used. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 21:14
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Chapter 2: Dossier For Mquote:Two weeks before, this memorandum had gone from Station S. of the Secret Service to M., who was then and is today head of this adjunct to the British defence ministries: Syndicat des Ouvriers d'Alsace, or SODA, translates to "Alsatian Workmen's Union". A major theme of all the books but especially this early one is the growing threat of communism around the world. At the time of this book's writing in 1952, fear of fifth columnists hiding in socialist organizations like trade unions was a major topic in the news. 1951 had also seen the sudden defection of Donald Maclean and Guy Hicks from the British embassy staff to the USSR after British authorities started to uncover that they were actually Soviet spies, a headline-making incident that would eventually uncover the Cambridge Five spy ring. The idea of a French union actually being a front for Soviet intelligence was a very real thing back then. The report goes into detail on what Le Chiffre has been up to. In 1946, he purchased control of the Cordon Jaune ("Yellow Ribbon") chain of brothels with 50 million francs provided by Leningrad Section III for financing SODA. The Secret Service suspects that he really did intend for this to be an investment to help finance Soviet operations, but was a careless choice from his desire to have access to women. Unfortunately he had the worst timing, as just a few months later France passed Law No. 46685, officially titled Loi Tendant à la Fermeture des Maisons de Tolérance et au Renforcement de la Lutte contre le Proxénitisme and popularly known as "La Loi Marthe Richard". quote:(When M. came to this sentence he grunted and pressed a switch on the intercom. ‘Head of S.?’ So at the time Le Chiffre purchased the brothels, France had legalized and regulated prostitution since 1804. However, when Marthe Richard was elected councilor of the 4th arrondissement of Paris in December 1945 she demanded an end to prostitution in Paris as an avenue for organized crime and in retaliation for perceived complicity by the prostitution industry in the German occupation of France (she was also a prostitute herself in her youth, in addition to being a pilot and interwar spy). This was passed quickly, and Richard was so emboldened by success that she immediately campaigned for the closure of all French brothels. Within 3 months, Le Chiffre's investment has had its bottom knocked out from under it. He tried to continue by converting the brothels into the French equivalent of "no-tell motels" and operating underground porn theaters, but it wasn't nearly enough to cover his overhead and the police quickly started closing down his illegal operations. quote:The police were, of course, only interested in this man as a big-time brothel-keeper and it was not until we expressed an interest in his finances that the Deuxième Bureau unearthed the parallel dossier which was running with their colleagues of the police department. So going by the inflation calculations we did earlier, that's about $1.4 million in modern money that Le Chiffre just bungled on a bad investment he didn't have permission to make. You can see why he might be up poo poo creek without a paddle. So, SMERSH. This Soviet intelligence organization is a common enemy in Bond books; while film aficionados are familiar with SPECTRE as Bond's nemesis, they're introduced later in the book series and many of the earlier books that were turned into movies actually had SMERSH in the role. In real life, SMERSH was actually a World War II organization specifically aimed at preventing German infiltration of the Red Army on the Eastern Front (in addition to other Army intelligence work like investigating traitors and sabotage, which in the Soviet Union could also include "failed to make a new project work in time"). In May 1946 the organization was disbanded and absorbed into the Ministry for State Security. The actual organization that would have been operating at the time would have been that ministry, the MGB, but obviously Fleming probably couldn't have known that SMERSH had already been disbanded at the time of writing. The Secret Service suspects that Le Chiffre knows how desperate his situation is, but the fact that he hasn't killed himself or gone into hiding suggests that he hasn't figured out that SMERSH is on his tail. He'd never be able to recoup the money with drug dealing, stock trading, or betting on races. Instead, it seems like Le Chiffre's plan is to take the remaining 25 million francs from SODA, move into a villa in Royale-les-Eaux just north of Dieppe on the Normandy coast, and visit the Casino Royale to engage in high stakes gambling to win the money back before SMERSH can find out. quote:Proposed Counter-operation The report goes into a biography of Le Chiffre next. His birth name is unknown and all of his aliases are variants on "The Cipher"; he was recovered from the Dachau concentration camp by American soldiers in 1945 suffering from amnesia and muteness. The only memory he regained was associations with Alsace Lorraine and Strasbourg, so he was given a stateless passport with a number and sent to France. He adopted Le Chiffre as his name, saying it's because he was "just a number on a passport". quote:Age: About 45. The inspiration Fleming took for Le Chiffre's appearance was partially based on famed occultist Aleister Crowley, which artwork of the character follows:   Le Chiffre has also had the most actors portraying him of any Bond villain, as it took several attempts at a Casino Royale film before it stuck. He was first portrayed by Peter Lorre in a 1954 TV play adaptation that cast Barry Nelson as the American "Jimmy Bond". The bizarre 1967 satirical adaptation cast Orson Welles (definitely closer to the 18 stone weight listed in his dossier), and finally the official adaptation in 2006 that saw the series rebooted with Daniel Craig cast Mads Mikkelsen as a fitter, sleeker Le Chiffre that probably encompasses the character's authentic danger a bit more.    quote:Appendix B.
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Jun 28, 2018 13:55
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Depending on the nature of Fleming’s retirement, he may have just been unaware at the time that a rival intelligence organization had been absorbed back into the main body. This was written 2 years before the KGB was established.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:37
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Mel Mudkiper posted:so you've gone from the crazed xenophobic ramblings of a violent racist to *checks notes* the same thing but with a posh accent But what of the prose Mel Mudkiper
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Jun 29, 2018 01:38
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Chapter 3: Number 007quote:Head of S. (the section of the Secret Service concerned with the Soviet Union) was so keen on his plan for the destruction of Le Chiffre, and it was basically his own plan, that he took the memorandum himself and went up to the top floor of the gloomy building overlooking Regent’s Park and through the green baize door and along the corridor to the end room. Moneypenny was originally named Miss 'Petty' Pettaval in the first draft of the book and was based on Kathleen Pettigrew, the personal assistant to MI6 director Stewart Menzies. To make his inspiration a little less obvious, he changed the name to something a bit more dramatic. 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.     Bill is later given the full name of Bill Tanner. He makes intermittent appearances through both the novels and the films, though never very important ones. He doesn't even make his first film appearance until The Man With the Golden Gun and isn't even named until the end credits. He's been portrayed by Michael Goodliffe, James Villiers, Michael Kitchen and Rory Kinnear (the godson of Judi Dench's late husband).  M. gives his approval of the operation, and Head of S. and his Number Two talk about how things will go from there. They figure that a Double-O agent will be sent, most likely 007 since he's tough enough to deal with Le Chiffre's gunmen and a skilled gambler who spent two months in Monte Carlo before the war stopping a Romanian card cheat team. Bond's interview with M. is short, so short that we'll actually continue into the next chapter to avoid ending immediately. He initially tries to get out of it due to not liking the odds at baccarat, but M. knows the odds just as well and won't take "no" for an answer. quote:‘He can have a bad run too,’ said M. ‘You’ll have plenty of capital. Up to twenty-five million, the same as him. We’ll start you on ten and send you another ten when you’ve had a look round. You can make the extra five yourself.’ He smiled. ‘Go over a few days before the big game starts and get your hand in. Have a talk to Q. about rooms and trains, and any equipment you want. The Paymaster will fix the funds. I’m going to ask the Deuxième to stand by. It’s their territory and as it is we shall be lucky if they don’t kick up rough. I’ll try and persuade them to send Mathis. You seemed to get on well with him in Monte Carlo on that other Casino job. And I’m going to tell Washington because of the N.A.T.O. angle. C.I.A. have got one or two good men at Fontainebleau with the joint intelligence chaps there. Anything else?’ Chapter 4: L'Ennemi Écoute quote:As, two weeks later, James Bond awoke in his room at the Hotel Splendide, some of this history passed through his mind. Bond has been gambling constantly at the casino since arriving, earning 3 million francs, memorizing the casino floorplan, and watching Le Chiffre play. He's a "faultless and lucky" gambler. quote:Bond liked to make a good breakfast. After a cold shower, he sat at the writing-table in front of the window. He looked out at the beautiful day and consumed half a pint of iced orange juice, three scrambled eggs and bacon and a double portion of coffee without sugar. He lit his first cigarette, a Balkan and Turkish mixture made for him by Morlands of Grosvenor Street, and watched the small waves lick the long seashore and the fishing fleet from Dieppe string out towards the June heat-haze followed by a paper-chase of herring-gulls. We get our first food and drink in this chapter! One thing Bond will display over the course of the series is an absolute love of eggs. Scrambled, fried, boiled, however you can prepare an egg. As much as he eats high class cuisine or exotic foreign food, when given the opportunity he'll often default to a hearty English or American-style breakfast. Also, the cigarettes Bond smokes are the exact same custom blend and shop that Ian Fleming had made for himself. While it's not mentioned yet, both Bond and Fleming held the rank of commander in the Royal Navy and customized the cigarette with three gold stripes to mimic the sleeve insignia of a commander's jacket.  The phone rings, the concierge informing Bond that a Director of Radio Stentor from Paris is here with the wireless set he ordered. This is the cover Rene Mathis is using to meet him. quote:When Mathis came in, a respectable business man carrying a large square parcel by its leather handle, Bond smiled broadly and would have greeted him with warmth if Mathis had not frowned and held up his free hand after carefully closing the door. As Mathis fiddles with the back of the set, a massive burst of static fills the room. He apologizes and begins messing with the knobs before music finally starts loudly piping through. As soon as they have their audio cover, Mathis gives Bond a smile and firm handshake. quote:‘My dear friend,’ Mathis was delighted, ‘you are blown, blown, blown. Up there,’ he pointed at the ceiling, ‘at this moment, either Monsieur Muntz or his alleged wife, allegedly bedridden with the “grippe”, is deafened, absolutely deafened, and I hope in agony.’ He grinned with pleasure at Bond’s frown of disbelief. Bond checks the fireplace and finds tiny scratches on the screws, confirming what Mathis said. I like Mathis, and I also like that in these early books especially Bond isn't portrayed as the best secret agent in the world. He's still vulnerable and still able to be outwitted and outfought by both his enemies and allies. Bond and Mathis turn off the radio and do some more play acting for the benefit of the enemy spies above, which ends with Bond cheerfully asking to hear the rest of the program and turning the radio back on. As they drown out their conversation yet again, they try to figure out exactly how Bond's cover was blown. Mathis is pretty sure no ciphers have been broken, but they can't make a call yet. quote:‘First of all,’ and he inhaled a thick lungful of Caporal, ‘you will be pleased with your Number Two. She is very beautiful’ (Bond frowned), ‘very beautiful indeed.’ Satisfied with Bond’s reaction, Mathis continued: ‘She has black hair, blue eyes, and splendid … er … protuberances. Back and front,’ he added. ‘And she is a wireless expert which, though sexually less interesting, makes her a perfect employee of Radio Stentor and assistant to myself in my capacity as wireless salesman for this rich summer season down here.’ He grinned. ‘We are both staying in the hotel and my assistant will thus be on hand in case your new radio breaks down. All new machines, even French ones, are apt to have teething troubles in the first day or two. And occasionally at night,’ he added with an exaggerated wink. Yeah, I make no excuses here. As Judi Dench's M put it in GoldenEye, Bond is a misogynist dinosaur of a bygone era. Mathis also fills Bond in on Le Chiffre. His villa is 10 miles down the coastal road and he has two guards with him; one of them has been seen in town visiting three "subhuman characters". Their paperwork says that they're stateless Czechs, but the other French spies in the area say they're speaking Bulgarian. quote:We don’t see many of those around. They’re mostly used against the Turks and the Yugoslavs. They’re stupid, but obedient. The Russians use them for simple killings or as fall-guys for more complicated ones.’ Fleming is not fond of Bulgaria except in terms of food and drink. quote:‘Anything else?’ Bond is very, very far from a heroic character here.
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Jun 29, 2018 16:44
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Wheat Loaf posted: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. That film has a lot of Bond actors or their relatives. It even has the same actor as M for the commander of the Secret Service!
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Jun 29, 2018 17:49
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Hyrax Attack! posted:This is a fascinating thread, well done. I especially liked the franc conversion info, it makes the casino stakes more understandable. Yeah, when I first read the book I thought they were throwing around ridiculous wads of cash. I didn't know how badly the franc had depreciated to the point where 100 francs was a few bucks in modern money.
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Jun 29, 2018 23:56
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Chapter 5: The Girl From Headquartersquote:It was twelve o’clock when Bond left the Splendide and the clock on the ‘mairie’ was stumbling through its midday carillon. There was a strong scent of pine and mimosa in the air and the freshly watered gardens of the Casino opposite, interspersed with neat gravel parterres and paths, lent the scene a pretty formalism more appropriate to ballet than to melodrama. Fleming actually put quite a lot of thought into the history of Royale-les-Eaux and how a high stakes casino ended up on the Normandy coast. It fits in well with the area and could easily be mistaken for a real location. Royale became Royale-les-Eaux when they discovered a natural spring behind the hills with sulfur, which they bottled and sold as a liver aid. Torpedo-shaped bottles of Eau Royale graced the mineral water lists of restaurants and dining cars and a casino was built before Vichy, Perrier, and Vittel put them out of business. The town was saved once more in 1950 when a group of expatriated Vichyites had their funds given to a Parisian syndicate that poured money into the casino and turned it into a nostalgic Victorian vacation destination. The Mahomet Ali Syndicate out of Egypt has leased a number of tables and high stakes games are occurring regularly. Bond heads down to the hotel garage to drive to the Hermitage Bar for his meeting. We get our first Bond car! quote:Bond’s car was his only personal hobby. One of the last of the 4½-litre Bentleys with the supercharger by Amherst Villiers, he had bought it almost new in 1933 and had kept it in careful storage through the war. It was still serviced every year and, in London, a former Bentley mechanic, who worked in a garage near Bond’s Chelsea flat, tended it with jealous care. Bond drove it hard and well and with an almost sensual pleasure. It was a battleship-grey convertible coupé, which really did convert, and it was capable of touring at ninety with thirty miles an hour in reserve.  Far from the sleek Aston-Martin and BMW sports cars or the submersible Lotus Esprit, Bond's first car is a tank that would look more at home on the track than in a car chase. This car actually makes a brief appearance at the beginning of the film adaptation of From Russia With Love, fitted with a high tech car phone to let MI6 call Bond from his trip to the lake.  quote:The room was sumptuous with those over-masculine trappings which, together with briar pipes and wire-haired terriers, spell luxury in France. Everything was brass-studded leather and polished mahogany. The curtains and carpets were in royal blue. The waiters wore striped waistcoats and green baize aprons. Bond ordered an Americano and examined the sprinkling of over-dressed customers, mostly from Paris he guessed, who sat talking with focus and vivacity, creating that theatrically clubbable atmosphere of ‘l’heure de l’apéritif’. Immediately afterward, we get our first Bond cocktail! Despite the reputation of Bond for "vodka martini, shaken not stirred", that was a simplification in the films (though we do see something like it, which I'll get into detail on because I've actually made one). In the books, Bond will drink pretty much anything that you put in front of him and orders different drinks depending on his mood.  The first ever cocktail Bond orders is an Americano. It was invented in the 1860s at Caffè Campari in Milan and was originally sold as the Milano-Torrino because of the geographic origins of its two ingredients: equal parts Campari (a bitter liqueur made from an infusion of herbs and fruit in alcohol and water) and sweet red vermouth (an aromatized wine with various botanicals like herbs and roots for flavoring) with enough soda water to fill the rest of the glass. It was renamed just before Prohibition due to its popularity with American tourists. While I've never had an Americano and really need to get around to finding a cocktail bar around here that can make one, knowing the ingredients I can imagine the taste would be a sort of bittersweet herbal fruit flavor with a bite from the carbonation. Bond mentions in a much later book that he actually doesn't really like the Americano but orders it mostly because it's one of the things a random cafe will have. As for the French folks, the quarter-bottles of champagne are 6 ounce bottles that you would get for yourself to go with a meal.  I took 3 years of French, so I don't need to worry about Google Translate! The women are talking about dry martinis, with one suggesting lemon peel as the garnish and the other advocating for the use of Gordon's gin.   The martini is one of the most classic cocktails, but I'll talk about it because not everyone has had it (and also I really love talking about food and drink so bite me). It's possibly named after Martini vermouth, as the classic recipe is 6 parts gin and 1 part dry vermouth (compared to the sweet red vermouth, dry vermouth is more bitter). There are cocktails dating as far back as the 1860s that bear a resemblance to the martini, but the proper martini has been dated to Prohibition in the 1920s due to the prevalence of easily produced illegal gin; gin requires no aging process, simply redistilling your lovely grain liquor in a tank full of botanicals to mask the horrible flavor. The vermouth originally served to further mask the taste of bathtub gin, and as time went on after Prohibition the amount of vermouth got lower and lower until people started making jokes about how you just wave the glass in the general direction of Italy or think about vermouth as you drink it. I actually don't drink martinis often, and there's only one local restaurant where I've ordered them (I prefer their Manhattan). However, a bit later on we'll see Bond's take on the martini and I'm a little in love with it. quote:Bond’s eye was caught by the tall figure of Mathis on the pavement outside, his face turned in animation to a dark-haired girl in grey. His arm was linked in hers, high up above the elbow, and yet there was a lack of intimacy in their appearance, an ironical chill in the girl’s profile, which made them seem two separate people rather than a couple. Bond waited for them to come through the street door into the bar, but for appearances’ sake continued to stare out of the window at the passers-by. I've seen some people misinterpret "fine à l’eau" as water. It's actually brandy or cognac with some water in it, which was a popular way of drinking brandy until just before this book's timeframe. The Bacardi appears to be a cocktail related to the daiquiri, made from white rum (in the US, it legally has to be Bacardi rum like Bacardi Superior as of 1936), lime juice, and grenadine to give it a pink color. And now to complete the trifecta, we get the first Bond Girl:  quote:Her hair was very black and she wore it cut square and low on the nape of the neck, framing her face to below the clear and beautiful line of her jaw. Although it was heavy and moved with the movements of her head, she did not constantly pat it back into place, but let it alone. Her eyes were wide apart and deep blue and they gazed candidly back at Bond with a touch of ironical disinterest which, to his annoyance, he found he would like to shatter, roughly. Her skin was lightly suntanned and bore no trace of make-up except on her mouth which was wide and sensual. Her bare arms and hands had a quality of repose and the general impression of restraint in her appearance and movements was carried even to her finger-nails which were unpainted and cut short. Round her neck she wore a plain gold chain of wide flat links and on the fourth finger of the right hand a broad topaz ring. Her medium-length dress was of grey ‘soie sauvage’ with a square-cut bodice, lasciviously tight across her fine breasts. The skirt was closely pleated and flowered down from a narrow, but not a thin, waist. She wore a three-inch, hand-stitched black belt. A hand-stitched black ‘sabretache’ rested on the chair beside her, together with a wide cartwheel hat of gold straw, its crown encircled by a thin black velvet ribbon which tied at the back in a short bow. Her shoes were square-toed of plain black leather. Ignoring the "touched wood" joke potentials, we can see a bit of slightly disquieting dominant feelings coming from Bond. In modern day, I could easily see him as being one of those overwrought doms on OkCupid or Fetlife who keeps trying to find submissive girls to abuse so he can feel better about himself but usually just gets laughed at. Vesper Lynd was not included in the 1954 Climax! TV adaptation of the book, with her place being taken by Le Chiffre's girlfriend Valerie Mathis; this gives Linda Christian the technical honor of being the first screen Bond Girl before Ursula Andress.  Vesper Lynd was first portrayed in the 1967 spoof by Ursula Andress, who previously played Honey Ryder in the adaptation of Dr. No. At the time of the official Bond film in 1962, she had such a thick Swiss-German accent that her voice had to be dubbed. In the 2006 film adaptation she was portrayed by Eva Green, probably the best casting choice. We also do have some official artwork of her! A later printing of the book included a drawing of her in the outfit she wears later on.    quote:Mathis had noticed Bond’s preoccupation. After a time he rose. Despite Bond's sexist reservations, Vesper's portrayal is far from the Bond Girl stereotype. We'll see more as we go on, but intellectually she's a sharp one and can be just as calculating as Bond himself. After Bond leaves, Mathis talks to Vesper about her rapport with Bond. She compares him to Hoagy Carmichael, but with a more cold and ruthless look to him.  quote:The sentence was never finished. Suddenly a few feet away the entire plate-glass window shivered into confetti. The blast of a terrific explosion, very near, hit them so that they were rocked back in their chairs. There was an instant of silence. Some objects pattered down on to the pavement outside. Bottles slowly toppled off the shelves behind the bar. Then there were screams and a stampede for the door.
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Jun 30, 2018 23:08
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Subjunctive posted:Also, inspiring. What ratio did you use?
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Jul 1, 2018 02:40
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Someone analyzed how much he drinks in From Russia With Love and it’s something like 13 ounces of pure ethanol equivalent in one day.
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Jul 1, 2018 13:45
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Chapter 6: Two Men In Straw Hatsquote:When Bond left the bar he walked purposefully along the pavement flanking the tree-lined boulevard towards his hotel a few hundred yards away. He was hungry. The two men are dressed in hot-looking black suits and straw hats with black ribbons, each carrying a camera case: one bright red, the other bright blue. Bond's instincts immediately take this as a warning sign. quote:Red-man seemed to give a short nod to Blue-man. With a quick movement Blue-man unslung his blue camera case. Blue-man, and Bond could not see exactly as the trunk of a plane-tree beside him just then intervened to obscure his vision, bent forward and seemed to fiddle with the case. Then with a blinding flash of white light there was the ear-splitting crack of a monstrous explosion and Bond, despite the protection of the tree-trunk, was slammed down to the pavement by a solid bolt of hot air which dented his cheeks and stomach as if they had been made of paper. He lay, gazing up at the sun, while the air (or so it seemed to him) went on twanging with the explosion as if someone had hit the bass register of a piano with a sledgehammer. Once again, not the same Bond from the films who would instantly leap to his feet to handle the situation. Mathis picks up the stupefied Bond and leads him back to the Splendide to strip off his clothes (wet with the dead men's blood and pulped flesh) and bombard him with questions. As soon as Bond tells him the description of the men, he recognizes them as the Bulgarians one of Le Chiffre's men was meeting in town. He calls the Deuxième Bureau with the story to give the police and press: it was two Bulgarian communists who killed each other with bombs during a vendetta, the third one around is probably heading for Paris so put up roadblocks to catch him, and the Englishman from Jamaica is with French intelligence. Mathis and Bond have realized that this job is far, far more dangerous and complex than expected. Mathis leaves to try and recover fragments of the "camera cases" and do a further investigation into exactly what must have gone wrong with the bombs. quote:Later, as Bond was finishing his first straight whisky ‘on the rocks’ and was contemplating the paté de foie gras and cold langouste which the waiter had just laid out for him, the telephone rang. Once again defying his reputation for vodka martinis, Book Bond is a very heavy whiskey drinker. In fact, the thing he drinks the most in the books is either whiskey on the rocks or a scotch and soda. Langouste is a French term for spiny lobster, or rock lobster. Foie gras is a controversial paté made from the liver of duck or goose that's been fattened through force-feeding, widely regarded in modern day as an inhumane practice. Despite its famous reputation as a delicacy, the method of production has resulted in bans on export, import, or the production altogether. Chapter 7: Rouge Et Noir quote:Bond was determined to be completely fit and relaxed for a gambling session which might last most of the night. He ordered a masseur for three o’clock. After the remains of his luncheon had been removed, he sat at his window gazing out to sea until there came a knock on the door as the masseur, a Swede, presented himself. Bond is a big gambler and it's probably his favorite activity. What he likes the most is the sense of fallibility that a good gambler must have: luck will come and go and mistakes in gambling are your own fault. He doesn't fall for the gambler's fallacy, where after the coin comes up heads 5 times in a row that you must be "owed" it coming up tails next. On a roulette table, the game begins anew every time the croupier tosses the ball in. As he plays roulette, Bond uses his realistic knowledge of the odds to make his bets. quote:On the record of that particular table, after about three hours’ play, Bond could see little of interest except that the last dozen had been out of favour. It was his practice to play always with the wheel, and only to turn against its previous pattern and start on a new tack after a zero had turned up. So he decided to play one of his favourite gambits and back two – in this case the first two – dozens, each with the maximum – one hundred thousand francs. He thus had two-thirds of the board covered (less the zero) and, since the dozens pay odds of two to one, he stood to win a hundred thousand francs every time any number lower than 25 turned up. Felix Leiter has probably been played by more actors than anyone else in Bond history, as they simply couldn't keep an actor for more than one or two films before suddenly recasting him. Leiter has been portrayed by Jack Lord, Cec Linder, Rik Van Nutter, Norman Burton, David Hedison, John Terry, Jeffrey Wright, and Bernie Casey in the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again. In the 1954 TV version, he was changed to British agent Clarence Leiter, played by Michael Pate. While there's artwork of his book appearance, I'll save it for another time as the portrait includes a spoiler that anyone who's seen License to Kill will know about.  quote:Bond insisted on ordering Leiter’s Haig-and-Haig ‘on the rocks’ and then he looked carefully at the barman. Haig & Haig is a scotch brand known for its distinctive "pinch" bottle.  quote:‘A dry martini,’ he said. ‘One. In a deep champagne goblet.’ Ah, here we go. The origin of the vodka martini, shaken not stirred. This is a drink that technically no longer exists. Kina Lillet was one of a large number of quinquinas, aromatized wines whose flavoring included quinine. Quinine is a bitter extract from the cinchona tree bark that was historically used as a treatment for malaria, and its terribly bitter taste led to a lot of attempts to make it palatable for medication. The most famous is the gin and tonic (mixing quinine-infused tonic water with gin, creating a chemical reaction that neutralizes the bitterness), but quinine was also used to flavor wines. Just like the gin and tonic, what was once a way of making the medicine go down ended up becoming extremely popular as a general flavoring. Unfortunately, in the 1980s Kina Lillet was discontinued. The current product, Lillet Blanc, has no quinine in it. That being said, you can get close to Bond's original taste if you know what to do.  Minor spoiler: this drink is called the Vesper. It's believed to have been named by Ian Fleming after a visit to a friend in Jamaica where the butler served "vespers", a generic term for drinks served in the evening; the original drink was a fruity frozen rum beverage. When I was at Dear Irving in Manhattan, I worked with the bartender to replicate the drink as closely as possible. There's a few specific requests that need to be made beyond shaking: 1. You need gin of 47% ABV before Gordon's was reformulated to a lower proof. 2. You need vodka of 50% ABV to match the proof of typical vodkas in the 1950s. 3. You need an alternative to Kina Lillet unless you have a perfectly preserved vintage bottle. I used Cocchi Americano, but you can also add quinine powder to Lillet Blanc. The higher proofs of the alcohol are actually the reason for it being shaken. Bond has been mocked before in pop culture for watering down his martinis, but in fact the higher alcohol content of the 1950s liquor compensates for any additional dilution from shaking with ice. That being said, shaking a modern vodka martini made with lower proof vodka will make a rather weak drink. I honestly really enjoyed this recreation, despite the bar not having sufficiently strong vodka. It tastes close to a gin martini, but the higher proofs and addition of vodka give it an extra alcoholic kick and the quinine-infused wine mixes in a sort of gin and tonic flavor. Just as Bond described (and as he is himself), it's very cold and very strong. quote:‘You’d better call it the “Molotov Cocktail” after the one you tasted this afternoon.’ Bond learns more about Leiter. He's about 35 (a similar age to Bond), a native of Texas (which Bond, and by extension Fleming, says that most good Americans seem to come from), and has a tall, thin, bony frame with a loose-fitting tan suit similar to Frank Sinatra that matches his hair. quote:His movements and speech were slow, but one had the feeling that there was plenty of speed and strength in him and that he would be a tough and cruel fighter. As he sat hunched over the table, he seemed to have some of the jack-knife quality of a falcon. There was this impression also in his face, in the sharpness of his chin and cheek-bones and the wide wry mouth. His grey eyes had a feline slant which was increased by his habit of screwing them up against the smoke of the Chesterfields which he tapped out of the pack in a chain. The permanent wrinkles which this habit had etched at the corners gave the impression that he smiled more with his eyes than with his mouth. A mop of straw-coloured hair lent his face a boyish look which closer examination contradicted. Although he seemed to talk quite openly about his duties in Paris, Bond soon noticed that he never spoke of his American colleagues in Europe or in Washington and he guessed that Leiter held the interests of his own organization far above the mutual concerns of the North Atlantic Allies. Bond sympathized with him.
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Jul 1, 2018 18:26
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Khizan posted:The main thing that I got out of reading this book is confirmation of my opinion that Daniel Craig is the best Bond. I'll get more into the Bond actors later, but the film adaptation of Casino Royale was an intentional effort to make as close of an adaptation as possible. That's actually why I'm not even allowing talk of the movie events in spoilers, because it's so close to the book that anyone who's seen the movie knows how this book will go even in small details. Daniel Craig and Sean Connery are also the only two Bonds to actually be close to the real Bond in age (unless you also count Barry Nelson as "Jimmy Bond"). All the rest were too old by at least a few years when they were hired, with Roger Moore actually being past the book's mandatory retirement age for Double-O agents!
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Jul 1, 2018 18:28
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Runcible Cat posted:I've got a copy of this around somewhere, which claims Kina Lillet would be incredibly nasty in this combination so you should use Lillet vermouth instead, but IDK, maybe that was just Kingsley Amis' opinion. It also remarks that Bond's being obnoxious with the potato vodka crack, since that would be poteen/moonshine/not something any respectable barman would serve. It certainly tastes fine with Cocchi Americano, which is a similar quinquina with just a different flavor blend. Maybe Kina Lillet itself is crap? In terms of the vodka, some further reading suggests that in the 1950s potato vodka was seen as a "commie vodka" less popular in Western circles than grain. Stolichnaya became popular at the time the book was published for its wheat vodka. Ian Fleming: The Spy Who Came in With The Gold was a 1966 biography that included Fleming's preferred American-style martini recipe: quote:“It is extremely difficult to get a good Martini anywhere in England. . . . The way I get one to suit me in any pub is to walk calmly and confidently up to the bar and, speaking very distinctly, ask the man or girl behind it to put plenty of ice in the shaker (they nearly all have a shaker), pour in six gins and one dry vermouth (enunciate ‘dry’ carefully) and shake until I tell them to stop.
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Jul 1, 2018 20:43
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Also I just found out that there's a new craft cocktail bar a few miles from my work that seems to have a very well-stocked bar (including absinthe!), so I'm going to start heading over there and requesting drinks from the books starting with the Americano so I can more accurately describe their flavors. If you like martinis, I firmly recommend you try my Vesper recipe: * 3 ounces of 47% ABV London dry gin (Beefeater will work) * 1 ounce of 50% ABV grain vodka (Svedka has released some 100 proof vodka recently) * 0.5 ounces of Cocchi Americano Shake vigorously in a cocktail shaker and serve with a large lemon peel twist. Drink while ice cold.
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Jul 1, 2018 21:08
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Chapter 8: Pink Lights And Champagnequote:Bond walked up to his room, which again showed no sign of trespass, threw off his clothes, took a long hot bath followed by an ice-cold shower and lay down on his bed. There remained an hour in which to rest and compose his thoughts before he met the girl in the Splendide bar, an hour to examine minutely the details of his plans for the game, and for after the game, in all the various circumstances of victory or defeat. He had to plan the attendant roles of Mathis, Leiter, and the girl and visualize the reactions of the enemy in various contingencies. He closed his eyes and his thoughts pursued his imagination through a series of carefully constructed scenes as if he was watching the tumbling chips of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope.  This is a sketch Ian Fleming commissioned of Bond when the Daily Express began Bond comic strips, making this the official appearance of Bond in the novels. However, Bond is quite famous in the film world for the variety of actors who have played him. The first Bond on film was actually Barry Nelson, playing the American "Jimmy Bond" in the 1954 Climax! TV episode that adapted this book. Nelson was a World War II Army veteran who was nominated for a Tony in 1978 for his part as Dan Connors in The Act and played the hotel manager who interviews Jack Torrance in The Shining. He died in 2007 a day before his 90th birthday of unknown causes.  When the first official Bond production began for the adaptation of Dr. No, bodybuilder and struggling actor Sean Connery was hired. He bears the closest resemblance to Book Bond of any actor, despite Fleming viewing his appearance as that of an "overgrown stuntman". The rough and unrefined Scottish actor was groomed, dressed, and trained to be the classiest man alive, and Fleming found himself proven so wrong that he made Bond half-Scottish in the later novels in his honor. Connery had no real desire for an extended series beyond how it would benefit his contract and hated being typecast. He was only brought back for Diamonds Are Forever in 1971 with a record $1.25 million salary, though in 1983 he would return for the unofficial Bond film Never Say Never Again; due to his age of 52 at the time of filming, the plot (a rewrite of Thunderball in a complicated situation that we'll get to when we get there) was written around Bond's advanced age catching up with him. Connery has since retired completely from acting.  When Connery refused to return as Bond for On Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1969, the producers scrambled to find a replacement. They settled on Australian model George Lazenby, who needed additional training simply for the acting side of things. While he's regarded as having given a fine performance for an inexperienced actor, he felt disrespected by the more experienced production team and was advised by his agent that the Bond franchise was going to be coming to an end soon, so he announced his decision to quit the role before the film even released. As you can see, his agent was wrong. Lazenby was not brought back after his singular outing and struggled to revitalize his career.  After Sean Connery left the official films for good, English actor Roger Moore was approached. He was already a household name from playing Simon Templar on The Saint and had previously been half-considered, but his television and film commitments left him unavailable. In 1972 when it became clear that a new Bond was needed, Albert R. Broccoli approached Moore and he was cast in Live And Let Die in 1973. Moore was an unusual choice, already being quite old for a Double-O agent, but his long turn as Bond meant that a lot of people grew up with Roger Moore as James Bond in their minds. The Moore films often angled more toward the campy, though For Your Eyes Only saw a turn for a darker and more grounded story; his depiction of Bond was a truly suave and debonair playboy who always had a trick up his sleeve, fitting the expected spy films of the 1970s. However, his age caught up with him and his final film was A View To a Kill in 1985 at the age of 58. The film was somewhat uncomfortable with the Bond Girl being young enough to be his daughter. Moore settled down from his strong career after leaving the role and spent a lot of time on humanitarian work, before dying at the age of 89 (the same as Barry Nelson) in May 2017.  With Moore too old to continue, the Welsh actor Timothy Dalton was brought in for The Living Daylights, released in 1987. Dalton had been considered as far back as 1968, but considered himself too young. When he was considered in 1979 or 1980 to take over from the aging Moore, he disagreed with the campy direction of the films. He finally accepted and was given a three-film deal. Dalton's Bond was a darker take, constantly re-reading the books on set and suggesting them as inspiration, and License to Kill was a straight revenge film with Bond going rogue to take on a drug cartel after their conflict became personal. However, the series was suddenly embroiled in a four-year lawsuit that delayed production. While production resumed in the 90s and Dalton was brought in to renegotiate his expired contract, he had lost his interest in the series and declined. Dalton has since diversified his career, from Rhett Butler to a stuffed porcupine in Toy Story 3.  With Dalton gone and the plans for his third film canceled, a totally new film was created and a new Bond located. Much like his predecessor, Pierce Brosnan was considered for replacing Roger Moore around the time of For Your Eyes Only (thanks to his first wife, Cassandra Harris, playing Countess Lisl in the film). He was given the first shot for The Living Daylights, but contractual obligations to Remington Steele prevented him from taking the role. After Dalton declined to sign a new contract, Brosnan was finally brought in and added Ireland to Bond's places of origin. Brosnan was the only Bond to never perform a film based on a Fleming story, with GoldenEye in 1995 being praised for its greater complexity and the quality of its action scenes. However, his films gradually began to fall closer and closer to typical 90s and early 2000s action films until 2002's Die Another Day saw a CGI Bond surfing away from a tsunami caused by a giant laser melting the Arctic. As Brosnan turned 50, he and the producers decided not to make the same mistake they did with keeping Moore on until he was Grandpa Bond and Brosnan saw his run end. Despite this, much of the millennial generation grew up with Brosnan as Bond and he's generally considered the true Bond of video games. Outside of the role, Brosnan continues to act in a variety of roles and has generally avoided typecasting. His film repertoire since Bond includes the film adaptations of the Percy Jackson series, Mamma Mia, The Foreigner with Jackie Chan, and upcoming historical drama The Wreck of the Medusa.  The new Bond was intended to be a closer take on the books, with the first official adaptation of Casino Royale released in 2006. The new Bond was Daniel Craig, a controversial choice for his blonde hair, big ears, and thuggish looks. He was also the first Bond born after the release of the original book and the death of Ian Fleming. Despite the public's reservations, Casino Royale successfully rebooted the series by depicting a cold and violent Bond on his first Double-O mission. Craig is the current Bond, though his fifth outing in 2019 will be his last. The reboot of the series has reintroduced such characters as Blofeld, with every film after Casino Royale being totally original and serving as a direct sequel to its predecessor instead of a stand-alone adventure.  quote:He slipped the case into his hip pocket and snapped his black oxidized Ronson to see if it needed fuel. After pocketing the thin sheaf of ten-mille notes, he opened a drawer and took out a light chamois leather holster and slipped it over his left shoulder so that it hung about three inches below his arm-pit. He then took from under his shirts in another drawer a very flat .25 Beretta automatic with a skeleton grip, extracted the clip and the single round in the barrel and whipped the action to and fro several times, finally pulling the trigger on the empty chamber. He charged the weapon again, loaded it, put up the safety catch and dropped it into the shallow pouch of the shoulder-holster. He looked carefully round the room to see if anything had been forgotten and slipped his single-breasted dinner-jacket coat over his heavy silk evening shirt. He felt cool and comfortable. He verified in the mirror that there was absolutely no sign of the flat gun under his left arm, gave a final pull at his narrow tie and walked out of the door and locked it. While Bond is famous for his use of the Walther PPK, this is only because Dr. No was the first book to be adapted and this is the one in which Bond switched guns. Originally, Bond carried a Beretta Model 418 vest pocket pistol in .25 ACP. This tiny gun is underpowered (it's estimated that in self-defense cases, 35% of attackers were not stopped no matter how many times they were hit and only 49% were incapacitated by a single torso or head shot), but it's extremely light and easy to conceal. Bond clearly chose this gun with the intention of using a gun as a last resort.  quote:When he turned at the foot of the short stairs towards the bar, he heard the lift-door open behind him and a cool voice call ‘Good evening’. This is the dress Vesper is depicted in on the cover. The pair head down to the casino's dining room. While the most popular seats are in front of a huge picture window overlooking the gardens, Bond seems to have wised up from the cafe bombing and chooses a mirrored alcove in the back of the room. Bond orders a carafe of very cold vodka for the table and finally realizes that he hasn't actually asked for the girl's name. quote:‘Vesper,’ she said. ‘Vesper Lynd.’ It's a drink that'll knock you flat on your rear end, sure! The pair decide on their dinner, which gives us some of the first real food porn in these books. quote:‘I’d made two choices,’ she laughed, ‘and either would have been delicious, but behaving like a millionaire occasionally is a wonderful treat and if you’re sure … well, I’d like to start with caviar and then have a plain grilled “rognon de veau” with “pommes soufflés”. And then I’d like to have “fraises des bois” with a lot of cream. Is it very shameless to be so certain and so expensive?’ She smiled at him inquiringly. Lucky for us, photographer Henry Hargreaves created a photo set called Dying to Eat which depicts the more prominent meals from the books as they would have appeared.  For about 100 years, French cuisine was considered the most desirable and spectacular cuisine in the world. While Bond is at a restaurant in France, such an order would have been typical at any fancy restaurant in the Western world. Delmonico's in New York City and Antoine's in New Orleans spent decades with a menu written entirely or almost entirely in French, making it impossible to understand what you were ordering if you didn't at least recognize culinary terms. Caviar, as we're all aware, is salt-cured sturgeon roe. There are many classes of caviar and the absolute best is served in incredibly tiny portions that nonetheless taste strongly salty and savory when placed on your tongue. The quip about not having enough toast for caviar is reminiscent of a 1919 incident when Fyodor Raskolnikov, commander of the Volga-Caspian fleet, brought several barrels of black caviar captured from former Tsarist warehouses back to Moscow. The Kremlin held a function where huge bowls were put out for the guests, but only two thin slices of bread provided to each person. It took months for them to finish off the caviar. Rognon de veau are roast veal kidneys. The pommes souffles are an upscale French fry made by slicing potatoes and frying them twice so they puff up and turn into little golden brown balloons as they cool. Fraises des bois are wild strawberries that are smaller and less perfect-looking than commercial farmed strawberries, but have a much more intense flavor. Tournedos are small round cuts of beef from the end of a tenderloin that include the filet mignon, but he may also be referring to Tournedos Rossini, a dish made from tournedos pan-fried in butter and served on a large crouton with a slice of fresh foie gras. Béarnaise sauce is a French white sauce made of clarified butter emulsified in egg yolks and white wine vinegar, flavored with herbs and spices like shallots, chervil, peppercorns, gherkins, and tarragon. The coeur d’artichaut is an artichoke heart, the fleshy base left after all the leaves of the artichoke are removed. The half-avocado with French dressing is a very unusual dessert (especially in the 1950s when avocados weren't very common in England or America; Mark's & Spencer's stores in the UK didn't get them until 1959) but as a common resident of Jamaica Fleming would have been familiar with them. quote:The maitre d’hotel bowed. I'm afraid I don't have much of a taste for champagne, so I can't really comment on any taste differences. I don't drink champagne quite enough to tell the difference between any brands. quote:‘You must forgive me,’ he said. ‘I take a ridiculous pleasure in what I eat and drink. It comes partly from being a bachelor, but mostly from a habit of taking a lot of trouble over details. It’s very pernickety and old-maidish really, but then when I’m working I generally have to eat my meals alone and it makes them more interesting when one takes trouble.’ chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Jul 22, 2019 |
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Jul 2, 2018 18:52
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Xotl posted:I'm confused here on the martini ingredients. Is Bond's drink a gin and vermouth thing like the Fleming quote describes, or the gin and vodka and quinine thing? Why the two different ones? A proper martini is a ration of 6 parts gin or vodka to 1 part dry vermouth (unless you're one of those people who thinks you can just drink gin out of a glass, think about adding vermouth, and call it a martini). The Vesper that Bond invents at the bar is a modification that mixes gin and vodka and replaces the vermouth with a quinine-infused aromatized wine. The resulting drink tastes like a cross between a gin martini and a gin & tonic, with an additional bitter herbal element from the Kina Lillet (or substitute like Cocchi Americano) and the vodka adding more alcohol content than is normal. In the films, Bond is known for ordering "vodka martini, shaken not stirred". He does occasionally order vodka and gin martinis in the books, but the films made it part of his character. The shaking also dilutes the drink more than stirring, which is appropriate when you're using the 1950s' higher proof spirits (especially for a Vesper, which is just a glass of three different kinds of strong alcohol) but will leave you with a pathetically weak drink if you use modern 80 proof vodka or 70 proof gin.
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Jul 2, 2018 19:03
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So because it's not something that will get brought up for a long time from now, let's talk about James Bond's distinctive sidearms. As was covered, Bond started with a Beretta Model 418. His gun is specifically described as having a "skeleton grip", meaning he removed the grip panels. This allows you to see how many rounds are left in the magazine without removing it to check the cutouts and makes the gun very slightly thinner at the cost of being much less comfortable to fire. As I said, the .25 ACP cartridge is incredibly weak (it's basically a centerfire .22 LR) and Bond clearly chose the most concealable and lightweight gun possible at the expense of anything else.  After an incident in From Russia With Love, Bond is given a Walther PPK at the beginning of Dr. No. The PPK is the shortened version of the Walther PP, a police sidearm chambered in .32 ACP or .380 ACP. While the .32 ACP round isn't very powerful, the .380 has been found to do just as well with stopping assailants in self-defense as any larger round. The PPK is also a more technologically advanced gun, featuring a double-action trigger and a decocker to allow the gun to be carried with the hammer down and safety off; pulling the trigger cocks the hammer back and fires it with a long, heavy trigger pull that can't be done accidentally. This photo is the actual PPK carried in From Russia With Love by Sean Connery.  Something very rarely talked about is that in Octopussy, Walther wanted to advertise their new gun, the Walther P5. Bond thus mislays his PPK and is given the gun with relatively little fanfare by Q Branch. The P5 is a more powerful pistol chambered in 9x19mm Parabellum designed to replace the West German police's .32 caliber pistols. It's actually based on the Walther P38 that was used by Germany in World War II and the P1 (a P38 with an aluminum frame that was used all the way into the 1990s before being replaced by the USP). Never Say Never Again, the unofficial Bond film, was released at the same time and gave Sean Connery the same gun.  Despite the speedbump with the P5, the PPK remained Bond's sidearm until the end of Tomorrow Never Dies, where Pierce Brosnan loses his after being captured. He once again picks up the latest Walther pistol, the P99, from Wei Lin's armory. Signifying the increasing action that Bond was facing beyond simple spy missions, Brosnan continued using the gun through his subsequent two films and Daniel Craig used it for Casino Royale, only returning to the PPK in A Quantum of Solace. The P99 was a very modern gun when it was released and is still in military and police use. While many versions have been released over the years, the original gun as used by Bond is a double/single-action striker-fired pistol. Rather than a decocking lever, it has a decocking button on top of the slide.  After Fleming's death, a number of authors took up his torch and continued writing Bond novels, both original stories and novelizations of the films (often trying to tie them into the book continuity, which led to some awkwardness when certain things had already occurred in the past due to the films taking inspiration out of order). In the stories by John Gardner, Bond carries an ASP 9. This is an unusual gun mostly known to aficionados and people who play Call of Duty. It's a Smith & Wesson Model 39 heavily modified for concealed carry usage: heavily rounded everything to prevent snagging, clear Lexan grip panels to see how much ammo remains, improvements to reliability, and a "Guttersnipe" sight that uses its triangular shape to provide a sight picture for close range point shooting.
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Jul 2, 2018 20:49
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Mel Mudkiper posted:by these people you mean cool and correct people I drink straight gin regularly (including Bols). I just don't call it a martini if I do it while looking in the direction of Italy.
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Jul 2, 2018 20:50
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I bought all the ingredients to make more Vespers this week for my lady friend. It'll be Tanqueray gin, Potter's 100 Proof vodka, and Cocchi Americano.
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Jul 3, 2018 03:21
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Chapter 9: The Game Is Baccaratquote:Bond looked round, but there was no possibility of being overheard, and the caviar would be waiting for the hot toast from the kitchens. Turns out the Bulgarians were too clever for their own good. They decided not to take any chances and figured they would throw the "smoke bomb" in first to cover up them throwing the bomb. Instead, they just blew themselves up. The third one hiding behind the Hotel Splendide to pick them up initially thought they had made a mistake and tried to flee, but when confronted with the fragments of the unexploded red case he realized that they were tricked and spilled the beans to the cops immediately. Unfortunately they were dealt with entirely through an intermediary, so he doesn't even know Le Chiffre exists. quote:She finished her story just as the waiters arrived with the caviar, a mound of hot toast, and small dishes containing finely chopped onion and grated hard-boiled egg, the white in one dish and the yolk in another. I'm not sure exactly which Yugoslav Bond is referring to. I imagine Tito had bumped off quite a few of them by 1952. The book gets more into the details later, but this is the first hint that Bond doesn't really think his job is all it's cracked up to be. There's more an idea that Bond has the job he has because it's what he knows how to do best, rather than any particular sense of patriotism or the idea that he's a "good guy". As Vesper thinks back on the Head of S. warning her about Bond's harshness and how quickly he shied away from any kind of warmth, Bond explains baccarat to her. quote:‘It’s much the same as any other gambling game. The odds against the banker and the player are more or less even. Only a run against either can be decisive and “break the bank”, or break the players. The version of baccarat being played today is Baccarat Banque. The other variant is Chemin de Fer, in which the position of banker is passed onto the next player when the current banker loses a hand. In Baccarat Banque, the bank is put up for auction and whichever player is willing to take the highest amount of risk buys it. Le Chiffre will put up an opening bank of 500,000 francs (I think about $13,500 in modern money). Every seat from left to right (from the players' perspective across the table from the banker) is numbered and each player is given the chance in order to accept the bet. If no player is willing to put up 500,000 francs for this hand, the entire table and spectators chip in to make up the 500,000. This is a pretty small bet by baccarat standards, but once you start hitting 1 or 2 million francs you may start seeing players pass. When a player actually accepts the bank and challenges the banker to a hand, the game is very similar to blackjack. The player and banker are both handed two cards, with the objective of getting as close to 9 as possible. Face cards and 10s are worth nothing, aces are worth 1, and all other cards are worth their face value. If your point total goes over 10, you drop the left digit (so if you have an 8 and a 4, your hand is 2 instead of 12). The player has the option of either standing with what they have or asking for a third card, and the banker isn't even allowed to look at his cards until the player makes their choice. If the player chooses a third card, the banker deals it face-up so everyone can see what it is. The banker then has to make the choice to either stand or take a third card for himself. Bond is partly playing a psychological game with Le Chiffre. If he gets dealt an 8 or 9, he automatically wins unless his opponent has an equal or better "natural". Because the banker doesn't get to see his opponent's hand but gets to see the third card they're dealt if they ask for it, Le Chiffre will need to determine his next move by trying to figure out how low his opponent's hand must have been to make them ask for a card and whether it's worth it to take a third for himself. The banker does get a slight advantage by actually having this information to make a choice (the player doesn't know the banker's hand until they've already made their move), but Le Chiffre will need to try and predict just how Bond will react to having a number like a 5 in his hand. quote:‘But in the end,’ Bond stubbed out his cigarette and called for the bill, ‘it’s the natural eights and nines that matter, and I must just see that I get more of them than he does.’ Chapter 10: The High Table quote:While telling the story of the game and anticipating the coming fight, Bond’s face had lit up again. The prospect of at least getting to grips with Le Chiffre stimulated him and quickened his pulse. He seemed to have completely forgotten the brief coolness between them, and Vesper was relieved and entered into his mood. They meet Felix Leiter at the tables, and he leads Vesper away to show her how to break the bank at roulette. quote:Bond looked inquiringly at Vesper. Bond turns in his receipt at the caisse for 24 million francs (about $648,685 today), divides the notes equally between his jacket pockets, and heads to the back. Baccarat is traditionally a high stakes game played in segregated areas where only seriously high rollers can play, in this case at the back of the room behind a brass rail and velvet rope. Bond has had the Number 6 spot reserved for him, slightly right of center. He intentionally sat as close to facing Le Chiffre head-on as possible. quote:Opposite him, the banker’s chair was vacant. He glanced round the table. He knew most of the players by sight, but few of their names. At Number 7, on his right, there was a Monsieur Sixte, a wealthy Belgian with metal interests in the Congo. At Number 9 there was Lord Danvers, a distinguished but weak-looking man whose francs were presumably provided by his rich American wife, a middle-aged woman with the predatory mouth of a barracuda, who sat at Number 3. Bond reflected that they would probably play a pawky and nervous game and be amongst the early casualties. At Number 1, to the right of the bank was a well-known Greek gambler who owned, as in Bond’s experience apparently everyone does in the Eastern Mediterranean, a profitable shipping line. He would play coldly and well and would be a stayer. Bond talks to a huissier and asks him to check with the chef de partie for information on the five gamblers who are missing or that he doesn't recognize. quote:Number 2, still empty, was to be Carmel Delane, the American film star with alimony from three husbands to burn and, Bond assumed, a call on still more from whoever her present companion at Royale might be. With her sanguine temperament she would play gaily and with panache and might run into a vein of luck. The baccarat table has a wide array of humans at it, both male and female. I guess even in the early 50s the gaming tables were one of the great equalizers of mankind. Le Chiffre slides in, all quiet economy of movement that Bond compares to a big fish, and sits at the table. He cuts the cards before the croupier loads them into the card shoe and announces the bank of 500,000 francs open. The Greek at Number 1 immediately takes it. quote:Le Chiffre crouched over the shoe. He gave it a short deliberate slap to settle the cards, the first of which showed its semi-circular pale pink tongue through the slanting aluminium mouth of the shoe. Then, with a thick white forefinger he pressed gently on the pink tongue and slipped out the first card six inches or a foot towards the Greek on his right hand. Then he slipped out a card for himself, then another for the Greek, then one more for himself. One of the greatest accomplishments of this book is its ability to give tension and detail to something as dull as a casino card game. I think one of the reasons Casino Royale had so much difficulty being translated to film properly is that it can be pretty hard to make a card game look interesting in a movie, especially if your series is relying on either campy spy gadgets or gigantic and incredibly expensive action sequences. Correspondingly, the 2006 film recasts Le Chiffre as a terrorist financier and front loads the story with action sequences in which Bond foils his plots and costs him his investments to force him into gambling. The Greek has only a 7, so Le Chiffre gets the 500,000. The croupier uses his wide spatula to push the cards through a slot in the table into a metal canister below where all dead cards are consigned. After the Greek pushes his five 100,000-franc plaques forward, the croupier slips a few counters through a slot to give the casino its cagnotte, or share of the win. quote:‘Un banco d’un million.’
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Jul 3, 2018 14:39
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Selachian posted:If I recall correctly, one of Gardner's reasons for having Bond give up the Walther PPK was the 1974 attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne. Her bodyguard was carrying a PPK, but it jammed and he was shot by the attacker instead. It was also one of the top deep concealment handguns back in the 70s and 80s. It actually took quite a long time for firearms technology to really perfect subcompact pistols in a caliber above .380 ACP or 9x18mm Makarov at best. Subcompact 1911s are really common now, but until the Detonics Combat Master in 1978 the only option for one was to cut and weld an existing gun to try and get it down to a size below "massive". One curious thing about the PPK in the films is that it's very inconsistent about what caliber it's in. In the novels and officially through dialogue in Dr. No, it's a .32 ACP. However, The Man With the Golden Gun specifically says his gun is a 6-shot, which would make it a .380. The film adaptation of Dr. No actually made a few bloopers due to prop availability. The biggest is probably that the PPK is actually the larger Walther PP, which the London Metropolitan Police were using at the time.  The other is that they apparently couldn't find a .25 caliber Beretta and so the gun Bond turns in is a Beretta M1934 is .380 ACP, ironically a more powerful gun than the .32 caliber PPK he was supposedly receiving. 
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Jul 3, 2018 15:22
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I got myself an Americano. Honestly it’s not that great. The Campari is strong enough to add too much bitterness to the drink and unbalance it if you use equal parts.
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Jul 5, 2018 01:34
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Currently struggling to fully recover from my hangover from last night. Among other things, I tried a Vesper made with Tempus Fugit Kina L'Aéro d'Or to replace the Kina Lillet, which the bartender said would be closer than Cocchi Americano in flavor profile. I definitely feel like it would taste closer, and I just need to get that 100 proof vodka to ramp it up all the way to authentic. The Tempus Fugit adds a more noticeable quinine bitterness that the Cocchi lacks. I had 6 cocktails (and 2 beers) last night and the Vesper was definitely the most dangerous.
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Jul 5, 2018 23:01
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Chapter 11: Moment of Truthquote:Le Chiffre looked incuriously at him, the whites of his eyes, which showed all round the irises, lending something impassive and doll-like to his gaze.  At the beginning of the book, when we got Le Chiffre's novel appearance, he had the benzedrine inhaler up his nose. Benzedrine is a trademark for the first amphetamine drug to hit the market. It was first marketed as a decongestant of all things, but people started using Benzedrine as a recreational stimulant. Amphetamines were commonly issued by all sides in WW2 to help keep their soldiers awake and alert and anyone in the military in the 40s and 50s like Bond/Fleming would have been familiar with them. Bond casually tosses a packet of money on the table without counting, an intentional gesture to indicate that he doesn't plan on losing and doesn't care if he does. The first hand is given out, and Bond impassionately flips up a four and a five. Le Chiffre flips up two knaves, a total of zero. Bond won the 2 million franc hand in an instant. quote:As the game went on, Bond looked over the spectators leaning on the high brass rail round the table. He soon saw Le Chiffre’s two gunmen. They stood behind and to either side of the banker. They looked respectable enough, but not sufficiently a part of the game to be unobtrusive. I guess we finally found a drug Bond won't touch! That dastardly reefer, turning all our children into hooligans and whores! quote:The other man looked like a Corsican shopkeeper. He was short and very dark with a flat head covered with thickly greased hair. He seemed to be a cripple. A chunky malacca cane with a rubber tip hung on the rail beside him. He must have had permission to bring the cane into the Casino with him, reflected Bond, who knew that neither sticks nor any other objects were allowed in the rooms as a precaution against acts of violence. He looked sleek and well-fed. His mouth hung vacantly half-open and revealed very bad teeth. He wore a heavy black moustache and the backs of his hands on the rail were matted with black hair. Bond guessed that hair covered most of his squat body. Naked, Bond supposed, he would be an obscene object. I definitely picture my enemies naked as soon as I meet them. It gives me a bargaining advantage. quote:The game continued uneventfully, but with a slight bias against the bank. At 1:10, the pattern of play suddenly alters. Mrs. DuPont takes a shot at a 2 million franc bank and loses to a natural 8. When it comes to 4 million, Bond puts it down. quote:Again he fixed Le Chiffre with his eye. Again he gave only a cursory look at his two cards. Bond pulls out the last of his money, trying his best not to make it obvious that it's all he has. He turns and sees Leiter and Vesper behind him and next to Le Chiffre's thugs; Leiter seems worried, but Vesper is smiling. She probably doesn't know how it's going down. quote:‘Le jeu est fait,’ said the croupier, and the two cards came slithering towards him over the green baize – a green baize which was no longer smooth, but thick now, and furry and almost choking, its colour as livid as the grass on a fresh tomb. 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. Bond looks at his cards. A king and an ace, a total point value of 1. quote:‘A card.’ He still kept all emotion out of his voice.
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Jul 6, 2018 14:38
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Deptfordx posted:Catching up. I have a query from the previous page. I'm guessing just an awkward way of saying that the car was in like-new condition when he bought it. Also Bond's birth date shuffles a little bit even in the official Fleming books because of the continued writing past when Bond should have reasonably aged out of the Double-O division.
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Jul 7, 2018 15:36
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Deptfordx posted:Thinking about it, Bond is famously an Author Avatar and Fleming was born in '08 which would make him an entirely explicable 25 year old deciding to buy a crazy sports car in 1933. I guess both he and his editor either didn't notice or care about the age discrepancy when it came to the character. I know that when he was in Eton, his housemaster hated him because he was a slicked-hair car-driving girl-dating rogue. 
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Jul 7, 2018 19:37
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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? Oh yeah, we get into some more of that later.
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Jul 7, 2018 21:46
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You can see the first hint of it with the "Shatter roughly" remark when he sees Vesper.
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Jul 8, 2018 15:53
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Chapter 12: The Deadly Tubequote:Bond sat silent, frozen with defeat. He opened his wide black case and took out a cigarette. He snapped open the tiny jaws of the Ronson and lit the cigarette and put the lighter back on the table. He took a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it between his teeth with a faint hiss. Leiter is gone, and Bond figures he doesn't want to look at him after this embarrassment. Vesper is smiling at him, like she doesn't know what's going on. And then the huissier suddenly ducks under the railing and hands Bond a fat envelope, the flap still wet from a fresh sealing. quote:Unbelieving and yet knowing it was true, he felt the broad wads of notes. He slipped them into his pockets, retaining the half-sheet of notepaper which was pinned to the topmost of them. He glanced at it in the shadow below the table. There was one line of writing in ink: ‘Marshall Aid. Thirty-two million francs. With the compliments of the USA.’ One thing to note at this point is more than just Leiter aiding his British companion. Every time Bond looks up at Vesper and sees her smiling at him, he thinks it's because she's a dumb broad who doesn't know anything about the game and has no clue what the stakes are. But every time we've seen Vesper in the past, her actions and appearances have been the polar opposite of Bond's guesses. His initial opinion on hearing that a woman would be on the mission was to lambaste the very idea, as no woman could ever be worth more than her value as a homemaker and living sex toy to Bond! And then she immediately shows the same sort of ability to read a situation as Bond himself, communicated entirely through the text's descriptions of her face and speech. Bond assumes that Vesper is just a happy idiot, when in fact she knows full well what Leiter has done to help him. Consistently, Bond underestimates her because of her gender. quote:The croupier had completed his task of computing the cagnotte, changing Bond’s notes into plaques and making a pile of the giant stake in the middle of the table. As the 32 million-franc bank goes around the table, the chef de partie starts calling out the bank along with the croupier. A stake of this size in baccarat hasn't been reached since Deauville in 1950. Bond leans forward and takes the bet, showing the cash (equivalent to about $865,000 in modern money) to prove to the croupier that he can actually play it. quote:It was when Bond shovelled the great wad of notes out on to the table and the croupier busied himself with the task of counting the pinned sheaves of ten thousand franc notes, the largest denomination issued in France, that he caught a swift exchange of glances between Le Chiffre and the gunman standing directly behind Bond. Bond's description of the cane gun is an accurate description of a firearm suppressor with rubber baffles. The best guns in that class (like the Welrod and DeLisle, both used by the OSS and British Secret Service at this time) have a discharge quieter than that of the hammer or striker firing, which would easily be covered by the noise of the casino. quote:Bond looked across. Le Chiffre was watching him. His eyes glittered back at Bond. His mouth was open and he was breathing fast. He was waiting, waiting for Bond’s hand to gesture to the croupier, or else for Bond suddenly to slump backwards in his chair, his face grimacing with a scream. Bond takes a chance. As the count reaches seven and the chef de partie turns to ask Bond to confirm his bet, he heaves himself backwards with all his strength. Caught in the crossbar of the chair back, the cane gun is wrenched from the gunman's grip and the back of the chair splinters as he hits the ground. The huissier and chef de partie rush over, trying to avoid a scene. quote:Bond held on to the brass rail. He looked confused and embarrassed. He brushed his hands across his forehead.
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Jul 9, 2018 14:20
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There's an excellent blog called Literary 007 that's all about the Bond of the books, and the blog creator has often done interviews, speaking engagements, and research on the character. While reading his posts on this book, I found this one talking about the possible inspiration for Casino Royale. In this case, our "Bond" was double-agent Dusko Popov.  Popov was one of the most talented spies of World War II, a Yugoslavian Serb born to a wealthy family (his father was a lawyer) in 1912. He infiltrated the Abwehr (the Nazi military intelligence service) as a double-agent for the British, feeding the Germans small amounts of real information approved by MI6 for release to cover up his false information. His false info was one of the defining factors in the Germans being unprepared for the D-Day landings, having believed that the Americans were landing near Calais instead. He was also famous for his Bond-esque playboy lifestyle, drinking and gambling the nights away with two or three girlfriends in every city he visited. The story of Fleming being inspired by playing cards with some German agents was originally dismissed as a tall tale, but Larry Loftis's biography of Popov, Into the Lion's Den, presents a story that bears great similarity to the book and (if true) was likely covered up to avoid Fleming being prosecuted for revealing wartime espionage missions. The information was only sheepishly revealed by Popov toward the end of his life when he was sure that there would no longer be any consequences to admitting it. So the story goes, a Jewish merchant named Bloch who had fled the Nazis from Lithuania was an arrogant gambler at the Casino Estoril in Portugal. Fleming was under orders to silently shadow Popov during his stay at the casino (where Popov would often report to his German handlers) where he had $50,000 in MI6 money on him. Bloch sat at the baccarat table and announced unlimited stakes. Wanting to intimidate him, Popov went "Okay, fine" and dropped all $50,000 on the table. The bet never ended up going through as the casino couldn't stake Bloch that much money (equivalent to over $800,000 today), but his face turned pretty green. The plot of Casino Royale is essentially a lengthened dramatization of this. The merchant fleeing the Nazis became a Soviet spy fleeing SMERSH, Popov became Bond (and the bet actually went forward), and Fleming himself a combination of Rene Mathis and Felix Leiter, both of whom took a much more direct role in the story.
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Jul 9, 2018 21:01
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Wheat Loaf posted: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. Reilly was one of many "real James Bonds". Fleming created Bond as a sort of composite of several people mixed with original details, as there was a surprising number of spies who maintained stylish or playboy lifestyles in addition to their espionage work. Reilly also died in 1925, when Fleming was still at Eton. He was a sort of mythological figure in British espionage at the time, while Popov was one of a number of spies that Fleming directly knew or worked with. He still had one very Bondish adventure: quote:In 1909, when the German Kaiser was expanding the war machine of Imperial Germany, British intelligence had scant knowledge regarding the types of weapons being forged inside Germany's war plants. At the behest of British intelligence, Reilly was sent to obtain the plans for the weapons. Reilly arrived in Essen, Germany, disguised as a Baltic shipyard worker by the name of Karl Hahn. Having prepared his cover identity by learning to weld at a Sheffield engineering firm, Reilly obtained a low-level position as a welder at the Essen plant. Soon he joined the plant fire brigade and persuaded its foreman that a set of plant schematics were needed to indicate the position of fire extinguishers and hydrants. These schematics were soon lodged in the foreman's office for members of the fire brigade to consult, and Reilly set about using them to locate the plans. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Jul 9, 2018 |
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Jul 9, 2018 21:42
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Lightning Lord posted:Hey chitoryu since I've read Casino Royale already, I decided to follow along with the thread by reading the recent comics adaptation from Dynamite... is it ok if I talk about that a bit, post some excerpts? Do you mind if I post some stuff about Bond comics in general as well? As popular as the character has been in movies and literature, he's had a surprisingly checkered career in comics, and it's pretty interesting. Yeah, go ahead! As long as it's not spoilers for anything not covered.
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Jul 9, 2018 22:10
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