The Many Lives of James Bond

by Mark Edlitz

  When Pierce dropped out, we approached Timothy again. We just knew he would be right and this time he was more receptive to our overtures. We met him in Michael Wilson’s house in Hampstead and had a good meeting. He was keen to tell us his own impression of what the Fleming character should be. He wanted to have a much harder edge and we liked what we heard so we decided to go with him.

  Is there a way to properly prepare an actor for what it’s like to be Bond and how that changes everything in his life?

  No, I doubt it. It’s like winning the lottery. You say good-bye to your private life and that’s tough. But Roger was good at handling it. Roger had a good attitude. I used to ask him, “How do you manage to keep your equilibrium when people want to take pictures of you in the middle of a meal?” He’d say, “They’re my public. Without them, I’d be no one.” He was good to his fans.

  Pierce described it as being an ambassador to a small country.

  He’s right. Pierce handled it very well. I didn’t direct him in any of the films. I directed him only in his tests. It’s a shame; I would have loved to have directed Pierce in a Bond.

  Who would your Pierce Brosnan’s Bond be?

  He would have been more similar to Roger. I don’t think he would have been the Sean Connery type of Bond, with the harder edge. He would have played the dramatic scenes well but we probably would have had as much humor as Roger’s Bond.

  When you were casting Dalton, there were really only two Bonds in the public’s eye. Lazenby was largely forgotten at the time.

  I worked with Lazenby. I was the second unit director of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I did some action scenes with him and he was an enthusiastic guy. He liked working with the stunt guys and he tried to do some of the ski scenes. It was a terrible responsibility for me because if he’d broken a leg on my watch I’d never have worked again. I had to keep monitoring all the time. “He mustn’t do this; he mustn’t do that.” He wanted to do everything. I had to be the bad guy and say, “No, you can’t do it.”

  It sounds like he threw himself into the part.

  He was very enthusiastic. As you know, he was a successful model. He did a well-known advert for Fry’s Chocolate where he was carrying this big crate of Fry’s Chocolate and he’s surrounded by beautiful women. He became a household name in England through this commercial. But he wasn’t an actor. He was just a very good-looking guy who had all the physical attributes of Bond. Except for the acting part. Peter Hunt, who directed the movie and is a very good editor, did all kinds of tricks with him to minimize the embarrassments.

  Talk about finding and crafting his performance in the cutting room.

  We knew that Lazenby was a bit wooden. You don’t become an actor overnight. He had the confidence, the looks, the walk, he moved well, and was good in action. Where he probably let himself down was in the dialogue. Peter cunningly used George Baker, who played Sir Hilary Bray in the film, to re-voice George Lazenby’s dialogue when Bond is impersonating Sir Hilary Bray.

  That was discovered in postproduction?

  That was improvised in the cutting room and happened in the latter stage of production.

  Talk about shooting the pre-title sequence in The Spy Who Loved Me.

  I did the ski parachute jump back in Ireland. Playing James Bond, Rick Sylvester skied off the cliff and the parachute opens. I shot that months before we even started shooting [principal photography on] the movie. That was a wonderful thing to have up our sleeves straightaway. It was great knowing that we’ve got this fantastic shot to go on the end of the pre-title sequence. Three months later when we started shooting the film, we shot the rest of the chase sequence. It just all cut together seamlessly.

  The jump is one of the most iconic images of the entire series.

  It encompasses everything that Bond stands for when you think about it. It has style, panache, patriotism, humor, and stunts.

  You have to have nerves of steel to direct these sequences.

  We use people who have got nerves of steel. It took a lot of nerve when Rick Sylvester went off that mountain.

  In his memoir James Bond, the Spy I Loved (2006), screenwriter Christopher Wood said that in the original ending of the pre-title sequence, Bond would have jumped off the cliff, landed on the lake below, hitched himself to a speedboat, and water skied to safety. In both versions, the last image before the opening credits is that of the Union Jack.4

  Because of tensions with Russia, I remember [director] Louis Gilbert saying that we’d start off the movie with the Union Jack and then we’d finish the film with the hammer and sickle. But it wasn’t carried through somehow.

  Bond films are unique. These ideas are not any one person’s idea. In the end, it’s a collection of ideas, which take on a life of their own. If they’re executed properly and filmed properly, they become a wonderful sequence.

  You start with the notion that Bond is forced to ski off the cliff. Then you have to reverse engineer it and come up with why he’s there and who is chasing him.

  Right and that gives birth to the idea of the Russian agent who is in bed with this beautiful girl [Barbara Bach as Anya Amasova]. It turns out the girl is a special agent and her boyfriend is an assassin who is ordered to killed Bond. But when Bond kills the boyfriend, the girl seeks revenge. That’s the way the writers eventually worked it out, but it almost certainly started with the idea that Bond would escape off the cliff. You’ve got to go back and work out a reason for him to be there in the first place and that has to generate the story.

  I get the sense that you’re never off duty as a Bond director.

  You’re always trying to think of new [action sequences]. I went on holiday in France with my wife and her sister from Australia. Her sister was a bad backseat driver. She was a bit of a pain in the ass, quite honestly. We went into a car wash together and we all sat in the car while it was being washed. That’s how I dreamt up the idea of Grace Jones killing Patrick Macnee in the car wash in A View to a Kill. That’s where that idea came from.

  Talk about Richard Maibaum, who wrote an impressive thirteen Bond films.

  Dick’s strong suit was story construction. We’d travel the world and find a fantastic location or come up with an incredible stunt and Dick would find a way to work it into the story. He was a good friend of mine and we have wonderful times writing some of these stories. We’d be in the office arguing the point about one scene or another. When he was first starting out, he used to be an actor. So he acted out the scene. He’d be on his hands and knees trying to sell the idea behind the scene. He was very funny. Oh dear, we had wonderful times writing those stories.

  Can you describe the writing process?

  We’d start off with a basic kind of storyline. Just three or four pages and then we’d start to expand it. Then we’d go and look at some locations and we’d get more ideas from the locations and then come back and work some more. Then after three or four months, you might throw the whole thing out. Cubby might come around and say, “Look, we’re on the wrong track here. We have to bring in another writer.” [Novelist] George MacDonald Fraser came in on Octopussy. I worked with him in Hollywood. I arrived on a Monday. At 9:00 am, George was in the office waiting to get to work. But nothing happened at 9:00. About 11:00, Cubby came in with his lawyer; they’ve got some problem with the legal aspects of Bond. There are always problems and they went straight into the inner sanctum. George MacDonald Fraser looked at me and said, “Well, what’s going on?” I said, “Oh, be patient. Let’s just throw a few ideas around among ourselves.” We didn’t do anything that day apart from talking among ourselves. Cubby and Michael were too busy with the lawyers. That happened quite a few days and George couldn’t get used to that.

  Licence to Kill was a much tougher Bond film than the public was accustomed to. It was also his first personal mission.

  The idea was that Bond was on his own. He went to his old friend Leiter’s wedding. Of course, it all goes wrong, and the drug barons come
and they maim Leiter and kill his wife in the most horrible fashion. The whole tone of that film was far harder than any film we’d done. Leiter’s maimed by a shark [an event taken from the novel Live and Let Die]. We had an awful lot of problems with the censor. Also the certificate we got excluded youngsters [under the age of fifteen] from seeing the film, which hurt the box office.

  Did you try to cut back some of the violence to change the rating?

  We did. We did all we could but we still had problems. We had problems when [villain Franz] Sanchez is on fire at the end. We kept chipping away at it but it only made the scene shorter and less effective. Cubby and I were ensconced with the censor in the cutting room. The censor took exception to it and he kept saying, “No, you’ve got to lose more of it.” It was a dangerous stunt to perform and it hurt me to keep chipping away at it. Things change and now you can see scenes like that on films and on TV all the time. But, at the time, we had a hard time with the censor.

  Quantum of Solace (2008) had a similar tone. In both movies, Bond seeks revenge on behalf of a loved one. As a whole, Daniel Craig’s Bond films are similar to Licence to Kill in that his missions are often personal.

  Yes, they are. Licence to Kill was before its time. I also think that Timothy was ahead of his time. If you look at his performance in Licence to Kill, it’s not that different from Daniel Craig’s movies. We suffered a little bit because the film was so hard [hard-edged]. But it’s a very good film and I’m very proud of it.

  By the way, the original title was Licence Revoked. But then we had a lot of hassle from America. They said people won’t know what “revoked” means. I couldn’t believe it.

  For his debut in The Living Daylights, Timothy Dalton was marketed as “The most dangerous Bond. Ever.”

  ILLUSTRATION BY PAT CARBAJAL

  After Licence to Kill, legal troubles held up the franchise for years.

  Yes, that seems to happen every now and again. Funny enough, when we were making Octopussy at Pinewood, the other Bond movie with Sean [Never Say Never Again (1983)] was shooting at the same time at Elstree [Studios]. One day their rushes [dailies] came to us by mistake. I promise you: I did not look at them. We even paid for the car to take them back to Elstree. All the guys who were editing that film were friends of mine anyway. We all got on well. I think Cubby had a financial interest in that film. He said to me, “I got a bit of a financial interest in it even though they are our competition.”

  Can you talk about some of the memorable supporting cast? Bernard Lee was a memorable M.

  I worked on The Third Man (1949) when I was a young assistant editor. He played the paper sergeant in it who gets killed in the sewer chase. Bernard Lee was a fantastic actor and he was absolutely irreplaceable as M. He brought a lot of humanity to the part. Although he treated Bond harshly, you could tell that M had a great feeling for Bond. He mastered [those conflicting attitudes] beautifully.

  What about Desmond Llewelyn who played Q?

  Desmond Llewelyn was a great friend of mine. He was a prisoner of war for six years during World War II. For one of the Bond films, we went on the publicity tour to Germany and he was being interviewed on TV. The interviewer asked him if this was his first trip to Germany. He said, “Oh, no. I was a guest of your government for six years.” He did it with a straight face.

  He’s a wonderful, wonderful man. But as he got older, he was finding it increasingly difficult to remember the lines because they were highly technical dialogue. They would be difficult for anyone to remember. On the first Dalton film, we were doing a scene where Desmond was demonstrating a nerve gas and while he did the experiment both he and Dalton were wearing gas masks. When he finished Dalton took his gas mask off and I said to Desmond, “Keep yours on, Desmond. Say anything you like and we can put the [actual] dialogue under when you loop.” That’s how we shot the scene.

  Do you shoot different rhythms and deliveries of the line, “Bond, James Bond”?

  You do a few takes but it’s an actor’s thing, isn’t it? It’s his timing, and, “My name is Bond.” And there’s a pause, “James Bond.” It’s fairly easy to do. You just have to have the confidence to do it.

  When you include second unit work with Lazenby and the screen test with Brosnan, you’ve directed more Bond actors than anyone else.

  That’s right. I did the three-day test with Brosnan [when he was tapped to play Bond in The Living Daylights]. When it was time to recast Dalton, Broccoli wanted Brosnan to play the part. Years later, the new regime at the studio wanted to look at Brosnan playing Bond. Of course, he wasn’t going to test again. So my son, who was the only one who knew where the tests were, went over to Pinewood, went into the vaults, and found the original tests. The tests that I shot ten years previously got him the job.

  What is your most vivid memory of working on the Bond films?

  My initial surprise when I was offered the job. That was quite an amazing time when Cubby turned around to me and said, “Would you like to direct the next Bond?” Then he said, “If you want time to think about it.” I was stunned. The whole industry was surprised. But Cubby knew the work I’d done on action scenes and in the editing on three previous films and he obviously had great confidence in my abilities. But it was a surprise for everyone, Roger as well.

  Did you instantly accept?

  I recovered quite quickly and I said, “I don’t need any time.”

  Why do you think he selected you?

  It dates back to The Spy Who Loved Me. Harry Saltzman sold his share of the franchise to MGM and so Cubby was on his own and he came back to England after about three years. He was going to make a Bond film on his own and it had to be good. I think the fact that I went out and shot that pre-title sequence, which was such a success and a great start for the movie endeared me to Cubby and him to me. He obviously got his eyes on me as a future director but I didn’t know that then.

  What sort of producer was Cubby?

  Cubby was a wonderful producer. He encouraged you to go out on a limb and do your own thing and he never interfered too much. He gave you plenty of rope. We succeeded pretty well doing that, and we certainly had a free hand.

  Your films generally stayed away from Bond’s personal life.

  Yes, otherwise it becomes a different [kind of film]. We didn’t go into his private life because Bond is always a man on the go. Bond has to be on a mission to be interesting. He has to be involved in the action. You mentioned the opening scene of For Your Eyes Only when Bond is at the grave of his [deceased] wife. He lays the flowers on her grave. I wrote that scene to introduce a new [actor playing] Bond. I wanted to remind people of the history of Bond. But it was such a good scene that, even when Roger decided he was going to do the film, we kept it in.

  That scene peels a layer away from him but still retains the mystery.

  Right. You show that he was married, and it helps people remember his past. Then a helicopter arrives and Bond gets in it. But Blofeld is operating the helicopter by remote control. I’ll tell you how I came up with the idea. One Sunday I was walking around Pinewood with Cubby. One of the carpenters had brought his young son to work and the son was playing with a wireless controlled car. At the time, it was

  James Bond (Timothy Dalton) is out for revenge in Licence to Kill.

  ILLUSTRATION BY PAT CARBAJAL

  brand new [technology]. I looked at this kid playing with this car and that’s what gave me the idea for the remote-controlled helicopter. It’s strange how these things happen.

  You mentioned patriotism. Is that an important element for Bond?

  Bond works for the queen. There’s always a portrait of the queen in the office and there’s always that feeling of patriotism. That feeling of patriotism was pervasive in England at the time, though I’m not sure it is today. In The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond’s having a romance with a girl in a ski hut. He gets up to leave. She says, “Oh, James. Don’t go.” He says, “Sorry, my dear. England needs me.” Although it’s tongue-i
n-cheek, it is what Bond stands for.

  If he wasn’t doing it for queen and country, then something would be missing?

  Oh, yes. It’s something special. Even if you’re not English, you still get that feeling he’s doing it for queen and country. No matter where the film is shown in the world, it comes off.

  One of the unplanned strengths of the series is that it’s not American imperialism.

  I’m not sure what makes it work. Everyone has their own theories. I’m not even sure Cubby knew exactly why it was such a success. Initially, [director] Terence Young was at the press screening of Dr. No and the press started to laugh. He got embarrassed and didn’t stay until the end of the film. He left. Peter Hunt [who edited Dr. No] told me that he rang Terence and told him to go out and buy the evening papers and see the reviews. They were rave reviews about this new character and this new tongue-in-cheek humor. Terence said, “It’s wonderful, Peter. But how are we going to repeat it?”

  It’s interesting that they didn’t even know what they had.

  We often discussed what it is that makes the films successful because it’s a question everyone asks. If everyone knew what made it a success, they’d all be doing it. But it’s a mystery. The rights to Bond were bandied around a long time before Cubby and Harry bought them. They formed the company Eon, which stands for everything or nothing, because it was the last of their money. They set out to make Dr. No and it was only through their friendship with the guy at United Artists that they ever made the film. They made it for $1 million. The original budget was $900,000 but when you include the contingency, it cost $1 million. I hate to think what the new ones cost. Probably about $250 million.

  There were other popular characters they could have tried to serialize, and others they have tried. But none took hold like Bond.

  Do you remember Our Man Flint (1966)?

  Yes, with James Coburn as Derek Flint.

  It had all the trappings of Bond. It was an American Bond but it didn’t work. It didn’t work because there’s something unique about Fleming’s Bond. It might have to do with class distinction. He’s a man who defies all the boundaries of behavior. He’s a guy who can play it rough or he can be the smoothest guy in the world. He’s an expert on the best wine, the best food. He’s very well educated. He’s a man for everyone.