The Many Lives of James Bond

by Mark Edlitz

  DICK CLEMENT AND IAN LA FRENAIS

  The writing team of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais performed an uncredited rewrite on Lorenzo Semple Jr.’s Never Say Never Again script while the non-Eon-produced film was in production.

  Clement and La Frenais wrote the Beatles jukebox musical Across the Universe (2007) with director Julie Taymor and the heist film The Bank Job (2008). They have scripted many beloved British television shows, including Bob Hoskins’s career-launching sitcom Thick As Thieves (1974) and the Ian McShane caper Lovejoy (1986–1994). Writing partners for more than five decades, Clement and La Frenais are known for their carefully drawn characters and their witty dialogue.

  Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back) directed Sean Connery in Never Say Never Again, his seventh and final filmed performance as Bond. Connery effortlessly plays the debonair spy with a welcoming twinkle in his eye and the confidence of an actor who is clearly at ease in his own skin. Rounding out the cast is an eclectic ensemble, including Klaus Maria Brandauer as an idiosyncratic and unhinged megalomaniac Maximilian Largo, Edward Fox as a stuffy M, Max Von Sydow as an imperial Blofeld, a wide-eyed Kim Basinger as the too-trusting Domino Petachi, Bernie Cassie as the first African American Felix Leiter, and Barbara Carrera as the black widow SPECTRE operative Fatima Blush.

  The movie begins with a frustrated Bond, wasting his time by playing war games and squandering his skills by teaching would-be agents the art of spycraft, and ends with him eschewing his traditional five o’clock martini and speciously vowing retirement. Along the way, Bond seduces multiple women, dances the tango, plays a deadly video game, kills a beautiful assassin with a pen gun, battles enemies underwater, and thwarts an extortion plot involving two stolen nuclear warheads. In other words, it’s business as usual for a weathered Bond who, despite the mileage, still hasn’t lost his mojo.

  How did you become involved with Never Say Never Again?

  Dick Clement: We were making a television series called Auf Wiedersehen, Pet [1983–2004] in England and we bumped into Irvin Kershner in the commissary in Elstree. We already knew him, so we said, “Oh, you’re doing this Bond film, do you need a rewrite?” He replied, “Yes, I probably do.” We thought that’d be great. We went back home to California and didn’t hear anything. So after a little while, we called our agent and asked, “Do they still need a rewrite on the Bond film?” He called back and said, “Yes, can you go to Nice [France]?” We were in the middle of writing a very boring TV pilot and we couldn’t wait to get out of that. So we hopped on a plane and went to Nice.

  The first thing we did when we got to Nice was to look at what they had already shot. They had been shooting for about three weeks, and it was clear to us that there were a lot of problems. We could see that Klaus Maria Brandauer, who was playing the villain, was going through all sorts of tricks that actors do when they don’t trust the script. Things like that were going on and the scenes were very long-winded. Then we started to do some work and one of the things we noticed was that Bond goes to the Bahamas and there was no explanation as to why he went. Kersh [Kershner] just looked at this and said, “Well, you better find a reason because there’s a unit shooting underwater there now.” So we did at least try to piece that together. [Note: In the finished film, Bond travels to the Bahamas because he learns that Largo is a resident of the island.]

  It was a curious situation because there was a lot of paranoia around the set because they were terrified of being sued by Broccoli. At one time we were told that we could shoot only the dialogue that’s in the original novel. Obviously, you cannot make a movie in which you can use only the dialogue from a novel. The insurance company was also paranoid about being sued. Everybody was very jittery. This made Sean somewhat bad tempered because he had hoped that all these problems had been sorted out before he started shooting. We were kind of in the middle of all that.

  Ian La Frenais: The problem was not the script; we’re not badmouthing the previous writer [Lorenzo Semple Jr., who also wrote the conspiracy thrillers The Parallax View (1974) and Three Days of the Condor (1975) as well as the television series Batman (1966–1968)]. But for whatever reason, they started shooting before they were ready and the film was definitely not ready to shoot. We were in the position of plumbers fixing a bad leak. We had to be aware of the logistics and the politics as well as the writing. But all the problems stemmed from the behind-the-scenes financing and insurance issues, all the logistical things. They were not prepared to start when they did.

  Clement: We did about a week’s work in Nice and we’re at the airport ready to fly back to London because they finished shooting the Nice section. I remember going up to Kershner and saying, “Do you like your opening sequence?” He looked at me and said, “Not especially, why?” I said, “In the current script, it’s a jousting tournament sequence. But it was also a fake-out because you don’t know whether you’re back in the Middle Ages or it’s the present.” It turns out to be a jousting tournament for a modern audience between a knight wearing black armor and a knight in white armor. The knights bash the crap out of each other. Eventually, one of them wins, takes off his helmet, and he’s revealed to be James Bond. We said, “Here’s the thing: the key asset you’ve got in making this movie is Sean Connery whom a lot of people regard as the James Bond. You’ve got him and they [Eon, which was shooting Octo-pussy at the same time] haven’t. It’s a huge asset. Why don’t you show him from the word go?” We got back to London, checked into a hotel, and then in the middle of the night we got a call saying, “Can you possibly be on a plane to the Bahamas in the morning?”

  As a result of that conversation at the Nice airport, we suddenly found ourselves continuing with the film when we hadn’t thought that was going to happen. It was delightful and great fun. We then wrote a good bit more in the Bahamas, including creating a new character, Nigel Small-Fawcett, that we suggested. We got Rowan Atkinson to play the part. That was entirely our thought. We thought we needed a little bit of humor in the middle of the film.

  La Frenais: We replaced the jousting sequence with the training exercise, which is a fake out [for the audience, which thinks Bond is stabbed while conducting a dangerous mission]. M tells Bond that he would have been dead if he was on an actual mission.

  Clement: Halfway through shooting the movie, they showed the sequence to the crew to encourage them and say, “Hey, we’ve got some good stuff here.” After watching it, the crew applauded it and thought it was a great sequence. It was a great introduction.

  La Frenais: It was supposed to be a tense and exciting sequence with a ticking clock.

  Clement: But they made a decision late in postproduction, to put a [jazzy pop] song over it and that killed the tension.

  La Frenais: The song killed all excitement. It should have been at the end credits.

  Clement: Or over a separate credit sequence.

  La Frenais: It was just so counterproductive to what we’d written. Anyhow, from the Bahamas we then went back to work on it in Elstree in London.

  How long were you in the Bahamas?

  La Frenais: We were in the Bahamas for about ten days.

  Clement: We shot a sequence with Kim Basinger; we shot another sequence with Barbara Carrera.

  La Frenais: By now, we were aware of the politics and the schism between [producer] Jack Schwartzman’s people, which included [executive producer] Kevin McClory and Sean and his agent. Irvin was in the middle but he also needed to get on with it, to look for locations and direct the film. Schwartzman gave us his view, and Sean gave us his view. We tried to remain neutral. But one time we were in the hotel suite with both parties. At the end of the meeting, Sean remarked that this is a Mickey Mouse outfit. Then he turned to Dick and me and said, “Right, let’s go for dinner.”

  Clement: We only met McClory once; he seemed slightly secretive. There were introductions and nothing much more. We were then told the whole backstory of his involvement with Thunderball, which is fascinating. He’d come up with
the original plot and Eon said, “We’ll give you the remake rights to the Bond film” and everyone laughed as if that’s ever going to happen.

  Where did you do the writing?

  Clement: In hotel rooms. Then we’d go out to the set for a little break and usually lunch, and then we’d go back to the hotel room, and then we’d have a game of tennis before they all wrapped. Then it was back on Elstree to be in the cutting room with Kersh, where we were looking for solutions to problems. Sometimes we needed a line to explain something. We kept trying to fix things.

  La Frenais: We spent hours in the cutting room with Kersh. A lot of it was boring, the action was underwater and Kersh was exhausted and sick of it. So he was glad when we’d pop in for a few hours.

  Clement: [Dryly] We don’t do underwater.

  La Frenais: We’d say, “You can cut that; you don’t need that.” Both of us loved being in the editing room, so it was no drag. Barbra Streisand was next door cutting Yentl (1983). One day she sent Kershner and me a bottle of red wine. That was when I became a fan of hers. I’d been indifferent to Streisand before that.

  When you’re rewriting on location, with production already underway—and since you have to work within the existing framework of the script—are you primarily adjusting the dialogue and finding more character moments?

  Clement: Right. On this occasion, in addition to fixing dialogue, we suggested whole new scenes. Like the opening scene, for example, and the scenes with Nigel Small-Fawcett. We suggested and wrote those scenes, and then they found the locations for them. So it was unusual, but we felt we made quite a significant contribution.

  La Frenais: It’s a lot of fun because as writers you spend so many hours writing things that don’t get produced. Or you can spend two years writing something before it gets produced and then you just wait for that day when you get your call sheet. When you’re writing on location, you’re in a building with sets, diagrams on the walls, and costumes. You have to deliver because everything is going on around you, so that’s exciting. It’s an adrenaline fix.

  Judging by his performance, Connery seemed invested in the picture and wasn’t merely coasting through it. What was your impression of Connery’s feelings about returning to Bond?

  La Frenais: Because he’d never made his fair piece of the pie on the previous Bond films, this was a chance to be compensated properly for being the iconic Double-O-Seven.

  Clement: I think that had a lot to do with it.

  La Frenais: Yes, the financial [incentive] had a lot to do with it. Not that he would’ve taken it on if he didn’t think he could convince people that he could play the part.

  Clement: I remember watching the dailies of the scene where Bond is being confronted by Barbara Carrera in the garage and she’s about to kill him. The camera was on Sean while she was doing her lines. It wasn’t even Bond speaking but I remember being incredibly impressed by how alive Sean looked. There was never a moment when he went flat or dead or went on automatic pilot. There was something happening in his face the whole time, even when it was the offscreen lines, and that impressed me. I thought, boy, he really does know what he’s doing. It was there. I was very impressed with that.

  Ian, what do you remember about watching Connery in the dailies?

  La Frenais: I thought, oh my god, the governor’s back. I’ve never ever been disappointed by anything Connery’s done; I don’t think he’s capable of strolling through a film. It was exciting for me.

  Clement: I remember saying to him about the script, “Bond is still Bond. He gets up, has a bonk, goes underwater, fights sharks, comes up, and has a bonk. That proves something.” Sean says, “It proves it’s a movie.”

  What was your take on Bond’s character and his motivation?

  Clement: We inherited Bond and we’re going along with what’s already there so we can’t claim to have had a fresh vision of Bond. But the main thing was he was a little older but he’s still the quintessential Bond. We weren’t trying to reinvent him at all. We thought that just having Sean was enough. When somebody’s already played the part several times, you don’t come along and say, “Here’s a new way of doing it.” Everybody wanted to re-create what he had already done successfully. The masculinity of Sean is so strong and his charm is there. He looks like a lady’s man who also likes a fine life. He created that.

  La Frenais: Every time a new actor is cast to play Bond, they’re fairly young. But, of course, that wasn’t the case with this movie. This is a Bond who’d already been established in the 1960s and Bond was returning twenty years later. This is an older Bond. We never wrote anything to establish that he’d come out of retirement, but our idea of the training program was to see if he was still up to snuff. We faced the issue of his age head-on when Edward says, “You’re not in the best of shape. You’re two seconds slower than you should be.” We’re acknowledging his age.

  La Frenais: I don’t think age ever has had any impact on Connery’s sexual attractiveness or potency. I remember Dick and I were at a party years ago at a restaurant in LA called The Dome. It was in its heyday. Elton John was there, maybe Rod Stewart. There were a lot of people there and Sean came in. Sean was in his late fifties, nearly sixty, and every woman’s eye in the room went to him. It’s a sexual magnetism that I know is too late for me ever to acquire.

  There’s a lot of wit in the movie.

  Clement: We always try to make sure that whatever we do—however serious it is—that there is always some humor because there is always humor in life.

  La Frenais: We said, “Let’s acknowledge this is an older Bond and that things have changed.” We gave a line to Q, “Now you’re back Mr. Bond, I hope we can have some more gratuitous sex and violence.” They weren’t sure about that line at all and we begged them to use it.

  I remember that line was frequently quoted in reviews for the film. Speaking of that same scene, that Q dynamic was wonderful and a different dynamic than Desmond Llewelyn’s Q, who barely tolerates Bond. This Q seems to have affection for Bond.

  La Frenais: Yes, it was Alec McCowen who played Q, and he was very good. Yes, it was a different way to play that relationship. It’s nice hearing that that line resonated so much. That definitely was one of ours.

  Sean Connery set the template for 007.

  ILLUSTRATION BY PAT CARBAJAL

  La Frenais: I’ll tell you, we had one funny reward. The props people in films are meticulous. Dick and I wrote a scene and we specified the vintage of champagnes and wines. We wrote a line quite intentionally where Bond’s suitcase contains the 1964 [Château] Cheval Blanc.

  Clement: It was one of the sixes; I forget whether it was 1964 or 1963.

  La Frenais: Well, Dick and I chose a fantastic wine, and we knew that props were just going to get it for £2,000 at Berry Brothers [& Rudd, a liquor store].

  Clement: I remember the prop guy came up to us and said, “I couldn’t get the 1964 Cheval Blanc. Will the 1963 do? We said, “Yeah, yeah, that’ll be fine.” But he was concerned with the authenticity of it.

  La Frenais: We said to Sean, “As soon as that scene is wrapped, you grab the [unopened] bottle so the three of us can have it.” He said, “I’ll give it to you two.” They shot the scene, cut, and to his credit, Sean grabbed the bottle. Later, Dick and I were doing rewrites in a service flat in London and we looked at Sean and said, “Well, we might as well open it. It wasn’t quite as good as the 1964.”

  I understood that there were problems with production that Connery found frustrating. But did you get any sense that he enjoyed revisiting the role with his additional experience and maturity as an actor?

  Clement: I think he did. He is a great professional and he was impatient with the lack of professionalism from other people. He said to us he experienced it before on Cuba (1979), where the script hadn’t been right before they went on the floor, and he always swore that he was never going to do it again. To some extent, he found that this was a similar situation. But once the camera was r
olling, he certainly played the part that he knew well, and I always got the feeling that he was enjoying that part of it.

  La Frenais: Once he’d seen some new scenes that we’d written, and once he knew we’d given him some funny lines, and once all the narrative problems were sorted, he was so much more relaxed. Having dinner with him and Kersh in London, we would talk about work that needed to be done on upcoming scenes. But it was a different kind of writing—we were talking about how to tweak it, how to improve it, how to have fun with it. The stress of all the other shit had been removed. And yes, he loved being Bond.

  The humor is tricky in a Bond movie. It has to be witty, but it should never go over the line into mockery or camp.

  Clement: Yes, it is tricky. When I first saw the tango scene, I thought it might have crossed the line—seeing Bond do the tango. I thought Sean definitely did get away with it, but I was nervous about it. Were you, Ian?

  La Frenais: Yes, but it was even worse because [other than the scene where he poses as a masseur], this was the first time he’d met [and could talk privately with] Kim Bassinger’s character. He had to break the news to her that her brother had been killed [at Largo’s behest]. In the original dailies, he takes her on the dance floor, twirls her around, and his opening line is, “Your brother’s dead.” We couldn’t believe it. We thought, hello?, you might want to ease into that a bit. It couldn’t be reshot so we had to rewrite that scene so that our lines could be used while you’re looking at the other character’s face. Sean’s newly added lines are on Kim Bassinger’s face and Kim’s lines are on Sean’s face. All that was done in the editing room.

  Clement: We wrote a line that Bond says: “Try not to react when I tell you what I’m about to tell you. Your brother’s dead.” I thought it was in the film until I saw that clip a little while ago when it was on cable. The line is not in there but that was our intention. Otherwise, it seems brutal.