The Many Lives of James Bond

by Mark Edlitz

  “Your brother’s dead. Keep dancing.”

  Clement: Could I have this dance, please? Oh, your brother’s dead.

  La Frenais: It’s a good line but it’s not gonna get you laid.

  Do you have any other favorite lines from the movie?

  Clement: There was quite an amusing scene early on with Edward Fox about free radicals. [M warns Bond, “Too many free radicals, that’s your problem… caused by eating too much red meat and white bread and too many dry martinis. Bond sensibly replies, “Then I shall cut out the white bread, sir.”] At the health retreat, a nurse says, “I need a urine sample,” and he says, “From here?” We had used that line in a television series [Porridge (1974–1977)] and we shamelessly recycled it.

  La Frenais: Interestingly enough, at the beginning, we were shooting a television series called Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, which had just been voted the most popular series ever on British commercial television [in a survey consisting of English TV critics and five thousand members of the public]. When we originally bumped into Irv, we were shuttling between the Auf Wiedersehen, Pet set and the Bond film, and so was Pat Roach, one of our actors. Pat Roach played the big guy [Lippe] who has the fight with Connery in the health spa with the weights. We went over across the set and there was Pat Roach.

  Your urine sample joke pays off in the fight scene. Bond throws it at Pat Roach, who recoils, inadvertently impales himself on a shelf full of glass bottles, and then falls over, dead.

  La Frenais: [With mock seriousness] Yes, so you see the urine joke wasn’t gratuitous.

  It was an important element of the plot.

  La Frenais: [Not breaking the gag] Absolutely, all of us planned it that way.

  There’s a wonderful line in the movie. Wearing a wet bathing suit, Barbara Carrera falls on Bond and apologizes, “How reckless of me. I made you wet.” Bond responds, “Yes, but my martini’s still dry.”

  La Frenais: Barbara Carrera on her water skis. We watched that being shot.

  Clement: We thought she was great. She was a fantastic presence and villainess. She had wonderful energy.

  La Frenais: But once they’re in Klaus Maria Brandauer’s desert lair, it suddenly becomes a different kind of film.

  Clement: We had much less to do with the last third of the film. Once you get into the action—the underwater sequence—that had very little to do with us.

  What did you think about the completed film?

  La Frenais: I couldn’t get over them putting that song on the beginning over the training exercise. That got us off on the wrong foot. We said that to the Schwartz-man and to Irv, but Irv said the studio wanted it. I enjoyed the film and I never enjoy the first screening of any of our films.

  Clement: The first time you see something you’ve written all you see is what’s not there. That’s true even on the ones that you come to love later.

  La Frenais: We did uncredited rewrites on The Rock [the 1996 film, which starred Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage]. I thought The Rock was great when I first saw it. We went on The Rock because of Sean. He said to the producers, I want Dick and Ian because of the Bond film.

  Clement: But the historical truth of it is that Sean did not sign on to do The Rock until he’d read some pages that we wrote. [Producer] Jerry Bruckheimer was always extremely grateful to us for nailing Sean for that role; Sean didn’t sign until we had written some stuff. Again, it was an uncredited rewrite, but it did us a lot of good in the business; the business tends to know.

  What do you remember about your time working on Moonraker?

  La Frenais: We got a phone call, “Would you like to do some work on a Bond film?” We said, “Wow, yes.” We were sent the script and we did some work. I remember we wrote an amusing sequence that took place in a brothel in Rio. In those days [the late 1970s] people would say, can you be in Paris tomorrow? And you got a first-class ticket and stayed in a five-star hotel, the Rafael. I arrived before Dick and was taken out to dinner that night by Broccoli with Roger Moore and about six beautiful girls. I just thought this was a great life. Broccoli said, “We had a logistical switch and we won’t be able to go to South America. So we won’t be able to use any of that stuff that you guys have done.” I thought he could’ve called us in LA and told us this rather than fly us over. We said, “Oh well, we’re still here.”

  Do you remember anything about that sequence?

  La Frenais: No, I don’t remember. Then we were there for [additional] lines and we wrote something when Lois Chiles went to a Venetian glassworks.

  Clement: In the end, I’m not sure if they used anything we wrote.

  Do you still have the pages?

  La Frenais: No, because it was pre-computer, pre-laptop.

  Clement: That’s disappeared without a trace. We’ve got an awful lot of stuff but not that.

  La Frenais: I just remember that the action sequence took place in a Rio brothel. It wasn’t based on personal experience.

  When you write for Connery’s Bond versus Roger Moore’s Bond, are you writing the same Bond?

  La Frenais: Yes, we try. Though it’s different because we weren’t on Moonraker much. But our approach is, this is Bond. We’re not thinking of Roger’s raised eyebrow or Sean’s approach. You’ve just got to write what’s best for the character.

  Clement: Although if we were asked to do a Daniel Craig Bond, that would be a different approach. He has certainly reinvented Bond to a great extent. It’s a different Bond, more muscular.

  La Frenais: In a nice bit of symmetry, years ago we were doing a film [Archangel (2005)] in Latvia with Daniel Craig, right before he was Bond. This was not a rewrite. Daniel was working out a lot. We would wrap and we’d say, “We’ll meet for dinner,” and he’d say, “I’m going to the gym first.” He knew what the rest of us didn’t; he was going to be the next Bond.

  Do you know what you would do with a Daniel Craig Bond?

  Clement: He’s been vocal about the fact that [certain aspects of Bond’s character] have passed their sell-by date and need to be rethought. At the same time, the audience wants a muscular hero who can handle himself. You can’t go away from the archetype too much.

  La Frenais: Bond was established by Sean Connery. Connery’s Bond liked being Bond but he had a job to do. Moore loved being Bond. “I’m James Bond; I can have everyone.” Then, Timothy Dalton said no, I’m a more serious Bond. I’m James Bond but I have a job to do, then Pierce Brosnan was almost back to, I love being Bond. With Daniel, it’s I despise being Bond; I’m a lonely, fucked-up person. But he was a Bond for the millennium.

  Clement: I believe that Daniel’s Bond could look after himself. I found Daniel very believable.

  La Frenais: If you’re flippant or casual about a precarious situation, then you remove the threat. So for me, if Bond is not afraid, then I’m not going to be afraid in my cinema seat. Daniel Craig makes us feel scared shitless about some of the situations he’s in. I also like Timothy Dalton as Bond.

  What is the Bond archetype?

  La Frenais: Daniel has reinvented Bond definitely. He’s right out of the up-to-date espionage, counterterrorism of contemporary movies. He’s from the breed of people in the series Spooks [(2002-2011) retitled MI-5 in the United States]; it’s hard-nosed, it’s realistic, it’s dealing with a world of terror, and Daniel fits that bill. The original Bond was a more glamorous figure. It was nightclubs, it was casinos, it was gambling, and it was also patriotism and the glamor of being a secret agent. But it’s a half a century difference.

  Clement: Bond’s a maverick.

  La Frenais: Who breaks all the rules.

  La Frenais: Today, all the cinema heroes have that.

  Clement: [imitating M] “Bond, this is the last time you’ll ever do this.”

  La Frenais: [imitating M] “I don’t like your attitude.”

  Why do you think that a shift occurred from the glamorous Bond to the hard-edged, more serious one of Craig’s version?

  La Frenais: The ide
a of a glamorous hero is dated. The world is dangerous and Bond has to reflect that. I don’t think you can believe in him or his world if it’s sex-and alcohol-centric basically. Every hero has to reflect the world he lives in, and Craig does. I’m still surprised they put Bond in a white tuxedo in Spectre. That looked ludicrous on Daniel Craig. Maybe they thought that’s an homage to the past but we’re living in a less glamorous world. If you look at contemporary cinematic heroes and compare them with cinematic heroes from the past, they’re a long way removed. If you look at Clark Gable, David Niven, or the Hollywood heroes of the ’50s, they all look good in a tuxedo, holding a martini glass.

  Clement: I saw a film from the ’50s the other day where it was a butch-looking leading man and he was holding his jacket by one finger, draped over one shoulder. I thought that was a ’50s thing to do. I can’t imagine anybody doing that now.

  La Frenais: The next time we go to a cocktail party, we’ll try it. Bond was not a ’60s person; he was a ’50s person. But Bond broke in the ’60s. Because of that whole transformation in the ’60s and what was going on in London—miniskirts, pop music, and the [birth control] pill—audiences expected more sex and more references to sex. They wanted to see a more amoral, if not immoral, lifestyle. That was just part of the zeitgeist. But Bond, by his look and his chauvinism, wasn’t what you’d call a ’60s person.

  Was working on Bond just another working gig of many or was it special to you?

  La Frenais: No, it wasn’t just a writing gig. We were both aware, fuck, it’s James Bond and the expectation and anticipation of it. It’s Sean Connery back as Bond. That was quite a bit of pressure.

  Clement: Oh, we wanted the job; no question.

  Bond fans have heard about a three-hour cut of the film. But a long rough cut is not uncommon, and especially with underwater scenes, which are slow by their nature. Do you recall any important scenes that didn’t make the final cut?

  La Frenais: No. I think it was mostly underwater stuff.

  Clement: And Klaus Maria Brandauer’s pauses.

  La Frenais: Yeah, that added a bit.

  When is the last time you’ve seen the film?

  Clement: Oh gosh, I have not seen it from beginning to end for probably twenty years.

  La Frenais: But we’ve seen bits of it because we do some lecture gigs and because we were trying to choose two clips from it. So we did a bit of fast-forwarding while watching it fairly recently.

  Which clips did you select?

  La Frenais: A scene with Bond and Barbara Carrera and the urine joke. It’ll be interesting now that we’ve done this talk with you; I want to go and watch it again.

  It’s a tricky film to discuss. It stars the original Bond but it’s also outside the official canon.

  La Frenais: It is interesting because the film wasn’t leading to another Bond film starring Connery. It was: Here is Connery’s return as Bond, but now he’s done with the role, never to be seen again 007, and then it was back to the regular Bond series. The audience didn’t quite know what to make of it.

  WRITING BOND SONGS

  LESLIE BRICUSSE

  “Goldfinger” is for many Bond fans the gold standard of Bond theme songs, if you’ll forgive the unfortunate pun. Sung with full-throated passion by Shirley Bassey, the jazz and rock-infused melody pulsates with thrusting, irresistible energy, as the lurid seduction demonstrates that Bond’s adversary is a sinister and malevolent force. Leslie Bricusse wrote the lyrics to the memorable song with singer, songwriter, and actor Anthony Newley. John Barry composed the music.

  In addition to “Goldfinger” and the sumptuous and haunting “You Only Live Twice,” (1967) Bricusse also wrote the lyrics for “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” a witty but unused track for Thunderball, which describes Bond as a “shark” who “looks for trouble” and as a “knife” who “cuts thro’ life.”

  Bricusse’s virtuosity in the two official tracks is displayed in his ingenious dual imagery. In “Goldfinger” he juxtaposes images of gold with spider images; in “You Only Live Twice” he blurs the line between the rewards and dangers of living life daringly with the allure of a dream life: “One life for yourself and one for your dreams.” These striking and unexpected contrasts give the theme songs uncommon texture and force.

  He has written or cowritten many other memorable songs for films, among them “Talk to the Animals” for Doctor Dolittle (1967), “Pure Imagination” and “Candy Man” for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971), “Can You Read My Mind” for Superman (1978), “Somewhere in My Memory” for Home Alone (1990), and “Christmas at Hogwarts” for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001).8

  Bricusse, a longtime friend of Roger Moore, also has a successful career as a songwriter for theatrical musicals, including Stop the World—I Want to Get Off (1961), which features the song “What Kind of Fool Am I”; The Roar of the Greasepaint—The Smell of the Crowd (1964), which includes the song “Who Can I Turn To?”; Sherlock Holmes: The Musical (1989); Jekyll and Hyde (1990); Scrooge (1992); and Victor, Victoria (1995), an adaptation of Blake Edwards’s comedy.

  What are the essential elements of a Bond song?

  It needs to be composed by John Barry. Unfortunately, he ran out of time. [Barry passed away in 2011 at the age of seventy-seven.] He is the essence of what Bond music should be. Also, Shirley Bassey should sing all of them because of the combination of her voice and her delivery. She delivered it with great impact and she made sense out of a totally ludicrous lyric. But the song works mainly because the music was so wonderful.

  How would you describe Barry’s Bond music? Lush seems to come to mind.

  Look at all John’s scores and you’ll see that he captured the passion of all the films. Look at Out of Africa [1985], Born Free [1966], and The Lion in Winter [1968] with Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn. He captured the essence of the passion that was the underlying feeling of the film of all those films. Take the plane ride in Out of Africa. His music captured the whole essence of the relationship between Robert Redford and Meryl Streep’s character and the awe she experienced when seeing something she’d not seen before. John had a rare gift.

  What do you think is the essence of a Bond song?

  It varies. Take two of the songs I did. “Goldfinger” is as ludicrous a title for a song as you could possibly find. “You Only Live Twice” has a kind of metaphysical mystery behind it. What does the song mean? Ian Fleming used to take phrases and turn them around on themselves. For example, he turned “live and let live” into Live and Let Die [1954]. He turned “you only live once” into You Only Live Twice [1964]. He twisted the phrases into titles, which made it more difficult to make lyrics out of them.

  Talk about having to include the title in the song.

  You have to write the title of the song as the title of the film. But the third song that John and I wrote was called “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” and it was intended for the movie Thunderball. I regard it as the best of our three Bond songs. “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” was the nickname Bond had in Japan, which was a big market for the films. After we’d written it, Shirley Bassey and [then] Dionne Warwick recorded it.9 The producers decided that they wanted to stay with the title of the film. But Thunderball is a daft title.

  I was in California at the time and I couldn’t do it, so somebody else [Don Black] did it. It’s impossible to do well because while you can rhyme “ball,” it is not a good word to end a song on. With the word “Goldfinger,” the stress was on the first syllable, as opposed to “Thunderball,” where the stress was on the last. Where you put the stress can have a great effect on the lyric.

  There was a rule with Cubby and Harry that the title of the song had to be the title of the film. It wasn’t the case with “Nobody Does It Better” but Carole Bayer Sager, who wrote the lyrics, used the title The Spy Who Loved Me in the bridge of the song. They got away with it. She and Marvin [Hamlisch, who composed the music] wrote one of the better—if not the best—Bon
d songs of all with that one.

  Many would give that distinction to “Goldfinger.”

  We were lucky because it was one of John’s great melodies. It was so dramatic. While it was the third film, it was only the second Bond song because Dr. No didn’t have a theme song. Lionel Bart, who wrote the music and lyrics for “From Russia with Love,” got taken away with the idea of love. The song should’ve been more dramatic. If John had written it, it would have been more dramatic. I don’t know how he would’ve done it, but it’s an interesting thought, and it would’ve been a totally different song.

  In “Mr. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” you referred to Bond’s code number “007.” You wrote, “And like the shark, he looks for trouble. That’s why the zero is double.” Did you first think, “I have to rhyme “Double-O-Seven.” So what rhymes with seven? There’s “heaven” and “eleven.” Then perhaps it occurred to you that the idea of referring to “Double-O” might be more interesting.”

  No. I thought, “like a shark, he looks for trouble,” so you’ve then got to find a rhyme for trouble. That’s how I got there.

  And then you realized that “trouble” rhymes with “double” as in “Double-O-Seven” and you could do something with that?

  Right, because people don’t say “O-O-Seven,” they always say “Double-O.”

  How did you and John Barry work together?

  We got off to a bad start. Tony Newley and I wrote “Goldfinger” together and we were in John’s apartment. When John played the first three notes, which were, “da, da, da,” Newley and I, without looking at each other, both sang, “Wider than a mile” [from the Henry Mancini song “Moon River”], which was what the melody said to us.

  “Goldfinger” was quite easy to do, although it may not have appeared to be, because the first thing I thought of was: “The man with the Midas touch.” Then it followed from there. That was the second line of the song. It guided it, so you knew what you had to do and you had to get the feeling of the girl who’s going to be painted gold. The line had to say, “Beware of this man, he’s dangerous.”