Forever And A Day:Bond begins (again)

Just a week after Ron Howard's self-defeatingly unnecessary Star Wars prequel Solo limped into cinemas, Anthony Horowitz's James Bond continuation novel Forever And A Day - set before the events of Ian Fleming's first 007 book Casino Royale - arrives bearing another origin story for a 20th century pop culture hero. The timing, of course, is coincidental, but the result is identical: a serviceable but weak yarn that might have passed muster if only numerous other entries in the series weren't vastly more impressive. Both Han Solo and James Bond deserve better.

Ant: man

There's definitely a great Casino Royale prequel to be written, and it doesn't need to cover every event in Bond's formative days that led to him becoming the cold, ruthless, state-sanctioned psychopath we know and love. To his credit, Horowitz realises this and avoids Phantom Menace-ing Bond, but the result swings a little too far the other way. You could fillet out every reference to Bond's pre-double-0 duty in Forever And A Day without much impact on the word count, and it would appear for all intents and purposes like any other Bond novel. It's almost as if the character needs no introduction.

It's a shame Horowitz didn't choose to cover Bond's WWII exploits; there's probably a cracking war story to be told that includes his rise from lieutenant to commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve that doesn't follow all the predictable beats of every other Bond book. I'd also love to see a fully fleshed-out account of the two assassinations Bond undertook in order to be elevated to double-0 status, and to which Fleming briefly and tantalisingly alludes in Casino Royale (nerd note: these were covered in John Pearson's 1973 book The Authorised Biography of 007, but that seems well outside the canon now. Also it's not very good). Horowitz obliges me with a few pages devoted to the latter of those jobs, but it's a cursory bit of connective tissue before the thrust of his own story gets underway.

That thrust is this: the newly-promoted James Bond assumes the code number 007 after its previous (unnamed) owner, who was in the middle of an investigation of unexplained goings-on in the heroin trade, inconveniently rocks up dead in the south of France. Bond sets out to finish whatever his predecessor started, with the added objective of a little payback for the death of 007.1. Grotesque villains, beautiful women, casinos, car chases, explosions, sex, violence and betrayal all follow, just as they always do, and surprises are few and far between. The only way you won't spot the final chapter's "twist" coming from at least the halfway mark is if this is your first ever book.

Oh God James Bond's going to die, he's going to die!

Horowitz writes well enough to keep you reading without getting bored, but his is not a particularly entertaining style. His attempts to emulate Ian Fleming are admirable - the detail with which he describes certain objects or places is almost as exhaustive as Fleming, and there's a great deal of evocative authenticity in his writing  - but you never get the feeling that he's as deep under Bond's skin as the character's creator was. There are brief references here to the way Bond feels about taking a life (which shifts significantly by the story's end), and a weird amount of reflection on the vulgarity of excessive wealth (specifically cruise liners), but Fleming poured so much of himself into Bond that you genuinely felt you were reading about a three-dimensional person, rather than the franchise icon of Forever And A Day. At least that title would have pleased Fleming, being as it is entirely meaningless and crowbarred into the story with minimal justification.

Where Horowitz succeeds is with his version of the Bond Girl: Sixtine, as she's mysteriously called, is a competent, independent woman who's more than a match for Bond and who approaches their relationship entirely on her own terms. She's never a damsel in distress and she teaches Bond a thing or two about a thing or two, which is refreshing to read. Bond first encounters her playing blackjack in Monte Carlo, in a great little vignette that tells you much about both characters with wit and efficiency.

Sadly that fire doesn't spread to any of the other characters: there are two major villains and neither of them are remotely memorable. Horowitz has one of them, a hideously obese Corsican gangster, speak via an emotionless translator, an unnecessary choice which prevents the reader connecting with the bad guy in any meaningful way. And as for the villains' evil scheme, it's lifted wholesale from one of the Bond films and makes even less sense here than it did there. Keep your eyes peeled too for echoes of Quantum Of Solace (spy business set against the backdrop of a performance of Tosca) and Skyfall (a villain's interrogation of a bound Bond that challenges his sexuality, albeit briefly and inconsequentially).

So the quest for a truly worthy successor to Ian Fleming continues: this is Anthony Horowitz's second Bond assignment (following 2015's criminally-titled Trigger Mortis), effectively rendering him the authorial equivalent of a double-0, but it's hard to get excited about any future missions bearing his signature. His style, which often borders on the prosaic (one major character's demise is described in literally the shortest, simplest way possible), is ideal for the younger audience of his Alex Rider books, but for the grown-ups who look to the literary Bond for the meat that's missing from the cinematic version of the character, it's a little on the lean side.

Sir Roger Moore1927-2017

It sounds morbid, but I've been meaning to write an obituary for Roger Moore since 2013. I had the immense fortune to interview him for the Empire podcast in the previous October, and while it was everything you'd hope for from an interview with Roger Moore, it did strike me that he was a Very Old Man (he'd just turned 85 that week), and his delicate shuffle and hushed tones suggested that he might not be long for this world. Every now and again I wondered whether to make a start, but each time I put it off - partly because I'm lazy, but mostly because I didn't want to admit that he might not actually be immortal. He, too, evidently decided to put off dying until he'd written a few more books, performed a few more sell-out shows and generally enjoyed the absolute shit out of his ridiculously charmed life. Turns out James Bond is pretty goddamn hard to kill after all.

Still, the day when Twitter could at long last break out its "Roger no Moore" gag has finally arrived, so only now do I sit down to gather my thoughts about the first 007 to ascend to the great damp-fannied-Bond-girl-filled boudoir in the sky. This isn't going to be a biography (read his books for that, they're terrific), but it is going to be tediously personal, so please forgive me if I uncharacteristically go off on a boring ramble about James Bond and Roger Moore for once.

Like most people my age, I was introduced to Rog (and Bond) by my dad and ITV. I'm ashamed to say I can't remember which Bond film I first saw on the telly, but I do know that that's how Roger first exposed himself to me: unconvincingly beating up lesser-paid stuntmen without getting a hair out of place, before making a terrible quip, throwing back a goblet of fizz and sucking the face off an alarmingly young lady who would then probably try to kill him. It's a lifestyle to which eight-year-old me immediately aspired, and has disappointingly failed to achieve thus far. But then I'm not Roger Moore, and nor is anybody else - not least the three actors who took over his role but, for various reasons, chose not to emulate him.

Because how do you follow Roger Moore? You can't, so you don't. You wouldn't get away with it, partly because the world has mercifully moved on from finding sexism and racism funny (not that that was the backbone of Rog's humour, but it would be disingenuous to ignore it), but mostly because with the twinkle of a baby blue eye, the gentle elevation of a beautifully-coiffed eyebrow and a wry grin, Rog's Bond could get away with pretty much anything. I loved this about him when I was a kid, hated it when I became a dull Bond purist in my twenties and have now made peace with it for what it is: cinema history, for better or worse. 

It's easy to dismiss that mercurial run of films that somehow frequently defied quality control to keep James Bond afloat in the '70s and '80s despite increasingly fierce competition in the action movie market. Rog didn't single-handedly turn the franchise into self-parody, but his name and eyebrows were front and centre when Ian Fleming's cold, cruel secret agent glided past a double-taking pigeon in a hover-gondola or defused an atomic bomb while dressed as Bingo fucking Dimples the clown. You can groan all you like (and believe me, I have), but try and imagine any other Bond actor pulling that shit off. Moore turned the Bond films into Roger Moore films, and there's nothing wrong with that in a franchise which frequently needs its pomposity bubble bursting.

*pop*

Look closely at Rog's Bonds, though, and you'll find it wasn't all cringe-inducing misogyny and pensioners fucking Grace Jones. Occasionally that RADA training and twenty-odd years of pre-Bond acting experience paid off: witness the scene in The Spy Who Loved Me where Bond reveals to his female Russian counterpart that he murdered her lover with a flare-firing ski-pole, or watch him boot a villain off a clifftop in For Your Eyes Only as revenge for the death of a colleague - those are the moments where Fleming's Bond briefly comes alive, and incongruous as it seems it proves that Roger Moore was indeed capable of being somebody else other than Roger Moore.

But could he be somebody else other than James Bond? That's what I decided to investigate when I embarked on That's Rogertainment!, an ill-advised attempt to watch all of Rog's non-Bond films; a project which began in earnest and tailed off somewhat as life got in the way. But of all the actors in the world I wanted to watch more of, it was Moore. Something about his indefatigable attempts to keep plugging away at something he clearly wasn't very good at but which paid for those homes in Switzerland and Monaco made me hungry to see what else he'd achieved in his time. The answer is a fucking shitload, a mere fraction of which I've managed to catch. But I recommend all of it, no matter how bad: North Sea Hijack sees him as the comically-named Rufus Excalibur ffolkes, cat-loving head of an aquatic counter-terrorist unit; Shout At The Devil has him visibly attempting to keep up with a sozzled Lee Marvin before smearing gravy browning on his face and donning a turban; Bullseye is basically Moore and Michaels Caine and Winner having a supermassive megajolly on camera for 90 minutes regardless of literally everything else in the world. Embodying the term "movie star" (in stark contrast to the term "actor"), Rog deployed his overabundance of charisma at every turn to ensure that he at least was always watchable, even if his films were frequently quite the opposite.

But if you want to see the man at his best, check out 1970's madgasm The Man Who Haunted Himself, which I have yet to cover on That's Rogertainment! - a failing I hope to correct very soon. It's a film I love so much I screened it in a cinema on my thirty-tenth birthday, complete with an audio introduction recorded on request by the man himself. That's the kind of guy Roger Moore was: 100% aware of how much his work meant to his fans, no matter its quality, and frequently happy to accommodate those fans' requests. There are numerous stories on Twitter right now that people have told about how lovely Rog was when they met him; see how many equally enthusiastic tales you can dig up about his co-Bonds. Maybe they'd rather move on, but Roger's acceptance that fate dealt him a winning hand with 007 and his gratitude for that make his death that little bit harder for Bond fans.

So as much as I love his Bond (a love which, frankly, has seen peaks and troughs over the years), I consider myself one of the lucky ones whose memories of Roger Moore are enhanced by having spent a brief amount of time in his company, which is why I have to bookend these ramblings with that 2012 interview. I got to ask him about The Man Who Haunted Himself, I got to shake his hand and see up close and personal how immaculately turned out he was, and I got to make a cack-handed attempt to explain the plot of Inception to him. Throughout all of this he was an absolute joy; a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire who insisted we didn't call him 'sir', suggesting we could call him 'Charlie' if we liked. I've no idea why. They say never meet your heroes, but 'they' have obviously never met Roger Moore: a hero for the ages. Rest in peace, Charlie.

Guy Hamilton1922-2016

"Your time in the cutting room is much too short,
but basically that’s as good as it gets"

- Guy Hamilton, director of Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever,

Live And Let Die and The Man With The Golden Gun

It's the Spectre teasre trailre!

I'm probably not allowed to say this, and there's no way I'm revealing my source, but there is DEFINITELY a new James Bond film on the way. I've managed to gain access to 97 seconds of footage from it, and I'd like to share it with you now. Remember: "Exclusive" is The Incredible Suit's middle name. Making its full name The Incredexclusiveible Suit. You can see why I had to shorten it.


Let's Spectrelate!

Oh dear, MI6 looks like Javier Bardem's face when he took that thing out of his mouth in Skyfall. Evidence found at the scene reveals the true cause of the explosion: Ben Whishaw left the gas on and Judi Dench lit a fart.

It's James Bond's flat, probably! Our hero lives at number 007 Spy Street, and the last time we saw it was in Live And Let Die, when it was decorated like a Swedish porn film and Bond impressed M with his new-fangled orange juicer. Rumour has it that in Spectre he will make Ralph Fiennes a toastie in his Breville sandwich maker. Also, in Things You Might Not Have Noticed But Probably Did: Judi Dench's M's bulldog on the table.

This is where things start to get a bit Flemingy. This document shows that Bond's legal guardian was - as Fleming describes - his aunt, Charmian Bond, after his parents died in a climbing accident. But it also reveals that temporary guardianship was transferred to one Hannes Oberhauser: more on that guy later. Also revealed here: Bond's age. Apparently twelve years old in 1983, that makes him 44 this year. It also means Daniel Craig's Bond is almost certainly the last to be older than me. Sad times.

Is that a young Christoph Waltz with a young Daniel Craig, plus a conveniently-obscured third party? Who could that be? Mr White? Blofeld? Roger Moore? We can only hope.

Is that a tear? Don't worry James, I cry too sometimes, usually during the Beach Boys scene in A View To A Kill. Note Moneypenny gently chiding Bond for not trusting anyone here. He trusted you not to shoot him in the chest at the beginning of Skyfall and look where that got him, you cack-handed twit!

I absolutely adore this bit. It's a beautifully-shot evocation of Fleming's short story Octopussy, in which Bond hunts down an old soldier, seeking revenge for the murder of childhood mentor Hannes Oberhauser (remember him? I mentioned him, like, three paragraphs ago. Keep up). Christoph Waltz, incidentally, plays a character called Franz Oberhauser. INTERESTING. (To me. I'm sure you couldn't care less)

That hat looks silly please cut this shot from the finished film.

Here's Monica Bellucci as the deliciously Flemingy-named Lucia Sciarra. Hopefully she's at the funeral of everyone who keeps banging on about how ancient she is for a Bond girl.

Lovely stuff. The SPECTRE ring, a ridiculous giveaway that anyone who wears it is a total shitbag, is a definite improvement on the ridiculous Connery-era version. Considering divorcing my wife so I can remarry her and have this as my wedding ring. Chicks dig that kind of romantic gesture, right?

And here's a beardy Mr White, apparent boss of Quantum, looking like he could do with a cuddle. I don't know what you heard in this bit, but I definitely heard Mr White call James Bond a cunt. In all fairness it's the only way to top Judi Dench saying "fuck" in Skyfall. I can't wait to see what happens in the next film. "Morning Moneypenny, you bloody buggering shitting cunty twatbastard motherfucker. Is M in?"

Bond is massively unimpressed with Mr White's "kite dancing in a hurricane" metaphor. Quite right too. I hope his response is "You are, more like".

Someone at this table better get 50,000 volts up the wazoo or I'm asking for my money back.

They are really pushing their luck with all this "Christoph Waltz isn't Blofeld" stuff. He couldn't be more Blofeldy here if the lights came on and he pulled off his wig and had a big ugly scar down his face and a fluffy white cat on his lap and a t-shirt saying "Hi I'm Blofeld nice to meet you" and then he said "Yes my name is Blofeld can't you read my t-shirt?"

Just so we're clear, this is some of the best movie logo branding-type stuff you'll ever see. It really is genius.


So what's the official The Incredible Suit verdict, I don't hear you ask because you didn't? Honestly, I was lukewarm on first viewing. But the more I think about it the more I like it: it's VERY Flemingy, which is great, and it's quite dark, which is also good. I've been assured, however, that the tone of the teaser is not representative of the tone of the film, which presumably will return to double-taking pigeons and Tarzan impressions as dictated by the Law Of Cyclical Bond Silliness. At the end of the day it's a new James Bond film, and as you probably know by now, that's enough to cause a commotion in my trousers until release date and quite possibly beyond. I'm ready. Bring it on. After another trailer and a few more posters obviously.

BlogalongaBond / Live And Let Die: The Assassin's Guide To Failure

So here we are. The beginning of James Bond: The Sitcom Years. There's a new 007, and he's charming, handsome, handy with a one-liner and about as close to Ian Fleming's creation as I am, i.e. Not Very.

Let me be clear: I like Roger Moore. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he is a good actor, and he's quite rightly assumed the position of National Treasure for his resolutely British self-deprecation, his charity work for UNICEF and his heady days as an ambassador for knitwear. He's also about the only actor who could get away with something like this:

He is, however, the worst thing that ever happened to James Bond. Now I'm all for a bit of levity in a Bond film – God knows they’d have long since become extinct if they hadn’t developed a sense of humour - but Rodge's inability to take any of it seriously just seems like a lack of respect. His insistence on breezing through his entire tenure as if he’s telling a long joke in an after-dinner speech means that there are now seven Bond films in which Fleming's cruel, brutal cold warrior is all punchline and no punch.

Moore isn't entirely to blame: following the "disaster" of George Lazenby, producers Broccoli and Saltzman deliberately steered their new star away from the Connery model by making him drink bourbon instead of Martinis and smoke cigars instead of cigarettes. They even had M and Moneypenny inexplicably pop round to his questionably decorated flat to brief him on his new mission, which is unforgivable. The obvious consequence of all this is that not only is the new guy not Sean Connery but he's also not James Bond, despite what his ludicrous monogrammed dressing gown says. He's just Roger Moore.

Still, we're stuck with him, so what about the rest of Live And Let Die? Well, it's not very good: moments of promise are soon smothered by Bond's cringingly sexist dialogue, the arguable racism or plain old bad filmmaking. There's a complex and interesting relationship between the villain and the girl that gives them both layers of subtlety rarely seen in a Bond film, but it's stomped on by Bond's excruciating "there there, darling" condescension towards her. Likewise, the excellent work put in by the cast of black actors is all but undone by having nearly every single one of them play a bad guy. Even the film's potential high point, a speedboat chase through Louisiana's bayous, is fluffed by frustrating stop-start editing decisions and the unwelcome appearance of a stupid fat redneck comedy cop.

Live And Let Die's least welcome legacy, though, is the villain's staggering inability to successfully assassinate James Bond, which would feed legions of awful parodies and Bond haterz for decades to come. It's one thing to leisurely explain your diabolical scheme to the hero while he unties himself from his sloppily-tied clove hitch, but it's another thing entirely for you and your asinine assassins to balls up his murder on no fewer than ten occasions in one film. It's enough to make you wonder if they've been taking lessons...

How To Die And Let Live:

A Ten-Step Guide To Being A Bad Bad Guy

If you have every opportunity to shoot Bond, don't. Go for his taxi driver instead, then speed off before the car crashes. Under no circumstances hang around to have a crack at 007 should he lean forwards to take control of the car.

Don't kill Bond in that quiet corner of Harlem; take him for a walk first, preferably past some convenient street furniture with which he can attack you. Don't worry: all he'll do is kick you and leave you, rather than kill you in case you try again.

If your human minions are proving useless, give the job to a dumb animal. Snakes are ideal: they're slow, easy to spot and made of highly flammable rubber.

Snake fail? Try a lady. Not only are they good for providing confusing plot twists but there's also surely no way they'll fall for the notorious fanny magnet, thereby switching sides (again). As an added bonus they can do all this in a string vest.

Has Bond discovered your heroin farm? Best send a helicopter to shoot at him, but only once. They'll miss him by inches before immediately declaring him lost and giving up and going home for a nice cup of tea and a Hobnob, but at least they tried.

If Bond tries to escape in a very slow wingless plane with a pensioner on board, your crack team of henchmen can't fail. The worst they'll do is miss him altogether, let him pass, then - despite not being hurt - watch as he makes a crap quip and wanders off.

Now you've got him, give Bond a tour of your heroin factory before leaving him on an island surrounded by stupid reptiles. Don't hang around to make sure they eat him, it'll be fine. It's not as if he can use them as stepping stones to escape, is it?

Speedboats are an ideal way to catch Bond. It's not as if your men are so unfeasibly stupid that they'll repeatedly drive into swimming pools or trees, AND you'll have the help of the Louisiana State Poh-leece's most competent officers.

If all else fails, feed Bond to the sharks yourself. Don't remove his watch though, in case it has a hitherto-unknown function that may help him in exactly this situation, and don't forget to turn your back just long enough for him to escape.

Don't worry if you've unexpectedly exploded, there's always your top henchman to finish the job in the final scene, even though he could have done it at any point. His unique disfigurement will almost certainly not be his ultimate downfall.

The music

It's not all bad. Live And Let Die immediately atones for the series' weakest pre-title sequence with the series' greatest theme song. Wings - "the band The Beatles could have been" (Partridge, 1997) - cruelly rocket expectations for a world-class Bond film to the moon with their blistering title track, and George Martin delivers an archetypally seventies score with more flare-flapping funk than a pimpmobile full of Isaac Hayeses.

The clothes

I don't know much about costume design but looking at the clobber on show in Live And Let Die is like having Huggy Bear throw a fondue party in your eyeballs. For far more informed opinion than I could ever hope to impart, check out these / three / posts at the massively-collared Clothes On Film.

The stunts

Live And Let Die's lengthy boat chase might be (i.e. is) a failure in terms of editing and direction, but the stunts therein are typically eye-popping, especially the record-breaking speedboat jump. The bus which transforms from a double to a single decker via the intervention of a low bridge is also noteworthy, and the sequence in which Bond attempts to wrest control of a car from his dead chauffeur is more exciting than you probably remember.

And finally:
Trust Roger Moore to take the series' best running double entendre and give it a new twist for the female-empowering new decade:

Rosie Carver, an inexperienced CIA agent, is terrified by the sight of a dead snake. She rushes into Bond's arms for comfort.

ROSIE

Oh, I should have never gotten into any of this!

I'm going to be completely useless to you.

BOND

Oh, I'm sure we'll be able to lick you into shape.

BlogalongaBond will return with The Man With The Golden Gun

What the hell is BlogalongaBond? I'll tell you.

Further BlogalongaBondareading here

Saturday Playlist #5: James Bond In The '70s

If Bond music in the '60s was all about the sleaze, in the '70s it was all about the cheese. From John Barry's Vegas of Diamonds Are Forever, through George Martin's funkalicious blaxploitation-esque wah-wah of Live And Let Die, to Marvin Hamlisch's whatever-the-hell-you-describe-it-as version of the Bond theme for The Spy Who Loved Me, well-past-its-sell-by cheddar runs through these scores like massively-collared safari suits run through Roger Moore's wardrobe.

So get out the cream crackers, raise a solitary eyebrow to the heavens and suck your cheeks in as you kiss a series of ladies in a horrifically unwatchable fashion, because it's time to...

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #5:

JAMES BOND IN THE '70s

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Tom Mankiewicz 1942 - 2010

Tom Mankiewicz wrote or co-wrote some of the most average James Bond films. That might seem like a perfectly good reason to politely ignore his passing, but it meant that his Bonds (Diamonds Are Forever, Live And Let Die, The Man With The Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me) reached massive - and massively varied - audiences, ensuring the survival of the brand for years to come. His place in the history of 007 should be neither underestimated nor overlooked.

Mankiewicz was also responsible for reshaping a humungous and flabby Superman script into two classic films, thereby creating the template for superhero movies that can be found at the core of every blockbuster with the suffix -Man since. Except maybe Rain Man.

Combine all that with uncredited work on Gremlins, The Goonies and Batman and it's easy to see how Tom Mankiewicz has almost certainly touched the lives of every single person reading this blog.

And for that, The Incredible Suit salutes him.

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