That's Rogertainment! Rogisode 4: Gold

The mid-1970s were glory years for our toffee-tanned hero. In the middle of the decade in which he made his best films, he was an adonis; a bronzed idol, always immaculately dressed and in fine physical fettle. Michael Caine and Malcolm McDowell might have been making better films, but neither of them had the catalogue model looks of Roger Moore. Now you could argue that that makes Michael Caine and Malcolm McDowell more deserving of your time, but this is That's Rogertainment so bugger off.

Just three months before his second Bond film (The Man With The Golden Gun, in which he looks his Bondy best) was released, Rog popped up in Gold, a tale of greed and heroism set against a backdrop of South African gold mining, and it's hard to deny how goddamn handsome he is in it. It's as if he's in competition with actual gold to see who can look the best. He knows it too: in most of the Johannesburg-set scenes, Rog is incapable of doing up more than a couple of shirt buttons, a look which he somehow gets away with far more successfully than I do when I emulate it in the pub at the end of our road.

It helps that Gold is directed by Peter Hunt, a man used to working with models-turned-James-Bonds after ushering the equally teaky George Lazenby through On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Hunt had also directed Moore in an episode of The Persuaders!, and knew how to make his star look good. In fact Bond alumni fill out the crew of Gold: John Glen directs the second unit and edits (as he did on OHMSS), Maurice Binder knocks up the titles, Syd Cain is production designer and Alec Mills is a cameraman. Perhaps most excitingly, Don Black writes the lyrics to the brilliant, bonkers and Bondesque theme song, which is a touching paean to the plight of the humble gold miner expressed via the medium of some absolutely bollocks-out brass:

After that vaguely crackers opening, Gold disappoints slightly by turning out to be a perfectly adequate drama about the heroically-named Rod Slater (our Rog), a gold mine manager who unwittingly gets caught up in a wicked plot, devised by a suspiciously SPECTREish cabal of businessmen bafflingly led by John Gielgud, to flood the mine and tinker with global gold prices. It's zippily edited, as you'd expect from Hunt and Glen, and despite its earnestness it never gets too boring for its own good. Its questionable high point is the total annihilation of a six-year-old Patsy Kensit in an explosion aimed at her SPECTRE-disappointing father.

Unsurprisingly, Roger Moore is the best thing about it, although this is one of his roles for which he leaves his self-parody hat at home. Hunt demands that Moore plays Slater straight, and as a result he comes off as a believable patsy and a genuine hero come the climax. He gets to bark lines like "Shut up Kowalski!" and "Drop it Kowalski!" (Kowalski is a bit of a prick), while the double entendres we so love to see him wrap his tongue around are scant and given to others: "I noticed you slipped out," purrs a female conquest as Rog climbs back into bed in the middle of the night. You can practically see the eyebrows desperately itching to climb north but being beaten back by Peter Hunt's steely glare.

It is a little-known fact that Roger Moore ejaculates champagne.

For this scene he filled a bathtub in one sitting.

A solid slice of Rogertainment then: proof that he can actually act when given good direction, but not as Rogertaining as when he's got his tongue jammed in his cheek and his eyebrows ready to ask "how high?" when he says jump. But my goodness he's a dishy devil, and if I look anything like that when I'm in my late forties (I won't, I can't afford the hair) then I'll consider myself to be one lucky bastard.

FUN FACT! In his autobiography, Rog fondly remembers how the arsenic in the water at the bottom of the gold mine turned his nipples a funny colour.

Rogerating:

Why am I banging on about Roger Moore? Hard to say. Here's an attempt to explain.

When The Incredible Suit met James Bond: Episode four in a series whichredefines the word "met"

It's eighteen long months since I last reported on the progress of my ongoing mission to meet every James Bond, and in that time I've come to terms with the fact that of the three remaining targets, only one is realistic, given that he's the only one still working. And so as long as there was breath in my body and intelligent people still casting him, I knew that one day I would meet Timothy Dalton, The Greatest James Bond That Ever Lived. Here's the story of how I did. Kind of.

Several weeks ago I was summoned through a leather-padded door and into a wood-panelled office at Empire Magazine and given a mission by a man I shall refer to only as 'N': to visit the set of Sky Atlantic's new horror drama Penny Dreadful and report back. From that day on my heart has barely returned to its normal b.p.m., for I knew that not only was Penny Dreadful created and written by Skyfall and Bond 24 writer John Logan, but that Timothy Dalton was a key cast member. Here was a chance to meet at least two Bond alumni, not to mention various others involved in both worlds - Eva Green (Casino Royale), Rory Kinnear (Quantum Of Solace, Skyfall), Helen McCrory (Skyfall) and 2nd Unit Director Vic Armstrong (too many Bonds to mention) are all involved in Logan's new project.

The set visit was fantastic: the show looked amazing, John Logan was charming, enthusiastic, incredibly generous with his time, and gave me a full personal tour of the sets and an exclusive Bond 24 interview which contained precisely no scoops. There was just one problem: I didn't meet Timothy Dalton. He was there, and I saw him, several times - in fact at one point he was as close to me as you are to that guy next to you - but we didn't actually exchange any words. This was mainly because he was working on an incredibly tense scene, and frankly I was mildly terrified. Dalton has enormous presence: when he walks into the room, you notice, and I noticed that he was way too busy being a ruddy amazing actor to speak to me. So I satisfied myself with some longing gazes and the knowledge that I'd breathed the same air as him, and went about my business.

Deep down, though, I knew that I hadn't really MET Timothy Dalton. In order to tick him off my list with a clear conscience, I had to talk to him. 'Seeing' plus 'talking to' equals 'meeting' in anyone's book, surely, even if those two elements occur weeks apart.

Insanely, no matter how long you stare at this photo,
it does not constitute a meeting.

Now magazine articles are rarely built from the transcript of just one interview, and so it was inevitable that I would need to talk to some of the Penny Dreadful cast at some point, even if it was just on the phone. And when I say "some of the Penny Dreadful cast", I mean "one of the Penny Dreadful cast". And when I say "one of the Penny Dreadful cast", obviously I mean Timothy flipping Dalton.

And so, just over two weeks later, I found myself sitting at home in front of my computer with no fewer than two voice recorders pointed purposefully at the telephone. It was 4.20pm on a Friday afternoon, and in ten minutes' time Timothy Dalton was due to call me from his home in Los Angeles. I repeat: Timothy Dalton was about to phone me, at my house, for a chat. I was trying extremely hard not to die of disbelief.

That photograph may or may not hang on my bedroom wall.

4.30 came and went, and the phone had not rung. 5.00 came and went, and still my phone remained frustratingly silent. I started to panic. Was the phone actually working? Had I given the right number to Dalton's people? Had I made some catastrophic miscalculation with the time difference? I checked and re-checked all possible opportunities of a balls-up but found none. At 6.00, still nothing. I needed a wee, but there was no way I was leaving the phone. My wife was due home at 6.30, so I decided I would make her my PA when she got in, instructing her to take any calls while I nipped to the bathroom. However, at 6.20 I could wait no longer. I was bursting. Reasoning that if Timothy Dalton hadn't phoned in the last 110 minutes, he was pretty unlikely to in the next two, I abandoned my post and took the much-needed comfort break.

Obviously, as I was mid-wazz, the phone rang. Unbelievable. James Bond was trying to get hold of me and I was urgently squirting out a torrential jet of piss that showed no signs of slowing down in the next few minutes. Somehow I clenched every relevant muscle, probably causing internal injuries to my bladder and personal waste disposal system, put everything back where it belonged and dashed back to the phone, answering it just before it was due to go to voicemail.

"Hello?"
"HELLO!" The voice was unmistakable. Booming, but with a gentle Welsh lilt, Timothy Dalton's tones sang out to me from across the Atlantic Ocean. We were about to exchange our first words; to finally meet. How would we begin our relationship?
"IS THAT NICK?"
At this point I should make it clear to readers who don't know: my name isn't Nick, although in the heat of the moment I considered changing it to Nick by Deed Poll so that I wouldn't have to correct Timothy Dalton.
"Uh... it's Neil. Is that Timothy?"
"NEIL! SORRY! TIM DALTON HERE!"

And with that, 'Tim' and I were off on a magical fifteen-minute voyage of conversation. It turned out that the lateness of the call was simply down to him being incredibly busy - it was, after all, his birthday; I gave him my best wishes but stopped short of singing breathily down the phone like Marilyn Monroe. And I realise all that detail about my trip to the toilet might seem unnecessary, but I need my wife to understand the sequence of events which led to her coming home to find me talking to James Bond on the phone with my trousers undone.

Anyway it pleases me to report that Dalton is charming. I had been concerned that the fiercely intense man I'd seen on set would be equally as terrifying on the phone, but he was quite the opposite: ebullient, effusive and erudite. At one point he used a Latin phrase, which I like to think means "you are my favourite blogger". When I told him I'd seen him in action on the Penny Dreadful set, he demanded to know why I hadn't come and said hello; I told him he seemed heavily involved in what he was doing and, with sly self-awareness, he replied "well that makes a certain sense".

I spent the next hour or so in a daze. I don't want to sound like I'd had a visitation from the holy ghost, but I did have a nice chinwag with a man largely responsible for bringing an enormous amount of pleasure to my Bond-nerd existence, and that felt pretty ruddy special. It pained me to wash the hands that had held the phone that was connected to the phone that was held by Timothy Dalton, but they had dried wee on them so, sadly, I kind of had to.

So there we are: four down, two to go. I know that both Sean Connery and George Lazenby are keen readers of The Incredible Suit, so it can only be a matter of time before one or both of them get in touch to arrange a meeting. In preparation for their call I'm off to stock up on incontinence pants.

You can read the fruits of my conversation with Timothy Dalton in Issue 300 of Empire Magazine, out now in all good newsagents and some newsagents who charge 80p for a packet of Tooty Frooties, the daylight robbing bastards.

Further reading

The Brosnan Incident

The Craig Incident

The Moore Incident

Bob Hoskins1942-2014

"This is a diabolical liberty!"

- Harold Shand, The Long Good Friday

It's quite the week for casts of huge sci-fi sequels sitting round tables in London

Sunday, April 27 - Avengers: Age Of Ultron

Tuesday, April 29 - Star Wars: Episode VII

If the cast of Jurassic World are reading, I've just bought a very nice vintage table with fold-out leaves which could comfortably seat six, seven at a push. Bryce Dallas Howard might have to sit on a patio chair from the shed. I'm busy tonight but Thursday's looking good?

Crispin Glover's UK tour is as mad as eggs and you should definitely see it

Last Friday found me at London's deeply sensual Hackney Picturehouse for the opening night of the UK tour of Crispin Glover: actor, director, writer and artist who - whether he likes it or not - will forever be connected to the role of George McFly in Back To The Future. While that role is undeniably magnificently written and portrayed, Glover has a remarkable body of other work behind him, much of which is completely and utterly batshit mental. And I'm not just talking about Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

A typical evening on his current tour (which visits several Picturehouses in the UK over the next three weeks) consists of Crispin Hellion Glover's Big Slide Show, in which he reads from obscure 19th century books which he's altered for his own ends; a screening of one of two films he's directed (which film you get depends on which venue you book) and a post-screening Q&A. It's a fascinatingly odd experience which will delight as many as it will frustrate; personally I loved it, but the gentleman next to me in the Back To The Future t-shirt was left visibly and audibly frustrated by Glover's insistence on yelling non-sequiturs in German rather than discussing fondly-remembered weekends spent skateboarding with Michael J Fox.

The slide show is the maddest part of the event: less a deconstruction of the concept of storytelling than a total obliteration and subsequent reconstruction of it by a demented force. Glover reads lengthy extracts - often from memory - of stories, manuals and textbooks from which he's removed several passages and, occasionally, added his own contributions. The pages appear behind him on screen, and are annotated and illustrated by what appears to be a deranged spider with too many dark thoughts and not enough friends. Not a second of it makes an ounce of sense, so you have to be prepared to let it happen to you, although towards the end I found myself so immersed in Glover's world that I began to appreciate and enjoy some of the readings. I remember thoroughly liking one called An Egg Farm, but can't for the life of me remember anything about it now except that it was really quite crackers.

Friday's screening was of Glover's second film in his proposed It trilogy, It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE., while some dates on the tour will screen the first film, What Is It?. Part three, IT IS MINE, is some years from completion, although evidently it will continue to employ an avant-garde approach to capitalisation. It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. is a remarkable, surreal and challenging film written by its lead, Steven C Stewart, who was crippled by cerebral palsy (he died a month after filming wrapped). Stewart plays a man who deals with his handicap and his feelings for long-haired, beautiful women in unusual and occasionally troubling ways, and while it's certainly an offbeat film it's much less bonkers than Glover's slide show. A lazy person would probably describe it as almost Lynchian in its wilful weirdness, so I'll simply say that to me it seemed almost Lynchian in its wilful weirdness.

Low on production values but high on originality, It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE. feels like a far braver and much more starkly honest version of last year's Helen Hunt / John Hawkes-starring The Sessions. Unrestricted by such annoyances as certification and studio approval, Glover's film dispenses entirely with cheese and goes straight for the jugular with its rage-fuelled protagonist and arguably misogynistic approach. It's probably not one to watch with your mum, but it does give you some insight into what it must be to be so agonisingly frustrated by a disease which renders your body useless but your mind lively and bursting with everyday impulses upon which it is near-impossible to act.

I had to leave the post-screening Q&A early in order to take advantage of outer London's marvellous weekend public transport timings (want to stay out past 11pm on a Friday? Then enjoy getting home via at least four varied and torturous methods, possibly by Sunday if you're lucky), but fortunately Mr Glover kindly agreed to my own personal Q&A via email. So here's a closer look at the musings of a deranged madman, and as a bonus I've included Crispin Glover's responses.

Hello Crispin. IS EVERYTHING FINE? Hello Neil! One usually only says "It is fine!" when something is actually wrong. How would you prepare someone who's coming to one of your current shows because they loved you in Back To The Future but know nothing else about you? I'm thinking in particular of someone like this chap: Frankly that is quite rare. I’ve not had many people come to the show that have exclusively seen me in Back To The Future. At least not people that come up to me. I would prepare them in the same way I would prepare anyone. I prefer films that cause the audience to ask questions. Your Big Slide Show includes some amazing slides: did you make all those annotations and illustrations yourself? How long did the process take? I started making my books in 1983 for my own enjoyment without the concept of publishing them. I had always written and drawn and the books came as an accidental outgrowth of that. I made most of the books in the '80s and very early '90s. Some of the books utilize text from the binding it was taken from and some of them are basically completely original text. Sometimes I would find images that I was inspired to create stories for or sometimes it was the binding or sometimes it was portions of the texts that were interesting. Altogether, I made about twenty of them. The books and films are all narrative. Sometimes people see thematic correlations between the content of my books and the content of the films. How did you select which books to use as the basis for the Big Slide Show? Many of the books that are in the show are specifically books that will perform well dramatically or that have a sense of humor. Some of the books that I have not used in the slide shows are books that work more as art objects as opposed to narratives. Your presentation technique in the Big Slide Show feels like you, as an actor, playing a part. Is that fair? How much of the real Crispin Glover are we watching? I would assess the slide show performance as a performance and interpretation of books I made not originally meant for performance. That being said I enjoy performing them. You described It is fine! EVERYTHING IS FINE as "the best film I'll have anything to do with in my whole career". What is it about the film that you are most proud of? The cinematic and subconscious emotional catharsis that happens with the protagonist / writer / Steven C Stewart in the film is central to what I am proud of with this film. You played Andy Warhol in The Doors: as an avant-garde artist do you feel any affinity with him? I met and spoke with Andy Warhol at the wedding of Madonna and Sean Penn. It was right after Back To The Future had come out which he had apparently seen. I did not speak with him for so long but definitely enough to get an idea about him. He was quite nice to me. After I spoke with him I stood back and looked at him and watched how he held himself and thought he would be an interesting person to play. I had met Oliver Stone previously for Platoon which I was not in, but we had a good meeting and I auditioned for the role and got it. I would not compare myself to Warhol for a lot of reasons, but I would take any comparison as a compliment. First off, the enormity of influence of Warhol’s art is something that is extremely important to consider. Someone asked me once if I related to Warhol's eccentricities. I feel like Warhol’s "eccentricities" were very different from my own, and frankly I believe that a lot of my own perceived eccentricities are greatly exacerbated by inaccurate media myopia. I do not know what Warhol would say about his perceived eccentricities, although I would say he was much more in control of his media perception during his entire career than I have been of mine for much of mine. You've also dabbled in music, and I love your song 'Clowny Clown Clown'. How do you really feel about clowns? The lyrics leave one uncertain. Even as a child I never found clowns particularly amusing. I am a little confused as to why even children find clowns amusing. 'Clowny Clown Clown' by Crispin Glover. Warning: contains clowns I recently watched Rubin & Ed, the film in which you play Rubin Farr, who also infamously appeared on David Letterman and in your video for 'Clowny Clown Clown'. Is Rubin an alter ego of sorts? I have neither confirmed nor denied in media whether or not that was me on the 1986 Late Night with David Letterman appearance. If asked I go in to a lot of detail about it at my shows. You own a 17th century castle in the Czech Republic where you are planning to shoot your future films. Do you know any Czech swear words? No. Like me, you are an only child. Did you ever invent imaginary friends as substitute siblings? I mean, not that I did or anything. No. I did not invent imaginary friends. Unlike me, your father Bruce played a Bond villain's henchman in Diamonds Are Forever. Are you a Bond fan? Who's your favourite James Bond and what's your favourite Bond film? I have not seen all the Bond films or all the actors that have played Bond. I think the first Bond film I saw was Diamonds Are Forever so I do like that one. I also like Dr. No. I love Notorious by Hitchcock with Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. That is the movie that supposedly influenced Ian Fleming to write his first Bond novel Casino Royale. I did see the recent Casino Royale and thought Daniel Craig did an excellent job and liked to see the obvious structural influences on that story from Hitchcock’s and Ben Hecht's great screenplay for Notorious. Would playing a Bond villain be something that might interest you? Certainly. Who is your favourite Charlie's Angel? I do not have a favorite Angel. All three of the actresses were very nice people to work with. Of note structurally, the character I played in Charlie’s Angels was somewhat similar to the character my father played in Diamonds Are Forever. They were both assassins that kept coming back to at least seem to attempt to assassinate the protagonists. You starred in Hot Tub Time Machine, a film which examined some of the most basic elements of the human condition, such as what it is to be a man, to be an adult, to lose sight of your hopes and dreams, and to find true happiness and a peaceful soul. If you had a hot tub time machine, would you use it to travel in time or just to feel the bubbles? Time travel would be of course amazing. Crispin Glover's one-armed bell boy was tragically absent from the Hot Tub Time Machine marketing campaign. Finally, as a man who has long contemplated growing a beard, I am impressed by your very handsome facial hair. How do you decide when to grow a beard and when to shave it off, and how do you maintain it? I have only in the last several years grown out facial hair because it has been appropriate for a number of period films in which I have played characters that it would be appropriate for. I do not grow facial hair or wear my hair for my own personal preference. My preference is probably shorter hair and clean shaven. Crispin Glover, thank you very much for your time. Thank you Neil!

Details of the rest of Crispin Hellion Glover's UK tour can be found at his website, CrispinGlover.com.

In Your Eyes and on your internets:Joss Whedon's missed opportunity

Joss Whedon recently took forty precious seconds out from filming Avengers: Age Of Ultron to record an introduction to one of his smaller projects, "metaphysical romance" In Your Eyes, for the Tribeca Film Festival. At the same time that the film premiered in New York, he announced, internet boffins were opening its e-cage and releasing it into the digital wild via Vimeo, allowing any old numpty to watch it for the princely sum of five "bucks" (just under three of the Queen's pounds).


Online film distribution is hardly new but it's yet to be fully embraced by Hollywood, so when a brand new Joss Whedon project pops up for you to watch immediately without even having to put your pants on, it naturally attracts attention. It's worth noting, however, that although His Jossness wrote and exec-produced In Your Eyes, it was actually directed by Brin Hill (me neither); from the SEO-friendly headlines the film has garnered you'd be forgiven for thinking it's another Much Ado About Nothingesque side project from the genial ginger genius.

While Whedon is to be commended for dipping his hairy toes into the digital water, you have to wonder if it's because without a headline-grabbing release, nobody would have batted an eyelid at In Your Eyes in the slightest. It's not that it's a bad film at all; it's a perfectly adequate, textbook romance with a supernatural twist, the script for which Whedon probably knocked out in less time than it took him to record its introduction. It's just that it's a little too bland to add much fuel to any kind of revolution in the way we consume films.

Whedon's script sees the achingly elfin Zoe Kazan, all doe-eyes and voluminous fringe, embarking on an unlikely affair with Cloverfield scruff Michael Stahl-David via the medium of unexplained telepathy: they can mysteriously hear each other, see what each other sees and feel each others' feelings despite never having met and being thousands of miles apart. He's an ex-con from the wrong side of the New Mexico tracks, she's the wealthy but unhappy wife of a prominent New Hampshire surgeon whom Whedon probably struggled not to call Dr. Douchebag. The characters are broader than a barn door plus all the barn walls laid end to end, and the plot less challenging than a battle of wits against said barn, but the parapsychological pen-pal quirk is just about enough to keep you watching.

It's occasionally eye-screwingly cringey (a spot of psychic nookie belongs in the movie equivalent of the Bad Sex In Fiction awards), but Kazan and Stahl-David are likeable enough to overcome the hurdles of playing cut-out characters in what is a predictable but - it must be said - almost flawless example of Screenwriting 101. Brin Hill's direction is workmanlike, but he's not the star here - if indeed he even exists and isn't one of Joss Whedon's pseudonyms.

So what we have is something of a curio: a script by a bona fide legend which is technically exemplary but disappointingly blunting-edge, released via a strategy that would have earned it far more column inches if only it had been, y'know, really good. In Your Eyes is destined to become, at most, a footnote in the Online Film Distribution history books, when its provenance suggests it should have been so much more. Let's see Marvel throw Avengers: Age Of Ultron onto the internet on the day it lands in cinemas; then we'll have something to talk about.

New poster for Edge Of Tomorrow