My Philly Daily & Broad + Liberty On Crime Column: Looking Forward To The New James Bond Film

Philly Daily & Broad + Liberty ran my On Crime column today on the upcoming James Bond film.

You can read the column via the link below or the following text

 Paul Davis: Looking forward to the new James Bond film

As fans eagerly await the next 007 film, they wonder what actor will assume the role of Bond, James Bond.

As a James Bond film fan and Ian Fleming aficionado, I too am waiting for the new film. I’ve been a Bond film fan since I first saw Sean Connery as Bond in Dr. No when I was a kid in the early 1960s. After viewing the second Bond film, From Russia With Love, I bought the Ian Fleming novels, which I was pleased to discover were darker and more complicated than the films.

I hope the new Bond film will be more faithful to Ian Fleming’s classic novels, and I hope the producers will pick a good actor to portray Bond.

Amazon acquired control of the world-popular, billion dollar 64-year-long James Bond franchise last year from the original producer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli’s daughter, Barbara Broccoli, and his stepson, Michael G. Wilson.

Amazon MGM Studios and Broccoli and Wilson formed a new joint venture in which they will co-own James Bond intellectual property rights, but Amazon MGM will have total creative control. Financial terms weren't disclosed, but it was big, big bucks.

The deal has increased speculation, and British bookie’s bets, about who will portray the world’s most famous fictional secret agent and international crime fighter in a new film that is set to hit the big screen in 2028.  

That will be seven years after the last Bond film, No Time to Die (it ought to have been called No Time To Think of a Better Title), which featured Daniel Craig’s last portrayal of James Bond. 

The new film is being produced by David Heyman and Amy Pascal, and Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dune and Blade Runner 2049, is set to direct. Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, is writing the screenplay. But the new James Bond actor has not yet been selected, or perhaps not yet announced. 

Experienced and fairly well-known actors such as Callum Turner, 36, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, 36, are being named by the press (and British bookies) as possibly the new Bond, but I suspect it will be a younger actor (Sean Connery, the first cinema Bond - and still the best in my view - was 32 when he filmed Dr. No), as well as a lesser-known and more rugged actor.

I believe they will select a younger actor as the film makers would like the new actor to do a 15-year run or more as James Bond. I also suspect they want a more rugged and physical actor, harking back to the ruggedly handsome Sean Connery, whom Ian Fleming first dismissed but later told a friend that the Scot actor looked like his Bond and had the right physique, and the rough-hewn, mug faced Daniel Craig. Movie audiences believed the two actors would kill without hesitation. I think the film makers will shy away from actors who, like Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan, are traditionally handsome and less intimidating.

There is also intense debate on what direction the new film will take, as Daniel Craig’s Bond character was killed in No Time To Die (apparently there was, in fact, time to die). 

One speculated direction that I would like the film makers to take is to reboot the series by having the film set in the 1950s, the era in which author Ian Fleming first set his Bond character.

I would also like the film makers to be more faithful to Fleming’s popular novels. And I would like the film makers to remake some of the sillier, action-comedies in the film canon, beginning with Sean Connery’s Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and all of Roger Moore’s Bond films from 1973 to 1985. 

As a teenager in the 1960s I loved Roger Moore as Simon Templar in the TV series, The Saint. He was debonair, tough and cool. I wish Moore had portrayed Bond as tough and less comedic like Simon Templar.

I’d like to see a remake of Moonraker as a true thriller set in the post-WWII 1950s. The Moore film was silly, taking its cue from Star Wars. Fleming’s Moonraker novel was much darker. It had a great plot and a great villain, and it would make a great film.

Likewise, Diamonds Are Forever. Connery’s film was made as an action-comedy rather than a thriller. The film was amusing and well-made (as were Moore’s Bond films) but if one reads the Fleming novel, I suspect one will wish for a more faithful film version.

In the novel Diamonds Are Forever, Bond takes on the American mob and is much more realistic than the 1971 film. Anyone who reads the novel won’t soon forget the spa violence at the Saratoga Racetrack. There are many other unforgettable set pieces in the novel as well.

So, like millions of other Bond film fans, I eagerly await the arrival of the new Bond, James Bond.

Paul Davis’s On Crime column appears here each week. He is also a contributor to Broad + Liberty and Counterterrorism magazine. He can be reached via pauldavisoncrime.com 

Shaken: Drinking With James Bond And Ian Fleming

The website jamesbondlifestyle.com looks at Shaken, the new book on Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond and his drinking pleasures.

Shaken explores James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s writings on the pleasures of drinking, the stories behind the Bond phenomenon and drinks inspired by 007 and his creator.

From the first Ian Fleming James Bond novel Casino Royale (1953) in which agent 007 invents the now famous Vesper Martini, to the immortal lines, ‘shaken and not stirred’, which first appeared in print in Diamonds Are Forever (1956) strong, carefully crafted cocktails are at the glamorous heart of every Bond story. Shaken explores James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s writings on the pleasures of drinking, the stories behind the Bond phenomenon and drinks inspired by 007 and his creator.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

www.jamesbondlifestyle.com/product/shaken-drinking-james-bond-and-ian-fleming 

You can also go to www.ianfleming.com to read about the book. 

John Gavin, Actor In ‘Psycho’ And ‘Spartacus,’ Dies at 86

Variety reports that actor John Gavin has died.

John Gavin, who reached the pinnacle of his acting career with roles in Douglas Sirk’s “Imitation of Life,” Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and the epic “Spartacus,” later serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild in the early ’70s and as U.S. ambassador to Mexico under Ronald Reagan, died Friday morning in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 86.

The actor was signed to a contract and almost played James Bond in the film “Diamonds Are Forever.”

Gavin was SAG president from 1971-73 and as President Reagan’s first ambassador to Mexico from 1981-86.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://variety.com/2018/film/news/john-gavin-dead-dies-psycho-spartacus-1202694312/  

My Crime Beat Column: Bond Vs The Mob: A Look Back at Ian Fleming's Visit To Saratoga Springs To Research ‘Diamonds Are Forever’

In 1971 I was a 19-year-old sailor stationed on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, which was home-ported in San Diego, California after a nearly year-long deployment to Southeast Asia and combat operations off the coast of Vietnam.

I was a "short-timer," eagerly awaiting my separation from the U.S. Navy when I and a couple of friends from the ship went to a movie theater in San Diego to see Sean Connery as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. 

Considering that George Lazenby had never acted before and he had the dubious honor of replacing Connery, I thought he had done a fine job as James Bond in the previous film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  But I was pleased that Connery was back as Bond in the new film.

Prior to seeing the film, I had read the novel, as well as all of Ian Fleming's novels, as I've been a Fleming aficionado since my early teens. I came away disappointed in the film, as it was not faithful to Fleming's novel, as On Her Majesty's Secret Service had been.

The producers made Diamonds Are Forever as an action-comedy rather than a thriller, and this led the way for the lighthearted and amusing Roger Moore-Bond films that followed throughout the 1970's and into the 1980's.

In Fleming's novel Diamonds Are Forever James Bond is pitted against American organized crime.

From London, Bond goes undercover as a diamond smuggler and he encounters American mobsters in New York and later in Las Vegas. And in between Bond visits Saratoga Springs, where the mob has arranged to pay off Bond via a crooked horse race.

Fleming's novel was influenced by Senator Estes Kefauver's committee hearings on organized crime in America. The hearings were televised in the early 1950's and America and the world got to see American gangsters such as Tony Accardo, the mob boss of Chicago who once worked for Al Capone, Frank Costello, known as the New York "Prime Minister of Crime," Meyer Lansky, and a sultry Virginia Hill, the former girlfriend of Ben "Bugsy" Siegal.  

In Saratoga Springs Fleming captured the atmosphere of the race track, the gambling fever that surrounds horse racing, and the presence and influence of organized crime. I recall vividly the brutal scene in the mud baths where the crooked jockey is tortured by mobsters.

I thought this was a great passage in a great thriller, and Raymond Chandler, perhaps our greatest crime novelist, agreed.

Unfortunately, the film didn't use any of this material. Perhaps one day the Bond producers will remake Diamonds Are Forever as a thriller and use Fleming's Saratoga Springs story.

All of this came to mind when I happened to come across a piece in the Saratogian (a newspaper Bond read in the novel) that covers Fleming's 1954 visit to Saratoga Springs to research his novel.

The piece offers generous passages from the novel:

“Saratoga Springs was the Coney Island of the underworld until the Kefauvers put their show on the television. It frightened the hicks and chased the hoodlums to Las Vegas. But the mobs exercised dominion over Saratoga for a long time. It was a colony of the national gangs and they ran it with pistols and baseball bats.”

The piece is also about a thoroughbred horse trainer by the name of H. James Bond.

You can read the piece via the below link:

http://www.saratogian.com/general-news/20170217/creator-of-james-bond-visited-saratoga-springs-for-diamonds-are-forever

The film Diamonds Are Forever is well-made and amusing, but if you're interested in a great thriller, I suggest you read Fleming's novel.

Note: You can also read two of my previous Crime Beat columns on Ian Fleming and James Bond via the below links:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/11/my-crime-beat-column-happy-anniversary.html

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html

For The Love Of Diamonds: Celebrating The 60th Anniversary of Ian Fleming's James Bond Thriller, 'Diamonds Are Forever'

I've enjoyed reading and rereading Ian Fleming's Diamonds Are Forever over the years.

I love that the story takes place in America and deals with diamond smuggling, fixed horse races, crooked casino gambling and murder. I also love that James Bond goes up against American gangsters.

I was disappointed in the 1971 film based on the novel. It was good to see Sean Connery back as Bond after a one-film absence, but I thought the film was a silly spoof and they left out some of the best scenes from the novel.

I'd like to see the Bond film producers remake the film as a true thriller and remain faithful to Fleming's novel.

With the novel celebrating a its 60th anniversary, Tom Cull at IanFleming.com offers a look back at Fleming's novel.

“Bond put down the piece of quartz and gazed again into the heart of the diamond. Now he could understand the passion that diamonds had inspired through the centuries, the almost sexual love they aroused among those who handled them and cut them and traded in them. It was domination by a beauty so pure that it held a kind of truth, a divine authority before which all other material things turned, like the bit of quartz, to clay. In these few minutes Bond understood the myth of diamonds, and he knew that he would never forget what he had suddenly seen inside the heart of this stone…” 

Ian Fleming said this of Diamonds Are Forever in an interview with the Daily Express in 1956:

“I’ve put everything into this except the kitchen sink. Can you think of a plot about a kitchen sink for the next one? Otherwise I am lost.”

And indeed he did. Whereas some of his books relied heavily on his imagination, this vastly under-rated fourth novel published 60 years ago in 1956, required lots of first-hand research and travel.

Fleming’s twin love of travel and ‘things’ were indulged to their fullest potential in this novel. The central plot revolved around diamond smuggling – a hot topic at the time – and like many, he was enchanted by their lustre, permanence and chatoyance:

“When jewels have chatoyance the colour in the lustre changes with movement in the light, and the colour of this girl’s eyes seemed to vary between a light grey and a deep grey-blue.” (Diamonds Are Forever, 1956)

He was also fascinated in the power and allure of these jewels that could provoke people, even of good standing, to smuggle them. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.ianfleming.com/for-the-love-of-diamonds-diamonds-are-forever-60th-anniversary/

You can read Andrew Lycett's biography of Ian Fleming to learn more about the man who created James Bond.

And you can read my Crime Beat column on Ian Fleming via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/06/casino-royale-revisited-film-that.html