Film Pairings – A Night With Ian Fleming

Fleming

Ian Fleming only wrote 12 James Bond novels, but sold more than 100 million copies. All of his Bond novels have been made into films, some more than once. There are also been Bond novels written by others, some of them well regarded by the literary world.  Moreover, Bond movies continue to be made using the Bond character long after Fleming’s death at 57. Seven actors have played Bond over the years including Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.  But what about the creator?

The Man Who Would Be James Bond — Spoiled, privileged and much tougher on the women in his life than his male adversaries, Ian Fleming lived the life he would eventually write about. Watch this four-part, BBC-produced bio drama to get a glimpse of a mama’s boy who made good largely, in my opinion, because he understood the nature of drama – life, death, power, and romance as shallowly, coldly and clearly as he observed it in his own life.

Biopic Of Fleming's Early Years

I’ve read and enjoyed every one of his books and I’ve watched and enjoyed most if not all of the James Bond films. They are potboilers, but nearly perfect ones.  Let’s not worry about nuance, or the why of things. Let’s not be subtle. Let’s create this wonderful travelogue. Throw in some sex, skiing, sailing and flying. Let’s do it all elegantly, expensively and  let’s eliminate the increasingly despicable bad guys who without James Bond’s last minute magic, would destroy the world.

Dominic Cooper plays Fleming in his active “Intelligence” agent days for the British Royal Navy, where he presumably gathered the material for his fiction. In those days young Ian played second fiddle to his brother Peter ((played by Rupert Evans) who was already a successfully published author. This series offers an introduction to one of the most successful film franchises of all time. Hints of the movies that would follow are subtly rendered in the music that underlies some pretty decent cinematography.

Bond's Latest Film Adventure With Daniel Craig

Spectre  — Bond’s most recent celluloid adventures star craggy Dennis Craig.  Once again Bond comes up against arch villain Blofeld, a megalomaniac who seeks to control the world.  We travel from Mexico City to Rome and eventually back to London in an attempt to keep Blofeld from having complete control over all intelligence operations on earth. There’s no question that his is action-packed adventure appeals to all of us who like action-packed adventures.

Ralph Fiennes plays M, and Judy Dench, (former M, now deceased) is reprieved on video.   Chris Waltz plays Blofeld.  My favorite is Chris Wishaw who plays Q, who designs Bond’s deadly gadgetry that saves Bond’s life when the plot won’t. Sam Mendes again directs the standard, but altogether enjoyable offering.

While watching, we must have a vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, or perhaps some fresh lemons squeezed into some fizzy water.

Opinion — Casting One’s Characters More Fun than Casting Stones

A talk-radio blowhard accidentally opened up an interesting topic.  During all of Sony-Kim Jong Un silliness a secret was revealed. British actor Idris Elba was (is) under consideration to be the next actor to play James Bond in the incredibly popular franchise.  Not quite yet a household name, Elba has a growing list of successful small (“The Wire” and “Luther”) and big-screen (American Gangster and Thor) roles. He is at least as popular as Daniel Craig was when he was tapped for the sacred spot.

Anytime the role has been up for grabs, there has been debate. It’s all part of the 007 spectacle.  And years after one actor or another has landed the role, the debate raged anyway.  There are the Sean Connery purists.  He was good.  He was also the first and the one who established expectations. The fans who accepted Connery, eventually accepted Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and now Craig.  Each performed as Bond multiple times and has earned Bond producers a serious fortune.  But what about Bond’s creator?  Which one was the truest to 007 creator Ian Fleming’s vision?  And because Craig is bowing out after one more epic adventure, who should be anointed?

Idris Elba As Bond?

Any choice would have been challenged.  We have our favorite Bonds.  And if you are basing it on the books, who knows how you have imagined the icon — a hero of your own imagination.  In this case one of the objections is that Elba is Black.

One person argued that if Fleming had intended Bond to be Black he would have said so, alluded to it in one of his early 007 novels. I agree with that. Given that Bond was loosely and flatteringly based on the author himself, I suspect the Bond in Fleming’s eye was white.  In fact, if Fleming had his way, David Niven would have been James Bond. I would have liked that as well. I loved watching David Niven. He might not have been as gymnastic as the others, but he would have projected the most sophistication. As it is we’ve adjusted to the tough, serious Bond of Connery as well as the tongue-in-cheek Moore and the dour Craig.  So far, after a few moments of adjustment, I’ve liked them all, including Brosnan who seemed a blend of Connery and Moore.

More to the point, though, since when did we abide by the original creator’s suggestion in any movie based on a book or series?

Lucy Liu Is Watson

If any fictional, crime-fighting literary character could out-icon Bond, it would be Sherlock Holmes. What say ye about Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern take on the world’s most famous detective? From a pipe-smoking, bookish private eye, we have a wonderfully outlandish and flamboyant narcissus in current day London.  Or, we might look at his incarnation in the American TV version, where a less stylish but more annoying narcissus solves murders in New York with help of his best friend Watson who has become for this 21st Century series a lovely Chinese woman. Jack Reacher, the newest best-selling superhero in books, is described as being 6’5”, size being a factor of no little importance to his character’s tough-guy profile. Reacher is being played on screen by the diminutive Tom Cruise.  Reacher’s creator, Lee Child, has said publicly that he likes Cruise in the role. So?

So, Elba is a fine British actor, great looking, and he has proven his screen presence.  How can he not be a prime candidate?

But there is an interesting question here.  How faithful should (can) films be to the books on which they were based?  I imagine a number of writers have thought about who they would cast to play the characters in their novels.  Of those whose books (and heroes and heroine) went to Hollywood, how many authors were satisfied with the choice of actors and actresses?  Robert B. Parker was said to have been extremely unhappy with Robert Ulrich’s TV series portrayal of popular Boston private eye Spenser. I’ve done some fantasy casting for my Shanahan series.  For years I imagined Paul Newman in the role of the elderly semi-retired private eye. He did make a great film about an older P.I. (Twilight). Just not mine.  Clint Eastwood has also come to mind. Shanahan in the forthcoming Killing Frost is a somewhat disabled 72.  (Eastwood is 86). I’ve also imagined Ed Harris, who is only 64. That’s not a huge stretch for a talented actor and gifted make-up artist.  Throw Morgan Freeman into the mix and I would be hard pressed to choose which one I’d pick for the Shanahan role

P.S. Rumors are afoot suggesting Cumberbatch is in the Bond sweepstakes as well.

Film Pairings — James Bond and Jack Reacher, Peas In Separate Pods

There’s never a shortage of superheroes.  At the moment The Lone Ranger and the zillionth portrayal of Superman, are dazzling or disappointing filmgoers.

However, we home-alone viewers with Netflix accounts are not necessarily “trending.”  We are catching up. The local theaters are no longer showing the two films I highlight here.  They are Skyfall, the latest of many James Bond films and Jack Reacher, the first of what is likely to be a new franchise searching for iconic status and profits.  They are about smart, tough guys who save the world or, in Reacher’s case, a tank of a man who cleans up a piece of a smaller domain.  The main characters in each are human though impervious to death. In both cases their near superpower comic-book feats take an immense suspension of disbelief.  Yet we do suspend it even if the Reacher character, designed by his creator at a towering, and intimidating 6’5, 250pounds,” is played by the diminutive Tom Cruise.  We want to believe.

When I was in my teens I read all of the 12 slim volumes of Ian Fleming’s 007 adventures.  I was mesmerized.  This was before I saw any of the movies.  I probably would have cast (as I learned that Fleming preferred as well) the sophisticated David Niven before the earthier Sean Connery, though it didn’t take long for me to buy into the Scotsman. I was disappointed to learn that he and Bond had separated after seven films, but quickly accepted Roger Moore who, in many ways for me, better captured the original, light-hearted spirit of the character.  I thought Pierce Brosnan split the difference and did so very well. So too have I, an avid cinema fan, accepted and welcomed Daniel Craig, though it seems we’ve almost come full circle — the most solemn of the lot.  He seems old and grumpy (I can identify with that), not the original, carefree Bond. This is also in keeping with the way we are seeing American superheroes these days, wit buried under stone.

Craig’s two Bonds, like it or not, have changed the Bond franchise. To drive the point home in Skyfall, with appropriate symbolism, the elegant Aston Martin is blown up on a dystopian landscape not disappearing out of the frame on a scenic highway along the French Riviera as it should.  This Bond is weary, sullen, craggy, yet demands your attention. He seems, perhaps — his superhuman feats aside — too human.  There’s not an ounce of a Devil-May-Care martini in his veins.

For Jack Reacher, maybe it would have been too easy to cast someone like Ryan Gosling as Reacher, the character inhabiting the best selling 17-book series by Lee Child.   Or maybe Channing Tatum.  Seriously. For me Tom Cruise is a sort of journeyman leading man.  And a case could be made that physicality aside, this was a perfect role for him.  Not a lot of nuance here to worry about.  As we expect from both films it is about right and wrong, good and evil.  We root for our heroes to win so we can go to bed believing the world is safe for the few minutes it takes to go off into our own dreamland.  These two heroes are not cut from the same cloth, however.

Bond, however rebellious at times, works for the bureaucracy in service to what we must presume or at least hope to be a larger good.  After all, he pretty much saves the world in each adventure.  Not so, Reacher.  There’s a line in the movie, which I don’t have precisely; but the gist is our hero doesn’t believe in the law or justice.  He believes in what is right.  Right is what is right in his world and the story may be written so we, in our secret vigilante hearts, agree and root for the three-in-one protagonist — judge, jury and executioner.  We do so with, I hope, a little caution from our better selves.

The director and cinematographer do a good job conveying Reacher’s worldview if it can be described so broadly.  Bond is filmed against incredible, wide-sweeping landscapes. It’s a big world with lots of moving parts.   In Reacher the camera is completely focused on Cruise.  He is constantly, slowly, importantly entering a room with music and lingering camera angles that emphasize his self-assured domination of the small world around him.  It is all immediate and personal.  It is all about him.  He is standing tall.  That seems to be all that matters.

Both films provide a couple of hours of worthwhile escape from our less eventful daily lives.  Jack Reacher is not complex as a movie or character.  The upside of that is the film is finely plotted and clearly told. Robert Duvall makes a cameo, as does Werner Herzog. Also on screen is the talented Richard Jenkins, who is clearly under utilized here.   Of the two, Bond is not only richer cinematically (also more than twice the budget), but also treats us to a cast of acting legends.  In addition to Daniel Craig, we have Judi Dench, Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem and Albert Finney.

For the evening viewing of Bond, a martini is appropriate of course, if for no other reason than a tribute to an earlier era.  For Reacher, maybe a Pabst to reflect a film and a lead actor, both delivering the goods in an efficient and timely manner.