Real Horosho

Jamie Hyneman, of Mythbusters fame, has a degree in Russian Linguistics (from Indiana University).

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I... did not expect that.

Bond. Litigious Bond

Yesterday, I talked about how George Lazenby got his lucky break and a chance to be James Bond.  But there's also an interesting story that I didn't know about Sean Connery, or more importantly, why Connery came back in 1983 to do Never Say Never Again.

You see, Dear Reader, back in the beginning, Ian Fleming had a friend by the name of Kevin McClory.  McClory and Fleming (and a few others) would all kick around story ideas, and write screenplay treatments for Fleming's new sensational literary hero.  One of these became the script for Thunderball.

However, both Fleming and McClory ultimately claimed rights to the screenplay, and it was promptly embroiled in a long series of legal rights battles (it was originally going to be the first film).  The courts eventually decided in McClory's favor, and he was all set to use it to launch a competing Bond franchise (can you imagine?), so the producers at Eon (Broccoli et al.) cut a deal-- McClory would get sole producer credit (and presumably gobs of money) for Thunderball if they could make it as part of the main franchise with Connery and the gang.

McClory continued to have dreams of parlaying Thunderball's success (it remains the best earning Bond film after adjustment for inflation) into his own Bond Empire, but he was unable to acquire the rights to any of the other properties from Fleming, leaving him with just the one film.  So what was he to do?  Why, make it again, of course!

So almost 20 years later he set out to remake it bigger and better.  Roger Moore was Bond now, though, and probably had little interest in the Non-Eon production, and frankly was a different kind of Bond anyway and would have been a poor fit for the script.  Fortunately, Connery was still around.  And if you'll recall, he parted company with Eon on somewhat acrimonious grounds.  When McClory approached him with the idea of revisiting his glory days (and presumably gobs of money), he was naturally receptive.  And thus we got Thunderball 2: Electric Boogaloo-- Never Say Never Again.

Bond. Brazen Bond

Back from vacation!  During which, I watched a documentary about the history of the Bond films, from which I learned some things.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for George Lazenby.  Part of it is just perversity, due to his one-off status, but I really did think that On Her Majesty's Secret Service was a pretty good film.  But there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than I ever realized.

For starters, the role of Bond was only available because Connery had walked out on a multi-movie deal with one left to go.  Connery's relationship with the producers had always been a little complicated-- on the one hand, they recruited him from more or less nowhere, and had to really fight the studio to let him play the part instead of some more established actor.  So they were his champion in one regard.  On the other hand, as a newcomer, he didn't have the leverage that an established actor would have had, so they didn't have to pay him as much, and he rapidly began to chafe under circumstances that he saw as exploitative.  Eventually, after You Only Live Twice (screenplay by Roald Dahl), he'd had enough and walked out.  So there was this movie that needed to get made, and no Bond.

According to the documentary, Lazenby had been waiting for just this opportunity.  According to him, he dressed himself up as Bond in a fancy suit and watch, and more or less forced his way into an interview, lying outrageously in order to convince the producers that he could do the job.  Basically, because (in his mind), playing Bond would mean that he'd get all the chicks.  Seriously, that's what he said in the documentary!  That was, he claimed, basically the whole point of the exercise.  The Wikipedia article about him suggests that this is a slight exaggeration-- while he didn't have much acting experience, he was a professional model, and had had some success in TV commercials, one of which may have landed him an actual interview.

And then, by the time the movie was wrapped and ready for release, he had turned into a hippie, decided that the violence of the character was inappropriate, and that the franchise was destined to be forgotten.  Oh, well.  Everyone makes mistakes.

Danny Kaye died and went to Valhalla

No, really.

When actor, singer and comedian Danny Kaye died, may or may not have been rewarded by an afterlife of continual combat, death, glory, and resurrection in the halls of the Viking gods (probably not).  But he was interred in Kensico Cemetery, in the hamlet of Valhalla, NY (part of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County) back in 1987.

He wasn't much of a fighter, but given his history of entertaining the troops, it's not hard to imagine him stopping by to lead a rousing chorus of "Who dropped the mead barrel?" up there in the halls of Asgard anyway.

Unexpected Cameo

I just saw actor Mike Farrell (most famously having portrayed one Cpt. B.J. Hunnicut)... on an episode of The Monkees.

That's right-- in 1966, nearly 10 years before his appearance on M*A*S*H, he was a strapping young agent for the Central Intelligence Service, tasked with helping the Monkees stop the dangerous Dragon Man's attempts to steal the Doomsday Bug.

Actually, now that I think of it, I'm not sure he had any lines.  But he was very tall and clean-cut, and I guess that's what mattered.

Chris Barrie

It turns out that Amazon Instant Video has basically all of Red Dwarf, including seasons and specials that I didn't even know existed.  So I've been happily devouring it all over again, and I noticed something that I was unaware of the first time around, when it came out in the late 1980s.

At the time, it was very clear that the audience was intended to identify with the character of Dave Lister, the "sole surviving human being," and the other characters were just foils for him to react to.  And that was fine.  I sympathized right along with the slacker slob, and hated his dead holographic bunk mate Arnold "Smeg-head" Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), just as I was supposed to.  And now, from my changed perspective, that's still true, although it's clearer that the character of Lister is occasionally even more of a rat bastard than Rimmer, if perhaps not quite so superficially dislikable.

However-- I also can't help noting, on a more meta level, that Chris Barrie was/is a vastly superior actor.  For example, in several episodes, for a variety of reasons, Barrie was called upon to imitate or in some way play one of the other characters (mind swapping, memory alteration, damage to his holographic circuits, etc.).  And it was frequently brilliant.  He captured their physical mannerisms, their vocal inflections, often uncannily.  And in the episode where Rimmer and Lister swapped bodies, this was made rather starkly evident-- Craig Charles, the actor who played Lister, was just basically himself with Barrie's voice overdubbed, but Barrie really became Lister, in a manner becoming an actor on a (frankly) much better show.  Honestly, Red Dwarf is fun, but wow, was it also bad.

So here's to you, Chris Barrie, the unsung hero (at least as of season 4, I've still got a ways to go) of Red Dwarf.  He's done other things, including some supporting roles in big-ticket movies, and one long run as the star of a show I've never heard of (probably because it was only on BBC) called The Brittas Empire.