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.

Pool film

Film is(was) made on Celluloid, as everyone knows.  But why?

When the film industry began, the very first films were recorded on a thin film made of paper.  This was clearly sub-optimal, because while the thin paper was appropriately transparent, it was also exceedingly fragile.  So they went looking for a synthetic alternative.

At that point, Celluloid (basically a mix of cellulose nitrate and camphor) was one of the primary commercially available plastics.

It had become commercially successful because the billiard industry at that time was running short of ivory for the making of billiard balls (conservation hadn't really taken a bite out of it yet, but they were honestly having trouble getting enough elephants to keep up with demand inspired by a billiard craze). The Brunswick Billiard company ^{1, 2} (probably?) ran a contest to find a synthetic replacement for billiard balls, and the Hyatt Celluloid Billiard Ball (or a variant thereof) was the winner in roughly 1868 ⁴.  I say probably, because apparently Hyatt never got the prize money ⁴, and the Brunswick company website ³ has does not mention the celluloid balls.  Possibly because although it was a much cheaper and easily acquired material than ivory, the balls themselves didn't perform as well.  Stories of the cellulose exploding are probably apocryphal, though.

Anyway, when the photography and then later the film industry went looking for their alternative, this material was no doubt an obvious choice, and the billiard ball factories were more than happy to supply it to a brand new market.

Sources:
¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiard_ball#History
² http://youtu.be/7I0rX7t1J0Q (Adam Savage)
³ http://www.brunswickbilliards.com/our_rich_history/important_events/index.html
⁴ http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_2947

Very special effects

Industrial Light and Magic has always been associated in my mind with Lucasfilm projects, for obvious reasons-- it was founded in the 70's by Lucas himself, after all.

But in addition to the obvious Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, IL&M has also done work on other Spielberg productions such as E.T., Henson productions (Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal), competing sci-fi franchises (most of the Star Treks), the Back to the Future trilogy, and frankly almost every other major effects film up through the Hunger Games and the Avengers.  I knew they were a major player, but that's just ridiculous.

In other news, this is my 200th post since the move to Blogger.

Yay.

Word for the day -- College widow

A "college widow," according to the venerable Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, is a "young woman in a college town who dates students of successive college classes."

I cannot help but think that there must be some sort of story behind this.  Apparently, it was the title of a stage production in 1904, and a subsequent silent film, but details of the story are lost, so it's hard to know if there is a connection.  At least one reviewer claims that there is, for whatever that's worth, but seems to indicate that the term was part of the common lexicon at the time, indicating in turn that this was a relatively common occurrence.  I'm a little bewildered, I must confess.