MARK O'CONNELL

Writer, Author, Bond Fan

Author: Mark O'Connell (Page 28 of 33)

Mark O’Connell is a comedy writer. He has written for a range of top comedy actors, directors and performers including the legendary Ronnie Corbett, plus numerous sketch shows, sitcom projects, stand-up acts, promos and online shorts. His work features on the BBC, Channel Four, Five, various Edinburgh Fringe productions and various comedy and film festivals. He has worked with leading comedy names, such as Jon Plowman, John Sullivan, Paul Mendelson, and Jonathan Harvey (who Mark featured alongside in a BBC3 The Last Laugh documentary about gay comedy).

Mark has won the Jerwood Film Prize for Skedaddle, the Lloyds Bank Film Challenge for Carrying Dad, one ninth of a BAFTA, repeat praise from Time Out and the Coen Brothers, plus a Five Star album from a local radio phone-in he has yet to receive.

He was also chosen by London 2012 and BT to be one of the official Storytellers of the London Olympics.

CATCHING BULLETS - MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN is his debut book. It has received great reviews, a starry line up of contributors and was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2013.

O'Connell is working on a second book.

“Come in Number One, we were expecting you” – Sam Smith & WRITING’S ON THE WALL make 007 chart history

October 2, 2015 /

JUKEBOX

CONGRATULATIONS to Barbara Broccoli, Team EON and the SPECTRE ensemble for making Bond chart history with the Bond series first UK Number One!

Sam Smith’s WRITING’S ON THE WALL has gone straight to the top of the British charts in its first week of release and is set to resound around the globe for Bond, SPECTRE and Smith. The singer has told BBC’s Radio One “out of all the songs I’ve brought out in my life, I was not expecting this to even chart in the top 10, let alone number one. It’s unbelievable.”

Despite some kneejerk panic and reaction, SPECTRE’s opening anthem is a worthy track, a solid one and possibly needs to be seen in the context of the film it flanks. It is certainly carrying on a grand tradition of the top singer of the era stepping up to 007’s mic and giving the series their take on a Bond tune. This will get Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy nominations. Easily.

For a review of the track and what it means for Bond – read here.

And Mark O’Connell writes for OUT magazine about Smith and the Bond song legacy :

Why Sam Smith entering Bond’s Thunderball of fame is good news for 007

 

Breaking Bond’s fall with WRITING’S ON THE WALL – reviewing Sam Smith’s 007 anthem

September 25, 2015 /

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SPOILER WARNING. I think.

 

From those mid Sixties strings firing like very familiar harpoon guns into a John Barry-savvy ocean, Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall is clearly ripped from the very genome of 007’s DNA. And it has certainly “divided fans” as media outlets love to say. But maybe middle-aged, blokey Bond fans aren’t quite the Sam Smith demographic. Aside from a trailer or two and a few Range Rover vanity vlogs, this is all the movie-going public can ‘own’ right now of SPECTRE. The bar is always high.

I’m prepared for this,

I never shoot to miss

Did I love Adele’s Skyfall when I first heard it about 30 seconds before going on air to talk about it? Did I instantly warm to Gladys Knight’s Licence To Kill when I heard some 2am snippet on local radio? And did I like or even understand the lyrics of The Living Daylights when I first heard a weirdly mixed b-side version? No to all of them. Bond songs are curious beasts. The best ones charted badly, the disliked ones sold well, they have always been a canny marketing tool dressed in a sequinned ball-gown, unlike champagne they age better than they first taste and they always play differently onscreen than through a phone.

Disclosure

Disclosure

It is seemingly not just the writing that is nowadays on the wall, but everyone and his Twitter bestie’s opinion of what a good Bond and a good song is. Nothing divides reaction more than music (well, maybe Jeremy Corbyn does a little bit). But nothing divides musical reaction more than a Bond song – not when the writing can be fired in 140 characters or less at every media wall going. Because the 53 year old cultural legacy of Bond is so rich, it becomes personal – strapped to all film fans nostalgias and musical tastes. And Bond song opinions are like favourite Bonds – everyone has one, so to speak. But like new 007 actors, Bond songs need time to bed in. Not every dollar-paying punter knows all these songs inside out.

It is a stranger sound for Bond. It is a different sound for Bond. But it is not wrong. It maybe needed a stronger climax, but it needs to be seen alongside Daniel Kleinman’s forthcoming title sequence for the actual SPECTRE film rather than snatched hearings on Spotify. There is a camp tragedy to it all – in part fuelled by Smith’s oeuvre of really martrying those vocals into submission. He certainly gets the drama of the gig. It is definitely a 1am torch song lament (like a lot of the best 007 numbers are). It is worth remembering too that – like Adele’s Skyfall, Madonna’s Die Another Day and Chris Cornell’s You Know My Name – there is now a story context to these songs. They are not just dropped in as a fade-to-titles Bond scrambles in some yacht for his condoms and champagne. In the Craig era these songs are now a narrative and tonal stepping stone for the film themselves. SPECTRE launches with a visceral, ambitious and aggressively mounted action sequence in Mexico City. The quieter melancholy of this track could be an apt and intended breather. There is definitely a context to this song based on what the audiences would have just experienced and the drama at stake. Remember – Sam Smith was asked to read the script. The writing is on the wall in the song, the film, its family of colleagues and all of Whitehall.

Co-written and co-produced by Jimmy Napes, Writing’s On The Wall is certainly a well-produced track. As Adele’s creative partner Paul Epworth proved in 2012, the Bond song project now has its eyes on producers and the ability to put on a production as much as the headlining singers. Whilst the sibling-production duo Disclosure (who co-produced the track) are more about the garage synths and electronica than anything evident in this tune, theirs is very much a crisp effort. The track could have very easily derailed itself with Smith’s octave-spinning vocals and penchant for piling vowel upon vowels (or Mariah-ing as artists less skilled than Smith tend to be guilty of).

If I risk it all, could you break my fall?

It’s certainly different – a [gay] male vocalist “risking it all” with a pained love song that retracts the traditional and bombastic momentum of a Bond song with a quiet falsetto or three (Communard Bond anyone?!). This writer would have loved to hear Smith step aside from the successes of Adele’s Skyfall, really go with that falsetto motif and create that hi-energy disco Bond song Sylvester never recorded. But maybe with Writing’s On The Wall we now have the first Bond song that sees a male soloist take the stance of the trapped bird, the love that cannot say no to our man James. That aching, first-person narrative is very Sam Smith and very Bond.

I’ve spent a lifetime running and I always get away

But for you I’m feeling something that makes me want to stay.

As it seems every self-pronounced diva on Eurovision seems to be channelling a faux John Barry Does Bond vibe (Conchita Wurst and her chuffin’ Vauxhall feathers anyone?!) what Disclosure, Napes and Smith have done here is definitely not faux. It is a very vintage Bond sound – no doubt in tune with that mid Sixties Thunderball template the fourth Craig film has its eye on. This film is called SPECTRE after all. In the wake of Austin Powers’ imitations and pastiches, that old-school, cat stroking villainy needs a classical sound to pin the film to that John Barry heyday when audiences last saw that mob of piranha-owning stalwarts in their prime. But is more David Arnold channelling John Barry than not and maybe indicative of the fact these ain’t your father’s Bond songs anymore. Sam Smith and his colleagues on this one were toddlers when Brosnan stepped into the role.

So as some initial reactions are seemingly giving this fledgling Bond song another kick in the wall, it might be worth noting what Smith himself noted to BBC Radio 1 upon its debut – “it’s a grower this one”. He may well be right.

 

Sam Smith’s Writing’s On The Wall is available now on iTunes.

SPECTRE is released in the UK on October 26th.

PENS MIGHTIER THAN SWORDS – Reviewing BOND BY DESIGN – THE ART OF THE JAMES BOND FILMS

September 21, 2015 /

With a growing archive of at least 15,000 illustrations, famed Bond creative hub EON Productions has collated a celebratory [and of course timely] coffee table look at 53 years of 007 design. Written by EON’s Archive Director Meg Simmonds, Bond By Design – The Art of The James Bond Films is a lavish 320 page tome – as much about the unnoticed artisans of cinema as it is James Bond 007’s glorious design legacy.

Straddling the various artistic strands feeding into the onscreen Bond – costumes, sets, graphic design, props, cars and stunts – Bond By Design explores the 007 design palette chronologically from Dr. No through to SPECTRE. As Archive Director at EON Productions, Meg Simmonds not only contributes to countless 007 books, articles, DVDs, auctions and documentaries, she has also helped curate, launch and maintain a triumvirate of Bond exhibitions. Designing Bond (which has just finished a summer run in Madrid), Bond In Motion (now parked up for a successful run in London’s Covent Garden) and the lesser known Exquisitely Evil (at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC) are all must-see branches of this ongoing project to mark and celebrate Bond’s production, sociological and cultural history.

As the lushly reproduced storyboards, charcoal sketches and hand-drawn illustrations evolve into rich marker pen interiors and beautiful water-coloured vistas before making way for the new era’s digital schematics and pre-vis imagery, Bond By Design is as much a document of late 20th century movie entertainment design as it is 007 – an opulent tribute to the lost heroes of movie design. The painted ponderings of costume designer Julie Harris (Live and Let Die) are as rich and relevant as any Cecil Beaton drawing for My Fair Lady. Anthony Mendleson’s costume paintings for 1965’s Thunderball equal any Edith Head etching for those balletic frames and never-ending legs. Donfeld’s watercolour illustrations for Diamonds Are Forever’s Tiffany Case are as luxuriant and era-pinning as any Vogue Paris cover or Robert McGinnis Matt Helm poster from the same time. And check out Barbarella’s Jacques Fonteray and his Moonraker suits and “Breeder” gowns! It is telling too how the ‘house style’ for Quantum of Solace, Royale and Skyfall ‘s digitally produced designs still hark back to that pulp fiction style of paperback cover art.

Of course the creative endowments to Bond and cinema from the likes of designers Ken Adam, Peter Murton, Syd Cain and Peter Lamont go unchallenged. Yet Meg Simmonds and the EON archive go further with Bond By Design. The end result is a rich reserve of those sleek sketches, languid watercolours and the vital scope of ambition EON and Danjaq afford these designers. But, Bond By Design also underlines the furnishing, decorative and architectural savvy these designers had [and continue to have]. The detail and notes Peter Lamont assigns a fairly incidental set and his clear awareness of materials, light, manoeuvrability and tone is as striking as any triangular ceiling of Ken Adam’s. And this is before the internet, online libraries and catalogued furniture archives. It is not enough for these designers to know their production and construction restraints. As this book testifies, they have to be ahead of fashion, erudite with what they know about the history [and future] of interior design and what will let all the global audiences into the story. And that is before you factor in the final challenge that twenty-four Bond films and their design teams increasingly come up against – originality.

“My job is to give them sets to work in that will surprise and amaze an audience”

Peter Lamont

Of course these designers are all sketching for the good of Bond and cinema. But Bond By Design lays bare their own characters. Ken Adam’s thick, dark and angular images for The Spy Who Loved Me and Goldfinger perfectly highlight just how he was indeed “the man who drew the Cold War” (The Daily Telegraph, 2008). Bond By Design sees those filmic and real life influences of his – The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Alexander Korda, that Germanistic penchant for precision and cavernous industry and a post-war, Space-Age renaissance of new materials and substances. Likewise, Peter Lamont’s career as a set draughtsman cannot be missed when you witness the mathematical precision he puts into each set, walkway or even doorframe.

“Never a dull moment working on a James Bond film, I can tell you!”

Syd Cain

The devil is naturally in the detail with this collection. It is as much about what we never see as what we do. So costume sketches contain reminders that stunt teams have to wear wet-suits under Lindy Hemming’s red dresses for Casino Royale’s Vesper Lynd and notes hint at how Blofeld’s coat of arms from OHMSS must be technically wrong.

 

The what nearly happened clues are nearly as rich as what did make its way up onto the screen. Close scrutiny of the artists notes and thoughts betray that Solitaire might well have worn an afro wig in Harlem in Live and Let Die (with a possible early thought that Diana Ross was in the running for that film?), the scarlet hues and hanging bling of The Man With The Golden Gun’s Bottoms Up Club are now a VIP room norm, that Willard Whyte in Diamonds Are Forever may have had an unused office complex to end all office complexes, that Whyte was first called ‘Graves’, Tomorrow Never Dies’ antagonist was once called Harmsway and that OHMSS’s Syd Cain designed an abandoned dog fight for GoldenEye. Very little is creatively wasted in the Bond franchise.

“What the Bond films did, they stimulated my imagination. I felt the sky was the limit. I could do anything.”

Ken Adam

Bond-by-Design-The-Art-of-the-James-Bond-Films-2It is the staggering specifics that go into these drawings – and ultimately on-screen – that makes Bond By Design such a valuable document for all film lovers, let alone Bond fans. The thought and notes jotted down for a simple flower-covered pillar in a party scene in A View to a Kill or the in-depth measurements Lamont makes for the flower elevations in OHMSS lay bare the commitment to quality first pioneered and bankrolled by the likes of Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and now well and truly continued with Barbara Broccoli and the man with the most producer credits on Bond, Michael G Wilson. This is the tireless effort going on behind, in-front and beside the scenes as hardened fans panic about gun-barrel logos infinitum on 007 forums. So much is actually designed for a Bond film beyond physical sets and theatrically-minded interiors. Gold bars, the front of Baron Samedi’s train, Bond’s MI6 logo, casino chips, Martini glasses, what ornaments a villain owns, is it to be a headscarf or a necklace a panicking tourist wears are all elements that viewers will never see and yet have to be factored in, designed, made and duplicated. This writer has always been a tad partial to a good villain’s logo. And those faux-corporate emblems are lovingly presented too including Zorin Industries’ try-out logos.

“I go with my instincts on every aspect of how I design films. It’s all emotional response to things”

Dennis Gassner, production designer on SPECTRE

SPECTRE is understandably not explored in too much depth this time round as a great many of its design and visual tricks are tied to its plot and story surprises. However, designer Dennis Gassner’s discussion of director Sam Mendes’s urge to explore “hot and cold” in the film makes utter sense for a Bond movie as does the use in Mexico City of those prime 007 colours – “red, black and white”.

As if it needs endorsing any more, this new champion of Bond production books also comes with a pair of glossy Ken Adam designs and a foreword contribution from Adam, Lamont and Gassner. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

 

Bond By Design – The Art of the James Bond Films

by Meg Simmonds

Dorling Kindersley

Published 1st October 2015

 

With thanks to Dorling Kindersley and EON Productions.

 

 

Catching TRIGGER MORTIS at its London launch

September 10, 2015 /

“It was that moment in the day when the world has had enough”

Trigger Mortis

The race date was Monday September 7th 2015.

The starting grid was London’s Waterstones Piccadilly.

The grandstand was flanked by Ian Fleming Publications, Orion Books, Fleming family and gathered guests proudly watching the newest Bond author take to the driving seat and rev up the engines for the official launch of the newest 007 continuation novel, Trigger Mortis.

“The man was a genius at what he did”

Anthony Horowitz on Ian Fleming

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

Arriving to a packed crowd in a 1950s Bentley, the 60 year old author of The House of Silk, Moriarty and the Alex Ryder series soon arrived at the Film & TV section of Waterstones’ flagship London store with apologies for taking up so much room with his new tome. In true 007 style (well, true 007 launch style), part of the floor has been dedicated to Trigger Mortis : Unlocking Bond – Les Enfants Terrible’s immersive tribute to 007, Fleming, 1950s motor racing, codes, clues, vintage globe-trotting and Bakelite telephones. Heck, even Geoff Love’s flagship Big Bond Movie Themes album was resplendent on the vintage turnstile! And it was here that the BBC’s Mishal Husein (looking pretty sharp herself) talked through Trigger Mortis with Horowitz – examining its genesis, research and thinking.

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

“He’s very good at jumping in and out of Bond’s head”

Anthony Horowitz on Fleming

 

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

One of the key phrases Horowitz’s mentioned throughout was his constant need to remind himself to be “selfless” with Trigger Mortis. This is not his series or even his creation to showboat his own creative foibles, fancies and tics. It is a honest and endearing approach and one that has clearly fed into the strong reviews the book is garnering from critics and Bond literature fans alike. Horowitz is adamant he has not rebooted what Fleming has created. He highlights how you “need a good title, a good girl and good villain“. Quite right. He is also highly mindful of the era that surrounds Trigger Mortis. It is no author’s role to change his book’s societal backdrops or the world vision of its protagonist. Horowitz discusses the gay characters in the book but is forever mindful of keeping faithful to a late 1950s context alongside acknowledging too the shifting attitudes of 2015. Again, it is that “selfless” approach.

“With original material by Ian Fleming”

With Fleming himself looking on in the form of Anthony Smith’s bronze bust of the cigarette-clutching writer, the poetry and casting of Anthony Horowitz’s new role as Bond author became most clear. A TV screenwriting veteran himself (having written such TV fare as Robin Of Sherwood, Poirot and Foyle’s War), Horowitz is the perfect choice to write the 007 novel that incorporates Fleming’s own TV treatment work, Murder on Wheels into a new 007 novel. Murder on Wheels was one of nine TV treatments written by Fleming for a television drama that ultimately never manifested. Some went into the published Bond novels, but four remained tantalisingly unused and, hence, unread.

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

The always animated Horowitz explains how he was invited by the Fleming family to use some of these unread works – to somehow weave them into his novel as a starting pistol of sorts. Horowitz has of course changed a few details and names from Fleming’s treatment notes. But Murder on Wheels is very much 007’s original creator waving his lap number flag at Trigger Mortis. He may have died 51 years ago but Horowitz is clearly proud to be able to be in this collaboration of sorts with Bond’s creator on this one.

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

Horowitz discusses too how he was fortunate enough to visit Germany’s infamously dicey racetrack – the Nurburgring – with racing driver and expert, Mario Franchitti, how an unsuccessful attempt to get noticed for writing a Bond film screenplay ultimately fed into his first Alex Ryder novel (Stormbreaker) and a small matter of a very public apology at the start of the week. Horowitz had caused a mild storm in a teacup (the sort that only gets unnecessarily amplified by social media) by claiming potential Bond actor headline maker Idris Elba was too “street” to play 007 on screen. Having told Horowitz that he did not need to apologise (Elba is as street as Jack O’Connell and Tom Hardy – so the sentiment has no racist overtones to it), he astutely told this writer he felt it was better to nip it all in the bud. Which he did. He also continued to clarify how he had not slated Skyfall and the forthcoming Spectre, but actually said they were just not as brilliant (in his mind) as 2006’s Casino Royale.

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

So there we have it. A full house of press, fans and Bond readers new and old were witness to the latest 007 novel firing off the starting grid. They certainly left feeling Trigger Happy as Horowitz did a lap of honour by signing copies of the hardback. 

It is worth noting that the Waterstones edition of Trigger Mortis features the unseen Ian Fleming text for Murder on Wheels and a discussion chapter from Horowitz himself on how he was inspired and spurred on by it.

With thanks to Anthony Horowitz, Mishal Husain, Riot Communications, Waterstones Piccadilly, Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, Fergus Fleming, the Fleming family, Ajay Chowdhury, Remmert Van Braam, Brian Smith, Matthew Field and Orion Books.

Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

 

Trigger Mortis is published now by Orion Books / Ian Fleming Publications Ltd.

For more on Anthony Horowitz’s own site click here. For further photographs from the evening check out Mark O’Connell’s Catching Bullets page.

With thanks to Anthony Horowitz, Mishal Husain, Riot Communications, Waterstones Piccadilly, Ian Fleming Publications Ltd, Fergus Fleming, the Fleming family, Ajay Chowdhury, Remmert Van Braam, Brian Smith, Matthew Field and Orion Books.

 

OFF THE WALL – Sam Smith is announced as SPECTRE’s title song performer

September 9, 2015 /

smith 2The official writing is finally on the wall with the announcement that British singer Sam Smith is performing  Writing’s On The Wall– the title song to the 24th Bond movie, Spectre.

Just like Adele before him, the multi-Grammy award winning British singer is a natural choice, a very current and high-selling choice and do not be surprised if Sam Smith is performing Writing’s On The Wall at next year’s Academy Awards ceremony. Just sayin’.

However, Smith of course strenuously denied such Bond associations, citing Ellie Goulding in a scent-diverting tactic. Other names were touted too – including the rather delicious prospect of Radiohead getting involved.

But the upshot was it was always Smith’s gig. Co-written very quickly with Smith’s co-writer Jimmy Napes (Stay With Me), the track allegedly took barely twenty minutes to structure with the end result being one of the proudest moments in Sam Smith’s career thus far.

He is the first British male solo artist in fifty years to perform a Bond tune, the first out performer and one of the youngest too.

For my fuller thoughts on Sam Smith’s casting as the Spectre title song artist :

OUT MAGAZINE : Off The Wall – Why Sam Smith entering Bond’s Thunderball of Fame is good news for Bond

BBC 5 LIVE :  Sam Smith ‘obvious choice’ for theme tune says Mark O’Connell

Writing’s On The Wall is available to buy and download from September 25th 2015.

CD and vinyl pre-orders are being taken here

THE GENTLEMAN AVENGER – RIP Bond’s Other Chauffeur

June 30, 2015 /

Macnee 1

“Sir Godfrey Tibbett, our department”- A View to a Kill, 1985

The chauffeur trope in a Bond film is a mainstay. From Bond’s Jamaican pick up in Dr. No through to Daniel Craig donning a driver’s cap at the Shanghai airport scene in Skyfall and 007 stunt man Paul Weston playing a chauffeur in the forthcoming SPECTRE, there tends to be at least one nod per film.

Whether it was intentional or not, Patrick Macnee’s character in 1985’s A View to a Kill greatly mirrored the grandfather at the heart of Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan – Jimmy O’Connell. So much so that they wore similar uniforms (though Macnee always looked smarter), both Tibbett, Macnee and Jimmy O’Connell shared a love of horses (as did Cubby Broccoli), and of course both drove CUB 1 – that silver blimped beauty of a 1962 Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II that belonged to Albert R Broccoli and is now a family must for producer Barbara Broccoli. Fortunately Jimmy did not die at the hands of Grace Jones in a car wash, but sadly at the ripe age of 93 Patrick Macnee has indeed gone to that big sound stage in the sky.

Etched on the tree of British cultural history for ever more for his icon-defining repeat turns as John Steed in The Avengers, The New Avengers and (sort of) in the movie The Avengers (1998), Macnee was one of the true dapper gents of cinema. Blessed with one of the most strikingly English yet commanding of voices (which lent themselves so well to Eon/MGM’s ‘Making Of’ specials on the initial wave of Bond DVDs and the opening intro of Battlestar Galactica in which he starred), Macnee also appeared in Olivier’s HAMLET, THE SEA WOLVES and SHERLOCK HOLMES IN NEW YORK (both starring alongside Sir Roger Moore), THE HOWLING, a cracking turn as music kingpin Sir Denis Eton-Hogg in THIS IS SPINAL TAP (“He’s the head of Polymer”), WAXWORK and THE RETURN FROM THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. He even had a Top Ten hit with a re-release of KINKY BOOTS with AVENGERS co-star Honor Blackman.

For this Bond fan he will be forever that wheezing, slightly comic foil to Roger Moore’s Bond – bringing some veteran panache and grace to a younger man’s genre and at the same time being part of a deceptively brutal death. And don’t pretend any Bond fan doesn’t think of Macnee when the sinister waters start cascading down the windscreen in a car wash.

RIP Sir Godfrey Tibbett.

RIP John Steed.

RIP Patrick Macnee.

FROM GENESIS PROJECTS TO BRAVEHEARTS – RIP James Horner

June 23, 2015 /

james-horner

Hollywood has lost one of its great creative and master musicians.

Let’s just take a moment out to consider the CV of composer James Horner who has died too young in a flying accident in California aged 61….

Aliens, The Name of the Rose, Project X, 48 Hours, Willow, Red Heat, Cocoon, An American Tail, Avatar, Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Star Trek II – The Wrath of Khan, The Dresser, The Rocketeer, Patriot Games, Legends of the Fall, Deep Impact, Iris, Jumanji, The Mask of Zorro and The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas.

Tinged with a soulful Celtic romanticism that can be heard in Braveheart (possibly his best work), Titanic and Star Trek III – The Search For Spock (possibly his second best work) and a rich sense of Americana in the likes of Apollo 13, Field of Dreams and Glory the composer James Horner was initially a young player in a new Hollywood that was moving away from fuller orchestral scores. He worked on countless Amblin projects and animator Don Bluth, Ron Howard, James Cameron, Mel Gibson and Jean Jacques Annaud tapped his skills throughout.

Horner ended up becoming one of the standards as much as many a piece of his music did on many a trailer or promo (music from his Aliens score is one of most used trailer tracks – likewise Legends of The Fall). He was also arguably – like all the Hollywood baton-bearing greats – not only singlehandedly responsible for lifting some rather mediocre fare (Willow, Krull, The Amazing Spider Man and The Land Before Time), he was also responsible for elevating many an okay film to Best Picture glory including Braveheart, Titanic and A Beautiful Mind. His opening prologue for 1983’s The Search For Spock is one of the spine-tingling openers to a film whose heart hangs heavy because of how Horner scored the previous film (The Wrath of Khan) – providing a humanity and dignity to what could have been a hackneyed and tired old space soap opera. Likewise, his score for 1995’s Casper is a beautiful, forgotten gem.

And the cruel irony that one of his last 2015 scores was for a work entitled Living In The Age of Aeroplanes does not go unnoticed.

RIP James Horner.

SOME KIND OF HERO – New Bond book tells the epic story of ‘The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films’

June 2, 2015 /

some kind of heroTwo good fellow bullet catchers are to bring out a great new 007 tome in December 2015.

Some Kind Of Hero – The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films is a new, exhaustive account of the production of the 007 movies and is written by Ajay Chowdhury and Matthew Field.

“We have gained a new appreciation of not only how the series was started but how that Rolls-Royce standard has been maintained” – Field & Chowdhury

“For over 50 years, Albert R. Broccoli’s Eon Productions has navigated the ups and downs of the volatile British film industry, enduring both critical wrath and acclaim in equal measure for its now legendary James Bond series. Latterly, this family-run business has been crowned with box office gold and recognized by motion picture academies around the world. However, it has not always been smooth sailing. Changing tax regimes forced 007 to relocate to France and Mexico; changing fashions and politics led to box office disappointments; and changing studio regimes and business disputes all but killed the franchise while the rise of competing action heroes displaced Bond’s place in popular culture. But against all odds the filmmakers continue to wring new life from the series, and 2012’s Skyfall saw both huge critical and commercial success, crowning 007 as the undisputed king of the action genre.”

Some Kind of Hero recounts this remarkable story, from its origins in the early 1960s right through to the present day, and draws on hundreds of unpublished interviews with the cast and crew of this iconic series.

Authors Field and Chowdhury commented: ‘As we delved deeper into the Bond mythos, we realised there were many untold tales from many unsung heroes who played key creative roles in the series. We hope that even the most devoted Bond fans will find fascinating facets to the franchise in these pages. We have gained a new appreciation of not only how the series was started but how that Rolls-Royce standard has been maintained. When SPECTRE is released later this year, we hope readers will gain some insight in yet another chapter in the remarkable story of the James Bond films.’

About the authors :
Matthew Field is a film journalist with CINEMA RETRO magazine and an author, whose books include THE MAKING OF THE ITALIAN JOB and MICHAEL CAINE – YOU’RE A BIG MAN. He was also a consultant on the acclaimed James Bond documentary EVERYTHING OR NOTHING.

Ajay Chowdhury is an attorney and has given legal consultation on motion picture, music, publishing, television, and theatrical projects. He was the associate producer on two feature films and has contributed to numerous books on James Bond including GOLDENEYE – WHERE BOND WAS BORN : IAN FLEMING’S JAMAICA.

Some Kind Of Hero – The Remarkable Story of the James Bond Films 
by Matthew Field & Ajay Chowdhury
Published by The History Press
December 5th 2015

FOR YOUR EYES WIDE SHUT – SPECTRE and Team Eon win 2015’s teaser war in 97 seconds

March 28, 2015 /

 

“And anticipation is a big part of the appeal. To this day, the arrival of the Bond teaser trailer is a red letter day for me”

(Mark Gatiss, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan)

Going viral round the globe quicker than Moonraker 5 or a Telly Savalas flu jab, the newly premiered trailer for SPECTRE hits the snow/water/gravel running and is surprisingly chaste for what could have played out as Skyfall II – Back To The Chapel.

SPECTRE

Simply pitched and lushly shot by DOP du jour Hoyte van Hoytem, this online teaser pre-title sequence to a further media campaign demonstrates an early sense of cool and story precision as well as a refreshing lack of falling masonry, arched eyebrow raising, car and lady jousting.

A destroyed MI6 building below The Fighting Temeraire’s oily horizon, Naomie Harris’s Moneypenny doing her subtext best with a flight recorder box of Bond’s salvaged memories and holiday selfies (though shouldn’t photos of a young Craig/Bond skiing show a bit more colourful 1980s exchange student ski-wear?), Bond at home and no doubt digging out his 1973 dressing gown (with his Live and Let Die coffee maker in one of those packing boxes), Bond being taken on a Who Do You Think You Are journey (there may be tears to camera before bedtime) and finding Catweazle – sorry, Mr White – hiding in an Austrian lodge not totally dissimilar (and wilfully so) to the interiors of Dennis Gassner’s 2012 Skyfall Lodge.

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Though despite the obvious leanings to Ian Flemings’s Hannes Oberhauser (Octopussy and The Living Daylights, 1966), climbing accidents, parental loss, orders of “Temporary Guardianship” and Monica Bellucci marked out in a sort of Bertolucci-framed grief there is a delicious additional sense of baroque villainy already in place in this newest 007 bullet. No doubt taking the tonal baton started by writer John Logan (who wrote the arched dialogue between Silva and Bond in Skyfall) SPECTRE looks to have an apt and shadowy sort of medieval sense of occasion guided by secretive, enclaved traditions (not totally un-removed from how Bond trailers themselves step out from the online wings). There is also that deliciously arched sense of dialogue and statement, in part from Logan’s pen. Oh, and Judi Dench’s M looks to be all over this film. Just sayin’.

“I always knew death would wear a familiar face, but not yours“

– Mr White, SPECTRE

No three pronged Walther PPK’s, no Thunderball droids, no CGI Aston Martins cascading through a signature theme. This ain’t The Sith Who Loved Me. This is pared down Bond, the Masters Year of Daniel Craig’s four film tenancy (so far). And is this the fully fledged return of Ernst Stavro Blofeld (after all he’s had 34 years to escape Beckton Gas Works – or the McClory legalities as they are also known) or have Eon Productions, director Sam Mendes and the writers got a few white cats of intrigue up their Mao sleeves (and yes, that is a Mao collar on Christoph Waltz there, no?). Well it better be!

One thing that is less evident as the trailer concludes with Bond stepping into a cultish invite-only Eyes Wide Shut territory is that the seated silhouette of Christoph Waltz about to do The Voice on 007 (“you owned that song, Mister Bond“), is we cannot yet see the rugs of surprise that are about to be pulled from under James Bond 007.

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“Welcome James. It’s been a long time. And finally here we are”

SPECTRE is released in the UK in October and around the world from November.

PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH GREAT IDEAS – producer Michael Deeley in conversation

March 25, 2015 /

bladeRobert De Niro clambering silently after deer in a Pittsburgh dawn, Joanna Cassidy cascading recklessly through a neon-soaked 2019 Los Angeles, Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie both clambering and cascading in one of cinema’s greatest sex scenes, a low-shot 1969 Michael Caine in any number of his modish suits and ties, Christopher Lee in folk-drag on a Scottish isle and Ali McGraw’s 1978 fro …. these are all moments of cinema which emerged under the watchful eye of British producer Michael Deeley.

Under the banner of Films Mean Business and their networking initiatives, seminars, screenings and socials Deeley attended a Q&A in London this week. Expertly steered by writer and film PR man Matthew Field (who co-wrote Deeley’s 2009 own book, Blade Runners, Deer Hunters and Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies) the session quickly becomes a fascinating and honest trawl through one man’s deer hunting, blade running, eleventh hour visitations from Warren Beatty (he wanted the sex scene in Don’t Look Now cut to spare the blushes of his then partner Julie Christie – Deeley rightfully refused, citing that was vital to the narrative), daily creative negotiations with a vice-addled Sam Peckinpah on Convoy (Peckinpah was not best pleased he was directing “a trucker movie”) and taking endless blame for allegedly not championing the first wave release of The Wicker Man (Deeley and Christopher Lee will forever beg to differ on what happened there – but, as the former points out more than once, a producer has to get a movie sold, seen and paid for, which is not always on the radar of actors).

Michael Deeley in conversation with Matthew Field, March 24th 2015 Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

Of course Deeley recounts his times producing 1969’s The Italian Job for Paramount Pictures. He recalls an original take on Troy Kennedy Martin’s [then] rather humourless script needing a desperate added layer of caper (a lightness of touch this writer thanked him for as there is nowt wrong with Peter Collinson’s timeless mod-yssey). Deeley was eventually able to cast the deliberately quirky likes of Benny Hill and Noel Coward and the rest is Britpop, Mini Cooper and cinema history. Deeley also rather deliciously teases out exactly what Croker’s cliff-hanger idea* is. And when asked if he made any money from the 2003 The Italian Job remake, Deeley is deliciously quick to fire, “no, and neither did Paramount“.

Photo (c) Mark O'Connell / 2015

Whilst I don’t fully agree with Deeley and his 1978 producer hat that suggests the first 45 minutes of Michael Cimino’s three hour The Deer Hunter (1978) is surplus to requirements because it impinges on the daily tally of screenings and hence profit (I believe that Pittsburgh first act sets up the characters and their American world that few other Vietnam movies took the time and dignity to do), Deeley seems particularly proud of the Oscar winning classic (and the fact John Wayne presented him with Best Picture three weeks before life’s Russian roulette took the cowboy star from this world). I asked Deeley what his proudest scene or shot is, what was the defining moment. He quipped that it is Benny Hill’s penchant for “big” ladies in The Italian Job (“I like ’em big!“) but conceded that it is the Russian Roulette scene in Hunter with its sharp, acute and panicky intensity.

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Photo © Mark O’Connell / 2015

Michael Deeley © Mark O’Connell / 2015

And then so to Blade Runner. Matthew Field was astute to not labour any of the special edition anecdotes we all think we know about the likes of 1982’s sci-fi turning point. It is the film Deeley seems most proud of, despite its “Hollywood star” increasingly miffed he was not getting regular on-set “cuddles” from Ridley Scott and the physical difficulties of shooting at night and in the rain for months on end. Deeley personally believes Scott is “stupid” to embark upon Blade Runner 2 – which French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) is currently circled to direct. Less the narrow vision of an older producer looking back, this writer believes the calmly savvy and non-cynical Deeley is on to something here. He mentions the models, rostrums and pioneering (hence, unknown) effects processes and experiments of the original Blade Runner with great reverence. I wonder just how that very real, very physical world of 1982’s 2019 would translate to today’s CGI, rendering and virtual sets. Nostalgia for one of the benchmarks of sci-fi cinema is not enough reason to go back.

And it is the myths surrounding how films happen which Deeley is particularly adept at shattering. When asked “what exactly does a producer do?” by an astute questioner in the audience no doubt keen to get the room of fledgling producers and creatives to peer around the rose-tinted prism of cinema’s best and hardest job, Deeley’s simple and telling response was, “he causes the film to happen“.

Michael Deeley is certainly testament to the best causes and effects of cinema.

With thanks to Michael Deeley, Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury.

Blade Runners, Deer Hunters & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies by Michael Deeley (with Matthew Field) is available now in paperback from Pegasus Books.

Blade Runner – The Final Cut will be released at selected cinema on April 3rd 2015 in association with the BFI.

 

[* As Croker and the boys lie in paused terror the roar of a helicopter is accompanied by the sight of two steel cables descending to hoist the coach back onto the road as the gold plays back into the mafia’s hands and hence The Self Preservation Society (come on, it’s a great title!) has its narrative starter pistol]

 

 

 

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