MARK O'CONNELL

Writer, Author, Bond Fan

Category: Fleming (Page 6 of 7)

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.

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.

3895702_the-teaser-trailer-for-spectre-is-here_45059d09_m

“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.

BIGGER THAN LIFE – KEN ADAM’S FILM DESIGN exhibition to open in Berlin

November 1, 2014 /

Ken-AdamThe art, craftsmanship and genius of production designer Ken Adam cannot be overlooked. Of course his legacy and links with the Bond films goes without question, but so too does the grip and influence he has to this day on film and public architectural design (London’s Canary Wharf is allegedly modelled on the Ken Adam style).

ken adam 2Opening in December and continuing until May 2015, BIGGER THAN LIFE – KEN ADAM’S FILM DESIGN is a new exhibition housed at Berlin’s Deutsche Kinemathek. In 2012 Adam gave his entire artistic output to the Deutsche Kinemathek – including more than 4000 drawings, personal documents, sketches and designs for such titles as GOLDFINGER, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME and MOONRAKER plus his non-Bond work including BARRY LYNDON, THE MADNESS OF KING GEORGE (for which Adam won the Oscar), ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, DR STRANGELOVE and unused artwork for PLANET OF THE TITANS (which became STAR TREK THE MOTION PICTURE) and more.

“When you do a scribble and everything seems to work … that is the most exciting part“ – Ken Adam

A full catalogue accompanies the exhibition featuring essays by renowned authors on a diverse range of previously unexamined aspects of Adam’s career – such as the artistic roots of his Gesamtkunstwerk and his influence on art, design and architecture. The catalogue will be available to buy.

BIGGER THAN LIFE – KEN ADAM’S FILM DESIGN

Deutsche Kinemathek / Dec 2014 – April 2015

For more on the Deutsche Kinemathek, click here.

Deutsche Kinemathek
Museum für Film und
Fernsehen
Potsdamer Str. 2
10785 Berlin

SIR_KEN_ADAM_NPG

The film with the Midas Touch – GOLDFINGER @ 50

September 17, 2014 /

Goldfinger @ 50

 

A Sunday in March, 1964

Auric Goldfinger’s Ford Country Squire station wagon motors its charge along Main Street on a Sunday afternoon, passing the Embassy Picturehouse and pulling up dutifully at the lights. Its Mustang poppy-red and faux wooden panelling is 1960s Ford personified and the car’s wide dimensions spill into neighbouring lanes of traffic.

But this is not America. And the car’s fictional owner Auric Goldfinger is not at the wheel. Nor is his fictional chauffeur, Oddjob. James Bond is not even sat captive on the back seat as he does in Goldfinger.

This is Esher, Surrey. The year is indeed 1964, but Jimmy O’Connell is driving, his wing man is my Uncle Gerald and my dad, John, is sat in the back. The locals frequenting the pubs of Esher – including Jimmy’s much-loved The Bear – are most intrigued by the left-hand drive and Yankie expanse of the Ford …. and how it handles “like a tart’s waterbed on wheels”. Not very James Bond.

(extract from Chapter 8, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eszhV1M3Dk8

“Like all institutions that must safeguard their survival, the Bond series adapts and adopts. Three films in and we already recognise where the villains, heroes and those in between are positioned. The film’s glossy calling-card of dousing Jill Masterson (Shirley Eaton) in gold paint is not just a proficient and nasty way of telling the audience all we need to know about Auric Goldfinger. It tells us what this film series now wants to be – bespoke action adventures, a little bit kinky, a little bit violent, often original, always stylish, yet forever aimed at mass audiences. The Bond films are now in the business of showing their intent rather than telling it.”

(extract from Chapter 8, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan)

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