Loosely imagining Wes Anderson and his wonderful world taking on the mantle of James Bond and his equally wonderful world …. all to a quirky soundtrack…
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Dear Hollywood, as another annual Hollywood buffet and raffle night comes to a close and in the “indomitable journey of life that takes us all on an transformative odyssey of respect and being able to be who we are” just remember that no-one outside of award speeches uses the word “indomitable” – especially Brad Pitt (unless of course he is about to play an Austen spinster).
So what happened this year? We had a montage celebrating 90 years of cutting to Goldie Hawn in the audience, Ronan Farrow has to now add Cate Blanchett to the list of people he will have to Tweet-hate like a Sinatra behaving like a spoilt Kennedy, Bette Midler forgot how the Acadamee hated For The Boys to sing over a montage of beaches scenes from the movies (I think), Kim Novak took to the stage nearly looking younger than Jennifer Lawrence (though she has yet to fall over twice infront of a billion TV viewers – is Lawrence the new Lee Evans?), the black Will Smith presented the Best Film Oscar for the slave drama/trauma that is 12 Years A Slave (trust me, the Academeee does this a lot – which is why Harvey Feinstein will present the Oscar to Jonah Hill should my fantasy biopic notion of him as Divine ever see the light of day), Liza Minnelli was in the house to help celebrate 75 years of The Wizard of Oz by letting, er, Pink sing Over The Rainbow, Hollywood and the world forgot that a “selfie” is taken by one person of them self … otherwise it is called a “photo“, Hemsworth annoyingly didn’t take home the Best Supporting Junk award for that cameo of his ball sack in Rush, Gravity picked up all the important technical awards including Best Sound Editing (for a space-set film where there would be no sound) yet sadly the film about a women stuck in a Space nightmare in just her underwear and vest top and having to save herself with a fire extinguisher were noticed by the Acadamee before when Aliens and Wall-E came out (in Space everyone can hear Sandra Bullock scream), American Hustle failed to get noticed on the night (or a nomination for hair and make up?!!) yet another montage featured the all-important remake of The Karate Kid (which was no doubt a rider for getting Will Smith to be the new Poitier), Jared Leto is clearly in preparation for the sequel to Chapter 27 where he will not play John Lennon’s killer but John Lennon himself, McConaughey deservedly wins for playing the worst JR Ewing tribute act in the Dallas Buyers Club (though Leto did make a marvellous Victoria Principal), Frozen won Best Animated Feature Not Yet Based On A Hit Broadway Show and the Interflora In-Memorium montage had its work cut out this year but still managed to keep a blank space in case Liza didn’t get out of her chair.
For all West Coast Bond fans, San Francisco’s brilliant CARTOON ART MUSEUM is hosting THE ILLUSTRATED WORLD OF JAMES BOND 007 on Saturday March 1st 2014. A look at Bond’s various news-strip and cartoon incarnations over the years, the night is hosted by Ron Evans (Cartoon Art Museum chair) with comedian and cartoonist Mike Capozzola and special guest Alan J. Porter (author, THE HISTORY OF THE ILLUSTRATED 007).
The evening is only $7 and promises to be a chat-fuelled, prize-giving, auction-minded and cocktail-ready celebration of all things illustrative 007. And the Cartoon Art Museum is an affordable must-see at any time of year. For more details of the night, click here.
Saturday, March 1, 2014
7:30-9:00pm
CARTOON ART MUSEUM
655 Mission Street
San Francisco, Ca 94105
415-CAR-TOON
www.cartoonart.org
UPDATE! A signed copy of CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN is being auctioned as part of the event on the night of March 1st at the Cartoon Art Museum.
BOND IN MOTION is back!!
Having spent an extended and highly popular run at Beaulieu’s Motor Museum until Christmas 2013, Eon Productions & the London Film Museum have announced that BOND IN MOTION is to take on the capital and open in London in March 2014.
Based at the London Film Museum, the newly revised exhibition will offer folk the opportunity to rub bumpers with a stellar cast of around fifty of 007’s wheeled co-stars – from the Connery days, the 1970s, possibly half a Parisian Renault, an Octopussy tuk-tuk, Skyfall‘s vehicular support acts (including the 1/3 scale Merlin helicopter models), You Only Live Twice‘s Little Nelly, Goldfinger‘s Rolls Royce Phantom III, The Spy Who Loved Me’s Lotus Esprit S1 and a certain Aston Martin DB5.
In the heart of London’s Covent Garden and marking the first time such a collection has been on display in the capital, this one is not to be missed… BOND IN MOTION.
For more details and tickets go to London Film Museum’s site.
Bond producer Barbara Broccoli kindly provided Catching Bullets – Memoirs of A Bond Fan its lovely opening ‘Prelude’. It was a unexpected and lovely eleventh hour gesture to have her endorsement and kind words grace the book, especially considering the reasons why.
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On the 19th January 2014, Eon Productions’ Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson collected the 2014 David O. Selznick Lifetime Award in Los Angeles at the annual Producers Guild of America Awards. This prize is awarded by the Bond producers’ peers and is named in honour of one of Hollywood’s most famous producing sons. As the much-respected chiefs of Eon Productions continue apace on Bond 24 it was a much deserved honour and underlines how they are still the biggest Bond fans around.
Deadline.com described the moment the pair were introduced at the Hollywood ceremony by David Picker (who himself was influential in securing and maintaining the Bond series for United Artists in the early 1960s when Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman launched the Bond series upon the world) :
“The latest James Bond Daniel Craig joined Picker in honouring the Bond years. In accepting the award, Wilson praised “our father, Cubby Broccoli” – who, when asked ‘What does a Producer do?’ replied, “My function is to be responsible for everything.” Wilson added, When it came to Bond, his advice was, “It’s okay if you screw it up, but don’t let anybody else screw it up for you.” Wilson went on to describe situations where Cubby Broccoli had cooked dinner for the entire film crew and said he and Barbara Broccoli would do the same. “In this business where you are only as good as your last film, it’s wise to have a back-up plan, ” he said. Wilson joked that if the next Bond film is not a success, “Barbara and I will be available for all your catering needs.”
Splendid Books and I would like to congratulate Barbara and Michael and wish them every success with Bond 24.
See a snippet of Daniel Craig introducing his Bond producers colleagues to the podium (20.30 mins)
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Read Variety magazine’s recent piece ‘Producers Maintain their Family Bond With 007‘ here.
Host and Mr Polari Paul Burston.
November 13th 2013 marked the night the Polari Salon had its annual Polari First Book Prize. Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan was on the shortlist this year so attendance in spesh clothing and clean shoes was a must. And no, I didn’t wear the Octopussy dressing gown or Roger Moore ski-suit despite hinting on Twitter I would (the many open stairs at the Southbank Centre rendered the Octopussy nightgown a no-no for anyone underneath not wanting to cop a peek).
And what a grand night it was, putting – as ever for a Polari gathering – the great and the good better all together to honour all guises of the queer word – spoken, sung, poetry, narrative fiction, non-fiction, stand-up, performance art and speech. And that was just host Paul Burston’s entrance!
Before the Prize winner was announced, Polari took on its more familiar monthly form. The nights are held at London’s Southbank Centre, cost a very fair fiver and represent two hours (plus interval, book and beverage stall) of the best LGBT readers and writers out there. This month’s menu of salonistas included Rosie Garland, Patrick Flanery, Dee Chanelle, Helen Lederer, Dean Atta and Charlotte Mendelson. It is hard and wrong to underline faves, but Patrick Flanery’s prose was fragile and quick-fire, Dean Atta’s stand-up poetry struck a very contemporary and sadly apt chord (“racism is institutionalised thinking“), singer Dee Chanelle gave the Brazilian street dancers a run for their volume-levels next door and Helen Lederer (a comedy hero of mine) was typically self-deprecating all over the podium.
And then to the grand master-plan, the denouement of the night and Polari’s crowning glory – the Polari First Book Prize 2013. Announced in true “Acadamee Award” style by the quietly incisive VG Lee (a new comedy hero of mine), the Societe Generale sponsored trophy went to Mari Hannah and The Murder Wall. A lovely winner clearly in awe of her charity telethon sized and much deserved cheque took to the stage and made winners of us all. Okay, she didn’t at all. Nor should she. It was her moment and she earned it. Us other four shortlistees got to go home with the ‘win’ that Polari and Paul Burston took us under his sterling wing. Not only have I been asked to read at Polari this year but I have seen first-hand the immense value and support mechanism it represents for queer writers. Writing is a lonely practise at the best of times. Paul himself has rightfully remarked how writing needs a reader to complete the process. Polari allows all manner of voices a podium or chair or even sometimes just a Re-Tweet and gives an audience to so many people, including myself. That is worth its weight in gold. The use of words as help and support versus the use of words to hate and incite is still the centuries old dilemma of language. Even now the use of phrases like “dyke” or “queer” is over-worried by the over-worriers, when it is up to gay individuals to adopt it into their parlance and out of the box marked “abuse”. Included in the audience was Nigerian activist and TV host Funmi Iyanda and out-gay Nigerian Bisi Alimi (now a welcome UK resident having had to flee his home country and family). The pair have their own [and sadly very] valid LGBT story to tell and THIS is where Polari is more than a few dykes and queers supping Pinot from plastic glasses in the name of literature (not that Burston would allow that complacency to sink in – hence his ever changing rota of readers and performers).
Polari and the work and efforts of its alumni, audience regulars (the life and pulse of each monthly gathering), venue owners and just those that pass the word on is one of the greatest LGBT assets in London and indeed the UK (where Polari is stretching its wings north – see here).
Furthermore, Paul and his team of judges give their time and efforts to reading the longlist and shortlisted titles and for my tale of a 1980s Bond fan to even get dropped on the “to read” pile is the stuff of privilege.
The Polari First Book Prize 2013 judges this year:
Paul Burston (Chair of Judges) – author, journalist and host of Polari.
Bidisha – writer, critic and broadcaster
Suzi Feay – literary critic
Rachel Holmes – author and former Head of Literature at the Southbank Centre
VG Lee – author and comedian
Joe Storey-Scott – books buyer
The Polari First Book Prize 2013 shortlist:
The Murder Wall by Mari Hannah (Pan Macmillan)
Tony Hogan Bought Me An Icecream Float Before He Stole My Ma by Kerry Hudson (Chatto & Windus)
The Sitar by Rebecca Idris (self-published ebook)
Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan by Mark O’Connell (Splendid Books)
The Tale of Raw Head & Bloody Bones by Jack Wolf (Chatto & Windus)
For more on Polari and why you should get along, click here.
Whoever said never meet your heroes clearly never had mine as theirs. For thirty years my cinematic hero, sartorial inspiration and now literary muse was and continues to be Sir Roger Moore.
It was June 1983 when my dad took a reluctant and seven year old younger version of myself to the Guildford Odeon to see Roger Moore’s sixth Bond opus, Octopussy. It was a simple outing that put a 007 shaped stamp on my life and was the beginnings of realising the stamp James Bond had already had on the O’Connell family. Key to that was Roger Moore. Being a 1980s kid, he was my Bond. Being a 1980s cinema kid, he was crucial. Numerous posters and images flanked my walls like Broccoli frescoes and an autographed still for my ninth birthday is still the best birthday present in the world ever.
Flash-forward thirty years and not only have I written a comedy memoir about literally growing up with Bond, Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan (Splendid Books), but Sir Roger is appearing in his current tour An Evening With Roger Moore at a local Surrey venue, G-Live (or the Moore-quip friendly G-Spot for those who can never quite find their way round Guildford’s notoriously shocking one-way system). Organised and marshalled onstage by Roger’s manager and biographer Gareth Owen, the Autumn 2013 show is a relaxed but complete look at Roger’s career from his early days at RADA (with fellow classmates including Bond alumni Lois Maxwell) via the touchstones of The Saint, The Persuaders, The Sea Wolves, that small matter of seven 007 movies to his more recent and very sterling work for UNICEF and taking on the charity baton handed to him by friend Audrey Hepburn.
And just as a 007 who sported the best ski-wear known to man should be, Moore is a master of going off piste – taking the audience and himself along reminiscences and sharply recalled anecdotes with cute timing and that self-mocking veneer that has served him well over the years. If only all of us could even hope to be so sharply minded at 86 years young. I had never seen Moore more lucid, relaxed, quick to quip and totally poised with all that trademark saintly persuasion.
It was not wholly random and the people who I need to thank already have been, but as the highly recommendable show came to a close I was faced with the prospect of finally meeting the man himself. Should I? Maybe I shouldn’t. The man might want to quite fairly shoot off home and crack open a glass of something bubbly, no? Guildford’s fine but it is no Monaco (despite Roger remembering with mocking fondness filming an AA commercial decades there before as a young actor). Suddenly I was overcome with a paranoia – “I should leave best alone, the journey of Catching Bullets has been so wonderful and well received and an L.A. encounter with my Bond Girl was such a divine day, don’t push your luck and spoil it now O’Connell!”. But if I didn’t try I would – to badly paraphrase the film Moore circles as his finest work – become the man who haunted himself.
Cut to the back car-park of G-Live and my seven year old Bond fan self has already led my adult brain down into a Guildford car park before the auditorium had barely got to its feet amidst well deserved cheer. A chauffeured car is naturally waiting for Mr Moore as is someone’s vintage Volvo from Roger’s The Saint days, and of course some loyal fans wrapped up against the autumn cold. A wink and a nod later and my partner, our friend Pat and I are coming in out the cold towards Mr Moore’s dressing room and a friendly hive of post-show backstage activity. I don’t know if the tricky Bond mistress that we all call ‘life’ meant to add such poetry to but it suddenly hits me how right now Roger Moore and I are merely yards away from the Guildford Odeon where my Bond fan journey commenced with Octopussy. Furthermore – and due to a bout of parental house-sitting – I write this piece alongside the very childhood bedroom that was a veritable shrine to our man James, 007, Octopussy, Maud Adams and all manner of Bond-foolery. Like those little white dots mark each and every Bond movie, events do sometimes have a very curious habit of going full circle. And before I knew it I was sat in Roger’s gleaming white dressing room with the man himself looking at me with the same piercing blue eyes that fought Zorin, Drax, Scaramanga, Stromberg, Nick Nack and Jaws with the same boyish grin that bedded Solitaire, Mary Goodnight, Anya Amasova and of course both our shared favourite 007 lady, Octopussy.
Whilst the details shall remain personal (in part due to me being caught by the utter surrealism of it all and hence forgetting what the hell happened), Roger soon beckoned me into his Santa’s Grotto of suavity to sit down with my cardigan-friendly eye already on his fine knitwear and wishing I had sported mine that night. We discussed Bond, Catching Bullets and my grandfather who worked with Cubby Broccoli and who Roger would have known. I also coyly mentioned the personal symmetry of finally meeting Mr Moore a few metres from where I had seen him in my first Bond at the cinema. He wondered, “which one?”. I nervously replied, “the Odeon“.
He then kindly asked again, “no, which film…?” to which I duly responded with Octopussy-mentioning pride and embarrassment. Roger then kindly said he wants to read Catching Bullets. I jokingly hinted of course he didn’t have to at which moment those firm blue eyes suavely clarified, “oh no, I will”.
Forever a gent. Forever Bond. Forever Moore.
An Evening with Roger Moore continues round the UK.
Catching Bullets – Memoirs of a Bond Fan is available now.
“He seems fit enough. Have him report to me in Istanbul in 24 hours…”
Rosa Klebb, From Russia With Love, 1963
10th October 2013 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Eon Productions From Russia With Love. A favourite of both CATCHING BULLETS and even John F Kennedy (who boosted sales by declaring it was his favourite book) this was the first Bond film with a pre-title sequence, the first overture of a title sequence within the film itself, the first Bond film to go to Europe, the first full score by John Barry and the first film to prove that James Bond can indeed return. It is a clear favourite with the Bond producers Eon Productions and always a film that those responsible came back to when discussing how they got it right.
“I’m not mad about his tailor, are you?”
Read more about From Russia With Love in CATCHING BULLETS.
Splendid Books and I are more than proud to announce that CATCHING BULLETS – MEMOIRS OF A BOND FAN has been shortlisted for the POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2013.
Polari is a monthly literary salon held (more often than not) at London’s Southbank Centre. Masterminded by author/writer Paul Burston, it is a queer / LGBT showcase of a brilliant rainbow-hued spectrum of writing, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, performance, works-in-progress, theatre and song.
Previous readers have included Jonathan Harvey, Celia Imrie, Damian Barr, Jake Arnott, Neil Bartlett, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Andy Bell, Sophia Blackwell, DJ Connell, Maureen Duffy, Stella Duffy, Fenella Fielding, Christopher Fowler, Patrick Gale, David Hoyle, VG Lee, David McAlmont, John McCullough, Will Self and many more. Oh, and of course yours truly (January 2013).
The POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE is an annual award to honour the best in LGBT writing. CATCHING BULLETS and myself never once imagined we would be rubbing shoulders with a range of very skilled books so are doubly chuffed to find ourselves on the final shortlist. The winner is announced on November 13th 2013 at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre.
One of “the World’s Best Gay & Lesbian Hotspots” for 2013! – ArtInfo.
“Lively, funny and inspiring – a gay-themed salon of interest to anyone remotely interested in literature, whatever their sexual bent. Paul Burston’s achievement in consistently bringing together writers and performers who will stimulate and inspire is remarkable” – Patrick Gale
“Always fun, always thought-provoking – a guaranteed good night out” – Sarah Waters, Tipping The Velvet.
“London’s most theatrical salon” – The New York Times
“London’s peerless gay literary salon” – The Independent on Sunday
For more details about past, present and future Polari nights then head over to the website. The evenings are a great and relaxed showcase of good writing, creativity, thought and ideas. A bar and book store is always at hand as are great views of London at night, whatever time of year. Though be warned – Polari often sells out quick so get in early.
@Mark0Connell
@PolariSalon
@PolariPrize
