God bless Guy Hamilton, Richard Maibaum, and Paul Dehn for only showing the holes that mattered in the film.
...that sounds dirtier than I meant it to.
The James Bond Film Discussion Thread (With Bonus Lazenby!)
- Thread starter cooleddie74
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...that sounds dirtier than I meant it to.
It is always quite amusing that when people say they want a true to Fleming adaptation, what they accidentally mean is a few hours of channel surfing on a Sunday afternoon/evening twenty to thirty years ago — bouncing between a dull documentary, Holiday, if you’re lucky a bit of Top Gear, maybe a beauty pageant, a war movie, and a dated sitcom or sketch show.
If there's one thing in the movies that is truly in spirit of the Fleming novels, it's the product placement. I don't think Fleming was paid for it, he just cared very deeply about brands of booze, cars, watches and so on. Makes me think he was the kind of guy who actually read and enjoyed the articles in Playboy.
The "articles" thing is, of course, an old joke, but the fact is much of the text content of Playboy really was top-notch. The fiction and interviews, in particular, were often excellent.
I was thinking more the lifestyle and product recommendation articles?! TBH, I've read one issue of Playboy in my entire life, it was when I was 19 and curious (and there probably was a celebrity taking her clothes off that made me buy that particular issue). It was the early 00s, and it was the German edition, but i was struck by how little of the issue were the famous pictorials, and how much of it was about adventure vacations and high-class brands. At the end of it I thought, this really is the kind of magazine James Bond would read.
I bought a book of essays on Bond. (I hope I haven't posted this before. Not recently anyway.) It opened with the author selling his first edition Bond books. And I wondered at why the article was going into such specific detail about the breakfast that he ordered while he was waiting for the buyer. Especially the bacon. I hadn't read Fleming yet so I didn't know that this was note perfect homage of the Fleming style.
Actually if you watch Dr. No there are quite a few more bits of "Flemingesque" character moments like those. Including, if I recall, Bond ordering breakfast. A few in From Russia With Love as well. And when he checks into the hotel in Jamaica they pretty much lift a similar scene from book of Casino Royale.
Yeah, Broccoli and Saltzman peppered the movies with product because they made extra cash from it. Fleming did it because he loved the stuff and wanted you to love the stuff too.
Actually if you watch Dr. No there are quite a few more bits of "Flemingesque" character moments like those. Including, if I recall, Bond ordering breakfast. A few in From Russia With Love as well. And when he checks into the hotel in Jamaica they pretty much lift a similar scene from book of Casino Royale.
Yeah, Broccoli and Saltzman peppered the movies with product because they made extra cash from it. Fleming did it because he loved the stuff and wanted you to love the stuff too.
The first issue I bought was for an interview with Steve Martin.
The magazine had the last (I think? Certainly it was one of the last) interview with John Lennon, an epic affair (Playboy's interviews were always really long, treated as the central text feature of the magazine). He went through practically his entire catalog song-by-song, commenting on each. I also remember a great group interview with the cast of Hill Street Blues. And of course there was also the Jimmy Carter interview where he made the famously controversial comment about "committing adultery in his heart."
I also have two old anthologies called The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural, collecting genre fiction from the magazine. Lots of classic stories from some of the greats in the field.
I also have two old anthologies called The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Playboy Book of Horror and the Supernatural, collecting genre fiction from the magazine. Lots of classic stories from some of the greats in the field.
Fittingly for the thread, that issue also had a Barbara Bach pictorial as its cover feature.
[GEORGE LAZENBY HAS ENTERED THE CHAT AND STARTED TO CRACK THE OFFICE SAFE]
The first playboy I bought was a special about James Bond, with a lot of interesting facts about the franchise. When I talked about it I noticed people made fun of it because you don't read playboy for the articles, that is how I learned to not talk about buying a playboy
Playboy has articles?
He was also quietly hopeful they’d slip him a free sample xD
It’s why the scene with Bond making Breakfast for Madeline in NTTD is probably one of the most Fleming things. (As is Bond having a kid, that’s straight from the novels too.) The old ‘Omega.’ ‘Beautiful.’ Train scene from CR should have gone on for five minutes while Bond explains the antimagnetic Co-axial movement to poor old Vesper for added Fleming veracity.
I made a similar joke about GQ or FHM (I forget which). A guy was talking about something he read in it, I said "you read that magazine?" He asked "you don't?" I answered "no, I look at it, I don't read a damn thing in it."
Back in the 90s heyday of the so-called Lads’ Mags, my former flatmate used to buy whichever one had the hottest woman on the cover in a given month.
Even Bernie Kopell's LOVE BOAT Doc gave a shout-out to the articles. As for interviews, John Wayne's was extra-controversial while Connery's was half the traditional length.* I literally bought 60 back issues to peruse the most favored interviews over the decades. Spader got three. Much later issues were also reduced in size and page-count. After PLAYBOY went all digital, I found a way to create my own version by reading one chapter per day of every old or newly selected books-------most of them non-fiction. So this week it's Norman Mailer, William Goldman, Fleming's GOLDFINGER, SLIMER from Britain, Armond White, MORNING GLORIES, an oral history of THE WEST WING, George R.R. Martin, plus bio-books on Hillary Clinton, Bibi Netanyahu, Mitch McConnell and FOOLS ON THE HILL.
The vast majority of PLAYBOY's interviews were 15 pages, though Brando's was 35 due to rambling while refusing to answer any questions whatsoever. I kept the HILL STREET interview.
(*And that one was controversial to boot.)
When I was in college, mom got dad a subscription. He had trouble getting them away from mom and I, who loved reading the interviews. 
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