THE BOOKS
The key to bluffing your way in Bond is to understand one crucial fact: the films are nowhere near as good as the books – even when Fleming was noticeably losing his touch towards the end. Once you have adopted this as your central argument, everything you say will earn the respect due an obvious expert.
Most Bond aficionados rate Ian Fleming’s novels about the spy significantly above the much more famous films. If you do the same, you’ll benefit, whatever the situation, for one of the following two main reasons:
- Even when your audience is aware of the books, it will be pretty unusual for them to have read any (especially if they’re under 40). If you show that you’re familiar with the novels, you’ll convince others that you really do know what you’re on about. Everything you say about Bond, even when discussing the more inferior film version, will be listened to with open-mouthed admiration.
- A large number of people don’t know that the books exist (depressing, but true). To such an audience, your pronouncements might as well be written on tablets of stone.
Serious Bond fans prefer the books to the films for reasons that tend to centre on the character of Bond himself. Fleming painted a portrait of a dark, complex man, very much a loner, rarely troubled by conscience, with tendencies towards misogyny. With very few exceptions, the films present Bond as a one-dimensional cartoon hero addicted to flashy gadgets, whose most taxing moral choice is whether he should (a) blow up the volcano then bed the girl in the bikini, or (b) bed the girl in the bikini then blow up the volcano.
When you’re trying to persuade people of the books’ superiority over the films… use the phrase ‘moral complexity’ a lot. It tends to impress.
When you’re trying to persuade people of the books’ superiority over the films, it’s best that you concentrate on the nature of Bond’s character. Use the phrase ‘moral complexity’ a lot. It tends to impress, and will have them thinking you’re some sort of Melvyn Bragg. They’ll be scared of arguing with you for fear of appearing shallow; instead, they’ll just nod wisely and bow to your superior knowledge. If any of them do threaten to step out of line, all you have to do is quote a line or two from one of the books to illustrate your point. It’s well worth committing a couple of these examples to memory.
It was part of his profession to kill people. He had never liked doing it and when he had to kill he did it as well as he knew how and forgot about it. As a secret agent who held the rare double-0 prefix – the licence to kill in the Secret Service – it was his duty to be as cool about death as a surgeon. If it happened, it happened. Regret was unprofessional – worse, it was a death-watch beetle in the soul.
Goldfinger
It was one of those days when it seemed to James Bond that all life, as someone put it, was nothing but a heap of six to four against.
Thunderball
The blubbery arms of the soft life had Bond round the neck and they were slowly strangling him. He was a man of war, and when, for a long period, there was no war, his spirit went into a decline.
From Russia with Love
James Bond, with two double bourbons inside him, sat in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life and death.
Goldfinger
Then, as gently as you can, ask your opponent how he or she can possibly defend a series of films in which ‘emotional depth’ translates as Roger Moore raising an eyebrow. If this fails to convince, use the ultimate argument for the books being better than the films: namely that the filmmakers themselves decided to return to the novels for inspiration when choosing a successor to Pierce Brosnan.
It was explicitly stated that in casting Daniel Craig and in downplaying 007’s gadgets to produce a ‘darker’ film, the producers wanted 2006’s Casino Royale to mark a return to the ‘true’ Bond. They were so sure that this was the right move that they announced Craig’s rehiring for a further film before the shooting of Casino Royale had even finished. Praise indeed. Not even Bond himself got his next job before finishing the one he was working on at the time.
You should then put forward the theory that the producers reduced the role of gadgetry because everyday technology had improved so much in recent years that it was becoming harder and harder to impress the average moviegoer. For instance, in Goldfinger, 007 tracks the villain’s car by means of a crude buzzing device that doesn’t even give the car’s exact location, just how near it is. Today, even the most basic sat-nav system from Argos can do more than that.
As recently as Pierce Brosnan’s tenure, Bond audiences were wowed by Secret Service computers in which you could instantly view any location in the world via satellite, simply by tapping in a place name, a postcode or a grid reference. These days, it’s called Google Earth.
If even that fails to silence your tech-obsessed opponent, put him (and inevitably, it will be a him) in the spare room with your child’s Wii. The rest of you can then get on with a proper conversation about the superiority of the Bond books.
THE FILMS
By the early 1960s, Bond’s exploits on the page had guaranteed him a welcome on the big screen. The big issue was who would take him there. Step forward, American producer Cubby Broccoli, whose real first name was Albert, but who received the nickname as a child after a cartoon character of the time. He once made the claim that one of his ancestors had invented broccoli by crossing a cauliflower with a particular sort of lettuce. Whether this is true or not, we can’t say. He was a movie producer, after all.
Broccoli discovered that the Bond film rights had been optioned by Canadian producer Harry Saltzman in 1961. They teamed up and, as the enterprise was such a risk, called their company EON Productions – ‘Everything Or Nothing’. In the event, it was the former. Since 1962, the Bond movies have grossed something in the region of $4 billion (£2.5 billion). Even SPECTRE only dared ask for £100 million.
Broccoli once claimed that half the world’s population had seen a Bond film. While this may be another moment to remind your audience that he was a movie producer, you can nevertheless assume that most of them will have seen at least one of them. Consequently, there is very little bluffing value to be gained from knowing the plots, which, apart from the first few films, bear little or no relation to the relevant books.
In each case, we recommend a one-line summary to help your audience differentiate the film from its companions, then a snippet or two of ‘behind the scenes’ trivia to show your superior knowledge. Being able to bluff even about films you don’t like will show a truly impressive command of your subject.