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cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. Girls, guns, gadgets, gambling, golf. All of those are constants in the life of a literary character who has become an industry in the last 50 years and more. His name? Bond. James Bond. He was, of course, the creation of Ian Fleming. But since Fleming wrote his dozen books and a handful of short stories, there have been some 25 films based on the exploits of James Bond. There have been, since Ian Fleming, six authors who have written James Bond books. One of them is Raymond Benson, who is my guest today for University Place Presents. Welcome, Raymond. >> Hello, Norman, how are you? >> I'm doing well. Like James Bond, we all seem to be flourishing in this environment that was created by Ian Fleming. It just never grows old, does it? >> No, he created an archetype, really. You know, there were thrillers, and literary thrillers before Ian Fleming, but I think he actually created a subgenre, the fantasy spy. >> Based on some of his own experiences. >> Yes, absolutely, and we can get into that. >> Let's have a look at Mr. Fleming first, and see if he conjures for us our notion of James Bond. Right away, there's some similarities, aren't there, with the pictures you see later say, of Sean Connery, for example. >> Right. Well, Ian Fleming was considered extremely good looking in his younger days. He was sort of a ladies man, very dapper. He was born in 1908 to a very wealthy, classy family in England. His grandfather actually, Robert Fleming, founded a merchant bank called Robert Fleming & Company, in the 1800s. This brought tremendous wealth to the Fleming family. So, he was never wanting for money. But the family did adhere to the notion of primogeniture, the oldest son. >> The oldest son would get it all. Robert Fleming had four sons, and his second son was Valentine Fleming, who was Ian Fleming's father. Valentine Fleming had four sons, and Ian was the second son. So he did not inherit the big wealth, although, you know, he always had money. There were two sides of the Fleming family. The banking side and then there was this sort of Bohemian side that went into the arts, and that's where Ian Fleming went. >> Where did he first start writing about this character, James Bond? >> Oh, not for a while. He had quite an interesting life. In the 1930s, he worked as a stockbroker during the day. But at night, he just relished being a playboy. He entertained numerous women in his flat. You know, he founded a gentlemen's club with his friends, where they could gamble and drink champagne. He was a big book collector. He amassed a very important first edition collection that in the '40s, it was deemed the second-most important collection of rare manuscripts and first editions in the world. Right now, that collection resides at Lilly Library at Indiana University. >> Oh, does it? >> Yeah, they bought it. >> They just plain bought it. >> They bought it. His collection had to do with things that started something. He collected the Wright Brothers papers and Freud's papers, even a first edition of Mein Kampf. You know, the first edition of the Boy Scout Manual. >> Wow. >> So each item was something that began something important, and that was what his collection, the theme of his collection. >> Wow, how appropriate for somebody who began something that went on and on. >> During World War II, it was very important. He was asked by Admiral John Godfrey, who was the Director of Naval Intelligence to be his personal assistant. That made him, essentially, the number two man of British Naval Intelligence during World War II. >> Navy Intelligence, British, all of those qualities reside in James Bond. >> Exactly. He worked in the Ministry of Defense in London, room 39. He helped plan and develop and execute all of Britain's espionage activities during the war. So that's where he got a lot of his ideas. Of course, he embellished them quite a bit, you know. He always said his war years were the best years of his life. He was just in his element. He almost, like, found himself during the war. >> He moved from being a relatively idle gentleman to somebody who was really channeling that intelligence and aptitude. >> Then right after the war he went to Jamaica which, at that time, was still a British colony. A lot of wealthy Brits had houses there and property there. He fell in love with the island. He purchased a piece of property on the north shore and designed his own house and built it. Not him, but he designed it. He called it Golden Eye. >> Do we know where that came from? It sounds like a Bond title already. >> Well, there's a movie title. There's a lot of theories of where he got it. Carson McCullers book, Reflections in a Golden Eye. >> Oh, yeah. >> That was one of his favorite books. There was also an operation that he worked on during the war called Operation Golden Eye. There was a piece of land in Jamaica called The Golden Eye. It could be any of those things, you know. He vowed to spend every winter in Jamaica. After the war he was offered the job by Kemsley Newspapers, which owned The Sunday Times, The London Times, The Daily Express, all these papers. They offered him the role of foreign manager, because he had all these contacts internationally. He said, well, I might consider it if you give me January and February off, with pay, every year. Then I'll do it. They, surprisingly, said yes. Beginning in 1946 he was the foreign manager of those papers. Then he would spend every winter in Jamaica. >> Is that where he started writing? >> That's where he started writing, but it wasn't until 1952. He was about to get married for the first time. He was 43 years old. His bride-to-be said, listen, you're so nervous. Why don't you write something? >> Nervous about the wedding? >> Yes, yeah. >> It's ironic. We have this guys who goes through World War II thriving in Navel Intelligence. >> He was a confirmed bachelor all his life. >> He's nervous about getting married. >> He was a confirmed bachelor. Remember, he's 43 now. So he was a little nervous about getting married. She said, write something that will take your mind off everything. He said, well, I've always wanted to write a thriller, but I need a good name of a character, something really dull and blunt and masculine. He got it out of this book, Field Guide of Birds of West Indies, by an ornithologist named James Bond. >> Which to us today sounds anything but dull and ordinary. >> I know, I know. Little did he know that the real James Bond, the ornithologist, lived up the road in Jamaica. Once James Bond became a sort of phenomenon, you know, a best-selling creation, the real James Bond came down the road and knocked on Fleming's door. He said, I'm James Bond. I have a bone to pick with you. I can't even go through airports without trouble. Fleming said, oh, my dear fellow, you can name a particularly nasty bird after me if you'd like. >> But why did he want this boring name? >> He just wanted a dull, masculine name that you could remember. >> But not a reflection of the character. >> Well-- >> Or yes-- >> Just something blunt, because he was a blunt instrument. >> He thought of James Bond as blunt instrument. >> That's right. >> He kind of bludgeons his way through all his assignments. >> Yes, exactly. Well, even him, his boss tells him, you're just a blunt instrument for the government. >> Well, we get away from that a little bit later on when we're into the films. I'm not sure about the books. So he writes the first Bond book. >> Right, and that was Casino Royale, his very first manuscript. He started this routine that he would keep for the rest of his life, he would get up around 7:30 in the morning, go for a little swim in his private cove, have breakfast, sun himself. Then he'd sit down to type, on a manual typewriter, for about three hours. Then he would stop. He would have lunch, take a little nap, sun himself a little more. Then he would work about four hours,

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00 or so. >> That's pretty long for an author. >> Yeah. Then that night he would have friends over for dinner and they would drink and eat themselves silly into the way-late at night. Then he would do the same thing the next day. He believed in finishing that first draft before going back and looking at what he'd written. He would develop this pace. >> That is one way to do it. Write the whole thing and then you go back and rewrite the whole thing, and so on. >> Exactly. At the end of the two months that he was in Jamaica he had a first draft of a novel every year. That's what he would do. Then he would take it back to England, and that's when he would revise, add, delete, whatever. >> Do you have a sense that he did a lot of that revision? >> In the early books, yes. More toward that later books, no. If you go to Indiana University, to the Lilly Library, they have all his manuscripts. You can study them and see what changed. Then he would turn in his manuscript to the publisher in the summer. It would be published the following spring. Of course, by then in January and February, he'd written his next book. So it was little routine. >> Which publishers love. As soon as you've got one book out, or before that, I guess, they want to know what the name of the next one's going to be. >> Now the picture of the books, Casino Royale, the one on the left is the British first edition. It was published in April, 1953. There were only 4,750 printed in the first printing. They sold out immediately. If you're lucky enough to own one of those first editions now it's worth about $25,000. If it's signed by Fleming, you've got about $100,000 item there. >> Check the attic. >> Yes. The one on the right is the first American edition. It took a year for it to be published in America by Macmillan. That's the first American edition. >> Equally successful in America? >> Not so much. In fact, it took a long time for Bond to catch on in America. The books would be published but they just kind of went nowhere. Bond became a sensation in England only for the first few years. Now it's interesting, Casino Royale-- Fleming, of course, wanted to get figure on the big screen. CBS TV came to him and said, we want to do a television adaptation of Casino Royale. There was a program called Climax Mystery Theater. >> It was a showcase. It was a high-class production. >> Right. >> Was it done live? >> It was done live. They would adapt, you know, Sherlock Holmes stories and what have you. >> Was it 90 minutes? >> Yeah, about 90 minutes, 60 minutes to 90 minutes In 1954, October of '54, over in America we had Casino Royale on television. It starred Berry Nelson as Jimmy Bond, an American Bond, Jimmy Bond. Peter Lorre got top billing. He was the villain, Le Chiffre. >> Oh, he would be good. >> But interesting, Bond's American CIA friend in the Books, Felix Leiter-- >> Yes. >> He was British in this. >> They flipped it. >> Yeah. But Fleming sold the film rights to Casino Royale rights off the bat. Nothing was ever done with it. We got into the '60s when the official films got made. The guy, Charles K. Feldman, who was sitting on the rights of Casino Royale decided to make this spoof of the movie in 1967. >> Yeah, well after the others were out. >> Right. That's because he couldn't compete with Sean Connery in the real films. >> That accounts for it. >> So he made a spoof. It had Peter Sellers, David Niven, Orson Wells, Woody Allen. It was pretty much a mess. Then many, many years later the official people got the rights back. That's why we got Daniel Craig making Casino Royale way late in 2006. >> Some 50 years after the book was written. >> Right. That title, Casino Royale, had a very tortured history to the screen. >> That clears up some of the confusion of that anomalous part of canon. >> Right, now all through the '50s Fleming would keep doing his books. This picture of From Russia With Love was his fifth book. It was published in 1957. This on raised the ante. It was much more literary. It was praised by the critics and it started making little waves in America. It started chinking into the sales. >> Tell me about the bad guys in the books up to From Russia With Love. Who is the antagonist? >> Well, in Casino Royale it was Le Chiffre. In Live and Let Die, that was the second book, it was Mr. Big. The third book was Moonraker and that was that was Hugo Drax. The fourth book was Diamonds are Forever. That was the -- brothers. They were the mob, basically. >> These villains so far, they almost remind me of descendants of Captain Nemo. They have these big, high-tech empires and some kind of ax to grind. >> Yes. Fleming was a big fan of Fu Manchu Sax Rohmer stuff, the Bulldog Drummond stuff, Jules Verne, all those when he was a kid. You can see all that influence in his books. >> By the time to From Russia With Love then we're talking about kind of global politics. >> Right. This was the first one that really got in more of a political vein. He was always fighting the Russians in the early books. Smersh. >> Yes, death to spies. >> Yes, yes, they were the bad guys pretty much in all the early books. From Russia With Love, for me, is I think the best Ian Fleming James Bond novel. It just hits all the right notes, and it's really brilliant. Then there was Dr. No and Goldfinger, and finally we're up to the 1960. >> Dr. No, though, is the first film. >> It was the first film. It was 1962. >> It was actually the sixth book. > The sixth book but the first film. >> Yeah, we'll talk about that. But first they had to break into America before the films could even be possibly successful. There were two things that helped do that. One of them was Playboy magazine. >> Was it an interview with Ian Fleming? >> Playboy is world famous for its articles. Didn't you know that Norman? >> I understand there are some in there. >> And fiction. Actually, you know, Playboy published in the second half of the 20th, the best writers. >> There were a lot of writers represented, actually, some fascinating interviews too. >> Yes. >> With political figures and with others. >> Fahrenheit 451 was first published in Playboy. >> Was it? >> Roots, by Alex Haley, was first published in Playboy. >> That I would not have guessed. >> Yes, I mean, the list goes on. Well, Mr. Hugh Hefner discovered Ian Fleming and thought, this stuff is going to be great for Playboy. He started publishing short stories and excerpts from the novels in the early '60s editions of Playboy. >> It is a perfect match. >> The picture that we have of Playboy is the March, 1960 issue. That was the first issue to have Fleming fiction in it. It was a short story called the Hildebrand Rarity. From then on Playboy was in bed with Bond, so to speak. >> The metaphor is apt. >> Yes, yes. The second thing that helped in America was John F. Kennedy. >> Was he a fan? >> He was a big fan, and he made it known. >> Hey, that worked for Tom Clancy and Ronald Reagan. >> Yes, absolutely. In a Life Magazine issue of 1961 there was a profile of Kennedy's personal life. He listed his ten favorite books. Nine of them were all non-fiction, biography stuff. There was one novel, From Russia With Love, by Ian Fleming. Over night people wanted to read Ian Fleming. Now this picture that we have of the White House, this was an ad that was put out by Signet Books at that time. Because they were going to release, in paperback, all of Fleming's existing books. Because Kennedy's statement had been so publicized, all they had to do was put out this ad. They did not have to put Ian Fleming on it. They didn't have to put James Bond on it. They just had to show a light on in the window in the White House. >> They didn't have to put Kennedy on it either. >> Everybody knew that Kennedy was awake reading James Bond. In our next image, those were the original Signet paperbacks that came out in the early '60s in America that everybody started buying. >> So these came out in what? >> '62, '63, '64. >> In a very rapid order, okay. >> They all came out at once basically, all the titles up to that point. >> These are re-issues of the English titles? >> Yes. Now some of them had been published in paperback in the '50s, but they just went nowhere. >> We have to remember a little bit too, if we're talking about the mid-60s-- >> Not yet. It's still early. >> Well, the British invasion comes in various forms of culture. >> Oh, yes. >> With the Beatles, people are going crazy for things British. >> Bond was definitely part of that. >> Yes, writing that way, and it's funny that he has, in the film Goldfinger, he makes a little disparaging remark about the Beatles. And then he gets clonked on the head. >> That's right, that's right. >> In the movie Help they play the James Bond theme. >> Oh, do they? I didn't remember that. >> Yeah, there's a lot of spy stuff going on Help. >> So he's taken off in America. He's got the endorsement of JFK. >> Right, so it was perfect timing. We have producers Albert R. Broccoli. That's him on the left, known as Cubby, right. And Harry Saltzman. Broccoli was American, but he was working in England. He had been making movies since the late '40s. Harry Saltzman was Canadian, and he had produced several big plays and some of the angry young man, British, stories, like Look Back in Anger. >> I was going to say John Osborne. >> Yeah. Saltzman actually got an option on all the existing titles except for Casino Royale. He didn't really have the clout to set up a production with a studio. He just wasn't big enough. Broccoli, on the other hand, he wanted to get the options, but this other guy had them. What they did was they formed a partnership. They formed Eon Production. This was late in 1961. This was the partnership that would make the James Bond films. >> That's all well and good, but you really need-- You can't use Berry Nelson for James Bond here. You need to come up with the right guy. >> Exactly. You know, the first movie, which they did pick Dr. No. It only had a million dollar budget, which in those days could go pretty far. But they couldn't afford a big star. In fact, Cubby was good friends with Kerry Grant. He asked him to do it. >> Interesting idea. >> Grant said, I'd be happy to do one, but I'm not going to do a series. They wanted somebody who would commit to a series. They talked to a lot of people. They talked to a young Roger Moore. >> More about that later. >> They talked to Patrick McGowan. >> Who had done The Avengers. >> No, he was in Secret Agent. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It was called Dangerman in England, but Secret Agent here. And some other people, but it was actually Cubby's wife, Dana Broccoli, who came home one day and she said, Cubby, I just saw this movie and it's got an actor in it, this Scottish actor. You've got to see him. I think he'd be great. It was Darby O'Gill and the Little People. >> Where Sean Connery sings. >> Yes, it's a Walt Disney movie. >> Yeah, it's a light thing. >> Yeah, so they invited him in and he refused to do a screen test. He just kind of walked in to the place. He's a really tall, foreboding guy, very handsome. It is said that the women in the office just kind of when like this as he walked by. Broccoli and Saltzman said they were impressed with his animal magnetism. He just had charisma out the yinyang. So they cast him. The problem was he was very blue collar. He grew up in a very lower-class, Scottish, almost slum, basically. They hired a very smart British director, Terence Young, to polish him up. Terence Young took Sean Connery out on the town, dressed him up, showed him the proper way to eat and address people, and go to the casino, and how to act. As you can see in this picture of Connery, he became a screen icon. >> Which raised an interesting question, you said that Broccoli had talked to Kerry Grant who has all of the image of the suave character, but none of the danger. >> Well, I'm not sure. >> Although he played in Suspicion. >> Oh, yeah, and Notorious, and then there was North by Northwest. >> Right, so he did have a history of that. >> Oh, yeah, he could have done it. I mean, he was a little old probably at that point. But in the '40s he would have made a great Bond. >> If only it had been invented at that point. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So in Sean Connery they found this combination of the physical, the rugged. Then once they put the polish on, they had their Bond. >> And they definitely took a poll of all the women in the office and they said, is this guy sexy? They all went, oh, yeah. They wanted that. They wanted to appeal to women as well. >> It's always a good idea. Women do tend to drive so much of the economy when it comes to films and consumer goods. >> Our next image is Dr. No. It was the first movie. It was released in England in October of 1962. It didn't come over to America until May of '63, almost six months lapsed. But it was a big hit in England. That assured that Eon Productions would make another film. They started again making another film. Then next slide would be From Russia With Love. This one was released in England in the fall of '63, and in America it was the spring of '64. >> By which time we do have a full-fledged British invasion underway. >> Exactly. These two films, From Russia With Love especially, started really upping the ante. People started really becoming aware. But it was the third film that just brought in the gold, so to speak. It was the first Bond blockbuster, Goldfinger. >> Well, it had things going for it. It had arguably the most interesting gimmick in the plot in terms of what Orik Goldfinger was after. You see Bond and his allies trying to figure out, what's he up to? Why would he go to Fort Knox but not take anything out? I mean, it's a fascinating little twist. It's almost credible. >> Right, right. >> But then he also had this whole iconic thing of the golden girl. >> And the Aston Martin. >> Well, yes. Is this where that puts in a first appearance? >> It did. Actually, From Russia With Love was the first movie to have a gadget, and that was the briefcase. The briefcase had all these little tricks about it. The audience apparently loved it, so the producers went, oh, we've got to go even bigger in Goldfinger. They got a car, which was basically the briefcase only it was a car. >> Is that the one with the passenger ejector seat? >> Yes, absolutely. >> Let's face it, a great gimmick. >> Goldfinger had, you know, everything going for it. It had the music by John Barry. >> Arguably the best of the themes. >> It established such a sound for the series that you could have it without in now. >> Where does the iconic Bond theme, you know--

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>> That was in Dr. No. >> So that's from the get-go, we have that. That's kind of the template for all of the themes to follow. >> Right, right. Now Goldfinger broke all the records. It was just absolutely huge. For their fourth film, Thunderball, they really pulled out all the stops. They released that as a roadshow attraction. >> How does that work? >> In those days a roadshow attraction was, like the big movies like Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, those kind of big movies, they would only play in selected theaters on a limited, reserved seat engagement. >> So if you were, say from Odessa, Texas, you'd have to go to the big city. >> Yes, it would play in New York and LA, maybe Chicago, for awhile first. You had to get reserved seats. That's a roadshow attraction. Thunderball was released for Christmas in '65, and of course by then we had merchandise. In this image here we have the very valuable road racing set, the Bond road racing set. But there was all kinds of-- >> How does that work? >> Well, you know, it was electric-- >> It literally was electric cars. >> It was. I think it was electric. I never had one. You had a little control thing and it would zoom around. They also made the attache case as a toy. They had action figures and puzzles and board games. They had Bond toiletries for the adults, and pajamas and clothing. >> Did they have Bond portable bars too, where you could shake it and not stir it? >> Absolutely. This is when that big spy boom happened, all over the world really, but especially in America. With Goldfinger and Thunderball, that's when we started getting all the TV shows, like The Man From Uncle and I Spy, The Avengers, Get Smart. Movies were starting to copy them, like the Flint movies with James Coburn, the Matt Helm movies with Dean Martin. Everybody was spy-crazy. Between '65 and '68 was the big spy era. You would look at fashion magazines and they were all, you know, spy guys, and things like that. >> We were still in the Cold War, that was part of it. >> Yes, we were. But you know, Bond did a great service for the Cold War. He made it fun. He did. Up to the Cuban Missile Crisis it was a very scary thing. When Bond came out and made almost fun of it. He made it glamorous. >> He made CIA recruitment a lot easier for a while. >> I'm sure he did. Yeah, because he made it glamorous, yeah. Sean Connery quit the role after You Only Live Twice, which was the fifth movie in 1967. >> Why did he? Was he just tired of it? >> He could not stand the fact that he was being type-cast. >> He was James Bond. >> People were calling him James Bond instead of Sean Connery. >> That's unfortunate, because in a way he still is James Bond. >> Yeah, I know. >> Because to coin a term, nobody does it better. >> Right, exactly. Well, he wanted to do other things. He was really sick and tired of the press's-- >> The hoopla. >> Him under a microscope. There was one incident when he was filming You Only Live Twice in Japan the reporters followed him into the bathroom. That just-- He blew his top. So he said, never again. That's it, I'm done. The producers had to recast it. They thought they would go with an unknown. >> You almost have to, don't you? >> Yeah, pretty much, at least at this point. They cast an Australian actor who had never acted before. He was a model. He'd done a lot of modeling and he'd done a couple of commercials, but this was his first roll in a movie. The movie was On Her Majesty's Secret Service. It was George Lazenby. This came out for Christmas in 1969. When it first came out it was not a success. It pretty much flopped at the box office. >> It was a pretty movie. >> Well, I can tell you right now, it's been reappraised. You talk to any serious Bond fan today, they will name it as one of the top five Bond films, including myself. >> Truly. >> I think it's one of the best Bond movies ever. >> As far as George Lazenby is concerned, well, he looked like a model. He did not have some of the frivolity that you associate, say, with Roger Moore when he played the part. >> We'll get into that. >> But he did not seem, at the time at least,to generate a lot of the charisma that you would see with Sean Connery. >> He didn't have experience. I think that was the main thing. I think he could have grown into the role with a little more experience. I didn't think he was a bad Bond. I didn't think he was a particularly good Bond. But the movie itself was really, really good. And, to this day, I think it's the most faithful to the book. It's a beautiful movie. It's very well made, very well directed. >> So why did they just use him once? >> Well, they were not happy with the response of the movie, and also George Lazenby said, I really don't want to do this again. He walked away. >> What did he do after that? Not much anybody knows of. >> Well, he was kind of black listed for quitting. He went to Hong Kong and made martial art movies. That's what he did. But he's really a good guy. I know George, and he takes his mistake with stride. He knows he made a mistake then, and he's proud of his movie. Now, you know, the fans love him. It's a movie that's very-- It's been rediscovered. I strongly recommend it. >> From Russia With Love? >> No, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. >> That's right, 1969. >> Yep. So for the next movie they said, of gosh, we've got to get Connery back. Of course, he was not going to do it. They started looking at some other people. Finally, it was the president of United Artists that said, I'll talk to Connery. He made him an offer he couldn't refuse, basically. He offered him the highest salary ever made to an actor at that point, plus two movies of his choice that he could star in. United Artists would foot the bill. >> Sounds like a sweetheart deal. >> Yeah, plus a guarantee of a certain amount of money if the shooting went over schedule. So Connery said, okay, I'll do it. Once, just once. That was Diamonds are Forever, 1971. >> He comes back at the beginning of that film looking like he's been somewhere for awhile. >> He's gained a little weight. He's got a little gray. But he's still Sean Connery. >> Oh, for sure, very much so. >> It's interesting, starting with that movie, which was the first one in the '70, the tone of the films changed dramatically, I think. They became, instead of action thrillers, they became action comedies. >> Yeah, I mean there was always a little bit of element of that, but it does ramp up, doesn't it? >> Yes. >> You get those little quips. >> And a lot of sight gags and slapstick, and you know, goofy stuff. >> Where do you think that came from? >> I think they figured that the spy boom was over, that nobody was going to take spies seriously, that it was all making-- You know, the only thing they could do was make fun of Bond now. Do it with tongue in cheek. For the next movie, Live And Let Die, Roger Moore slipped right into the roll easily. Go back. >> Roger Moore certainly had the sophistication. I mean, you had that image, the polish. >> He had that light, comic touch. >> Yes, yes. He had that kind of the wink. >> Yes, the nudge, nudge, wink, wink thing. He fit this sort of lighter Bond. He was very popular. He made seven Bond films, and they were very successful. >> So he made more than anyone else? >> Connery made six of the official films. He went on later, which we'll get to, a rogue film. So he did seven and then Roger Moore did seven. So they're tied really. >> Some people would say that during the Roger Moore run is where the series hit it's low point. I think the slide whistle that they use when the car is doing a flip. >> That's an example of the slap-stick that I'm talking about. >> It doesn't get a lot more kitschy than that. >> Also the films seemed to-- In the '60s they were the leaders. They were the trend setters. In the '70s they stared looking at other films and copying them. Like for example, in Moonraker when they pressed the code to enter the secret laboratory it goes

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The Close Encounters thing, you know. >> Yes, yeah. >> In Spy Who Loved Me he's going across the desert on a camel and they play the Lawrence of Arabia theme. >> Yeah, and you had that scene between Jaws and his girlfriend playing Romeo and Juliet. Yeah, and the looks between them and so on. >> It's almost as if they were aiming to for the lowest common denominator of audience. Of course it was a world-wide audience so I guess they had to. >> But those movies were successful? >> They were very successful. Now but in the early '80s Connery did come back and make a rogue film because one producer had the rights to Thunderball. He had actually collaborated with Broccoli and Saltzman on the original one. So he re-made Thunderball as Never Say Never Again. That was 1983, and that was when Octopussy came out with Roger Moore and Never Say Never Again, the same year. >> Oh, really. How did they compare in terms of their success? >> Octopussy did better, but Never Say Never Again still made money. It was still very successful. >> I always thought that a title that Sean Connery had chosen for personal reasons. >> It probably was. Yeah, Never Say Never Again. It was a tongue-in-cheek title, yeah. >> Was there ever much of a gap between films? >> Up to this point, no. Not yet. In the '60s it was almost every year up until the late '60s, and then it was every two years. Now Roger Moore left the role in 1985. He was just too old to play it now. The producers decided-- That was just Albert R. Broccoli and his step-son, Michael G. Wilson, who were now the producers. They decided, we've done all this silly stuff, let's pull Bond back to Ian Fleming. Let's make more serious Bond films again. They cast a Shakespearian actor by the name of Timothy Dalton. His first movie was 1987, The Living Daylights. For my money, I mean I love Sean Connery, he's still my favorite Bond, but if you're going to talk about who was the most accurate to the books that Fleming wrote, I would say Timothy Dalton is. >> At being that blunt instrument. >> Yes, because Bond in the books is very serious. He's not a witty guy. He's very sophisticated, but he's a brooder. He's got a lot of angst. He doesn't laugh at anything, it doesn't seem like. He's ruthless and he's ice-cold. Timothy Dalton brought that in. He wanted to do a very accurate portrayal, and he did. The response to Timothy Dalton was very mixed. I think he was very well-received world-wide, but for some reason here in America people just didn't respond to him well. I thought he was fantastic. And talk to Bond fans and they're going to tell you, wow, Dalton was really good. He only made two. Then we had this hiatus because of legal problems with MGM and United Artists. There was a six year hiatus between the last Timothy Dalton film, which was in 1989, to 1995 when they sort of re-booted it with Pierce Brosnan. >> The Cold War is over by now. >> The Cold War is over. I remember when the movie came out there was talk of, will Bond still be relevant? >> Well, yeah, of course, right? Who's the enemy? >> Exactly. Well, there's always enemies. >> You can always come up with, yes, with the individual eccentric. >> But Goldeneye came out in 1995 with Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan was a really good choice. He kind of embodied everything that all the other Bonds had. He could be tough, he could be funny, he could be-- You know, he was athletic. People liked him. I call the Brosnan movies the video game Bonds. They were full of action and a lot of computer generated special effects, by now. It was almost like playing a video game when you go see a Brosnan Bond film. Coincidently, the Goldeneye video game that came out the same year is rated one of the greatest video games of all time. It actually made more money than the movie. >> Are we past Ian Fleming by now? >> Oh, yeah, we're way past. Goldeneye was a made-up title. Once they used all of Ian Fleming's main titles they started making up their own and creating their own storylines and everything. >> Refresh my memory. Did the original Bond books, they do have M in them? >> Oh, yes, and Miss Moneypenny, yeah, Felix Lighter. >> The American cohort there. So Pierce Brosnan sells it. >> Yes, and he made four very successful films through the late '90s and early 2000s. His last film was Die Another Day in 2002. Then there was another little hiatus of four years where now Barbara Broccoli is now co-producing. That's Cubby's daughter. Now it's Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. Cubby has passed away. They brought Bond into the new millennium with Daniel Craig. They decided to completely re-boot the series by starting over with a young Bond who still didn't have his 00 number. They got the rights to Casino Royale, which is really Bond's origin story. >> Yes, that's right. >> If we look at the next image, that was released in 2006. It was the first time we had Casino Royale as a serious Bond film, starring Daniel Craig. It was a Bond origin story. So far now Daniel Craig has made three very successful Bond movies. He's going to make, apparently, two more at least. >> And these movies do get back into-- Well, Skyfall, for example, gets really a good deal into Bond's origins in Scotland, his parents and his family home. >> Yeah, the films are making up a lot of stuff, but the whole bit with his parents dying. He was an orphan, that's true. That's from Fleming. >> By the time we get into the 21st century with Bond enemies are still these single, megalomaniacs or-- >> Well, it was in Skyfall. He was actually a disgraced MI6 agent that has gone rogue and wants revenge on him. >> A little improbable, don't you think, the way he goes about getting his revenge. I mean this elaborate plan when he's already been right there in-- >> With Bond movies you're not supposed to analyze what just happened. You're supposed to watch them and have a good time. >> I think that's true. I do remember watching fairly recently one of the Bond movies, I can't remember which one, and thinking, now this time I'm going to get the plot. I'm going to figure out exactly why he goes where he's going and what he's doing there and what happens. About ten minutes in it's, wait a minute, where'd that guy come from? Literally, some guy just jumps out of the bushes and attacks him. I'm not sure we ever did figure out who the person was. >> Right. Now we've talked about the movies, let's talk about the books now. After Ian Fleming died in 1964, right before Goldfinger came out. He saw the first two movies, but he did not live to see the huge success that Bond brought with the third movie, which was unfortunate. But his estate decided, let's keep Bond in copyright by hiring, periodically, other authors-- >> Did they have to do that to keep it in copyright? >> That was what was advised, yes. It keeps the character in copyright. They would hire authors periodically to continue the books. The first guy here on the screen is Kingsley Amis. He was a very well-known author in Britain, a literary author, a Booker Prize winner. He wrote one Bond novel, Colonel Sun. That was published in 1968. It's a very good book. I don't think it did very well at the time. I think it was too soon after Ian Fleming. So the estate waited 12 years, actually 13 years, to do another adult Bond novel. >> What kind of directions did they give to these post-Fleming Bond authors? >> It kind of depended on who was in charge at the time at the estate, and what the climate of the publishing industry was. Now John Gardner was the second guy. That's who is here in the car. John Gardner had the longest run of any of the authors. His first book was License Renewed. That came out in 1981. He wrote 16. >> 16? >> Yep, 14 novels and two movie novelizations. He had a long and successful run. I especially think this first half of his books are very, very good. The first half of his run. Yep. I think he started getting a little tired toward the end. There were some good parts. Then in 1995 he decided he didn't want to do it anymore. The estate asked somebody else, and that happened to be me. >> Right. This is you here. >> Yes. Yeah, that's me a long time ago. That's in the mid-'90s. >> And now why this guy, Raymond Benson? >> That's a good question. Note that I'm also the first American that they asked to do it. In the early 1980s I wrote a book called The James Bond Bedside Companion. >> I take it you were a hard-core fan. >> I was a hard-core fan. This was a labor of love for me. At that time there were no comprehensive encyclopedic, non-fiction books about the James Bond phenomenan, about Ian Fleming's life, about how the movies started, analyses of all the books. >> Nothing that put it all together. >> Nothing. There was maybe one or two books on the movies themselves. There was maybe one or two biographies of Ian Fleming. >> Did you get it serialized in Playboy? >> That comes later. >> All right. >> But anyway, I went to England to research. I met members of Ian Fleming's family and his business people. We got along. When the book was published in '84, they liked it. Of course, this was when John Gardner was writing. We stayed in touch. I did little odd jobs, no pun intended, for the Fleming estate during that time. Then suddenly, out of the blue at the end of 1995 they called me and said, well, John wants to stop. How'd you like to give it a shot? >> Give it a shot. Had you written novels? >> I had not written novels. I'd written fiction. I'd been writing, actually, role-playing computer adventure games where-- They're like writing a screen play times three because of all the different paths that you have to take. Like, if you don't do this then you do that. So you have to write it all out anyway. I had experience writing fiction, and plots and obstacles and characters and dialogue. >> Did they know all this before? >> Yep. Oh, yeah, they did. >> They checked you out? >> Yep. But I did have to sort of audition. I had to write an outline of a plot on spec. >> That's kind of a standard authorial chore. >> And that had to be approved by not only the Fleming estate, but also the British publisher and the American Publisher. >> Were you a little nervous about this? >> I was a little nervous, yes. Big shoes to fill. They approved the outline, then I had to write the first four chapters on spec. Same approval process. Once that was done I got the contract. My first book was published in 1997. That was Zero Minus Ten. >> What did they tell you then at the estate about, okay, this is what you must do. You have this much freedom, but these things are sacrosanct in the Bond business. >> John Gardner had put Bond in his time period, in the '80s. He had said, okay, he's a little older, but he didn't really say how old. I suggested at first, I said, why don't we put Bond back in the '50s and '60s? They said, no, why don't we keep it in sync with the movies. The Pierce Brosnan movies were just coming out. They said, why don't we put him in the '90s and update him. In fact, we want you to write the books kind of like what the movies are doing. Make them very action filled. I said, I really want to keep the character that Fleming wrote about. I want him to be the brooder, the serious guy. They said, that's fine. Just make the books themselves more like the Pierce Brosnan movies. That was my directive. And I did that. I also novelized three of the Pierce Brosnan movies. They were original screen plays. They gave me the screen plays, so I turned them into books. >> How much fun was that? >> Well, it was very nerve-wracking because I only had six weeks to do it. They give you the script and they say, okay, we need the book in six weeks. That was a little tough. I enjoyed doing the original novels more. I did six original novels and three movie novelizations. Some of them were exerted in Playboy. I also wrote two original stories for Playboy, one of which was kind of a goofy story. It was for the 45th anniversary issue in 1999. Mr. Hefner specifically requested that we do a story where James Bond visits the Playboy mansion and meets Hugh Hefner. >> Oh, boy. Well, I mean, it might be farfetched, but how interesting can you make it? >> It was kind of a novelty, a nudge, nudge, wink, wink story I set it at the Midsummer Night's Dream party, that's the big, annual pajama party where a thousand celebrities come to it. I had to do my research. >> Tax-deductible research. >> Yes. So my wife and I got to attend the party and that was really cool. My tenure as the Bond author ended at the end of 2002, and then there was another big hiatus. The Fleming estate did some other projects. They did a series of young adult Bond books that were successful in England. There was three books supposedly written by Miss Moneypenny, The Moneypenny Diaries. >> That's sort of a cute idea. >> Yep. Then the next adult James Bond novel they decided to go with a big name to do one book. That was Sebastian Faulks. This was in 2008. The book was called The Devil May Care. It was a big success, mainly, I think, because of his name behind it. Then next book was by Jeffery Deaver. That was the second American to be asked. He's another big name, best-selling author. >> A very big seller, yes. >> He did one book in 2011. >> Are they using any of these books for film? >> Nope. >> No, they're just completely different projects. >> Jeff's book is called Carte Blanche. He re-booted Bond. He invented a new James Bond that was born in the '80s and served in the Iraq war in the new millennium. >> That's way different, isn't it? >> Very different. Then finally just this year William Boyd wrote the most recent novel and it's called Solo. It's back in the '60s again. >> As a Bond writer yourself, you said you were attracted to the idea of setting him back in the '50s. What's the advantage of that, do you think? Other than the you've got the Cold War to work with. >> I think that's it, and also you don't have so much technology that you would have to be-- >> Oh, you would have to be up on the latest scientific developments. >> All the spycraft and everything. It would just be more nuts and bolts, more about the plots, and the characters and the atmosphere and the locations. >> Yeah, that's true. It's hard to see the atmosphere in your own time. But if you can go back to an earlier time, '50s or '60s, you have more of a sense of, gosh, wasn't it glamorous? >> Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, the Bond novels are considered travelogues too, the Fleming books were. Because he would go to exotic locations. All the other authors have continued that. To research I went to all my locations. >> Which locations were those? >> Let's see, the first book was Hong Kong and China. The second one was Greece and Cyprus, and Texas. I knew that one already. The third one was Belgium and Nepal. The fourth one was-- >> Let me interrupt you just a second here. Did you think, as you were writing this book or planning to, you know, I'd really like to go to Waikiki so let me see if I can work that into the plot of this one? >> Kind of. Usually what I did is I'd take a big map of the world. First I'd find a hot spot that Britain would be concerned about. >> Plenty of possibilities. >> Yeah, so it had to be something that Britain was concerned about. Otherwise, James Bond had no reason to be there. >> True, we forget that he's working for the Brits and not just for sort of the overall powers. >> Now the Hong Kong novel was published in 1997 which was the year it was handed over. I set it during the handover. I figured that would be a good location and time for a Bond story. The fourth book was Morocco and Gibraltar and Spain. The fifth was France and Corsica, and the sixth one was Japan. >> You've said that-- I'm not sure you have said exactly which of the movies is your favorite. >> It's like the book, From Russia With Love is my favorite of the films. >> Because of the literary value of the book? >> I think it's the best movie. It's still raw and edgy, and probably the most realistic of the Bond movies. I think it has the best cast. It's got Robert Shaw, as well as Connery, and Pedro Armendariz and Lotta Lenya as Rosa Klebb, Kurt Weill's wife. >> Of course. Boy, did she have staying power. She's got that knife in the shoe. >> Yeah, it's just a great story. The really early Bond movies are my favorite. You know, I lived it. I went. That's when I discovered them. >> Yes, it's something to have. It's almost hard to imagine now, what it was like when a new Fleming Bond book came out, and then not too long afterward, a new Sean Connery movie. >> Every generation kind of has their own Bond. When you talk to younger people and you say, who's your favorite Bond? Kids that grew up in the '70s, they'll say Roger Moore. Kids that grew up in the '80s or the '90s, they'll say Pierce Brosnan. >> What do you think about Daniel Craig? >> I like Daniel Craig a lot. I think he's portraying the role very accurately. He doesn't look like what we think Bond is supposed to look like. >> No, a least Ian Fleming thought he kind of like Hoagy Camichael. >> I know! Isn't that funny? >> You just never know about these things, so you? What the author's image is compared to our own. >> I think Daniel Craig is doing a great job. >> I think he's done a good job of bringing back sort of the danger in the character, sort of the unpredictability of the character. It seems they've got an awful lot into, well-- The characters all become kind of negotiable. In other words, Judi Dench gets knocked off in Skyfall. >> Shhhhh. >> Oh, sorry. Spoilers, spoiler alert! >> For those who haven't seen it. >> And there's this terribly moving scene between the two. I mean, this is far removed, is it not, from both Ian Fleming and from the early films. >> The fact that there was a female M at all is pretty far removed from Ian Fleming. That started with Pierce Brosnan. Judi Dench started with the Pierce Brosnan movies. >> And what about the role of M in this thing. How is that changed over the years? >> The original M in the movies I thought was just dead-on. Bernard Lee was his name. He embodied Fleming's M perfectly. That's exactly who you would picture in that part. >> It's a bit of a father/son relationship there. >> Yeah, there is that. >> You know, please bring this back without breaking it, kind of thing. >> And he's very gruff, you know, with his pipe and everything. He's very British, almost a Churchill kind of figure. >> Judi Dench had that gruffness too. >> She did, she did. I think they did that because Stella Rimington had become the head of MI5 in England in the mid-'90s. They thought, okay, they've got a female head of MI5. Let's make our M a woman. >> What's the closest James Bond comes in the books, let's say, to actually having a meaningful relationship with a woman? >> Well, he gets married in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And in the film too. >> However briefly. We won't spoil that, even though it came out more than forty years ago. >> There are two sort of-- >> Diana Rigg. >> Yeah, Diana Rigg played her. >> There are two loves of his life. The first one is in Casino Royale. Her name is Vesper Lynd. He really falls for her. In the movie as well as the book, he's saying that he'll quit his job to be with her. But she betrays him. She ends up working for the other side. >> It's a killer last line in that book. >> Yeah, and I think the disappointment and the heartbreak that he felt from that is what made him so cool towards women. He's happy to have all these dozens of affairs and whatever, but he's not going to get emotionally attached. Until he meets Tracy in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. And of course, something bad happens to her. So he goes back to his old ways. >> It had to be. It almost has to be because you can't have the Bond character as-- Once he becomes a family man-- Although, Tom Clancy sort of pulls that one off with his characters. But once he settles down, he's by definition, something other than James Bond. >> Right, right. >> If you were to write another Bond book would you set it back in the '50s? >> That would be totally up to the Fleming estate. I doubt they would ask me back because, as they say in the movies, I've had my six. I don't know what they're going to do, if they're keep doing this celebrity author, one book at a time, kind of thing. That seems to be working. >> With the films, where can they go? We've already got this whole back story with the Daniel Craig character. There's some fantastic stunts though. Those get more impressive. I don't know how much of it's computer generated, but it's impressive. >> They were quite a bit in the Pierce Brosnan days. I think they've tried to steer more toward actual stunt-work in the Daniel Craig movies. There's still a little CGI involved, but there's real stuntmen now doing real stuff now. Which was what made the early films really exciting. >> Yeah. That's right, if you know it's a real person. The same with Douglas Fairbanks or Buster Keaton. That guy is really climbing up that. >> Interestingly, the films have not touched any of the continuation author books. >> That's what I was wondering about. >> They have not touched any of them. >> There's plenty of material to work with. >> They'd prefer to write their own originals. If they don't have a Fleming, then they're just going to write their own originals. >> It'll be interesting to see what direction it takes now that we don't have a Cold War. We still have some hot spots out there. We always will. There will always be a place for James Bond. It's amazing to think that it's gone on more than 50 years. How many characters have that kind of staying power? >> I think, you know, he's the Sherlock Holmes of the latter half of the 20th century, and now into the 21st. >> Interesting you should say that too, because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a slightly different image of Sherlock Holmes than we have, as being less attractive than some of the people who played him. >> All my six original Bond novels are still available. They're available on Amazon Kindle, separately, and they're in two anthologies in print, Choice of Weapons and The Union Trilogy. >> There's a lot of Bond stuff out there. >> Yeah. >> A wealth of literature there, and images and movies, all that stuff. It's quite the industry. >> Yep. >> Raymond Benson, it's been a pleasure. >> Thanks for having me on. >> Thanks for talking James Bond with us today. >> You bet. >> I'm Norman Gilliland. Thank for joining us. I hope you can join us next time around for University Place Presents.