Moonraker - Dir. Lewis Gilbert (The Bond Project #11)

Moonraker (1979)

Dir: Lewis Gilbert

OUTER SPACE BELONGS TO BOND!

By Jay Maronde

                

               Sometime after the release of The Spy Who Loved Me, Bond producer Albert Broccoli said to himself, “This Star Wars movie is crazy popular, I should do a Bond in space flick.” Luckily for him Ian Fleming had already written a Bond in space book called Moonraker, which, while bearing almost zero resemblance to what would become the finished film, was originally written to be produced into a movie. Director Lewis Gilbert was contacted, set designer Ken Adams was brought on board, and even though he had originally only signed on for three films, the most recent Bond, Sir Roger Moore was re-signed, and work began on Moonraker. Round about this same time the British Government levied a huge new tax on film productions, so production was quickly relocated to Paris, under the condition that the production team could literally occupy every single soundstage and production facility in the whole city. This greatly irritated numerous French filmmakers, but in the end, money talks. The result of all this is yet another fantastic globe-trotting (and orbiting) James Bond adventure which quite a few of my cohorts claim to be their favorite Bond.

                The plot of this movie is quite simple, even though most of the first half of the film is spent on Bond investigating what is going on. Drax is an evil villain of tremendous character played superbly by the perfectly-cast Michael Lonsdale. Lonsdale exudes a very particular Hitler-like evil: he is almost always seen entertaining not one, but two, extremely lovely and much younger women, he keeps Dobermans almost exclusively to “release” them and torture/murder his perceived enemies, and most revolting of all, he is planning to exterminate the human race and re-populate the earth from his space station with his uber-society of “perfect” people.  Drax is also super mega rich, (as all good villains should be) lives in a French château which has been imported to southern California, and has facilities all over the world (which leads Bond to a few delightfully beautiful filming locations).

Drax is literally crazy evil. He’s not ransoming anyone; he’s just bent on “wiping the slate clean.” Drax also has two extremely notable henchmen: Jaws (with Richard Kiel reprising his role as the near-immortal, monstrously-sized, metal-mouthed assassin) and the-always-kimono-wearing Chang. Chang is notable because during his Kung Fu fight with Bond in Venice, the two literally destroy an entire glass museum.  This scene, which Gilbert had originally planned for TSWLM, turns out to be record breaking (pun intended); as to this day, it is the single most amount of breakaway glass used in any movie ever.

                The character of Jaws is far more notable in this film. The previous film had featured Jaws extensively and the audience had loved him so much that the producers decided to bring him back. In fact, the director received so much fan mail from small children asking him why Jaws had to play a “baddie” instead of a “goodie” that he was eventually inspired to re-work the end of the film so that Bond and Jaws become allies to save the world. Further, Bond’s line towards the end of the film as Jaws is falling back to earth in a shard of the crippled space station of, “Don’t worry, Jaws will be alright, it’s only 100 or so miles back to the earth,” was directly intended to imply Jaws’ survival, and while he doesn’t re-appear in any Bond films, he does make several appearances in the James Bond video games over the years including a prominent role in 007: Everything or Nothing,  which happens to be one of my favorite Bond games.

                Roger Moore finally deserves more than a cursory glance from me in this review as he really seems to have grown into the character of Bond. His suave is unmatched, he’s not going for the rough-and-tumble Bond, but more of a smooth-sophisto-Bond. He only fires one bullet in the entire movie, and he looks, well, a lot less old. It’s apparent that he had some work done in-between this film and last, as his face looks so tight you could bounce a quarter on it.

Next to Bond are cast three very beautiful Bond Girls. First while touring Drax’s compound, Bond is escorted by the lovely Corrine Dufour. The French production location caused the management to choose a French actress/model, the radiant Corrine Clery. Corrine has the distinction of being the only Bond girl ever to have the same name as the actress playing the role. Speaking of names I’m always extremely pleased when the Bond girls’ names are rife with double entendre and this movie might take the all-time cake with Dr. Holly Goodhead. Goodhead is an undercover CIA agent who teams up with Bond to stop Drax. She is played magically by the renowned actress Lois Chiles, who was originally offered the role of Agent XXX in TSWLM but refused, having declared a retirement. Luckily, her retirement was short-lived and by her good luck she happened to be seated next to director Lewis Gilbert on a plane, and he decided that she was perfect for an undercover CIA agent. Also worth a brief mention is Bond’s south American contact, the very beautiful Manuela, played by the gorgeous Emily Bolton, who, while only appearing briefly, is too ravishing to not acknowledge.

                Again however the real stars of this film are Ken Adams’ incredible sets. As I’ve mentioned before most of this film was shot in France or on various other locations to avoid new British taxes. France is not necessarily known for its filmmaking industry so to this day the Moonraker sets are still the largest sets ever built in France. Initially there were tremendous problems with the French set builders union, as the foreman informed Adams and Gilbert that the French do not work overtime in the production of films. After extensive negotiations, the production team managed to convince the workers of the magnitude and importance of the task and hand and the workers relented (for more money of course) and agreed to work on the weekends, under the condition that they were allowed to bring their families to work so as not to miss their weekend family time. In the end the final space station set required more than 200,000 man hours, two tons of nails, over 10,000 feet of steel construction work, and a staff of more than 220 builders.

Attention should also be paid to the special effects coordinator, Derek Meddings, who was nominated for an Academy award for his work on this film. Much like the sets, the effects in this film are otherworldly. To this day the film Moonraker holds the record for most actors in weightlessness (on wires) ever, used during the massive outer space battle at the end of the film. The effects weren’t just limited to outer space, the beginning of the film features an extremely famous scene where Bond is pushed from an airplane with no parachute, he free falls, and then manages to wrangle a chute off the back of a henchman. This particular shot took over 80 skydives to complete as they could only film for a few seconds and the way down, and in fact the actor from whom Bond removes the parachute from was cast to look like the stunt man who had to perform the aerial work. Also of note is that the stunt man was almost killed when he lost his footing on top of the real cable car in Rio while the cameras were rolling.

                Lewis Gilbert delivers a classic in his final Bond entry, and his work is only enhanced by a wonderful cast of actors and an amazing production staff. Moonraker, while suffering from some initial critical complaints about being too “outlandish,” would go on to make more than $210 million dollars, which made it the most profitable Bond until 1995’s Goldeneye.

                 

The Spy Who Loved Me - Dir. Lewis Gilbert (The Bond Project #10)

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

Dir: Lewis Gilbert

Back on Track

By Jay Maronde

                Director Lewis Gilbert and Set Designer Ken Adams teamed back up again—and after extensive delays, seemed to re-work their “You Only Live Twice-magic” into the Blockbuster smash The Spy Who Loved Me—and saved the entire James Bond Franchise. This film is widely regarded as Roger Moore’s best Bond work (not necessarily by me), and he is more than adequate in this film in which James Bond’s ability to seduce women literally ends up saving his life while dealing with a Soviet spy. But the real star of this film is Ken Adams’ completely insane sets (which earned him on Oscar nomination) and the brilliance of Gilbert’s special effects team.

                First though, let’s start with the problems, which were once again legal, and once again caused by the Franchise’s early dealings with one Kevin McClory. Litigation is nothing new in Hollywood. People sue other people all the time—in fact, the producers had to buy at least one other litigant’s film treatment to avoid being sued by him—but Kevin McClory takes the all-time cake. From my research it seems as though McClory  sued the James Bond Franchise for almost 50 years. He even went to so far as to produce a non-authorized Bond in the 1980’s. I personally feel that he got his what for during the production of this film.

The Spy Who Loved Me was, and forever will be, the only Bond Film that occurred in the same order as the book from which it drew its title: the 10^th book became the 10^th film. Coincidentally, and partially because of McClory, the film draws almost nothing from the book besides the title and part of the inspiration for its uber-famous henchman: Jaws (played famously by Richard Kiel). TSWLM was supposed to be another film in which Ernst Stavro Blofeld and SPECTRE were the villains. McClory had already won the rights to Blofeld and SPECTRE in earlier litigation, so when he heard this new film would include Blofeld, he sued again.  The producers had his number this time and almost immediately rewrote the entire script to no longer include any mention of BLofeld or SPECTRE, and instead created a villain extremely similar to Blofeld, except named Stromberg. AHHH HAHAHAHAHAHA Kevin McClory had to learn the expensive way that he didn’t have the exclusive monopoly on fictional villains.  (Sorry, I just like it when Bond’s enemies get theirs).

                Anyways legal problems aside, Gilbert (who had actually been chosen after Steven Spielberg refused, having just completed Jaws and stating that he “wanted to see how these fish movies turn out”) began work on a Bond to really outperform the others, and in this effort went to some amazing extremes.

First off, over 1 million dollars of this production’s budget went directly towards the building of an all-new world’s-largest-ever-soundstage built at Pinewood Studios and named the 007 stage. The first job for this stage was the interior of Stromberg’s super-evil nuclear-submarine-swallowing super tanker The Liparus (the water tank inside the stage actually held more than one million gallons of water to enable this footage). The new stage was so incredibly large that a super-secret consultant was brought in to aid with the lighting: Stanley Kubrick. A Shell corporation executive and golfing buddy of Producer Albert Broccoli had volunteered a real Shell supertanker for the film, but the production team had been forced to pass as the insurance which would have been required would have been outrageously prohibitive.  The outside shots of the supertanker were filmed with an almost 70 foot long model.

Another favorite special effect is Bond’s white Lotus Espirit turbo coupe which converted to a submarine when driven into water. This car is easily one of my favorites throughout the series, because it is super cool, which is exactly why after the film’s release the waiting list for a new Lotus suddenly grew to over three years. Another aquatic effect in this film is Bond’s use of the world’s first jet ski. The “water motorcycle” (as it was at the time called) ridden by Bond during the latter part of the film as he assaults the evil villains lair, literally sprouted an entirely new watersport.

                Gilbert’s two other smashing successes with this film came from two shockingly different angles. First there was Jaws, cast perfectly with the actor Richard Kiel, who in real life is actually over 7 feet tall, and still works with the Bond Franchise doing Bond events and promotions. Jaws was immediately popular with Broccoli—so popular, in fact, that Broccoli had the script rewritten so that Jaws could live and escape and therefore possibly reappear in a later Bond adventure. Screener audiences loved Jaws so much that they gave the film a standing ovation when Jaws escaped. Over the years, Jaws has become one of the most recognizable and beloved Bond villains.

                Gilbert’s other success was even more important: he singlehandedly re-envisioned the entire humor of the franchise. Gone were the slapstick shtick and vaudevillian humor; gone were silly southern sheriffs and stunts corrupted by penny whistles. This new Bond was smooth as ice, and when he does make a joke it’s in an extremely pithy, very British, overly-sexualized-and-yet-not-quite-skeevy manner. My favorite Bond zinger comes at the very end of the film after Bond has escaped from the villain’s destroyed fortress in an escape pod with the lovely Soviet Agent XXX (played well, but not too memorably, by the very pretty Barbara Bach, who is actually currently married to none other than Ringo Starr). The two have escaped, and the girl is about to make good on her oath to kill Bond once the mission is over. Bond then seduces her in a scene which couldn’t have been more perfectly written for Roger Moore. As Moore handles Bond’s favorite business, the escape pod is recovered by the British and when M (again played by the classic Bernard Lee) asks Bond what he’s doing, Bond replies: “Keeping the British end up, sir!”

                This movie was wildly popular and easily made up for the lackluster financial performance of The Man with the Golden Gun. The theme song “Nobody Does it Better” went gold, even though it was the first Bond theme song not to be titled the same as the film, and has been covered by numerous artists over the years since it was first recorded by the ethereal Carly Simon. On a strange note: this film ends with the classic “James Bond will return…in For Your Eyes Only.” Moonraker would actually be the next Bond film to be produced as the management team would seek to capitalize off other space movies such as Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but also to parlay the audience’s love of the character Jaws by having him reappear in the successive film. It is of little concern though, as Gilbert had saved the longest running film franchise.  Were it not for his excellent direction of this film and re- direction of the entire series, one truly wonders if we would all so eagerly be awaiting next month’s Skyfall.