TMWTGG - Showing Daily - Indefinitely!
Shady Tree
London, UKPosts: 3,012MI6 Agent
I've recently returned from a vacation in Thailand where I spent several days in Phuket. A highlight was a half-day tour to the 'James Bond Islands', Scaramanga's base in TMWTGG. The tour operator, Sim, sailed us out to the islands in a longboat, but unfortunately because of the monsoon rains we weren't able to disembark. (The hazards of visiting Thailand during the low season!) Still, the views of the iconic rock edifice in the sea were very impressive.
There are actually several tour operators who put on trips to the islands daily, and they've been linking what they do to to Bond / TMWTGG for over thirty years! It's quite an industry... and it lifted my heart to think that this is a way of keeping in focus, indefinitely, a Bond film which, despite its flaws, I rather enjoy.
On the coach ride from Phuket the tour operator, Sim, screens TWWTGG - from the part where Bond escapes from the martial arts school, to the end of the movie. This is introduced as a way of whetting everyone's appetite for the sightseeing to come.
It's odd to think that the film is indefinitely getting daily audiences on the coaches... making it, perhaps, the most 'screened' Bond film of all? On the day I went, most people were watching avidly. (I discreetly asked the Sim tour guide at the end of the day whether the company had the licence to show the movie and he said that it did.)
As I settled back on the coach to watch the film, I was embarrassed by the physical (if not attitudinal) similarity of J.W. Pepper and his wife to some of my fellow tourists! I was even more embarrassed by Pepper's repeated references to "pony heads" and to Thai traffic control, realising that the Thai coach driver and tour guide need to sit through this day in, day out.
I was also reminded of Sir Roger Moore's embarrasment at the scene where Bond shoves a Thai beggar boy into the canal: Sir Roger, wearing his UNESCO hat, talks about this in his Ultimate Edition DVD commentary. It made me wince because I, too, had been approached by child peddlars a few days before.
On the plus side, the film looks great, with good use of the locations, inventive set designs and lush colour and lighting. TMWTGG represents the tail end of the Hamilton / Maibaum-Mankiewicz period for Bond. Despite its excesses and shortcomings, I personally relish that period. The highlight for me is Christopher Lee, perhaps the most charismatic Bond villain of them all.
While watching the movie on the coach, I remembered how badly I feel about one particular moment. Bond and Scaramanga are sitting next to each other in the stadium, and Scaramanga is confiding in Bond about the traumatic incident in his childhood when he exacted revenge on a circus trainer for shooting an elephant: it's a slice of pure Fleming and is meant to give us the key to understanding Scaramanga's character. But Scaramanga's confessional, his 'big character moment', is rudely ruined when Bond leans forward, at a critical moment in the telling of the story, to buy a bag of peanuts from a vendor! Okay... the vendor is really a friendly agent, Hip, and what Bond is actually doing is passing to him the recovered Solex Agitator... the narrative justification is all there... but somehow the moment is jarring and undermining of Scaramanga's story, which deserves more respect. It may seem like a slight faux, but I personally think that Hamilton's handling of this moment is one of his biggest lapses in the series. But thereafter it's all good...!
Shady Tree
There are actually several tour operators who put on trips to the islands daily, and they've been linking what they do to to Bond / TMWTGG for over thirty years! It's quite an industry... and it lifted my heart to think that this is a way of keeping in focus, indefinitely, a Bond film which, despite its flaws, I rather enjoy.
On the coach ride from Phuket the tour operator, Sim, screens TWWTGG - from the part where Bond escapes from the martial arts school, to the end of the movie. This is introduced as a way of whetting everyone's appetite for the sightseeing to come.
It's odd to think that the film is indefinitely getting daily audiences on the coaches... making it, perhaps, the most 'screened' Bond film of all? On the day I went, most people were watching avidly. (I discreetly asked the Sim tour guide at the end of the day whether the company had the licence to show the movie and he said that it did.)
As I settled back on the coach to watch the film, I was embarrassed by the physical (if not attitudinal) similarity of J.W. Pepper and his wife to some of my fellow tourists! I was even more embarrassed by Pepper's repeated references to "pony heads" and to Thai traffic control, realising that the Thai coach driver and tour guide need to sit through this day in, day out.
I was also reminded of Sir Roger Moore's embarrasment at the scene where Bond shoves a Thai beggar boy into the canal: Sir Roger, wearing his UNESCO hat, talks about this in his Ultimate Edition DVD commentary. It made me wince because I, too, had been approached by child peddlars a few days before.
On the plus side, the film looks great, with good use of the locations, inventive set designs and lush colour and lighting. TMWTGG represents the tail end of the Hamilton / Maibaum-Mankiewicz period for Bond. Despite its excesses and shortcomings, I personally relish that period. The highlight for me is Christopher Lee, perhaps the most charismatic Bond villain of them all.
While watching the movie on the coach, I remembered how badly I feel about one particular moment. Bond and Scaramanga are sitting next to each other in the stadium, and Scaramanga is confiding in Bond about the traumatic incident in his childhood when he exacted revenge on a circus trainer for shooting an elephant: it's a slice of pure Fleming and is meant to give us the key to understanding Scaramanga's character. But Scaramanga's confessional, his 'big character moment', is rudely ruined when Bond leans forward, at a critical moment in the telling of the story, to buy a bag of peanuts from a vendor! Okay... the vendor is really a friendly agent, Hip, and what Bond is actually doing is passing to him the recovered Solex Agitator... the narrative justification is all there... but somehow the moment is jarring and undermining of Scaramanga's story, which deserves more respect. It may seem like a slight faux, but I personally think that Hamilton's handling of this moment is one of his biggest lapses in the series. But thereafter it's all good...!
Shady Tree
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Comments
I hear the location has changed quite a bit in the last thirty odd years. On the UE DVD there were plenty references to how different things now are.
In India, I didnt get to Udaipur but I hear they are still showing OP in the cafes there.
Last year I went up to the Meteora and the Greek tour guide mentioned 'For Your Eyes Only' was filmed there.
Also, up to 2002 they showed the Jaws/Holly/007 fight on the cable car at the Sugarloaf. Most unnerving watching them slug it out as you queue to board.
We had pretty high tide, so, unfortunately most of the beach has been under water.
Here is how it looks today:
And here the opposite view:
P.S. The person on the very right does not belong to me.....:D
But we can make the trial, who identifies my wife, who is on the beach...
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
She's not the woman sitting in the white dress to the right hand side of the pic, is she? (There's someone else in red standing beside her.) Shucks, you're married to Mary Goodnight! lol!
Great pics. For my visit it was all mist and rain. But it didn't stop me carrying around in my head snatches of John Barry's incidental music for TMWTGG... my private mental soundtrack of choice as we arrived at the site of this exotic pilgrimmage!
Shady Tree
My first girlfriend (her name has been Ulla, she had swedish parents) was the B. Ekland type and I have been with her in my 1st 007 movie, TSWLM.
However, I did not get very much from the movie then...
Back to TMWTGG: I discovered, that the first Scene with Scaramanga and Andrea must have been done on a different beach. Does anyone know, where this has been shot exactly?
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!