Confusing Dialogue
BIG TAM
Wrexham, North Wales, UK.Posts: 773MI6 Agent
There are two instances of conversation which leave me pondering.
The first is from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER:-
"You've been on holiday, I understand. Relaxing, I hope."
"Hardly relaxing, but most satisfying."
Does anyone else think like me that this is a cheeky in-joke reference to Connery's non-appearance in OHMSS? It doesn't seem to fit in any other context.
In MOONRAKER Drax is seen in phone conversation with an outside source in Venice, requesting a replacement for Char (or is it Chang; that name's a separate point of confusion). He appears to be speaking to a superior. Is Drax meant to be part of some SPECTRE-like organisation. It's as if there's explanatory scenes cut out elsewhere. Anybody else baffled or am I looking for logic where non exists?
The first is from DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER:-
"You've been on holiday, I understand. Relaxing, I hope."
"Hardly relaxing, but most satisfying."
Does anyone else think like me that this is a cheeky in-joke reference to Connery's non-appearance in OHMSS? It doesn't seem to fit in any other context.
In MOONRAKER Drax is seen in phone conversation with an outside source in Venice, requesting a replacement for Char (or is it Chang; that name's a separate point of confusion). He appears to be speaking to a superior. Is Drax meant to be part of some SPECTRE-like organisation. It's as if there's explanatory scenes cut out elsewhere. Anybody else baffled or am I looking for logic where non exists?
Comments
Actually, I think he was referring to Bond taking a sabbatical to go and hunt down Blofeld, as depicted in the pre-title sequence. He probably thought the Blofeld clone he did kill was in fact Blofeld, which is why it was "most satisfying".
"and might I remind you that Blofeld is gone. Finished. The least we can expect from you now is a little plain solid work."
I see that as a reference to the sabbatical to take down Blofeld, which he thought he succeeded, and obviously sent a report to M. He let a grieving Bond go and have his revenge for Tracy's death and come back ready for some "plain solid work".
I always felt that DAF was an odd fit because Sir Sean plays Bond in a slighlty more tounge in cheek version of his previous films, leaving no reference to OHMSS in any way. Of courae the whole film has a business as usual feel to it. I try not to connect it to the previous or suceeding films for that reason.
about Connery not doing OHMSS
1: Brosnan 2: Craig 3: Moore 4: Dalton 5: Connery and 6: Lazenby
Actually, I got this one immediately and thought it was hilarious. There's a WAY outdated stereotype of the British liking gardening and seeing as Wade was essentially self-parody, I'd always interpreted this as Wade's clumsy attempt to make small-talk.
In fact, for a really good movie that also references this, there's The Great Escape, when Stalag Luft III's commandant (Hannes Messemer) asks Group Captain Ramsey (James Donald) why the British are planting tomato gardens (real answer: to hide the dirt from the tunnels) and that he'd always known the British to plant flowers. It's actually played straight, as Massey shrugs and says "because you can't eat flowers".
All right but if I can't make it
All I can say is don't grow up any more - huh
- The opposite sex would never survive it
I didn't notice it until I watched it a couple of months ago, but now it always confuses me. GoldenEye came out five years before the 21st century, so it seems kind of weird. I grew up in the 90s, but I don't really remember people referring to the 21st century before it actually happened. Maybe they did and I just didn't notice, but it still seems strange to me.
1: Brosnan 2: Craig 3: Moore 4: Dalton 5: Connery and 6: Lazenby
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao
And as long as we're on the subject of FYEO, what's with the delicatessen in stainless steel?
#1.TLD/LTK 2.TND 3.GF 4.GE 5.DN 6.FYEO 7.FRWL 8.TMWTGG 9.TWINE 10.YOLT/QOS
A non-Kosher deli was a popular mafia hangout way back when (think Al Capone times). Still, it's a really, REALLY obtuse reference. And as a kid with a Jewish father who went to (and still go to) Kosher delis all the time, I laughed my behind off when I first heard this one.
EDIT: However, assuming Bond knew the reference, why the heck would Blofeld attempt to bribe Bond, a guy who he knows is a straight-shooter, with, to quote another film, a wretched hive of scum and villainy?
Chairman Mao's Little Red Book, otherwise known as Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Hugely famous (as well as infamous) book.
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the PTS of GE was set in 1986, the rest of the film 1995.
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The lines are indeed an in-joke about the fact that Connery had taken a 'holiday' from the Bond series since YOLT. This break had been busy but 'satisfying' for the actor as he'd had the chance to focus on other movies/roles. But yes, on the surface Bond seems to be referring to his apparently successful hunt for Blofeld in his own time.
Hmm, I learnt something new today
Do you have a source for that information?
1: Brosnan 2: Craig 3: Moore 4: Dalton 5: Connery and 6: Lazenby
Sorry if I gave the impression that this interpretation of the lines was based on some sort of inside information. It's merely an inference, albeit well supported by the internal evidence discussed below. As James Chapman puts it in his 'Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of The James Bond Films', Bond's exchange with Sir Donald Munger is "referring to his [Connery's] 'holiday' from the series and, by implication, to the four non-Bond films - 'Shalako', 'The Molly Maguires', 'The Red Tent' and 'The Anderson Tapes' - that he made in the interim."
At the height of sixties Bondmania, before the Eon series had weathered its first instance of re-casting the lead, the publicity for YOLT had loudly insisted: "Sean Connery IS James Bond". Note Connery's wry delivery of a line in DAF, "We were inseparable, you know." The proclamation in the YOLT posters of an absolute equation of identities between Connery and Bond is partly explained as Eon's marketing strategy for undermining a rival (phoney) Bond - Feldman's 'Casino Royale'. Subsequently, however, as far as Eon's Bond was concerned, Connery's deliberate absence from OHMSS necessarily broke any notion of a natural 'bond' between the actor and the role, slowing box office returns for OHMSS. (The fact alone that Connery was missed put George Lazenby at a disadvantage, irrespective of any shortcomings in Lazenby's own performance. The subtext of Tiffany's exchange with Connery in DAF is irresistible: "You've just killed James Bond!"/"Is that who it was? Well, it just goes to show: no one's indestructible!") Post-OHMSS, Connery's celebrated return to the series for DAF, re-coupling his name with Bond's, was announced in the posters without, this time, an absolute equation of identities, as merely a matter of "Sean Connery AS James Bond [my capitals]" - i.e. a reversion to the wording in the publicity of the early 60s, prior to YOLT. After all, as was now clear, "We DO function in your absence, Commander." The eye-rolling Bernard Lee's line is a defensive message on behalf of the producers: the Bond franchise had managed without Connery, albeit not as successfully. That said, and crucially, DAF exudes a sense of how special it was to have its star back in the shoulder holster. The image of Connery rising atop the scenic elevator for 'The Starlight Lounge', carnation in lapel and flanked by neon-lit, diamond-shaped star decorations, is a glitzy image of his superstardom in ascendancy. "Priceless!" - but debunked at the end of the ride by his need to duck to avoid being crushed.
Connery, with all his pulling power as Bond, was lured back for DAF only after unprecedented financial incentives, including a million dollars which he donated to the Scottish International Education Trust. Emerging from a coffin, Bond says to Morton Slumber and Shady Tree: "You get me the real money, and I'll bring you the real diamonds." If the 'real diamonds' represented, at some level, the sparkling success of Connery's on-screen presence as Bond, the proven asset of his "incomparable charm", it's tempting to read this money-for-diamonds line as an oblique allusion to the actor's contractual negotiations with United Artists/Eon's producers for a substantial reward to appear in DAF (tempting - especially since Broccoli himself, like the exasperated Slumber, had a background in the funeral business, as a coffin-maker). Exercised by the enormous cost of signing Connery for just one more Bond movie, United Artists' money men might also have shared Blofeld's sentiment: "Such a pity. All that time and expense - just to provide you with one mock-heroic moment!"
Thus DAF's writer Tom Mankiewicz was clever and sly enough to incorporate to his screenplay reflexive in-jokes/semi-jokes about Connery's relationship with the series. For his part, Connery, who said he approved of the screenplay's wit, improved his performance to something considerably more polished than his bored plod through YOLT. In DAF, M is perhaps again speaking for the producers when he says, "The least we can expect from you now is some plain, solid work!" (In fact, the only part of DAF in which Connery noticeably sags is during the short but pedestrian expository scenes with Willard Whyte and the CIA agents in the penthouse suite, working out what Blofeld is up to.) In any event, Connery had decided that DAF was definitely his swan song as Eon's Bond. There would have to be a different lead for LLD, hopefully more successful than the last pretender, Lazenby. As Connery remarks in DAF, with a twinkle in his eye, "I think we ought to let Mister Bond take the load from here on out." This left the producers with the headache of finding a new star once more. Accordingly the last line goes to Tiffany, looking up at the night sky after John Barry's cruise-ship mood music has played like a mock requiem and Wint and Kidd have been despatched: "James... how the hell do we get those diamonds down again?"
Mankiewicz's new comic emphasis on the fact that Bond is a PERFORMED role fits, in DAF, with his pervasive theme of phoniness, a theme which ranges from cloned (and drag artist) Blofelds, to a pretend girl-to-gorilla transformation for the kids; from a ludicrous 'zero gravity' simulation at the space research center (given the lie by Bond's sprint across the fabricated moonscape), to a 'red herring' pussy cat and a fake 'bombe surprise' dessert; from "Felix Leiter, you old fraud" to Bond's own false identities in this movie (Peter Franks, Klaus Hergesheimer and his ruses as the smoocher outside Tiffany's apartment and as the genial Dutchman in the elevator); from Bond's bogus finger whorls, to Tiffany's changing hair colour, to voice boxes cunningly set to impersonate Willard Whyte and Burt Saxby. Indeed, phoniness is so integral to DAF's comic strategy that it allows us to forgive, if we're willing, even unintended moments of exposed artifice, such as the poor special effects work on the exploding helicopters in the film's playful climax.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
"Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in forty years." :-)
(except that I've now expanded the above post to try and strengthen my case!)
Roger Moore 1927-2017
In the book, Wade has a gardening magazine as a prop. He talks a little to Bond about gardening, this wasn't in the film.
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It was an old Italian mafia saying. Some people were bought off with a business, usually a delicatessen. That way, the family would also get free food or meals out of obligation also. A stainless steel one would be very swish. Cubby put the line in, and unsurprisingly not many got it. I didn't for years until I read it.
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