Christopher Wood : The Spy I Loved.

Muston

Has anyone read Christopher Wood's memoir of his time working on Bond? I'm thinking of getting it but wanted to find out some opinions on if it's worth it or not?

David Schofield

Read the book a little while ago.

It is a full bio of Wood but does give a flavour of the man and why he had the best understanding of Fleming's and Bond's world of all the continuation writers bar Pearson.

From a lit Bond point of view, the book is disappointing; it concentrates mostly on Wood in EON-world, writing as a committee, Rog's take on Bond.

However, on his Bond books, he makes it clear that his intention is to write Fleming's Bond, not Rog Bond - ie merely novelize the films - and yet as a person he really dislikes Fleming's Bond and his views and rather prefer Rog's version....

But highly recommended to find out about Wood the man and what an interesting bloke he is (again, unlike many many of his continuation successors).

IMO you should certainly get it.

Thunderpussy

Must keep an eye out for this myself, I thought he did a great job on his two Bond film tie-ins.
IMHO he captured a fantastic " Fleming feel ". To His writing. -{

Revelator

David Schofield wrote:

It is a full bio of Wood but does give a flavour of the man and why he had the best understanding of Fleming's and Bond's world of all the continuation writers bar Pearson.
From a lit Bond point of view, the book is disappointing; it concentrates mostly on Wood in EON-world, writing as a committee, Rog's take on Bond.
However, on his Bond books, he makes it clear that his intention is to write Fleming's Bond, not Rog Bond - ie merely novelize the films - and yet as a person he really dislikes Fleming's Bond and his views and rather prefer Rog's version....

A good summary. It's the sort of book that's worth checking out from the library rather than buying. Woods's account of scripting the Bond films had less details than I would have liked--an in-depth "who wrote what" examination would have been very valuable in the case of TSWLM. Wood is honest in admitting that he was basically copying himself and writing to formula in MR.
In his Bond novels Wood proved himself a good literary mimic, but as David points out, he disliked the author he was mimicking. In The Spy I Loved there's lengthy section where Wood mocks the novel of TSWLM, and I found the cheap shots irritating. I finished the book somewhat disappointed with Wood--he is a writer of obvious talent with a good sense of humor, but his idea of a good Bond movie was nothing more than pastiche. This approach worked well in a greatest-hits compilation like TSWLM, but the formula delivered mechanical results in MR, and you can see why EON switched gears afterward. The fact that Wood could deftly imitate Fleming in his novels yet cared so little for the author suggests that Wood was a skilled technician with little personal investment in his material.

Silhouette Man

I have two copies (by mistake on Amazon!) and have read some of it. It's getting the time these days. It's definitely worth buying though as there are few other resources out there on Christopher Wood as a screenwriter and author. It fills something of a gap but could do with going into more detail perhaps.