Thunderbird 2East of Cardiff, Wales.Posts: 2,817MI6 Agent
edited June 2020
I read that the final scene as with the whole film was painfully pieced around Sellers absence.
The actor was nervous and a bit paranoid of working with Orson Welles. He was constantly late due to trying to save his marriage. Welles made pointed remarks about punctuality, and when HRH Princess Margaret a friend of Sellers made a bee line for Welles while visiting the set, that was the last straw. The baccarat scenes had to use doubles as Sellers refused to work with Welles any more.
Charles Feldman was hopping about to appease Sellers as much as possible, hiring more and more studio space, scrapping ideas he had committed to at the filming stage... the film ended up with four key directors each working on their own segments of the script, with no idea what each other was doing.
Val Guest was given the thankless job of piecing the mess into some sort of cohesive thing.
Feldman, overwhelmed with gratitude, said he would give him a special credit. Co Ordinating Director. Guest, genuinely offended and angry shouted, “You do that, I’ll sue you,for every penny you have left after this mess! People take one look and say This is co-ordinated?!” They settled on additional sequences by.
The film is notable as it took up Pinewood and MGM Borehamwood, and keeping a lid on the PR mess was next to impossible. Sellers, who wrecked the film with his lack of co-operation happily blew the story (at least the bit he was in) to the press. An unforgivable sin in the industry then, unheard of today.
Equally, a depressed Woody Allen wrote to a friend saying the film stinks as did his part. The sets were all modern art nouveau vulgarity and every time Feldman revised the script, he would leave in the build ups and cut out the punchlines! The director of those scenes assured Allen they would solve this problem by letting Feldman think he was making changes, and then put back in the missing punch lines, filming what Allen intended. - Which is precisely what they did.
There was fear, scare mongering and hysteria about how much damage it would do to careers - on both sides of the camera. But in the end, Charles Feldman himself was the only real casualty. He only made one more film after CR-67, then died of a cancerous ulcer, aggravated and accelerated by extreme stress.
In a cruel twist of fate, Sellers had yet to start the most noted and successful part of his career with the Pink Panther films, and the rest of the cast would be remembered for everything else they did, especially Niven, Allen and Andress.
As to The House Of Eon, they were too busy focussing on YOLT to worry about the faltering spoof that occupied Pinewood before them. It’s unchallenged success, meant Feldman in more ways than one, got off the hook.
One factor that is fascinating.... originally Feldman had wanted Sir Sean in the film, when it was supposed to be a ‘real’ Bond film. Sir Sean’s price tag was one million. Poss out of concern how the House Of Eon would react. After the dust settled, Feldman told Sir Sean, paying you a million would a bargain after what I have spent, lost and been through with this film.
The House Of Eon would get the last laugh, just shy of 40 years later. CR-06, would prove itself to be the best James Bond film right across the board, and confirm once and for all, no one makes 007 as well as the House that Eon Built!
This is Thunderbird 2, how can I be of assistance?
And to be clear: if you liked this film, more power to you. As I've said before, it'd be a boring world if we all liked the same thing.
That's certainly true. I know you're a big MR fan, too, as am I. I kind of wonder whether CR67 opened up that space which allowed the official Bonds to go a little crazy from time to time. One difference is that CR67 wasn't wanting to appeal so much to kids - it was aiming, more, to be a blast for hip young adults - whereas those of us who fell in love with the big 'fantasy' Bonds in the Eon series often first saw them as kids, finding in them more than enough to excite at the level of comic-strip action.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
I think FRWL, LTK or indeed CR-06are better antidotes.
Using MR as an antidote to CR-67 is a bit like those fine people who fights off a powerful hangover with a shot od vodka :v
Thunderbird 2East of Cardiff, Wales.Posts: 2,817MI6 Agent
On that note my final thought....
The best example of and the plot went boom?
“Moonraker One.... lift off.....
(Explosion). ....We have lift off!!”
Goodnight Folks. :007)
This is Thunderbird 2, how can I be of assistance?
Feldman had at one point approached Eon with an offer to do a joint production, but Cubby and Harry refused having the McClory/TB situation on their minds.
If perhaps they had said yes, then a 1960s Eon-style CR starring Sean Connery would have existed. That would obviously be better than the film we saw last night, but the downside would be that there would be no CR06. I wonder how BB & MGW would have rebooted the series if the rights to CR hadn't become theirs after so many years?
Also- if Connery had been in this hypothetical CR and proceeded to quit afterwards, perhaps the next film would still have been OHMSS with Lazenby but the one after would be YOLT thus restoring book order and solving the continuity problem of Bond and Blofeld not recognising each other atop a Swiss Alp?
It's probably as well that there was no mid-60s deal resulting in an Eon CR with Connery. An early 60s CR directed by Terence Young in the style of FRWL, and as a reasonably faithful Fleming adaptation, would have been ideal, imho (especially if Peter Lorre or Orson Welles had played Le Chiffre), but by the mid-60s, with GF and TB having charted a more outlandish course for the series, CR might have mutated into some sort of space race/atomic weapons story, with bits of Fleming thrown in.
As it is, CR06 was probably the best use, at the optimal time, of the belatedly acquired rights. Mads Mikkelsen was the third brilliant actor to give us a memorable LeChiffre, and Eva Green was the second beautiful actress to play Vesper. (In '54 Linda Christian had played 'Valerie Mathis'.)
CR67 exists as a sumptuously oddball sideshow, whose significance as far as the main series is concerned was probably to influence new contributors such as Tom Manckiewicz and Christopher Wood - and returning directors Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert - to indulge a little more of the wacky or the bizzare at the edges of their 70s Bond films than they otherwise might have.
At least two of the three existing screen versions of CR fail to give us a proper incarnation of James Bond.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
As a bit of a footnote, I don't know if anyone else here was a fan of the AMC series 'Mad Men'. There was one episode where Don Draper is seen in a cinema watching CR67 and another episode - I think in the same season - where Nancy Sinatra's YOLT song is played over the end credits. I think Draper is seen in a cinema for YOLT as well, if I remember correctly. The show is suggesting how the Bondmania of 67 shaped not only the pop cultural landscape of the day but also the personal values and style of a player like Draper.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
It's probably as well that there was no mid-60s deal resulting in an Eon CR with Connery. An early 60s CR directed by Terence Young in the style of FRWL, and as a reasonably faithful Fleming adaptation, would have been ideal, imho (especially if Peter Lorre or Orson Welles had played Le Chiffre), but by the mid-60s, with GF and TB having charted a more outlandish course for the series, CR might have mutated into some sort of space race/atomic weapons story, with bits of Fleming thrown in.
I linked to this upthread, but you guys probably missed it, what with the entertaining film you were watching and all...
See this old thread about the unused Ben Hecht script that evolved into the "funny" version. Thanks to Jeremy Duns research we actually know quite a bit about what was once intended as a proper adaptation. It was actually going to be darker than the EON films, but with some goofy ideas added as well.
Having just watched the Silencers (1966) the other night, I don't believe CR67 opened the doors for more outlandish content, it was just one more in a trend of over the top spy spoofs, only a bit more ambitious and totally out of control.
Even before Dr No, Hope and Crosby did Road to Hong Kong, which anticipates the scifi excesses and comedy stylings.
Having just watched the Silencers (1966) the other night, I don't believe CR67 opened the doors for more outlandish content, it was just one more in a trend of over the top spy spoofs, only a bit more ambitious and totally out of control.
Even before Dr No, Hope and Crosby did Road to Hong Kong, which anticipates the scifi excesses and comedy stylings.
I take your point. In spite of poor notices, the fact that CR67 did well at the box office as a spoof which explicitly carried Bond's name may nevertheless have emboldened choices to introduce elements of broad comedy to some of the Eon films which followed in the 70s.
In flaunting a notion that it's "too much for one James Bond" CR67 was at once acknowledging the proliferation of surrounding Bond spoofs and, perhaps, anticipating the casting challenges which Eon itself would face when Connery finally stepped aside - an actor for whom YOLT apparently proved "too much". Moneypenny's line-em-up kissing trials in CR67 are like a sly foreshadowing of future Bond screen tests - as well as a witty reference to the ubiquity of competing spy fare on the market, all in need of case-by-case evaluation. Passing Moneypenny's smooching test but then curtailed, CR67's Cooper is a representative model, a generic OO7 looking as much like Dean Martin (Matt Helm) as he looks like Connery.
Critics and material I don't need. I haven't changed my act in 53 years.
Comments
The actor was nervous and a bit paranoid of working with Orson Welles. He was constantly late due to trying to save his marriage. Welles made pointed remarks about punctuality, and when HRH Princess Margaret a friend of Sellers made a bee line for Welles while visiting the set, that was the last straw. The baccarat scenes had to use doubles as Sellers refused to work with Welles any more.
Charles Feldman was hopping about to appease Sellers as much as possible, hiring more and more studio space, scrapping ideas he had committed to at the filming stage... the film ended up with four key directors each working on their own segments of the script, with no idea what each other was doing.
Val Guest was given the thankless job of piecing the mess into some sort of cohesive thing.
Feldman, overwhelmed with gratitude, said he would give him a special credit. Co Ordinating Director. Guest, genuinely offended and angry shouted, “You do that, I’ll sue you,for every penny you have left after this mess! People take one look and say This is co-ordinated?!” They settled on additional sequences by.
The film is notable as it took up Pinewood and MGM Borehamwood, and keeping a lid on the PR mess was next to impossible. Sellers, who wrecked the film with his lack of co-operation happily blew the story (at least the bit he was in) to the press. An unforgivable sin in the industry then, unheard of today.
Equally, a depressed Woody Allen wrote to a friend saying the film stinks as did his part. The sets were all modern art nouveau vulgarity and every time Feldman revised the script, he would leave in the build ups and cut out the punchlines! The director of those scenes assured Allen they would solve this problem by letting Feldman think he was making changes, and then put back in the missing punch lines, filming what Allen intended. - Which is precisely what they did.
There was fear, scare mongering and hysteria about how much damage it would do to careers - on both sides of the camera. But in the end, Charles Feldman himself was the only real casualty. He only made one more film after CR-67, then died of a cancerous ulcer, aggravated and accelerated by extreme stress.
In a cruel twist of fate, Sellers had yet to start the most noted and successful part of his career with the Pink Panther films, and the rest of the cast would be remembered for everything else they did, especially Niven, Allen and Andress.
As to The House Of Eon, they were too busy focussing on YOLT to worry about the faltering spoof that occupied Pinewood before them. It’s unchallenged success, meant Feldman in more ways than one, got off the hook.
One factor that is fascinating.... originally Feldman had wanted Sir Sean in the film, when it was supposed to be a ‘real’ Bond film. Sir Sean’s price tag was one million. Poss out of concern how the House Of Eon would react. After the dust settled, Feldman told Sir Sean, paying you a million would a bargain after what I have spent, lost and been through with this film.
The House Of Eon would get the last laugh, just shy of 40 years later. CR-06, would prove itself to be the best James Bond film right across the board, and confirm once and for all, no one makes 007 as well as the House that Eon Built!
That they did
That's certainly true. I know you're a big MR fan, too, as am I. I kind of wonder whether CR67 opened up that space which allowed the official Bonds to go a little crazy from time to time. One difference is that CR67 wasn't wanting to appeal so much to kids - it was aiming, more, to be a blast for hip young adults - whereas those of us who fell in love with the big 'fantasy' Bonds in the Eon series often first saw them as kids, finding in them more than enough to excite at the level of comic-strip action.
Using MR as an antidote to CR-67 is a bit like those fine people who fights off a powerful hangover with a shot od vodka :v
The best example of and the plot went boom?
“Moonraker One.... lift off.....
(Explosion). ....We have lift off!!”
Goodnight Folks. :007)
If perhaps they had said yes, then a 1960s Eon-style CR starring Sean Connery would have existed. That would obviously be better than the film we saw last night, but the downside would be that there would be no CR06. I wonder how BB & MGW would have rebooted the series if the rights to CR hadn't become theirs after so many years?
Also- if Connery had been in this hypothetical CR and proceeded to quit afterwards, perhaps the next film would still have been OHMSS with Lazenby but the one after would be YOLT thus restoring book order and solving the continuity problem of Bond and Blofeld not recognising each other atop a Swiss Alp?
As it is, CR06 was probably the best use, at the optimal time, of the belatedly acquired rights. Mads Mikkelsen was the third brilliant actor to give us a memorable LeChiffre, and Eva Green was the second beautiful actress to play Vesper. (In '54 Linda Christian had played 'Valerie Mathis'.)
CR67 exists as a sumptuously oddball sideshow, whose significance as far as the main series is concerned was probably to influence new contributors such as Tom Manckiewicz and Christopher Wood - and returning directors Guy Hamilton and Lewis Gilbert - to indulge a little more of the wacky or the bizzare at the edges of their 70s Bond films than they otherwise might have.
At least two of the three existing screen versions of CR fail to give us a proper incarnation of James Bond.
Oh, at least. {[] {[] {[]
See this old thread about the unused Ben Hecht script that evolved into the "funny" version. Thanks to Jeremy Duns research we actually know quite a bit about what was once intended as a proper adaptation. It was actually going to be darker than the EON films, but with some goofy ideas added as well.
Having just watched the Silencers (1966) the other night, I don't believe CR67 opened the doors for more outlandish content, it was just one more in a trend of over the top spy spoofs, only a bit more ambitious and totally out of control.
Even before Dr No, Hope and Crosby did Road to Hong Kong, which anticipates the scifi excesses and comedy stylings.
I take your point. In spite of poor notices, the fact that CR67 did well at the box office as a spoof which explicitly carried Bond's name may nevertheless have emboldened choices to introduce elements of broad comedy to some of the Eon films which followed in the 70s.
In flaunting a notion that it's "too much for one James Bond" CR67 was at once acknowledging the proliferation of surrounding Bond spoofs and, perhaps, anticipating the casting challenges which Eon itself would face when Connery finally stepped aside - an actor for whom YOLT apparently proved "too much". Moneypenny's line-em-up kissing trials in CR67 are like a sly foreshadowing of future Bond screen tests - as well as a witty reference to the ubiquity of competing spy fare on the market, all in need of case-by-case evaluation. Passing Moneypenny's smooching test but then curtailed, CR67's Cooper is a representative model, a generic OO7 looking as much like Dean Martin (Matt Helm) as he looks like Connery.