Peter Hunt query
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Posts: 3MI6 Agent
Hi I'm new on this forum and a huge bond fan.One thing that i have never understood is why Peter Hunt was never asked back to either direct or edit another bond film after OHmss .His editing style on the first 5 films helped define bond from the normal film of the era with quick brilliant quick edits. In fact he ended up editing yolt after he was unhappy with how it was edited by someone else whilst takin g into account he was about to direct the next bond film .
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Welcome aboard and very good question! Look forward on getting some insights into this myself
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And we all know how well that went
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I know you're being sarcastic, but it was a very successful move.
As Matt S says, it went very well. The picture made a bundle more money than its predecessor and Bond's future (openly being questioned at the time) was assured. Job done, as far as the producers & UA were concerned.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
So was Die Another Day!
But you're right, i'm always a bit sarcastic when it comes to Diamonds, some hate it, others love (or like) it.
Even though it's my least favorite Bond film in the bunch, I too can find some merrits in there I like -{
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This tension has always been cyclical, sometimes having creative shifts take place within a resident Bond's set of movies as it happened with Roger Moore and Daniel Craig, while entire tenures are responses to those preceding them, like how Tim Dalton's toned-down Bonds were in response to Roger Moore's later Bonds.
I will always root for the purists and visionaries like Peter Hunt, but sadly, the series wouldn't likely survive if that approach were kept constant.
A few years later, such would become more common, but in 1969, it was still unusual. I think the answer as to why he wasn't asked back to direct was reflected in his later films, which oddly are more conventionally directed but were mostly box office failures or unremarkable.
I like OHMSS very much, and it's in my Top 5 Bond films, but I'm not sure I would be praising it so if it weren't a Bond film and adapted from the novel.
To quote from our man, "Successfully, too". In financial terms, anyway, if not always artistically (although they've had their moments).
I think many "borrow" ideas. The secret being which "ideas"to borrow ?
1) An overtall leading man who was not exactly conventionally handsome for the day but who set a new standard for what the leading man was to look like.
2) Brutal, often sadistic violence -- and an antihero lead who seemed to enjoy it.
3) Overt sexuality, sometimes played for laughs.
4) Over violence, sometimes played for laughs.
5) Sumptuous production values and a sense of globe-trotting grandness.
These were improvements over what existed at the time and had before. The Bond approach and aesthetic, as well as the cinematography and music, set the films apart.
In more recent years, the Bond films have followed the contemporary film trends, starting with the notion of a prequel in the first place -- they've obviously borrowed from the Batman films and the Bourne films, too. They don't seem so cutting edge anymore, though they remain profitable mostly by riding the coattails of other films that set the standard.
Bond, tends to put his own spin on these ideas.
"I was going to do a James Bond film with [Hunt]. They were about to film A VIEW TO A KILL. He had a part written in there for me. I took promo pictures. The costumers put me in this red, rubber dress. And then he got sick, and then they turned it over [to John Glen]."
This is the first time I've seen anything about Hunt being the original director on AVTAK, though I don't doubt Boyd's comments.
QED! TLD and LTK
Dalton - the weak and weepy Bond!
Never heard that one before either, thank you for sharing. That is quite a minor but sharp tremor in the Bond world if that really did happen, as interviews go because sometimes, people's recollections can be shoddy, and it's possible they verbalized one thing (AVTAK) when they had something else in mind. I would love to know more about it as surely, there would possibly be other "unearthed" sources out there.
The implications are remarkable. If Peter Hunt was indeed tapped for AVTAK, it would indicate another case of the producers wanting to change course again in tone for the sake of variety, wanting to counter OP of all things (!) perhaps for the much debated "excesses" (clowns, gorilla suit, the tiger, the tarzan yell and the female acrobats), and grounding the next movie with the sensibilities of OHMSS?
1983: OP released. The Bond team (Broccoli, Wilson, Glen, Maibaum) begin work on the next one (script, location scouting, etc) shortly afterwards*.
1984: Peter Hunt directs a TV series The Last Days Of Pompeii. Glen works on AVTAK.
1985: Hunt directs a film, Wild Geese II. AVTAK is finished and released. The Bond team (Broccoli, Wilson, Glen, Maibaum) begin work on the next one (script, location scouting, etc) shortly afterwards.
1987: Hunt's film Assassination released. TLD released
* That's how to do it!
?:)
"Better make that two."
When I saw SP at the theater I thought that it looked like the most arthouse Bond film since OHMSS.
By "arthouse" do you mean dropped on a urine-covered bathroom floor? Because I'd agree...
I think it may qualify on a good day as an "art" film.
No, that's not what I meant.
The poetry reading in Skyfall was the most conspicuous example, but the same film also had that highly stylised fight scene sillhoutted against the flashing city lights.
And the previous film had the big fight scene at the opera house (!) fragment into smaller and smaller edits until the most violent acts were almost subliminal. Like it didn't want to be an action film, it wished to comment cleverly and tastefully on action film conventions.
And Casino Royale itself, the scenes in the casino were given almost Masterpiece Theatre style reverence with all the polished wood and obsequious servants. (seriously, read up on the abandoned Ben Hecht script, we coulda had brothel fights, this story shoulda been sordid!)
The last two films have been directed by a genuine, award winning art film director, who apparently doesn't understand how thrillers are structured. There are art film directors who do know, Tarantino or the Coen Brothers for example (and I know most of you guys like Nolan), they shoulda hired one of them. But this American Beauty fellow I don't think gets it. One or two beautiful images, and a plot that doesn't add up.
I think they went for a radical change after Brosnan. Brosnan's films played to the popular expectations of a popcorn thriller, then they fired him and with Craig started taking it all a lot more seriously, and aiming the films at audiences who ordinarily might not see such common entertainment.
And we know Barbara is branching out, she just released Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, and I think she has more like that in the works.
I don't think this was a factor. None of the reviews I've come across complain about the editing or fast motion (which was used in earlier Bonds anyway), though several did praise Hunt's direction. Furthermore, the late 1960s were a time of artistic experimentation even in mainstream cinema--look at the editing in The Wild Bunch, which was released the same year and a great success. OHMSS was hardly avant-garde cinema.
That only applies to the tail end of Hunt's career. Let's not forget that he directed two big-budget successful features with Roger Moore (Gold and Shout at the Devil). Furthermore, Broccoli had considered asking Hunt back to direct For Your Eyes Only.
An interview (https://web.archive.org/web/19981206131445/http://www.retrovisionmag.com/jamesbond.htm) with Hunt gives more information on his lack of further involvement with Bond:
"At the end of that film [OHMSS], they didn't know what they were going to do, whereas prior to that we had gone on, and on and on. But the team sort of broke up and went on to other things. Then Broccoli asked me to come back for Diamonds Are Forever, but at that time he and Saltzman were fighting and I was involved with something else. I told them that if they moved the production date I might be able to, but they couldn't and so they went with Guy Hamilton...Then, again, Cubby asked me when I was doing Death Hunt [1981], and I couldn't. So each time he came to me, I couldn't do it for one reason or another, although I would have liked to, therefore the cycle broke, as it were...If Lazenby had done Diamonds, then I may have done it, as well as the next two, and I wouldn't have done anything else and whilst I've often been disappointed about things I wanted to do that never came off, I've done some films that I'm awfully proud of which are out of the Bond idiom, away from the protected society of Broccoli and Saltzman and all that. It was very protective for me, and very nice and good, but I was able to go off and make my own films, like Gold and Shout at the Devil, both starring Roger Moore, which I'm proud of and which were very different from Bond."