Bond Takes Flight

And I take on motherhood

The 70s came to a close as I neared the end of my childless phase. I appeared in a play, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and directed a play, One Flew Over the Cuckoos’ Nest. In between, I taught voice, and began writing plays. In 1979, Moonraker came out. The story was published in 1955. As usual, the film had a passing connection with the story Fleming wrote.

Moonraker, the print, is a story about a stolen missile. Moonraker, the film, updates the scenario to the stealing of a space shuttle. The United States, and Russia, were quite involved in the space exploration thing, plus Star Wars was a well established entertainment. Ergo, Bond got into the space program.

This flighty piece of entertainment featured Bond looking for the person, or persons, responsible for the highjacking of a shuttle. Following a lead, he travels to Los Angeles. There’s a fabulous establishment shot of L.A. from the air as Bond’s flight passes over it. It made me nostalgic to see the city from that viewpoint. That’s the Los Angeles I miss.

The person responsible for stealing the shuttle is a dude named Drax. He is the usual oligarch, hell bent on killing Bond, and the rest of the world’s population to boot.

Drax is ahead of his time. He would fit right in with the “too many people”fascists we now have wandering around the Earth. Think what a story Fleming could write today, with the eco-fascists against the fossil fuelers. Drax’s ark, a space station, had a well chosen group of young people that would repopulate the world. Sound familiar? Except today’s fascists pretend to be inclusive…but I digress.

Moonraker also introduces us to Jaws, the man, not the fish. Lois Chiles plays the Bond girl, scientist Holly Goodhead, whilst Roger Moore continues as Bond.

The Bond travelog,  after Los Angeles, includes stints in Venice, and Rio. Bond gets around to all the best places. I rank the fist-a-cuffs in the Venice Museum of Glass as one of the more entertaining ones. I do wince when those gorgeous pieces are broken. Bond’s vehicle chase is amusing as well. A gondola speeding through the canals, well, there’s a laugh for you, with its weapons of small destruction keeping Bond safe.

The next Bond film, For Your Eyes Only, came out in 1981. So too, did my son. Nick was born in August. And my life changed.

For Your Eyes Only  is from a story that was published in 1960. The plot is, you may have guessed it, about a stolen item. Not as large as a space shuttle, but just as important, the item is an encryption device used to operate the Polaris subs. The device is a laptop, before there were laptops.

The Bond girl is Melina Havelock. Yes, no silly name here, because Melina is a woman who can handle herself and her enemies. She is the daughter of an archeologist who is murdered because he worked with British Intelligence. Melina’s intensity in avenging the murder of her parents, gives her a gravitas we rarely see in Bond women. Pus, she kills the assassins with a crossbow.

The travelog takes us to Greece. From the depths of the sea, to St. Cyril’s monastery, that sits on top of a mountain. And to Spain, where the best, and most fun, Bond car chase takes place. Bond and Melina flee a few bad guys in her Citroen 2 CV. You can see the humorous car chase here.

And who is the oligarch bad guy in this story? It’s the usual, with a twist.  The bad oligarch, Kristatos, pretends to be the good guy.  He tells Bond that the oligarch Columbo is the bad guy. But Columbo is actually the good guy. Are you getting all this?

Nick was 2 years old when the next two Bond films were released. Soon, it would be his turn to grow up with Bond.

In 1983, Sean Connery played Bond one last time. Never Say Never Again was a remake of Thunderball. The title, Never…Again, is based on Connery’s statement that he would never make another Bond film.

You see, that is why your elders told you to never use the word never.

What I like about Never…Again, is the bad guy, Largo, played by Klaus Maria Brandauer. Brandauer’s Largo is ever so charming, but when he smiles, he makes my blood run cold. Being with such a man is extremely dangerous, and in this plot, as it unfolds, we see Domino, (Kim Basinger) realize she’s with a guy who is a rich, serial killer. He is a splendid archetype of the darkest of demons. An oligarch in his own right, he performs well for SPECTRE. His female counterpart, Fatima Blush, is ever bit as cold, and Barbara Carrera plays her well. We get it. Fatima enjoys the kill.

Fatima and Largo are the archetypes of the world of oligarchs, governments, and the spies who do their bidding, whilst hiding behind them. We have seen enough of these types skimming on the surface to know they are real. If you cannot see it, read Flemings biography. He was a spymaster in WW2. He was a classic, successful writer in that he wrote what he knew about. He was not making this stuff up. If anything, he may have lightened up on it, when it came to the characters he created. And, I will remind you here, that Fleming was not what we’d call a warm hearted individual. Bond was Fleming as he imagined himself. And as so many men have imagined themselves. Daring, dashing, and not committed to a woman or a family. Being footloose and fancy free to pursue the game is their reason to get up in the morning.

Fleming did finally marry, and did have a family. But Bond never could get over the death of his wife. She was killed in the line of duty. There’s that. Well, we can only imagine what would happen with Bond, once retired. That makes me ask the question; what happens to old spies? Has someone written that book?

The same year that Never Say Never Again hit the screens, another Roger Moore Bond was released. Octopussy is the one with all those beautiful circus performers, who foil the plot. The book was a part of short stories, released in 1966. It included The Living Daylights. That story would not be a movie until 1987, with Timothy Dalton as Bond.

Roger Moore’s last Bond hits the big screen in 1985, with A View to Kill. It’s from an anthology of stories that was published in 1960. Naturally, the storyline is changed quite a bit, as it is updated to the world of computer chips and Silicon Valley.

This upgrade to the current world of the mid 1980s is what it has going for it. But Moore was definitely over the hill, at 57, playing Bond. That aside, Grace Jones, as the female villain, working for Christopher Walken’s Zorin, as the oligarch on the road to world control,  made for a sort of remake of the Barbara Carrera, Klaus Maria Brandauer team.  Cold serial killers determined to not let anything or anyone get in their way. And they are ever so clever.

In the mid-1980s, Nick began school alongside this birth of the vast computer industry. As this new world developed, workers went from pushing paper to pushing digital documents. It presaged, that  many years later, Nick would sit at a desk with a computer that controls a vast network of restaurants. You know what I’m talking about, those touch screens that rule the world of eateries and coffee houses. Whenever something goes wrong, someone sitting at a master control fixes it. In a way, Nick became a master of that world.

As for Bond, he would morph even more with the fall of the Soviet Union. And a new Bond would enter into our 007 Consciousness.