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Post by fitzoliverj on Mar 6, 2020 19:10:19 GMT
Jarvis & Ayres do "The Man with the Golden Gun" later this month
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Post by grinch on Mar 6, 2020 20:46:02 GMT
Jarvis & Ayres do "The Man with the Golden Gun" later this month
Capital! Glad to see they’re still doing these. |
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mbt66
Chancellery Guard
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Post by mbt66 on Mar 7, 2020 10:40:55 GMT
Jarvis & Ayres do "The Man with the Golden Gun" later this month
Proof, if proof was needed, that there is no point in Big Finish adapting the Fleming books. However I still think they could do great things with the John Gardner Bond books. |
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Post by iainmclaughlin on Mar 7, 2020 14:00:24 GMT
Jarvis & Ayres do "The Man with the Golden Gun" later this month
Proof, if proof was needed, that there is no point in Big Finish adapting the Fleming books. However I still think they could do great things with the John Gardner Bond books. I find the Gardner books really hit and miss. He was a proficient and professional author but you could tell he was losing steam after a while. Distilling some of the stories down to a 90-120 minute drama might actually do them the world of good. It might also give the opportunity to avoid the formula a lot of the books fall into... the enreliable woman, people not as dead as they seem... he does tend to repeat himself a fair bit. On the other hand, some of them are really good and solid. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2020 15:29:13 GMT
Proof, if proof was needed, that there is no point in Big Finish adapting the Fleming books. However I still think they could do great things with the John Gardner Bond books. I find the Gardner books really hit and miss. He was a proficient and professional author but you could tell he was losing steam after a while. Distilling some of the stories down to a 90-120 minute drama might actually do them the world of good. It might also give the opportunity to avoid the formula a lot of the books fall into... the enreliable woman, people not as dead as they seem... he does tend to repeat himself a fair bit. On the other hand, some of them are really good and solid. The problem I have with a lot of Gardner is it really doesn't know what it wants to be. He tries to make it a sequel to Fleming often but with stories ten times more outlandish than the original books. They don't really work as, as they're known to fans, "continutation" novels as they're not sure whether to continue Fleming...or Richard Maibum's movie scripts. I always thought Raymond Benson was the far better of the two main continuation writers though one offs like Kingsley Amis' Colonel Sun and some of the more recent reboots like Trigger Mortis or Carte Blanche which move the timeline back are my favourites. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2020 1:38:26 GMT
Proof, if proof was needed, that there is no point in Big Finish adapting the Fleming books. However I still think they could do great things with the John Gardner Bond books. I find the Gardner books really hit and miss. He was a proficient and professional author but you could tell he was losing steam after a while. Distilling some of the stories down to a 90-120 minute drama might actually do them the world of good. It might also give the opportunity to avoid the formula a lot of the books fall into... the enreliable woman, people not as dead as they seem... he does tend to repeat himself a fair bit. On the other hand, some of them are really good and solid. Do you have a particular favourite? Icebreaker, I always thought would work rather well as an adaptation. No Deals, Mr Bond has good momentum to it too. |
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Post by iainmclaughlin on Mar 8, 2020 2:23:10 GMT
I find the Gardner books really hit and miss. He was a proficient and professional author but you could tell he was losing steam after a while. Distilling some of the stories down to a 90-120 minute drama might actually do them the world of good. It might also give the opportunity to avoid the formula a lot of the books fall into... the enreliable woman, people not as dead as they seem... he does tend to repeat himself a fair bit. On the other hand, some of them are really good and solid. Do you have a particular favourite? Icebreaker, I always thought would work rather well as an adaptation. No Deals, Mr Bond has good momentum to it too. is silly but fun. I remember enjoying Win, Lose or Die when it came out. Icebreaker reads like a good novelisation to me so it would probably be that one. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2020 8:25:17 GMT
Do you have a particular favourite? Icebreaker, I always thought would work rather well as an adaptation. No Deals, Mr Bond has good momentum to it too. is silly but fun. I remember enjoying Win, Lose or Die when it came out. Icebreaker reads like a good novelisation to me so it would probably be that one. Nice.  Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived. I find the Gardners a bit hit-and-miss too. At a guess, I'd say the ones that tend to fall flat strayed a bit too far into parody for my tastes. SPECTRE's hijack of NORAD in For Special Services, for instance, is great but the mind-controlling ice cream they use to do it feels more at home in something like Our Man Flint or the Steed/Peel era of The Avengers. I can enjoy the book as a whole and they're fine ideas on their own, just maybe not in a Bond thriller. Solid bones with a few easy details to change. |
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ljwilson
Chancellery Guard
It's tangerine....not orange
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Post by ljwilson on Mar 8, 2020 10:32:04 GMT
The Man with the Golden Gun....my favourite Bond film!
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Post by iainmclaughlin on Mar 8, 2020 13:55:02 GMT
Nobody Lives Forever is silly but fun. I remember enjoying Win, Lose or Die when it came out. Icebreaker reads like a good novelisation to me so it would probably be that one. Nice. Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived. I find the Gardners a bit hit-and-miss too. At a guess, I'd say the ones that tend to fall flat strayed a bit too far into parody for my tastes. SPECTRE's hijack of NORAD in For Special Services, for instance, is great but the mind-controlling ice cream they use to do it feels more at home in something like Our Man Flint or the Steed/Peel era of The Avengers. I can enjoy the book as a whole and they're fine ideas on their own, just maybe not in a Bond thriller. Solid bones with a few easy details to change. The Head Hunt premise was so good that Matthew Reilly used it for Scarecrow, one of his Shane Schofield novels. He didn't use bits of it... he used ALL of it... the contract on his head, the chase, the kidnappings, the location, the guillotine, the demise of the villain... I remember reading Scarecrow think "Hey now, wait a minute here..." I can only assume that Reilly read the Gardner book at some point and the idea lodged itself in his subconscious.
I'm not convinced John Gardner was ever really a proper fit for Bond. His own thrillers tend to be complex and... high-brow isn't quite right but it's heading in the right direction. It often feels that he's trying to wear someone else's voice when he's writing Bond and that does, as you say, veer him into being something too close to parody. I just don't think he was ever completely at home with Bond. He also softens Bond for an 80s/90s audience. His Bond is definitely older, too. I read Gardner's Bond as late 40s rather than Fleming's who I see as in his 30s.
It's confession time. I've got two Bond books coming out in a month or two - only in Canada initially, where he's out of copyright. I think I made several of the same mistakes as Gardner on my first drafts. I didn't use Bond's flaws. He is a chain-smoking borderline alcoholic with horrifically misogynist, racist and homophobic views. Finding the balance between writing as close to a genuine Fleming as possible and writing a book which belongs in today's market is an interesting challenge. Oddly, I found it much easier in the short story anthology than in the novel. I had to go back over the novel twice to add more Fleming. In particular, I'd veered away from talking about Bond smoking, but that's important to him so I had to go back and put it in, and be as Fleming as possible by adding things like having him complain when the only cigarettes available to him as Russian, which he doesn't like. Bond is a sensualist. Gardner tended to write technical details of how a cigarette was made whereas Fleming would write about Bond's sensual experience when smoking it.
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mbt66
Chancellery Guard
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Post by mbt66 on Mar 8, 2020 15:21:26 GMT
Nice. Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived. I find the Gardners a bit hit-and-miss too. At a guess, I'd say the ones that tend to fall flat strayed a bit too far into parody for my tastes. SPECTRE's hijack of NORAD in For Special Services, for instance, is great but the mind-controlling ice cream they use to do it feels more at home in something like Our Man Flint or the Steed/Peel era of The Avengers. I can enjoy the book as a whole and they're fine ideas on their own, just maybe not in a Bond thriller. Solid bones with a few easy details to change. The Head Hunt premise was so good that Matthew Reilly used it for Scarecrow, one of his Shane Schofield novels. He didn't use bits of it... he used ALL of it... the contract on his head, the chase, the kidnappings, the location, the guillotine, the demise of the villain... I remember reading Scarecrow think "Hey now, wait a minute here..." I can only assume that Reilly read the Gardner book at some point and the idea lodged itself in his subconscious.
I'm not convinced John Gardner was ever really a proper fit for Bond. His own thrillers tend to be complex and... high-brow isn't quite right but it's heading in the right direction. It often feels that he's trying to wear someone else's voice when he's writing Bond and that does, as you say, veer him into being something too close to parody. I just don't think he was ever completely at home with Bond. He also softens Bond for an 80s/90s audience. His Bond is definitely older, too. I read Gardner's Bond as late 40s rather than Fleming's who I see as in his 30s.
It's confession time. I've got two Bond books coming out in a month or two - only in Canada initially, where he's out of copyright. I think I made several of the same mistakes as Gardner on my first drafts. I didn't use Bond's flaws. He is a chain-smoking borderline alcoholic with horrifically misogynist, racist and homophobic views. Finding the balance between writing as close to a genuine Fleming as possible and writing a book which belongs in today's market is an interesting challenge. Oddly, I found it much easier in the short story anthology than in the novel. I had to go back over the novel twice to add more Fleming. In particular, I'd veered away from talking about Bond smoking, but that's important to him so I had to go back and put it in, and be as Fleming as possible by adding things like having him complain when the only cigarettes available to him as Russian, which he doesn't like. Bond is a sensualist. Gardner tended to write technical details of how a cigarette was made whereas Fleming would write about Bond's sensual experience when smoking it.
For me I don’t want the Fleming version of Bond. I want the OTT cinematic version. Basically I want the Matthew Reilly version. Thanks for the comparison by the way. I had never put them together, but now you mention it...I really will have to go back and read No one lives forever! |
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Post by fitzoliverj on Mar 8, 2020 15:25:47 GMT
One recurring thing in Gardner's novels is Bond's age, because he's constantly coming up to the point at which he'll be compulsarily retired from field work. Eventually it happens, and he's appointed to a management role. But he makes sure he gets to go out and about anyway. It's also about now he gets his second tragic marriage.
The final book, "Cold", is one of the better ones, but I didn't even know it existed until several years after it was published. I thought Raymond Benson had just dumped Gardner's continuity, whereas in fact it had all been wrapped up in a neat little bow already.
It was a great shame, incidentally, that as Benson's writing improved his readership fell away; I suspect because of his tendency to revive characters from decades ago for no very good reason (why, for example, use James Suzkuki from the Pearson book if he's got a diffferent backstory?).
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Post by number13 on Mar 8, 2020 16:02:10 GMT
Nobody Lives Forever is silly but fun. I remember enjoying Win, Lose or Die when it came out. Icebreaker reads like a good novelisation to me so it would probably be that one. Nice. Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived. I find the Gardners a bit hit-and-miss too. At a guess, I'd say the ones that tend to fall flat strayed a bit too far into parody for my tastes. SPECTRE's hijack of NORAD in For Special Services, for instance, is great but the mind-controlling ice cream they use to do it feels more at home in something like Our Man Flint or the Steed/Peel era of The Avengers. I can enjoy the book as a whole and they're fine ideas on their own, just maybe not in a Bond thriller. Solid bones with a few easy details to change. Lol! That is wonderful - for Steed/Peel, Adam Adamant (* they'd have to call the episode '99 wouldn't they? One for @davygallagher and other Adam fans  ) or TV Batman ('Holy Cornish wafer, Batman!') but NOT Bond. Not even in one of the sillier 80s ones!
EDIT: * I realised this joke is unlikely to 'travel' so I'll ruin it by explaining! In the UK a '99 is/was a vanilla ice-cream cone with a piece of chocolate flake stuck in it. Totally 70s seaside hols, and for long after I've no doubt. Happy days!
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2020 22:16:19 GMT
Nice. Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived. I find the Gardners a bit hit-and-miss too. At a guess, I'd say the ones that tend to fall flat strayed a bit too far into parody for my tastes. SPECTRE's hijack of NORAD in For Special Services, for instance, is great but the mind-controlling ice cream they use to do it feels more at home in something like Our Man Flint or the Steed/Peel era of The Avengers. I can enjoy the book as a whole and they're fine ideas on their own, just maybe not in a Bond thriller. Solid bones with a few easy details to change. The Head Hunt premise was so good that Matthew Reilly used it for Scarecrow, one of his Shane Schofield novels. He didn't use bits of it... he used ALL of it... the contract on his head, the chase, the kidnappings, the location, the guillotine, the demise of the villain... I remember reading Scarecrow think "Hey now, wait a minute here..." I can only assume that Reilly read the Gardner book at some point and the idea lodged itself in his subconscious. I'm not convinced John Gardner was ever really a proper fit for Bond. His own thrillers tend to be complex and... high-brow isn't quite right but it's heading in the right direction. It often feels that he's trying to wear someone else's voice when he's writing Bond and that does, as you say, veer him into being something too close to parody. I just don't think he was ever completely at home with Bond. He also softens Bond for an 80s/90s audience. His Bond is definitely older, too. I read Gardner's Bond as late 40s rather than Fleming's who I see as in his 30s. It's confession time. I've got two Bond books coming out in a month or two - only in Canada initially, where he's out of copyright. I think I made several of the same mistakes as Gardner on my first drafts. I didn't use Bond's flaws. He is a chain-smoking borderline alcoholic with horrifically misogynist, racist and homophobic views. Finding the balance between writing as close to a genuine Fleming as possible and writing a book which belongs in today's market is an interesting challenge. Oddly, I found it much easier in the short story anthology than in the novel. I had to go back over the novel twice to add more Fleming. In particular, I'd veered away from talking about Bond smoking, but that's important to him so I had to go back and put it in, and be as Fleming as possible by adding things like having him complain when the only cigarettes available to him as Russian, which he doesn't like. Bond is a sensualist. Gardner tended to write technical details of how a cigarette was made whereas Fleming would write about Bond's sensual experience when smoking it.
Ah, bless. I'll have to read Scarecrow at one point, I'm sure I have it somewhere on the shelf. Yeah, he seemed more in the school of le Carré than Fleming in the end. There was a sense of obligation to some of the elements he used. Ann Reilley (a.k.a. Q'ute), for instance, was a really nice idea, introducing a younger, female quartermaster for an older Bond to tangle with. I wish, though, she hadn't become another one of his conquests. That diluted what could have otherwise been a rather interesting dynamic. Something more in line with Gala from Jarvis's Moonraker adaptation or even the rocket scientist there. And I think that sensuality, that physicality of thought, is the crux of it. No matter how fantastical some of the stories may get, the ones that resonate with people and stick in the mind tend to have that emotional component. Book, film or otherwise. All those marvellous set pieces in The Spy Who Loved Me are tethered together by the emotional suspense of whether Anya knows Bond killed her paramour. All those paragraphs about the post-War cuisine and high living transferred into those beautifully cinematographed vistas of Turkish mosques, undersea banquet tables and Japanese weddings. It's a bit easier with the cinematic versions of Bond, they all have a trait you can hook their emotional architecture on. Connery's is a thrillseeker, Lazenby is unsettled, Moore's tends to lean more towards the gentleman... Dalton's seems to be having trouble with his own inner demons, whereas Brosnan's looks to have made peace with them (mostly), and so on. But with Fleming's stalwartly anti-heroic original, I think you need that inner life and emotional resonance to make him palatable. One of my favourite short stories from him is For Your Eyes Only. Bond takes the mission as a favour to M and has to push and push and push himself into the mind of an assassin (' What did the man ever do to Bond?'). Even though they're bad people, it doesn't come naturally to him. The beginning of Goldfinger has him drunk in a bar reflecting on a murder in Mexico. The character's deceptively complex and deliberately contradictory, but if you've got that hedonistic component down pat (for Bond and the reader) I think you've nailed it. Look forward to the books. |
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Post by frisby78 on Mar 10, 2020 10:08:40 GMT
I get more personal enjoy from the Gardner books over Fleming. Does that make me as evil as Hugo Drax🤔
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2020 22:11:14 GMT
I get more personal enjoy from the Gardner books over Fleming. Does that make me as evil as Hugo Drax🤔 Nah, just means you have fun in a different way.  |
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Forever's got that great Head Hunt premise with the guillotine, doesn't it? I liked the use of the villain there and kidnapping May of all people was a good way of sending Bond off on a personal mission that didn't feel contrived.
) or TV Batman ('Holy Cornish wafer, Batman!') but NOT Bond. Not even in one of the sillier 80s ones!
