James Bond (film series)

"Alec Trevelyan: Oh please, James, spare me the Freud! I might as well ask if all the vodka martinis ever silence the screams of the men you've killed. Or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women for all the dead ones you failed to protect."

"I knew a review of the new Bond film would be hopeless, not just because of the hilariously abject plot, but because the franchise has already been dead for three decades. All they can do now is drag up the character, like grave robbers, to mock and degrade with hubris and irony, because they can’t invent archetypal characters or stories of their own anymore."

"The real hidden gem of the Bond series’ financials lies in the marketing sponsorships it generates. Every major brand—Omega watches, Gillette shavers, Belvedere vodka, Heineken beer—wants to be associated with 007’s prestige. Jacques de Cock, a marketing consultant and lecturer at the London School of Marketing, estimates that the franchise has earned between $4 billion and $5 billion in marketing sponsorships since 1962’s Dr. No. If we’re working from the high end of that projection, that amounts to roughly $208 million per film. For perspective, Skyfall‘s entire production budget was $200 million. But that sponsorship money is going to the production companies, not the distributor. Still, that means the cost of each film is practically covered, and then some, long before the actual movie arrives in theaters. For that reason, the James Bond series may never end (there was even talk about a small-screen spin-off when Apple and Amazon were vying for the rights). These days, Hollywood is built on repetitive cash flow (i.e., sequels), but unlike the Star Wars or Harry Potter films—which earn more on average picture by picture, but only run for eight or nine installments—Bond is set up to live on ad infinitum."

"The films go toe to toe with Marvel: Craig’s Skyfall did around the same box office, $1.1 billion, as Iron Man 3. At the same time, they are weirdly artisanal, bound by tradition, a certain way of doing things. The offices of Eon Productions, which makes the movies, are a short walk from Buckingham Palace. The theme tune hasn’t changed for half a century. The stunts are largely real. The scripts are a nightmare. There is a slightly demonic, British conviction that it will all work out in the end. “There has always been an element that Bond has been on the wing and a prayer,” Sam Mendes, who directed two of Craig’s 007 movies, told me. “It is not a particularly healthy way to work.” Reckoning with any of this doesn’t actually help if you’re the frontman. Craig has spent a lot of his time as James Bond trying not to think at all. While making No Time To Die, he taped some interviews with Broccoli and Wilson about his years in the role. There was a lot that he simply couldn’t remember. “Stop fucking thinking and just fucking act,” Craig said once, like it was an incantation. “It’s almost that. Because so many things are going on in your head. I mean, if you start thinking…that’s it. You’ve got to sort of forget. You’ve got to leave your ego.”"

"In Craig’s hands, Bond aged, fell in love, and wept for the first time. He lost the smirk and gained a hinterland. During the same period, Britain—which Bond, in some way, always represents—has experienced extraordinary turmoil and self-doubt, #MeToo has happened, and it’s very unclear who the good guys are anymore. It’s just possible that Craig smashed Bond in more ways than one. The films can never go back to what they were."

"In 1997, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery had satirized the movies from head to foot, making it harder to play them for laughs. On the morning of 9/11, Broccoli and Wilson were in London, in a script meeting for Die Another Day. It was too late to rewrite the movie, but they sensed that it would be the last of its kind. “We felt the world has changed and the nature of these films has to change,” Broccoli told me. Two years earlier, after a long legal battle, Eon and MGM Studios had obtained the rights to Casino Royale, Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, which was published in 1953. After September 11, the story offered a chance to refresh the franchise, grounding it more strongly in both the original, darker tones of the novels and the new, worrying state of the world. “It wasn’t just recasting the role,” Broccoli said. “It was a new century and a new era. It felt like we had to redefine.”"

"A ritual of the franchise is that all potential Bonds are asked to play the same scene, a moment in From Russia With Love, in which the spy returns to his hotel room to find Tatiana, a Russian agent, waiting for him naked in bed. Craig hated the rigmarole, the sense of following tradition. “I can’t believe my own arrogance, really,” he said. But he studied for the part. He went back to Fleming’s novels and found a character quite distinct from the unruffled screen persona of the previous 30 years. The Bond of the books was someone Craig could relate to: cold, messed up, human. “He is really fucking dark,” he said. In the novel Moonraker (1955), Bond tips a load of speed into his Champagne. “I think it’s more interesting,” Craig told me. “I know we can’t have him having amphetamine and speed and doing all these things. But inside, I know I’m doing that. And I wanted to inform the part and say that’s what he is. He’s kind of a fuckup. Because this job would fuck you up.”"

"I mean the reasons that I wanted to be Bond were simple. I looked up to Sean Connery as an actor, and I thought that I would get laid a lot more. The strange thing is it actually had the opposite effect. Short hair and suits didn’t get you laid in the late 1960s. Everyone was wearing bell-bottoms."

"I tend to forget that I even played James Bond until somebody reminds me. But I am glad I got to share the story."

"I wouldn’t have changed it from the way I played it. I played it slightly tongue-in-cheek because I never quite believed that James Bond was a spy because everybody knew him, they all knew what he drank. He’d walk into a bar and it would always be, 'Ah, Commander Bond, martini, shaken not stirred.’ Spies are faceless people."

"I was like "What the hell is going on?" and they were like "James Bond is cannot be played by Idris Elba because Idris Elba is a black man and James Bond is white!" I was like "Well, actually, James Bond is a FICTIONAL character and so he can be played by anyone because it is FICTION!" and they were like "Well, when you think about it, James Bond was based on a real man who was white and so he should be played by a real white man!" And I'm like "Well, that just doesn't make sense 'cause, if you think about it, Jesus was technically a black man but he gets played by a white man, so I don't know what your point is, 'cause that's never stopped me from receiving my blessings, I don't know what you're going on about!""

"Raoul Silva: "Medical evaluation: Failed. Physical evaluation: Failed. Psychological evaluation: Alcohol and substance addiction indicated." Ooh! "Pathological rejection of authority based on unresolved childhood trauma. Subject is not approved for field duty and immediate suspension from service advised." What is this if not betrayal? She sent you after me, knowing you were not ready, knowing you would likely die. Mommy was very bad."

"Bond isn't going to be downing three or four martinis, and then winning a fight with five guys," Swartzwelder tells Shots. "He might be starting the fights, but he's not winning them." The old saw that every drink kills lots of brain cells isn't true, Swartzwelder says. "But chronic drinking does damage neurons and brain circuits over time," he says. "And there are parts of the brain that you don't want to damage if you're an international spy." First off, chronic alcohol abuse can injure the cerebellum, the brain region involved with coordination, Swartzwelder says. "It allows you to string together a series of athletic movements." "If Bond is pickling his cerebellum on a regular basis, he's not going to be able to learn fight sequences, jump through windows and shoot at the same time or even learn those dance sequences with his girlfriend," he says. The second brain region damaged by years of heavy drinking is the hippocampus, Swartzwelder says. Shaped like a little sea horse, the hippocampus is dedicated to forming new memories. "It is very sensitive to the effects of alcohol," he says. "Bond wouldn't be able to remember all those names, card numbers at poker games or even all his girlfriends' phones numbers if his hippocampus wasn't working correctly. "Believe me," Swartzwelder says. "Bond wouldn't have been doing the things that we he was doing in those movies if he drank as much as the study found."

"Images of cars and highways fill our literature, songs, movies and art, not just in America but worldwide. Books like "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac or "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe were among the first to romanticize driving and road trips. Old blues and early rock songs like "Route 66," "Brand New Cadillac," and "Goin' Mobile" further romanticized cars and highways for the postwar "Baby Boom" generation. Thousands of films and T.V. shows have focused on or predominantly featured cars and car chases: "Rebel Without a Cause," "American Graffiti," "Easy Rider," "Bullet," "The Dukes of Hazzard," the "James Bond" films, and at least half a dozen Burt Reynolds movies. The list goes on... All this pop culture, combined with relentless commercial advertising, has made cars an integral part of our personal identity. We have been taught to equate motor vehicles with wealth, power, romance, rebellion and freedom. Now, everywhere I go in the world, I see cars-millions and millions of cars-in Rome, Guatemala City, Kuala Lumpur, Bombay and Beijing. Everywhere there are huge traffic jams and poor air quality. The number of motor vehicles in the world is growing three times faster than the population."

"James Bond was established by Ian Fleming as a white character, played by white actors. Play 003 or 006, but you cannot be 007. A lot of people say we should be allowed to play everything. Don’t be ridiculous. If I say I want to play JFK, I should be laughed out of the room."