Kevin McClory, film producer, being restrained in bar room brawl with London film critic Leonard Mosley, who gave a very negative review of his film ’The Boy on the Bridge’, Venice Film Festival, September 1959. And Connery, who initially had no intention of starring in McClory’s unsanctioned Bond wannabe, found it hard to say no to the $3 million check McClory was dangling in front of him-or the hefty backend points that only sweetened the pot. It would take years of legal wrangling and new writers would come and go, but by the early ‘80s, McClory had finally persevered. But the renegade producer kept fighting like a Rottweiler with a T-bone. For the screenplay, he turned to bestselling coach-class author Len Deighton and, as an adviser, the man who knew 007 in his deepest marrow, Connery. With no legal hurdles blocking his path, McClory launched head-first into his own new cinematic spin on Thunderball called Warhead. And in 1963, Eon Productions, the company that would end up producing all of the canonical 007 films, struck a deal with McClory saying that, yes, he could be a producer on the 1965 screen version of Thunderball, but only with the stipulation that he not make his own movie version of the story for a period of 10 years.įlash forward a decade and Bond was as popular as he’d ever been. An independent producer named Kevin McClory and a screenwriter named Jack Whittingham, who had both helped Ian Fleming come up with the idea for his 1961 novel Thunderball (then going by the title Longitude 78 West), had sued Fleming for breach of copyright when he failed to credit their contributions. While all of this was going on, a different drama was playing out in the background at the British High Court. So after hemming and hawing about returning to play Bond one more time, he finally turned his back on the series, famously saying the words: “Never again.” Connery had played Bond six times between 19, but like all actors who think too much about their legacies, he bridled at being typecast. But by 1983, the original MI6 man of mystery was 52, and it had been a dozen years since he’d last ordered a Martini, shaken-not-stirred, in Diamonds Are Forever. I suppose it would have been fair to call him the reigning heavyweight champ, nostalgia being what it is. We called it “The Battle of the Bonds.” Apparently, so did everyone else. In our household, those four months felt like the World Series, the Stanley Cup Finals, and the Super Bowl all rolled into one glorious grudge match that would crown a victor once and for all. After all, it was the year when, during one brief four-month window, we got two James Bond movies-one with Moore and one with Connery. Which is why 1983 would go down as the ultimate litmus test for moviegoers who cared as much about license-to-kill superspies as we did. In the early ‘80s, though, Bond was everything. Why Miller's Crossing Is the Best Coens Movie.Where Are Conspiracy Thrillers When We Need Them?.Why 'Commando' Was the Most '80s Action Movie Ever.But today, Bond movies are just a small part of the larger Hollywood tentpole ecosystem alongside shock-and-awe superhero spectacles, eye-candy Pixar confections, and whatever Fast and the Furious installment is being shoveled at us. The Daniel Craig movies continue to rake in money hand over fist, and the sheer absence of a new 007 sequel on the release calendar can force theater chains to board up their doors and close for business (as we’ve just seen with the latest postponement of No Time to Die). Nowadays, a new Bond film is still a big deal, of course. Punches flew, wet willies were administered, titties were twisted. Still, whenever a new Bond extravaganza made its way to our sad local movie theater in suburban Massachusetts or an old one popped up on one of the three networks, our heated double-O debate would pick right back up where it had left off. I suppose that sort of white-hot passion still exists today in the schism between DC and Marvel partisans. To both of us, the stakes in our ongoing blood feud felt almost existential, as if a critical piece of our identities hung in the balance over which 007 we preferred (it should be noted that neither of us cared about the one-and-done George Lazenby). It’s amazing what an age difference of three years could make back in the early ‘80s. My older brother Keith, on the other hand, was ride-or-die for Sean Connery. Growing up, Roger Moore was my James Bond.
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