Ep. 36 - Bonds, all the Bonds! Part 1

This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:01] J.J.: So, my daughter is now getting old enough to appreciate everything that's going on around her. The thing that she discovered most recently, Halloween now, is like, she discovered how much she really enjoys the dressing up part and the, you know, going and asking people for candy. Watching her do that has been really amazing and it got me to thinking, uh, what, like, costumes I would dress up as Halloween. Um, I was Yoda one year. Like, I had the mask. This was back when Empire was, like, out, you know, a thing. So I had, like, the full Yoda mask and the outfit. And it got me to thinking, too, one, I was going to ask you two questions. One, and I think I know the answer to this already, but one, your, like, sort of favorite Halloween costume, because I don't dress up as much anymore, obviously, as an adult. Well, I kind of do a little bit now, now that I'm a parent, but one, what's your favorite Halloween costume dress up that you've done in your life?

[1:04] Olaf: Oh, you weren't going to ask me back to back?

[1:07] J.J.: I'll ask the second question after.

[1:09] Olaf: Oh, okay. Uh, well, I mean, I love Halloween. Halloween's great. And, uh, the spooky season is fun. Lots of great movies to watch. And then you've got the fall season, which is just magic to me. The spices in the air, hot apple cider, pumpkin pie loaded with sweet, sweet whipped cream, because that's the only way to eat it. Yeah, it's a great time of the year for me. And it's cooler temperatures, which I love. And I've always enjoyed Halloween. And I used to dress up a lot. And I used to really get into it. In fact, I would, like, wear prosthetics.

[1:53] J.J.: Okay.

[1:53] Olaf: And I'd, I'd, I'd get really into it. And I'd have all this stuff. And, you know, halfway through the party, you're like, I just want to take all this off now.

[2:02] J.J.: Well, I know that, like, I was, we were living in the same city over one Halloween, just one. And you came in with like full on Indiana Jones head to toe.

[2:15] Olaf: I mean, that was more on the level of, I guess, like cosplay and stuff, where I just did a ton of research. Like I was finding out information about Indiana Jones and this stuff he wore and used that no one needs to know.

[2:33] J.J.: Right. But it was pretty, it was a pretty authentic costume. Like I never got into that kind of detail. I'm very, I'm a lazy costume person when it comes to Halloween.

[2:44] Olaf: Well, that was me when I was younger, even as a kid, like I wanted to look as cool as possible in whatever character monster or whatever. And I never could do it because I didn't have the means to make it myself. I didn't have the money. My parents didn't have the money. So I remember I wanted to be the wolf man for a Halloween as a kid. And my mom made a costume and, you know, that's great and awesome. Love you, mom. But at the time, I hated it. I was like, I don't want to wear this because, you know, it's it wasn't what I had envisioned.

[3:24] J.J.: It wasn't. Yeah. Well, the irony about all of that is like you and I both have done our stints in theme park where and as and also being both being actors at any given point in our lives, where we've had opportunities to actually be in costume as characters in shows or even in whether it's a theater, a stage production or a theme park where hopefully the theme park has got the resources to give you the prosthetics and the makeup.

[3:48] Olaf: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and for me, like, again, I go back to characters that I feel like I, you know, gravitate to that I would want to dress up as. So it's like Marty McFly. And I what do I have in my closet that I could possibly make shift that I don't have to like break the bank? That's me now. I am whatever is the most comfortable costume I can wear or articles of clothing that suggest what it is I wanted to be.

[4:25] J.J.: And so my suggestion here, you would be able to pull off more than I, because a lot of times I feel like I wasn't thinking enough out of the box because I would go, I don't really look like this person. I'm not tall like this particular character is like you could pull off Indiana Jones. I could pull off short round that sort of thing. Right. You know, I'm not pulling off Indiana. You could pull off most Fred Savage movies from or Danny DeVito, any sort of Danny, Danny DeVito character. I could play Goonies or anybody from the Navigator.

[5:02] Olaf: Oh, I could. My suggestion to you, because you've done you could say you've successfully done Indiana Jones. You've successfully done the Terminator. All you would need to do is put on a nice tuxedo, maybe get yourself a little piece up at the top. And all of a sudden, you're James Bond for Halloween.

[5:29] J.J.: Yeah, I mean, you could you I don't look anything like Sean Connery, so it would look a little weird. But I mean, so which which Bond character, which Bond actor, then do you feel like you could like possibly?

[5:40] Olaf: I mean, when I was younger, I would have gone for Sean Connery. Easy. Like, okay, let's do it now. I'm like, I think I would look ridiculous trying to look like Sean Connery, and it would be way easier for me just to go as Blofeld.

[6:00] J.J.: I don't know. I'm one like eye scar away from Dr. Evil. I don't know why I didn't see that response coming, because I had no idea you were going to drop that. But that is funny.

[6:19] Olaf: Yeah, I mean, I'm at the lazy stage now. And yeah, all you would need is some sort of gray jumpsuit and a stuffed white cat and you're there and an iPad. I want to see that. I want to see that that I would definitely pay money to see.

[6:43] J.J.: Well, that what's the second question?

[6:43] Olaf: I don't even remember anymore. I think it was I think I might have inadvertently asked you the second question in the midst of it all. But either way, what a perfect segue to what we are going to be talking about today. What we're going to start talking about today, because it's a long journey, but it's going to be a really fun one. Because as you and I have both talked about before, this is a character and a franchise that we love dearly.

[7:06] J.J.: Yes, I've always loved these movies. As a kid growing up. They're great. They're fun. They're stupid. They're exciting, entertaining. Yeah, very entertaining. And there's so many of them.

[7:29] Olaf: There are. And we're really only going to be talking about over the course of this, I would imagine the ones that are in the official canon of James Bond movies.

[7:39] J.J.: Well, we can mention the ones that we will, but I don't see a need to do a deep dive on them.

[7:47] Olaf: No, no, no. But before we dive into anything, we have to dive back into the movie theater.

[8:16] J.J.: Yes. Let's go back to the movie theater, everybody.

[8:23] Olaf: Hey, guys, here we are. We're back in the movie theater. It's J.J. and Olaf. And boy, have we got one for you today. I mean, we are starting at the beginning of the Bond franchise. More than likely, we'll probably be doing two of these movies per episode, at least at the beginning, just because there's a lot to get through. There's a lot to cover. And as iconic as a lot of these older ones are, especially with Sean Connery, because he started it all, this is where everything that's come after is based on. The movies themselves, there's not a lot to them. These came out in the early 60s. It's a different time of how movies were made, how they were edited. So you just have to bear with us. We're not going to skip over stuff, but the first half of the Bond series is easy to get through.

[9:13] J.J.: It is. It's easy to get through. And that doesn't mean that the quality of films isn't good. It's just based on budget, based on the time in which these movies were made. They made a lot of these movies back to back to back. There are certain things that you can cover in these first couple of movies that you don't really have to do a total extensive deep dive. One, because there isn't a whole lot to deep dive into, I don't think. Especially the first one, Dr. No.

[9:43] Olaf: Dr. No, which is actually the sixth book. It's not even the first book. It's the sixth book.

[9:50] J.J.: Yeah. They never went in the order of the novels, but the main reason why they started with Dr. No was because there was no budget for Dr. No. They had very little money.

[10:03] Olaf: It was not a lot of money.

[10:04] J.J.: Yeah. The plot of the book was so simple, and it really only took place in one major location.

[10:13] Olaf: In one location.

[10:14] J.J.: So watching the movie, you can tell, oh, they had no money. Because you go from Dr. No to anything now, and it's so much grander, and there's so much more. Even the next film, which we're going to talk about also, but yeah, you're right. Dr. No had one location. They shot it in Jamaica. It had one major set piece, which is at the very end.

[10:34] Olaf: Yeah, and that was mostly a model.

[10:36] J.J.: And like you said, the money in and of itself was, they shot this movie in like 58 days or something. Under 60 days, they shot this movie.

[10:44] Olaf: Yeah.

[10:44] J.J.: But it started out as like a-

[10:45] Olaf: And you feel all 58 days of that when you're watching.

[10:47] J.J.: Oh my goodness. It's a rough watch. As you and I, we actually sat down and watched this one together just before we started talking about it. We both realized prior to getting into it that it was going to be a road, a journey. Because the pacing of this movie is really bad.

[11:10] Olaf: All right. Now, before we get into it, let's just start from the beginning. We're starting with Dr. No. This movie came out in 1962. It is an hour and 50 minutes long.

[11:23] J.J.: It might as well be three.

[11:25] Olaf: It feels like three. And the movie could be tightened down to a solid 45 minutes.

[11:35] J.J.: You say 45 minutes?

[11:39] Olaf: Yeah. Maybe 60 minutes, but it has a meta score of 78, which is-

[11:46] J.J.: It's pretty good. That's really good.

[11:47] Olaf: And a Rotten Tomatoes of 95.

[11:50] J.J.: I think that 95 is generous because, again, it's not like the movie is bad. It's definitely a movie of its time, early 60s. I mean, they shot it in 61. And I think prior to that, or at least movies of that genre really had to deal with the censorship of what was going on. They had to really come back from a lot of things. Now, there are obvious things that they wanted to have in the movie that they couldn't, like Ursula Andress coming out of the ocean naked. It wasn't going to happen.

[12:22] Olaf: I mean, in the books, there's a ton of nudity and-

[12:26] J.J.: Correct.

[12:28] Olaf: They were wanting to go that route with these movies, but they couldn't because of the censorship, which I think was a good idea. And I know-

[12:36] J.J.: I completely agree.

[12:37] Olaf: But I think the lack of it actually helps the movies. I think it makes them sexier and-

[12:44] J.J.: I think to understand that, you'd have to understand Ian Fleming, who basically, Ian Fleming is James Bond. I mean, he's writing these books off of his life. A lot of the locations are places he lived. He lived in Jamaica. He wrote these books there, like on his estate named Goldeneye. And he is Bond. I mean, that's who he is, chain smoker, somewhat of a womanizer. And so to have these sorts of things in the books is obvious. And then, yeah, to see him in the movie, yeah, you're going to get some pushback for sure.

[13:26] Olaf: Now, Connery was not the first choice for Ian Fleming and-

[13:32] J.J.: Correct.

[13:32] Olaf: To be honest, Ian Fleming did not like this movie.

[13:36] J.J.: He didn't. I know. I think he said something like, after he saw it, he initially said dreadful.

[13:42] Olaf: Yes. He said it was dreadful.

[13:43] J.J.: Simply dreadful.

[13:45] Olaf: Yeah. Yeah. He didn't like Sean Connery because he was kind of a working class-

[13:53] J.J.: Yeah, working class guy.

[13:54] Olaf: Guy. So he didn't seem to have the regalness that he thinks of with Bond, but-

[14:00] J.J.: Originally, he wanted David Niven.

[14:02] Olaf: Well, he also thought a young Roger Moore would have been a good pick.

[14:08] J.J.: Roger Moore was unavailable. Yeah. I read that too.

[14:10] Olaf: But you'll find out later, when we get to Russia With Love, that Fleming changes his mind.

[14:16] J.J.: Yeah, no doubt.

[14:16] Olaf: This movie, he hated. In fact, the studio didn't really like the movie either, so they didn't really promote it. This movie made money based off of word of mouth.

[14:26] J.J.: It made, what, 17, something like 17, 18 million, which-

[14:30] Olaf: Well, off of a $1 million budget?

[14:33] J.J.: Right.

[14:34] Olaf: That's pretty good.

[14:35] J.J.: That's amazing. Yeah, no doubt. It made 17 mil, but when you recalculate it, it made money. It made a lot of money.

[14:45] J.J.: Now, what do you think about when you think of a James Bond movie?

[14:50] Olaf: Well, now-

[14:54] J.J.: Think of a James Bond movie? The song, the theme song. The theme song is the first thing that pops into my head. The theme song by John Barry slash Monty Norman. Well, that's the thing. It was Monty Norman. Right. He did the music for this first movie. John Barry just arranged the music, so it's what we know today. Right. But everybody thinks John Barry, he did the James Bond thing. No, it's Monty Norman, yeah. Well, because Monty Norman, I think that the actual tune is from something else that he had been working on. It was a musical of some kind. Yeah. And then they brought it over to this. The other thing I think of when it comes to James Bond is the opening title sequence, which there really isn't one in Dr. No. I mean, there is, but it's not what would end up becoming another staple of the James Bond franchise.

You don't get a cold open either. This is the one movie you don't get a cold open. So let's talk about what Dr. No did for James Bond. Dr. No introduces us to the character M, who is in charge. In this movie, he's in charge of MI7. It's not MI6 yet. Which is so weird because they had to re-dub that line. Well, they didn't want, they were afraid of saying MI6 and them being mad about it. So they re-dubbed the line. But there's a scene prior to that, the scene where M says MI7, I think there's a scene prior to it where they mentioned MI6. So it was sort of like a moot point because you're right, eventually Bond is working with MI6 or working for MI6. But yes, it introduces us to M and MI7. We get Moneypenny, Ms. Moneypenny.

Yes, Lois Maxwell. Yeah. This is her first movie and she goes on for many, many more. This movie introduces us to Bond's drink of choice, the vodka martini. Now in this movie, in Dr. No, he doesn't order it. Well, he orders it, but we don't see him order it. The bellhop comes in and says, I have your drink, a vodka martini. It has been—what does he say? He doesn't say shake and not stirred, but he says something like it has been tossed. Tossed around? Tossed around not stirred or something like that. Yeah, but then later when they get to Dr. No's, the guy brings him the drink and says shake and not stirred. Yes, that's right. But you're right, but he doesn't order it at all. He doesn't actually order it.

We get the Walter PPK, which before that he was using a different gun. A Beretta. He was using a Beretta. Yeah. And then we don't get Q or Q Branch. We get the armorer who is, we get him by name. The same character, but it's not played by Desmond Llewellyn. It's played by a different actor, but the character is the same. Yeah, Major Boothroyd is the character name, which is Q's name. But after this, actually, I think he's still referred to as Boothroyd in Russia with Love. Yes, correct. We get Spectre. We do. We do get Spectre. That is mentioned, which can you tell me what Spectre means? I have. I was looking at it all day today and I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. So Spectre, for those who don't know, means Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion.

Which is something that Ian Fleming made up because one, when Ian Fleming was writing these books in the 50s, he had this feeling that the Cold War was going to come to an end soon. He didn't want the Russians or the Soviets to just to be, you know, always be Bond's sort of nemesis. So he creates Spectre, which is fantastic, I think. The funny part is that the Cold War didn't end until like the mid 80s. We got there, though. We got there. Because he mentions SMERSH, which was an actual organization in the Soviet Union, and he mentions it in the books and later in the movies, but Spectre is the main entity. The anti-MI6 slash 7. Right. And then the one other thing that Dr. No, well, Dr. No gives us the sex bomb Bond girl, but the other thing that Dr. No gives us is the idea of a grand evil lair.

Yeah, you don't really, I mean, a lot of the tropes that we consider tropes now were because of, I believe, the main reason because of these movies. Dr. No was really responsible for, with such a limited budget, doing the heavy lifting of building this universe that these characters can exist in, and then the next consecutive films take that and add a little bit more to it to fully become the character and the world that we know today. Yeah, and I think the love that it gets is strictly, I believe, a lot of it to do with appreciation for what it had to set up, because you've mentioned, you say this a lot, it's having to do a lot of heavy lifting, which is completely accurate, because when you watch this movie, there are a lot of moments where there just isn't a lot going on.

No. Like you've mentioned, they figure out what they need to do about 35 minutes into the movie, but then they spend another hour trying to get there. Like Ursula Andress doesn't even show up until an hour into the movie, an hour and five minutes into the movie. Honey Rider, Ursula Andress, she appears just over an hour in. Dr. No, in person, his voice shows up earlier, but Dr. No's first appearance is well over an hour into the movie. He's only in the last 20 minutes of the movie, and of that 20, he's in like 10. Yeah. I hadn't forgotten that, but it was just a surprise when we rewatched it. I was like, when is this dude coming in? Because there's one thing to create this idea of a villain where you don't have to see them to know that they're around, and they do that more effectively with the Blofeld character later.

Yes. But with this first movie, they talk about Dr. No, they do their best to try to make him this, let's say, otherworldly being, but at the end of the day, I feel like there was a lot of potential wasted to do more with him as a villain because once you do meet him, once we do see him, you're like, ooh, this guy's interesting looking. Then we get to see the fact that he's got these metal hands, the black gloves and whatnot, and he even goes on this dialogue about how and why, but then we only get to see him use them once as some sort of scare tactic. Yeah. Well, then he beats up Bond with them later. It just seemed almost like a wasted villain, and the movie is named after him. And so if you're going to name the book, not the movie, the book is named after him, then I just wanted more of him.

Yeah. But this movie was really about the spycraft of it all. Yeah, I know. In 1962, that was a low bar for them to get over, to convince people of. So when James Bond gets the assignment to go to Jamaica and find out what's going on and figure out who Dr. No is and all this stuff, and he goes to his hotel room, and he knows he's a spy, he's super smart and capable, so he knows what to do. He comes into his hotel room, and he shows us two examples of spycraft before he's like, that's it, I'm good, and leaves, which is he takes his briefcase, he puts some powder on it so that he can see if anybody's messed with it, and then he takes a single hair from his head, a single hair from his well-gelled hair.

Oh, yeah. Looking back, he probably shouldn't have done that because he needs all the hair he could get. Exactly. And then he sticks it on one of the two closet doors in his hotel room. And once he does that, he's like, all right, I'm good. Let's go have a party. And then he leaves. Yeah. No, it's true. I mean, you're right. It's like they set up this moment to say, okay, this is Bond at his, this is what he does, this is what he's trained for. He's going to put this piece of hair here just in case somebody opens the door and the powder on the briefcase. I mean, I get it. And again, it's one of those things where scenes like that seem even more mundane. Oh, yeah. Because the pacing of the movie up to this point has been bad.

It doesn't pick up until the last 20 minutes. Long takes before an edit, and there's just not a lot going on. Which isn't bad if there's stuff going on. Exactly. No, I agree. There is this one scene, I read this, and I even noticed it in the movie when Bond notices the painting of the Duke of Ellington on an easel. Oh, yeah, yeah. And in the movie, if you're just watching the movie, he walks right by it. And then he does a double take and looks at it and then keeps walking. That particular painting was a stolen painting from London's National Gallery. Yeah, it was pretty famous. And in the movie, it was a stolen prop they used in the movie that got returned. They found it in like 65 or something like that.

But it had been stolen, I think, either at that time or before. So it was just kind of interesting that even he kind of does a double take. It's a fun little inside joke that they put into the movie. And I think they even changed the music a little bit. The music is also interesting in this movie because, and I would argue this movie and From Russia With Love, the music is off because it's not a traditional score. You mean it doesn't fit in the scene that it's in? It doesn't fit in the scene. Okay, I agree. For Dr. No, there really isn't any real music for the score of the movie. You'll have music playing in the background. And because it's Jamaica, it's a lot of like calypso and whatnot. Steel drum.

And the only score you really get is the James Bond theme song, which would play kind of at random moments where you're like... Yeah, it seemed like kind of out of place. Doesn't really fit right here, but okay. Well, that's because, too, I don't... John Barry said, too, that he didn't really feel like he had any sort of creative control from the score standpoint until Goldfinger. Oh, yeah. Well, because this movie, he's not doing anything. He's just arranging it. Monty Norman is the composer for this movie. You get the opening of the movie, which there's nothing to it. It's not like what we know now when it comes to James Bond, this amazing song and images and all that. It's literally just an animated opening of dots with the James Bond theme song playing.

With the three guys that end up being like the three blind mice. Yeah. And that's the other thing. Then it switches from the James Bond theme to the three blind mice song. But in calypso. Yeah, like I said, they hadn't found... They really hadn't found what they were wanting to do all the way up to... Well, you asked me earlier, when I think of James Bond movies, what do I think of? And one of the main things is that opening shot of the gun barrel. And then you see Bond walking and then posing to shoot at the camera. And for the first three movies, it's not even him. It's not even Connery. I mean, it's the stunt guy. It's the stunt coordinator, Bob Simmons. And you can tell because it's really awkward.

He does this little hop. It doesn't make any sense to me. And of course, this is somebody and anybody watching or getting introduced to Bond. That's one of the most iconic things, I believe. Sure. That's been like sort of the mainstay of every film is that opening moment. I think, again, it's a product of its time. That was considered kind of a stunt that they were doing, I think, in post edit of the movie. So they just grab whoever, they grab Bob Simmons, the stunt guy. And they use it for three movies. And then Thunderballs, when you finally get Sean Connery doing it himself, which every Bond that does it, including Bob Simmons, has their own way of doing it. So it's really interesting to watch how that evolves with the evolution of it.

You can find like side by side of all of them on YouTube somewhere. I've done it before. Like you can watch the Bond intro of all of like the maturation of it. It's fun to watch if you're a Bond fan, especially if you've seen all the movies. For me personally, Bob Simmons is the worst. Because it's kind of an awkward walk in. And then he just kind of does a hop, jump, turn. And he's sort of off center. He's not even in the center of the scope. But that's not his fault. But I'm just saying, I mean, come on. That's whoever put the scope on the camera. That's them. Whoever shot it, they put a camera through the barrel of a gun. And that's how they shot. They saw they got that shot, which I think is really cool, actually.

But all they got to do is do, hey, can we just do this one more time? And we just need you to hit your mark. They didn't have that kind of money, Bob. They didn't have that kind of money. Just a piece of tape on the floor. Just hit the T or the X and turn and then shoot the gun towards the camera. Come on, Bob. Do those stunts. This movie opens up and there's no cold open like the other Bond movies. Right, there's no cold open. It just goes right into the not.

[29:48] J.J.: Great title sequence. But then we see Bond and he's playing Baccarat with a character that was meant to be an ongoing character, but only makes it to the second movie when they're like, you're out. They wanted to do this gag where she's just this constant girlfriend figure that is just always annoyed that he has to leave to go on a mission. Which they tried to play in the second one. But yeah, Sylvia Trench, the character, is in the first two movies. And her role and Ursula Andress's role, dubbed. The entire role, dubbed. Well, Ursula Andress, her accent was just too heavy. So they had to, they dubbed her, which, you know, whatever. You don't notice.

[30:36] Olaf: No, you don't. You really don't. Even on the rewatch, I wouldn't have clocked that at all. What I did find interesting, though, with both Honey Rider and Sylvia Trench is that they both introduced themselves last name first.

[30:47] J.J.: Yes. Sylvia Trench actually introduces herself as Trench, Sylvia Trench, before Bond introduces himself. In fact, Bond was actually sort of making fun of her by introducing himself the same way. But it just became iconic at that point. Well, and even the shot of Connery cigarette sort of dangling out of his mouth is classic. And I forgot that Ian Fleming was such a chain smoker, and that's why Connery's Bond is smoking in just about every one of his movies.

[31:18] Olaf: Yeah, well, it was also the 60s, where it was also the commercials told you that cigarettes were good for you. The doctors in the commercials told you that cigarettes were good for you. These will make you stronger, more virile.

[31:33] J.J.: Yeah, exactly. There's not much else to say about Dr. No. Forgive me. I forget the guy's name who created the set of Dr. No's Lair. They were so impressed with what he did that it got him hired onto building the set for Dr. Strangelove, which meant he wasn't available for Goldfinger. But yeah, Dr. No, it started it all. It really builds the foundation. And thankfully, through word of mouth, it became a success because the studio and Ian Fleming weren't there to back it up. They weren't super excited, right. And when they approached Connery, they wanted him to do something like six movies in a four-year period or something like that. I mean, it was pretty stacked. They finally agreed on doing one movie a year, which has ended up what happened because this movie comes out in '62.

And the following year is '63. And From Russia With Love is, to me, one of the top five Bond movies. And even doing a little more of a deep dive, finding out that a lot of people attached to the franchise and to this movie, particularly, consider this movie to be one of their favorites, if not their favorite movie.

[32:56] Olaf: So From Russia With Love came out 1963. It is an entire eight minutes longer.

[33:03] J.J.: But so much better. Pacing-wise is still a little clunky. It's still slow. You still got Terrence Young as the director. He takes the next movie off, but it comes back for Thunderball. The pace is still a little slow, still a little clunky, but there's a lot more happening. So it's far more interesting.

[33:22] Olaf: Yes. And I think a lot of the things that we, like pop-culturally, that we associate with Bond start with this movie and then subsequently with the next movie as well.

[33:34] J.J.: Well, I mean, I wouldn't say start with this movie. I'd just say are added because Dr. No introduces to a lot. I think when you think about when they start referencing Bond and other things, Austin Powers, as far as influence, the things that they're pulling are Colonel Klebb, the Blofeld, the gadgets, the devices, all of these things started with it. Because you're not really looking at Dr. No and you're not pulling things that are influential in terms of like, oh, when you think of James Bond. You get the vodka martini, you get Bond, James Bond, you get the Bond girl, you get the Bond theme music. You get Moneypenny. We already got that part.

[34:16] Olaf: So what does Russia with Love introduce? It introduces Blofeld.

[34:21] J.J.: Sort of. They never call him that. They call him number one and you never see him. He is Blofeld. That's where we first get him. This is finally when we get Desmond Llewellyn as Q, but he's still technically the armorer major Boothroid. He is. They do mention Q Branch. They do mention Q Branch.

[34:43] Olaf: He's not Q and we don't see Q Branch until Goldfinger.

[34:47] J.J.: Goldfinger. But we do see some gadgets. We do see some gadgets. We get a briefcase that has some tear gas, a knife and some hidden 50 gold sovereigns. And the gun, the gun that sort of breaks down.

[35:01] Olaf: The rifle, the sniper rifle.

[35:03] J.J.: Which is a functional rifle. Like it was an actual weapon. It wasn't just for the movie. Same with how they work 50 gold sovereigns. Colonel Klebb uses a knife in her boot.

[35:14] Olaf: Yeah, and a shoe.

[35:15] J.J.: And that was actually a real weapon used by the KGB. Now there's some really cool things to find. No, no. There's some really cool things that we discover about a lot of things in this movie, which we're mentioning at the moment. Another couple of things that are introduced in this movie are we get at the end, we get Bond will return in and dot, dot, dot, whatever the subsequent.

[35:40] Olaf: Is Goldfinger.

[35:42] J.J.: Yeah. Goldfinger. Yeah. And then we also get sort of an opening sequence. It's still not quite there, but.

[35:49] Olaf: No.

[35:50] J.J.: We're getting an instrumental version of the Bond song, which is From Russia with Love. And then we're getting projections of the movie on bikini clad women.

[36:01] Olaf: Right. I can't remember the person who designed the sequence for Dr. No wasn't available. And so they went with this other option of showing the credits over the women, which ends up becoming a theme of the title sequences just because a long time.

[36:19] J.J.: Yeah. But you're right. The song itself is this instrumental. And I wonder if they do that because the song itself is slow. It's a slow moving song. It's a beautiful song.

[36:31] Olaf: Yeah. But we've got a lot of slow bond songs that I know.

[36:35] J.J.: But we didn't yet. But we hadn't yet. I know. We have wondering is but I'm just but I'm wondering is where they just not wanting to do that because they felt like it's slow and it's not going to work.

[36:45] Olaf: I don't know because you do we do end up hearing the song in the movie.

[36:49] J.J.: Yeah. At the end.

[36:50] Olaf: When we first. No, no, no, no, no. We hear when we first see James Bond, it's playing on the boat that's going right by Bond and Sylvia Trench. It's like being played on a radio.

[37:01] J.J.: Oh, you're right.

[37:01] Olaf: As the boat as the gondola is going by. We get it in its fullness at the end.

[37:06] J.J.: Yeah. In the credits at the end. And we also get the song played sort of through the movie.

[37:12] Olaf: Yeah, but just instrumental.

[37:14] J.J.: Yeah, just instrumental. But yeah, we do finally hear the song when we first see Bond. In this movie, we do have John Barry taking over as the composer.

[37:24] Olaf: But this is like you said before, he still felt handicapped by Monty Norman, because a lot of Monty Norman's riffs were still being used for this movie.

[37:35] J.J.: So he was still kind of having to stick to that. It's not till Goldfinger where he really gets to do what he wants. But yeah, there's a lot more music in it, which is great.

[37:47] Olaf: So there's more of a score to the movie.

[37:50] J.J.: Yes. And I don't want to jump ahead, but when I was watching this movie, there was one scene that just made me laugh, because the music was just so ridiculous. So just imagine it's the James Bond theme song, but it's not at the very beginning where it's like, it's the horns are playing, it's loud.

[38:19] Olaf: And yeah, do you know what's happening in that scene?

[38:23] J.J.: When the music's just blaring?

[38:25] Olaf: Aren't they just like run? They're not even running, are they? I can't even remember.

[38:29] J.J.: No, because I'm thinking of a different scene too. It's James Bond just walking around his hotel room.

[38:35] Olaf: Oh yeah, that's what it is.

[38:36] J.J.: Looking for bugs, and he's finding them. But the music is just so outrageously loud. And you're like, what? It's jarring.

[38:45] Olaf: It's like, okay, okay, calm down. We know it's James Bond.

[38:51] J.J.: There's that other piece of music, and it's playing over a car. Like the first movie, the music is good, but it's placed awkwardly within the movie.

[39:03] Olaf: Yeah, it is.

[39:03] J.J.: So it's jarring. You actually get a film score that fits and works by Goldfinger. That's when it's like, okay, now we have a film score, and it's playing under a lot of stuff. Where here, it's playing over everything, and you're just like, okay, calm down.

[39:34] Olaf: In this movie, we get two villains that I still think hold, in terms of all the movies that have come after this. These two, I think, are still very much at the top of, at least my list, if I were to rank villains and henchmen and whatnot. And that's Lotta Lenya as Colonel Klebb, and of course, Robert Shaw as Grant. These two are iconic.

[39:58] J.J.: Yeah.

[39:59] Olaf: There's so many other thugs in the Bond franchise that are based off of Robert Shaw's character.

[40:05] J.J.: Yeah, so many.

[40:07] Olaf: And nobody does it better, as the song would say. Because Robert Shaw doesn't say a lick of dialogue until like an hour and 20 minutes in. And when he finally does, they have this great scene on the train, he and Bond in the car, and the dinner, and then at the fight. The whole thing leads up to that. And I wanted more of Robert Shaw dialogue-wise, but I think he was solid and perfect for this movie. This movie got him Jaws. Spielberg saw him in this, and he ended up getting Jaws because of it.

[40:40] J.J.: Yeah.

[40:41] Olaf: And Ian Fleming was so won over by Sean Connery playing James Bond in this movie that he actually wrote in his next novels, James Bond had Scottish roots in his backstory. Because this book, it came out before... This is the fifth book. So this book came out before Dr. No. So they had to change some of the story for the movie, because in this movie, the plot is, well, they're going to go after Bond for killing Dr. No. And so they're going to set up this trap with the lector device and all this other stuff. But Dr. No, he'd come out in the book world, Dr. No was after this book. And from Russia with Love in the book, it actually ends on a cliffhanger where Colonel Klebb poisons James Bond with a knife boot. And then in Dr. No, the book, they got him medical attention just in time, and they saved him.

[41:33] J.J.: Yeah.

[41:34] Olaf: The cold opening of this movie is exciting because you see, or you think you see, Sean Connery.

[41:43] J.J.: It's actually Sean Connery.

[41:45] Olaf: But you can tell, if you watch, you can tell they've put a ton of makeup on him to make him look a little off, like his skin's not right.

[41:56] J.J.: Right.

[41:57] Olaf: And he wasn't quite... You're just like, what? And it turns out that he's just a live target for Robert Shaw's character to practice hunting.

[42:08] J.J.: Yeah.

[42:09] Olaf: And then they take a mask off and it's some random dude.

[42:12] J.J.: Somebody else.

[42:13] Olaf: But it's Sean Connery playing a fake Sean Connery.

[42:18] J.J.: Right. In that scene.

[42:19] Olaf: So you don't officially see James Bond until like 17 minutes into the movie.

[42:23] J.J.: Yeah, which is...

[42:23] Olaf: With Sylvia Trench.

[42:24] J.J.: Which is crazy to think. We get the gypsy camp.

[42:28] Olaf: Oh, that scene is so crazy to me.

[42:32] J.J.: There's a lot going on.

[42:34] Olaf: There's a lot happening in this. I had to rewind it. I'm like, what's happening here? There's two gypsies that are going to fight to the death.

[42:42] J.J.: Yeah.

[42:42] Olaf: Which they were both beauty queens that auditioned.

[42:47] J.J.: Oh, in real life, yes.

[42:48] Olaf: Were given the roles of the two fighting gypsy girls.

[42:51] J.J.: Right.

[42:51] Olaf: They auditioned for the lead, the Bond girl.

[42:55] J.J.: Yes.

[42:55] Olaf: Is that right?

[42:56] J.J.: Yeah.

[42:56] Olaf: Okay. But weirdly enough, the director hated her legs.

[43:10] J.J.: Yeah, I read that too.

[43:11] Olaf: That's so bizarre.

[43:12] J.J.: So they kept like using a body double when her legs were being shown.

[43:18] Olaf: Or yeah, or doing everything they could to not show her legs.

[43:20] J.J.: Yeah, I didn't understand that one, but...

[43:23] Olaf: This was an interesting one to deep dive into from a research standpoint, because yeah, of the time, it was the 60s. The whole casting of it, even with Dr. No, where they're just like looking at pictures and they've got this sort of sketchy breakdown of, we need this voluptuous woman that we don't have to pay a lot of money for. And so they see a picture of Ursula Andress in a wet t-shirt contest and they're like, get her. She clearly isn't going to care about the lack of money she's going to get paid. And then with this movie, she had to do the screen test in the scene where Bond finds her in bed, or even maybe it was the second scene. But she had to do the screen test with Bond's stand-in, with Sean Connery's stand-in, to see if that would be... She would get the role. And then subsequently for other Bond movies, that's how they would cast the Bond girl, is if like this sort of similar type of screen test.

[44:11] J.J.: Yeah, that whole scene became the screen test for other Bond movies.

[44:42] J.J.: Oh, yeah, Chris-

[44:43] Christoph Waltz: Christoph Waltz has now tied him for the record of playing the character twice.

[44:45] J.J.: Yeah.

[44:46] Olaf: But then it was also voiced by an uncredited Erik Polman, who was the voice of Blofeld.

[44:49] J.J.: Ah, Bond, in this particular movie also, cause they, through the course of this, you know, franchise, they'll always, like, bring back an actor to play a different character.

[44:57] Olaf: Ah, they've done that several times.

[44:59] J.J.: They do that in this movie with a character from Doctor No that Bond kills in Doctor No, like in the hotel room. They end up bringing that same actor back to play number five in the Spectre organization, the one who wins the chess match, who ends up getting stabbed by the knife of the boot at the end.

[45:15] Olaf: And the guy who does the stabbing, who ends up subsequently getting blown up in the boats, plays the Prime Minister in the Roger Moore series. He plays that recurring character in those series, so they always seem to find ways to bring back certain actors to play different roles, and we'll talk about that later as we jump into the Roger Moore franchise, cause it happens a few times there as well.

[45:37] J.J.: JFK had said that From Russia With Love is one of his favorite books, and that was the main motivator to make this the second movie because the production company felt this was great press. If the president is saying that this book is one of his favorites, we gotta make it into a movie. He ended up watching it. JFK ended up getting a chance to watch this movie the day he left.

[46:01] Olaf: Yeah, it was like the last movie he ever saw was this one. The last movie he ever saw, the last movie he ever watched was From Russia With Love, which I didn't know that until recently. I'd read that and I went, oh wow, that's wild.

[46:15] J.J.: I really do like this movie. It definitely feels more like a Bond film, cause it just fills in a lot of the gaps that Dr. No had left. When we come back and talk more about Bond and we get into Goldfinger, that's where it really takes off. That's when they add the rest of the elements that we know and love, and we're off to the races.

[46:37] Olaf: Because there have been so many Bond movies, there's been 25 of them up to this point, and the effects, the technology, the action, the whole thing has just come so far. This movie may be hard to get into, From Russia With Love, because of the limited tech and the limited resources, but when you look at it from strictly a spy, espionage storytelling movie, it really is, it does hold up. It really is a very good movie.

[47:01] J.J.: Yeah, they do their spy phrases and they're leaning into that side of it. Connery called this movie his personal favorite of the Bond movies. I think Daniel Craig also said the same thing, that he favored this movie. Albert Broccoli, it's one of his favorites. It's the favorite of so many people in the franchise and out of the franchise.

[47:25] Olaf: It was excellently done.

[47:27] J.J.: Yeah, it's not my favorite Connery, but it's my second favorite Connery. Robert Shaw had the best part because he doesn't have to talk until the end of the movie. He only has like 20 minutes of dialogue.

[47:43] Olaf: Not even 20 minutes, maybe 15 minutes.

[47:45] J.J.: But that makes everything he says, it's like what they didn't do with Dr. No as a villain, they gave to Robert Shaw because he's in more of From Russia With Love than Dr. No is in Dr. No. But as far as screen time, dialogue, interaction, it's basically the same, but what he does with the time he's given or what he's given to do is so great.

[48:09] Olaf: I mean, it is a lot of just lurking in the background, but he does a great job. The first thing I thought of when we see him, I thought of Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.

[48:19] J.J.: And then I end up reading later that Rutger Hauer actually based it off of this, which makes total sense because you watch Blade Runner and you're like, this dude looks like a thinner sort of leaner version of Robert Shaw. Robert Shaw didn't even want to do this originally.

[48:37] Olaf: He read the script and he's like, this is going to be trash. I think his wife convinced him to do it.

[48:41] J.J.: His wife convinced him. I think he's still arguably one of the best villains slash henchmen. He's kind of both in this movie. They're kind of tag teaming with Cleb.

[48:53] Olaf: I wanted more of Col. Cleb. She's in like four scenes or something. She's not even in that much of the movie.

[49:01] J.J.: I can't remember because I'm re-watching all these movies as are you, so I haven't gotten to Honor Majesty Secret Service, so it's hard to remember. But there is a character that very much looks like Col. Cleb, so I don't know if it's the same character.

[49:17] Olaf: I don't imagine it would be the same character, right? She just looks and behaves just like her.

[49:23] J.J.: Another fun fact is Lotte Lenya, who plays Col. Cleb, was married to the composer and author of Three Penny Opera and the song Mack the Knife.

[49:35] Olaf: She gets a shout out in Mack the Knife from Louis Armstrong because she was walking around. So when you listen to the song, he says Lotte Lenya in the song, which I think is kind of fun.

[49:49] J.J.: This movie made twice as much money as Dr. No. It made like $79 million worldwide, like $500 million, which is an insane amount of money. Connery became a superstar and solidified himself as James Bond.

[50:05] Olaf: We've talked a little bit about this because yes, the running sort of joke or observation is that Connery was already thinning out and losing his hair.

[50:15] J.J.: He still has his hair in this one.

[50:17] Olaf: He does.

[50:18] J.J.: I've read two different things, one that he did have it, but I don't think they started patching it in until Goldfinger. They were using playing with camera angles to hide his hair that was thinning.

[50:30] Olaf: But he doesn't get a hair piece until Goldfinger.

[50:32] J.J.: If you had to introduce somebody to Bond, would you introduce him with either one of these movies or would you introduce him to something else and then bring them into one of these later?

[50:42] Olaf: I'd start with something else just because the pacing is still slow with this one and it's so slow with Dr. No. So I'd give them something a little bit more interesting so that they're like, okay cool, I'm into this. I don't want to potentially turn them off if they've never seen a Bond movie before. Start with something else and then say, hey, if you want to watch these, here you go.

[51:06] J.J.: I guess that's the luxury we had whenever we got introduced to it because we got introduced to it with Roger Moore to a certain degree. At least those were the movies that were coming out when we were that age.

[51:20] Olaf: I can't tell you for sure, but I'm pretty sure Sean Connery was still the first Bond movie.

[51:24] J.J.: I'm trying to think. It might have been a mixed bag for me. I think I might have caught Roger Moore and then went back and caught Connery because they were being put on TV, a Connery Bond on TV.

[51:36] Olaf: But when you're thinking about the evolution of technology, it wasn't so separated where you're like, this looks cheesy compared to the one I'm watching now as opposed to today or even Brosnan's Bonds.

[51:50] J.J.: If you're watching a Brosnan Bond and then you go to Connery, you're like...

[51:54] Olaf: That depends on which Brosnan you show them.

[51:56] J.J.: Something that we did not mention before, the meta score for this movie is 83 and the Rotten Tomatoes is 97.

[52:06] Olaf: That's good.

[52:08] J.J.: That's a solid rating, and I can't disagree with that. I think this movie for me is better the more I see it, the older I get, I suppose the appreciation for what they're trying to do and what they end up doing. I think as a kid I couldn't appreciate it until I thought it was slow.

[52:28] Olaf: But you know, those were the times that these movies were made.

[52:30] J.J.: But what's interesting is Doctor No is also slow, and even watching it now, it's still slow. It's still like, it's not like, oh, I was too young to appreciate Doctor No. It just was their first movie with, like you said, a million dollar budget or something like that. They're figuring everything out.

[52:50] Olaf: From Russia with Love, they have a little bit more money, and it shows. The payoff is huge because by the time this movie comes out, they're already in production, they're already shooting Goldfinger when this movie comes out.

[53:06] J.J.: That's like you said, we've been sprinkling Goldfinger in here. It's almost like, don't worry everybody, we are going to talk about it in the next episode.

[53:16] Olaf: Yeah, so I think that brings us to a close on our first outing with Bond with Doctor No and From Russia with Love.

[53:24] J.J.: But don't worry, James Bond will return in our conversation of Goldfinger and Thunderball, so stay tuned for that.

[53:32] Olaf: And like the movies that followed up these movies, the pacing of what we talk about will also be better because the content of what we'll be talking about will be better as well.

[53:42] J.J.: Yeah, so let us know what you think of Doctor No and From Russia with Love. Watch along with us. We're starting from the beginning, and so should you.

[53:54] Olaf: The first few are, they're a little long in the tooth, but that's okay because you're getting a lot of history and how movies were made back then, and you get to see the character that you know evolve into what you know, which is pretty cool.

[54:10] J.J.: So be sure to follow us on Instagram.

[54:12] Olaf: And as always, to be continued.

[54:14] J.J.: Follow us on Instagram and TikTok, and find us on YouTube at BackToTheMovieTheater with J.J. and Olaf.