62 replies to this topic

[Tybre]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

Spoiler

Harry Potter

Spoiler

Not actually about spies, I believe

Spoiler

He didn't specify "spy film"

[Syndicate]

Is there a crackbrain in this planet who will finance this absolute rubbish? I have to admitt though that his PR is really talented, don't you think?

I have to say if there is, he or she is a FOR BRAIN.

[MrDraco]

i dont really see this happening.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

I'd be interested in this because:
1. I am always curious about most everything Tarantino does
2. I'm curious to see what he'd do with the spy genre
3. More competition may up Eon's game in competing with this
4. Should the end result fail, maybe he'll shut up about not getting his chance to do Casino Royale. Probably not.

I agree with this, especially about upping EON's game.
I don't know anything about these Deighton books or the characters within them, but the only harm I could possibly foresee to James Bond is if Tarantino should cast Henry Cavill for this project. Suitable 007 actors are thin on the ground and I think Cavill is one of the few that could be a successor to Craig (when the time comes). His involvement in a different spy series could possibly rob the Bond films of a good potential 007. Aside from that hopefully very remote possibility, Tarantino can film what he likes.

[DAN LIGHTER]

It does strike me that the Journalist is just adding a bit of pepper to a otherwise underwhelming story. Keeping Bond in the press never did EON any harm though. If Tarantino every gets round to it, I am sure it will be a good film.

[Sark2.0]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

Spoiler

Harry Potter

Spoiler

Not actually about spies, I believe

Spoiler

He didn't specify "spy film"

It was obvious to everyone except you that he was talking about something in the same genre. Not just something that makes as much money.

[dinovelvet]

May I ask why this is front page news on a James Bond forum, as it really doesn't have anything to do with 007, does it?

And once again, this is most likely rubbish, because a. Quentin regularly announces he wants to do all kinds of movies, none of which ever happen (e.g. a Nightmare on Elm street movie, a western, the Vega brothers, er, Casino Royale, etc etc) and b. he is not a member of the Director's guild of America, which precludes any major studio from working with him. I'm assuming one of the major studios owns the rights for this.

[Tybre]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

Spoiler

Harry Potter

Spoiler

Not actually about spies, I believe

Spoiler

He didn't specify "spy film"

It was obvious to everyone except you that he was talking about something in the same genre. Not just something that makes as much money.

Ah relax, it's all a joke. Quick little laugh at some of the shouting that was going on a few weeks ago.

[jaguar007]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

No remember, XXX made the Bond movies obsolete. At least thats what Vin Diesel said xxx was going to do.

[Mr.Stamper]

What is wrong with this guy? He needs to get his head tested.

[Jackanaples]

I can see this happening actually. I'd never have placed Tarantino as a Deighton fan but I've linked them in my head for a while now. Both men came into their respective fields as young men and shook them up.

I don't know what Tarantino would have planned with his adaptation but perhaps it's a sign of his wanting to try some new things. That's cool.

Too bad he wasn't able to make his version of CASINO ROYALE in addition to the one we got in 2006. It sounded very cool, and he would probably have gotten more out of Pierce Brosnan than anyone could have imagined-- including me, who was not overly keen with Brosnan as Bond.

I'm sure that Tarantino will eventually make a spy movie of some sort. It's one of the only genre's he hasn't worked in yet. MATT HELM won't happen with him because a major studio is putting that one together already.

Another quasi spy series he'd be good for are THE DESTROYER novels by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir? Though he might already feel like he's sort of covered that territory with KILL BILL.

Anyway, I love Tarantino's movies and look forward to anything he does. He's incredibly talented and his knowledge of film rivals Scorsese's. Hmmm. Now THAT'S a meeting and conversation I'd like to see.

[marktmurphy]

Not read it; I'd like to see him do spy though.

[Craig Arthur]

Which part did you like best? Which scenes, do you think, cried 'Film me, Tarantino!!!' when you first read them?

My personal favourite was always Dicky Cruyer forgetting the classified stuff in the Xerox machine and I bet QT will make it a hell of a scene on screen...
[/quote]

I first read Deighton's Samson series before Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs so I did not think of him as the ideal Game, Set and Match director. Like you I did not think much of the Samson books at first. I grew up on the narrative style of Fleming and more action orientated thriller writers. I did not think much of le Carre or Deighton. (Though I now see them - along with Charles Cumming and Eric Ambler - as superior to other spy thriller writers). Then I was in Sydney in 1989 and the TV series was on Australian TV and I thought it was brilliant. I immediately went out and bought Berlin Game and eventually read all the Samson series. They are not action packed like say Yesterday's Spy or Spy Story but they have such brilliant style and atmosphere. The characterisation is superb and builds slow burning suspense. Especially on re-reading, once you know the true events from Hook, Line and Sinker, the pleasure is in watching events unfold and sharing Bernard Samson's ignorance and gradual discovery of the truth (I am trying to avoid spoilers here). In this repect, Berlin Game is essentially the same story as Reservoir Dogs. The theme is subterfuge. A theme that also crops up in all QT's movies. A recurring visual motif in most early Tarantino films is bare walls and the Berlin Wall is of course always present in the lives of Bernard Samson and the other characters in the trilogy. The Wall represents defection. Certain characters defect or feign defection while Werner Volkmann makes money by trading across the frontier. But also there is a metaphorical wall both in Bernard Samson's world and often in QT's characters as well. Often in spy novels and spy movies the East is presented as a mirror image of the West. (Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain" for instance where it is on accident East Germany looks like the rural America where it is filmed.) This same effect is felt in sources as diverse as TV's Mission: Impossible - where the fictional Eastern European countries feel like schizoid versions of America - to the fictional Zembla in Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire". In these examples the film makers or authors are using these mirror worlds the way directors - Hitchcock again for example - use mirrors onscreen. As metaphors for introspection and the spilt self. When Leamus goes east in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold he is on a voyage of introspection and self-discovery. But although Samson is on a journey toward the truth about the mole in London in Berlin Game he is effectively up against a brick wall. He discovers the mole is somebody dear to him, as does Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino uses blank walls because they look good but also as the opposite of the way other direcotrs use mirrors. He is very much concerned with the surface of things, a sense that the true under-nature of things something terrible and dangerous. In his films we see this reflected in the way that innocuous dialogue is pregnant with danger and menace. He can make the most trivial discussion seem electric and dangerous and this to me is the power of Deighton's Samson series. We, the reader, are also only seeing the surface appearance of things - the insurmountable wall. Apart from in the third person narrative of Spy Sinker we have only have Samson's limited viewpoint to guide us. The slow-burning tension lies in gradually uncovering the truth. A truth that even by the end of London Match we still don't know.

I tend not to remember incidents from the Samson books but rather the splendid atmosphere and the language. For instance, the wasp buzzing in Werner's Berlin apartment and the blue sky outside the windows in London Match, or the blackness outside the windows of the London HQ conference-room a chapter later is etched into my subconscious. As are the conversations in cars that frame the opening of all three novels. And that is something QT can do well too - conversations in cars. The opening chapter of Berlin Game is crying out for him to direct it: the images of the Berlin Wall with Samson and Werner talking inside the car. I have a heard time not hearing Samuel Jackson's voice when they talk about how long they have been sitting there. And of course the reference to the fact that the spy thriller the GI is reading was not written when they first began their careers is almost a cue for QT to work in a discussion on 1960s and 1970s spy thrillers. If I open any chapter of the trilogy at random I can picture a cinematic technique from various QT movies that would adapt well to this material. In particular I think of the scene in the suburban house at the opening of Kill Bill Volume one, the discussion in the kitchen before the fight. The violence and menace evoked in that scene adapt well to the non-violent intrigue and menace that are essential to the suspense of these Samson books.

[Craig Arthur]

The opening of my last post (immediately above):

Which part did you like best? Which scenes, do you think, cried 'Film me, Tarantino!!!' when you first read them?
My personal favourite was always Dicky Cruyer forgetting the classified stuff in the Xerox machine and I bet QT will make it a hell of a scene on screen...

[/quote] -

This part should read "quote Trident". I made a technical goof. Sorry Trident, if you are reading this.

Edited by Craig Arthur, 16 August 2009 - 11:24 AM.

[sthgilyadgnivileht]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

No remember, XXX made the Bond movies obsolete. At least thats what Vin Diesel said xxx was going to do.

Really? If that's what XXX was going to do I didn't realise that it actually happened

[Aris007]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

No remember, XXX made the Bond movies obsolete. At least thats what Vin Diesel said xxx was going to do.

Really? If that's what XXX was going to do I didn't realise that it actually happened

If the movie had been pure XXX, it would have gone closer to Bond than it did!

[Trident]

The opening of my last post (immediately above):

Which part did you like best? Which scenes, do you think, cried 'Film me, Tarantino!!!' when you first read them?
My personal favourite was always Dicky Cruyer forgetting the classified stuff in the Xerox machine and I bet QT will make it a hell of a scene on screen...


This part should read "quote Trident". I made a technical goof. Sorry Trident, if you are reading this.

Never mind, mixed that up myself, like, a hundred times.

I first read Deighton's Samson series before Tarantino made Reservoir Dogs so I did not think of him as the ideal Game, Set and Match director. Like you I did not think much of the Samson books at first. I grew up on the narrative style of Fleming and more action orientated thriller writers. I did not think much of le Carre or Deighton. (Though I now see them - along with Charles Cumming and Eric Ambler - as superior to other spy thriller writers). Then I was in Sydney in 1989 and the TV series was on Australian TV and I thought it was brilliant. I immediately went out and bought Berlin Game and eventually read all the Samson series. They are not action packed like say Yesterday's Spy or Spy Story but they have such brilliant style and atmosphere.

I don't think the Samsons are bad books, far from. While I'd personally rate them at the lower end of the Deigtons I'd still consider them head and shoulders above most Gardners. In fact I think they are the kind of books Gardner might have wanted to write, rather than the continuations which didn't give him the opportunity for this particular kind of spy novel.

It would seem that many CBners aren't as familiar with the Samson series we two are, so for all of those who haven't got a clue and want to find out here's the Wikipedia page on the Samson books. BE WARNED, THERE'LL BE SPOILERS!


So if you plan to read the Samsons unspoilt and make up your own minds, perhaps better stay away until you've read them.

To get back on topic I'll use spoiler tags from here:

Spoiler

The characterisation is superb and builds slow burning suspense. Especially on re-reading, once you know the true events from Hook, Line and Sinker, the pleasure is in watching events unfold and sharing Bernard Samson's ignorance and gradual discovery of the truth (I am trying to avoid spoilers here). In this repect, Berlin Game is essentially the same story as Reservoir Dogs. The theme is subterfuge. A theme that also crops up in all QT's movies. A recurring visual motif in most early Tarantino films is bare walls and the Berlin Wall is of course always present in the lives of Bernard Samson and the other characters in the trilogy. The Wall represents defection. Certain characters defect or feign defection while Werner Volkmann makes money by trading across the frontier. But also there is a metaphorical wall both in Bernard Samson's world and often in QT's characters as well. Often in spy novels and spy movies the East is presented as a mirror image of the West. (Hitchcock's "Torn Curtain" for instance where it is on accident East Germany looks like the rural America where it is filmed.) This same effect is felt in sources as diverse as TV's Mission: Impossible - where the fictional Eastern European countries feel like schizoid versions of America - to the fictional Zembla in Vladimir Nabokov's "Pale Fire". In these examples the film makers or authors are using these mirror worlds the way directors - Hitchcock again for example - use mirrors onscreen. As metaphors for introspection and the spilt self. When Leamus goes east in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold he is on a voyage of introspection and self-discovery. But although Samson is on a journey toward the truth about the mole in London in Berlin Game he is effectively up against a brick wall. He discovers the mole is somebody dear to him, as does Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino uses blank walls because they look good but also as the opposite of the way other direcotrs use mirrors. He is very much concerned with the surface of things, a sense that the true under-nature of things something terrible and dangerous. In his films we see this reflected in the way that innocuous dialogue is pregnant with danger and menace. He can make the most trivial discussion seem electric and dangerous and this to me is the power of Deighton's Samson series. We, the reader, are also only seeing the surface appearance of things - the insurmountable wall. Apart from in the third person narrative of Spy Sinker we have only have Samson's limited viewpoint to guide us. The slow-burning tension lies in gradually uncovering the truth. A truth that even by the end of London Match we still don't know.

I tend not to remember incidents from the Samson books but rather the splendid atmosphere and the language. For instance, the wasp buzzing in Werner's Berlin apartment and the blue sky outside the windows in London Match, or the blackness outside the windows of the London HQ conference-room a chapter later is etched into my subconscious. As are the conversations in cars that frame the opening of all three novels. And that is something QT can do well too - conversations in cars. The opening chapter of Berlin Game is crying out for him to direct it: the images of the Berlin Wall with Samson and Werner talking inside the car. I have a heard time not hearing Samuel Jackson's voice when they talk about how long they have been sitting there. And of course the reference to the fact that the spy thriller the GI is reading was not written when they first began their careers is almost a cue for QT to work in a discussion on 1960s and 1970s spy thrillers. If I open any chapter of the trilogy at random I can picture a cinematic technique from various QT movies that would adapt well to this material. In particular I think of the scene in the suburban house at the opening of Kill Bill Volume one, the discussion in the kitchen before the fight. The violence and menace evoked in that scene adapt well to the non-violent intrigue and menace that are essential to the suspense of these Samson books.

This is all good and well and I agree that Tarantino not only is able to handle suspense and translate it into visual images. He definitely can do so. But for the Tarantino film (it being a genre of its own by now) to work Tarantino must dissolve the suspense into action. This action can be raw and unkempt or highly stylized to the point of absurdity. But it must always find its resolution in visual action.

And here I think Samson offers only very little for Tarantino to work with.

Basically, the Samsons play the same plot 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' does. Leamas was betrayed and used to act just as his handlers wanted him to act. Deighton went several steps further with his series, making Samson a tragic figure in many more ways. Although Samson survives the doubleplay, his life is really so wrecked he might as well be dead.

While Samson at the beginning is afraid his wife may be cheating on him with Bret Rensslaer, she was actually played purposefully into the Russians hands. To cover the operation he's not just told nothing but also faces a dead end in his career once his wife defected to the Russians. So in fact he's considered expendable twice: he's not given the penetration operation himself, his wife being the better agen for this plot, but he's also considered so expendable that his superiors feel they can use the supposedly inferior Cruyer, making Samson his errand boy instead of giving him the post of section chief for Germany.

And when Samson finally uncovers the truth about Fiona he's still not given all the facts, for the plan to safely exfiltrate Fiona depends on killing her twin. In the end Fiona is back from her mission just as Samson has barely manged to patch up his wrecked family.

All of this truly is immensely intriguing stuff, a drama of epic scale. But with next to nothing for Tarantino to get his teeth into IMHO. It's 'Where's-that-missing-file?/Who's-the-bloody-traitor?' stuff, much like the Smiley books, and this can of course be filmed. But the medium to do this would really be tv, IMO.

I like most of Trantino's work very much myself and I'm happy for you if you think this would work well if Tarantino just got his hands on it. But I daresay the result would be disappointing.

But I'd also be happy to be proved wrong!

[dee-bee-five]

Now on the CBn main page...

Quentin Tarantino considers spy series to rival James Bond

Director wants to adapt Len Deighton spy trilogy

I've heard a rumour that Quentin claims he gave Len Deighton the idea for the books...

[Conlazmoodalbrocra]

Now on the CBn main page...

Quentin Tarantino considers spy series to rival James Bond

Director wants to adapt Len Deighton spy trilogy

I've heard a rumour that Quentin claims he gave Len Deighton the idea for the books...

Idea? I heard he wrote them!

[DaveBond21]

Might be interesting, but he wont get round to it, just like he hasn't got round to most of his 264 projects from the last twenty years.

Yes, he may make one but would he have had other ideas by the time comes to make the second in the trilogy?

[Judo chop]

On the bright side, if this goes through, we can look forward to an Elvis spin-off from EON.

[Deighton Dossier]

Well, let's wait and see. But I do think Game, Set and Match needs re-filming. The 1988 TV adaptation starring Ian Holm - rarely available on bootleg DVD - was eminently watchable because it gave the story and the characters over the three books time to develop, so that what you ended up with was an immense piece of visual story telling, rather than an action packed, intense two hours of movie fun and suspense. Even then, director Ken Grieve had to cut significant parts of the story and narrative from the final screenplay to get it to thirteen hours. So, that would be the major obstacle for QT - can he squeeze a Deighton-sized quart into a Bond-sized pint pot?

It would really only work if he was to make an adaptation rather than slavishly follow Deighton's plot lines. And you can imagine already what he'd do with the shoot-out scene at the end of London Match when...well, basically, you can imagine the blood flying everywhere across the abandoned U-Bahn.

Certainly, I'd take issue with posters who've questions Game, Set and Match as worthy of top spot in Deighton's canon. I think Bernard Samson stands on the shoulder of 'Harry Palmer' as a gritty, believable sardonic spy with a domestic hinterland and all the troubles and neuroses that brings to an already tough job - field agent. Realism and the essential pettiness and mundanity - punctuated by fierce periods of excitement - that were the agents lot in the Cold War is rendered exquisitely in this series of novels. It's Deighton's magnum opus, I think, as he gives the character much more scope for development across the arc of the story.

Finally, I do think there needs to be a modern thriller based around Cold-War Berlin. The city now is unrecognisable from what it was, and modern cinematic audiences have missed out on a 'Funeral in Berlin' of the modern era.

I'll not hold my breath, however!

[Trident]

Certainly, I'd take issue with posters who've questions Game, Set and Match as worthy of top spot in Deighton's canon. I think Bernard Samson stands on the shoulder of 'Harry Palmer' as a gritty, believable sardonic spy with a domestic hinterland and all the troubles and neuroses that brings to an already tough job - field agent. Realism and the essential pettiness and mundanity - punctuated by fierce periods of excitement - that were the agents lot in the Cold War is rendered exquisitely in this series of novels. It's Deighton's magnum opus, I think, as he gives the character much more scope for development across the arc of the story.

It's certainly his magnum opus, it just fails to grip me with the force I feel it should. Deighton aimed for epic scope and truly has achieved that goal. By extending the story backwards to the beginning of the century he makes the Samson books not just a testament of the cold war but also of the 20th century.

Still he takes awfully long to do so and in my view not all of this time, not all of those pages are spent wisely on character development. On the whole I would have preferred just one trilogy or perhaps even just two books. Apart from the real plot there's also a tremendous amount of private life, private relationships, that makes up a good deal of every book. Yet this cannot simply be discounted as 'filler' for throughout the immensely complex tale it isn't clear until the last page which of these parts are truly private and which may at some point become crucial for the understanding of the whole storyline. I've read 'Winter' somewhere between 'Berlin Game' and 'London Match' and realizing how many of the characters returned in the Samson series I took notes of the names and their respective relationships to keep track on them.

Perhaps I expected too much, a kind major revelation at the end of the series that just didn't come. Not because Deighton couldn't think of any, but because in real life there are hardly any big revelations at all.

Spoiler

Even that one big, BIG, surprise, the fact that Fiona hasn't really defected but was working for London all along, doesn't come as a major surprise for Samson, who may or may not have known for some time the truth.

Deighton stated in 'Spy Sinker' that all books of the series can be read individually and in any order, so he may have had a similar idea to Durrell's 'Alexandria Quartet'. Yet, strange as it may seem, the whole series to me feels like less than the parts it's made of.

[Gustav Graves]

Now on the CBn main page...

Quentin Tarantino considers spy series to rival James Bond

Director wants to adapt Len Deighton spy trilogy

I think it's a great idea! I'd love to see his take on this franchise. It's a pity for the Bond franchise now, has Bond gets eaten by Bourne, Batman and Deighton. The next James Bond film MUST be an instant smasher.

[RazorBlade]

I do like QT and would love to see a spy film or two from him. I agree with Dr. Shatterhand, that Matt Helm is the ideal franchise for QT to make.

[Safari Suit]

It's a pity for the Bond franchise now, has Bond gets eaten by Bourne, Batman and Deighton. The next James Bond film MUST be an instant smasher.

I imagine Bond will cease to exist, given that there happened to be some films in the recent past which were better than Quantum of Solace. Why I even hear there will be some good non-Bond films in the future! Why don't they just give up?

[DR76]

Oh God! Isn't ever Tarantino ever going to get over this Bond obssession of his?

What am I saying? Of course he won't. He'll beat this to a bloody pulp using every last breath in his body. Oh God!

I think it's a great idea! I'd love to see his take on this franchise. It's a pity for the Bond franchise now, has Bond gets eaten by Bourne, Batman and Deighton. The next James Bond film MUST be an instant smasher.

Huh?

Edited by DR76, 18 August 2009 - 07:23 PM.

[Stephen Spotswood]

Oh for christ sakes.
People have tried for years to rival James Bond, and apart from the Bourne movies, nothing has came close.

Spoiler

Harry Potter

More qt's style:

[AgentBentley]

I'm excited about this. I'm going to see Basterds this Saturday, and I've been thinking about which genre Tarantino could tackle next after the war movie.

I just hope his Deighton trilogy:
- will be sufficiently different from Bond and Bourne so that it gives us something new;
- will not be too conservative and cold-blooded (not that Tarantino has ever been conservative)
- but not be over-the-top farcical either.

I'm hoping for a serious but not too traditional thriller, a watchable movie with some Tarantino elements but not the full overdose.

[Cody]

During his recent talk with Charlie Rose, Tarantino said, "never say never", but he doesn't currently have any intention of doing any novel adaptations.