55 replies to this topic

[Call Billy Bob]

One of my favorite things to ponder regarding Bond films is how different DAF would have been if Lazenby was in the role of 007. Not only would we have a more serious film, it might have had the potential to cement Lazenby as one of the best Bonds. Granted this is pure speculation, but I can't help but "fantasy write" the plot for a Lazenby DAF:

 

- The overall tone is more akin to LTK, Bond shuns MI6 in favor of hunting down Blofeld regardless of consequences.

- The opening is similar, but less humorous. Bond travels the globe in a montage looking for any SPECTRE remnants to try and get a fix on Ernst.

- When he does find Blofeld, the fight is an epic confrontation. Ideally, it leaves Blofeld "dead" and Bond in grave condition (cue PTS).

- Plot plays out similarly, with slight changes. Examples: combine Wint and Kidd into one henchman, change the locale from Las Vegas to another resort city with a casino presence (Monaco perhaps), etc.

- Instead of a space lazer, Blofeld uses smuggled diamonds to buy government officials in an attempt to "legitimize" himself and essentially run his own city or country.

- A final showdown is the climax of the film, with a definitive Blofeld death. Wint/Kidd henchman is the surprise before credits roll.

 

Man, I want to see this movie now...

[AMC Hornet]

How times change. Used to be people pondered over Connery making OHMSS!

 

Lazenby's only crime was not being Connery - a crime even Laurence Olivier would have been guilty of.

 

I would have liked to see George return in FYEO (fat chance!). Imagine him at Tracy's gravesite, and saying 'goodbye, Countess' to Lisl?

[HoneyDiamond]

I think George Lazenby is very tongue in cheek so I don't think the tone in DAF would have changed that much. 

 

But I agree it is fun to fantasize about "what ifs" in the Bond universe.  I think the reverse fantasy of having Connery in OHMSS is also fun to think about. 

 

I have become a big fan of Lazenby so it might have been fun to see him in DAF.  Can you imagine him in Live and Let Die?

[Call Billy Bob]

 

I would have liked to see George return in FYEO (fat chance!). Imagine him at Tracy's gravesite, and saying 'goodbye, Countess' to Lisl?

 

AMC, this just gave me chills.

[AMC Hornet]

Good or bad?

[Call Billy Bob]

Good! Some emotional continuity - and imagining George's performance in those scenes... I like the idea.

[Dustin]

I seem to remember Lazenby was offered a contract of seven - further? - films, which would have seen him in the role until OP. I actually wonder whether he would have been able to successfully depict the various shifts in tone the series has gone through during the 70s and 80s. Moore did rather well in that department.

[Call Billy Bob]

That he did. Which begs the question: had Lazenby stayed on, would the series' tone have shifted as much as it did at all?

[AMC Hornet]

More rapid-fire fight editing, fewer winking pigeons.

[freemo]

I think ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE is all the more powerful and impactful for being a one-shot statement. In fact, I wish they'd never referenced Tracy again.

[sharpshooter]

Indeed. And with that final frame, George Lazenby's Bond is forever left cradling his dead wife on the side of the road. That's a powerful thought. 

[Guy Haines]

I think DAF, or whichever story followed Lazenby's OHMSS would have differed a bit from the one we know had he stayed as Bond. I'm not sure in what way though. I think DAF shifted gear in part to remind the audience that Sean Connery was back as Bond - and that things had moved on from OHMSS. I have a souvenir programme for DAF I bought when I first went to see it decades ago. It's interesting. It covers the making of DAF, Bond's new and previous women, his latest and past opponents and there's an article about Ian Fleming himself. But there's hardly a mention of George Lazenby and OHMSS. It's as if the film never happened. And there's an element of that throughout DAF itself. No mention of Tracy, but Bond gets his revenge at the start, or so we're led to believe, but no air of triumph about it. And by the time Bond meets Blofeld again in The Whyte House the conversation between them is almost civilised and gentlemanly. No bloodlust on Bond's part, and no taunting from Blofeld about Bond's wife. With the space-laser plot, Blofeld's taste in Mao/Nehru suits and the very first scene after the gunbarrel as Bond roughs up an oriental man, it's as if the film had taken up where YOLT had left off rather than OHMSS.

 

But lets assume Lazenby had stayed on. There would be continuity and the lust for revenge would be more credible coming from the actor in the previous movie. But would we have had a harder edged Bond? It's hard to know. There might have been a conflict between resolving Bond's revenge against Blofeld satisfactorily and wanting to retain an audience expecting a "return to type" Bond film of the Connery era. As it is, in the real world the film makers squared this, in my view, by hardly mentioning the events of the previous film at all.

[Bunny Deana]

For me, James Bond will always be the one and only George Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service - 1969). When I was "Bunny Deana" at the London Playboy Club, in the 60s and 70s, I was privileged to have been crowned Playboy Bunny of The Year by George, and I shall treasure the memory forever. The very precious (to me at least) photo of George performing the crowning, immaculately dressed in his beautiful Bond-style suit, is a proud part of my unique, personal Bunny Deana's Playboy Photo Album online.

Happy 75th for yesterday, George! XX

 

[Dustin]

At the time of Lazenby's break-up with Eon - and apparently over some years after that - Lazenby voiced a general discontent with the figure of Bond and the tough action hero in general. Many of his musings were undoubtedly fuelled by a mix of substances, self-delusional arrogance and simple lack of experience. Yet I wonder if Lazenby wouldn't even have supported that turn to the sillier fun of, say, LALD or the crocodile-sub of OP. I doubt he'd have been the right man for these slapstick moments - Moore simply was perfect in that regard - but DAF with Lazenby may not have turned out so different in the end.

That said I think DAF is in fact rather dark and splendidly black-humoured, it's merely let down by a couple of elements that turn it into a Little Rascals episode for grown-ups. There is the gripping lift fight, the moment Bond is trapped in the coffin, various deaths Wint and Kidd deal out, even the penthouse penetration and subsequent confrontation with Blofeld's double - now we know why he didn't recognise Bond in OHMSS, that was an early doppelgänger atop Piz Gloria - all that is very amusing and suspensefully entertaining. The downsides are a cheap-looking Las Vegas that gives the feeling the film was shot in a Woolworth store, the boring oil rig fight, the lacklustre special effects, the lack of a satisfying final confrontation between Bond and Blofeld. I'm not sure any of that would have been so massively different with Lazenby on board, even if Tracy may have been referenced with him (and I'm not sure she would have; based on what I have read the idea of Bond marrying for real wasn't a favourite with the public back then).

Edited by Dustin, 06 September 2014 - 11:03 AM.

[DLibrasnow]

I don't think we can assume that a George Lazenby DAF would have been more serious. The serious nature of OHMSS was more due to Peter Hunt's role as a director and the desire to be faithful to the Fleming novel.

 

In the first turn as James Bond the actors have very little influence over the tone of the movies because they haven't proven themselves in the roles yet.

 

Take for example Roger Moore. It's no secret that in his first two movies they were trying to make Roger Moore like Sean Connery (slapping Andrea around etc)  and even in "The Spy Who Loved Me: Roger dispatched Sandor rather ruthlessly. My point is that as an unproven James Bond Lazenby had little influence on the tone of OHMSS

[Walecs]

I don't think we can assume that a George Lazenby DAF would have been more serious. The serious nature of OHMSS was more due to Peter Hunt's role as a director and the desire to be faithful to the Fleming novel.

 

You're right, but do not forget that the original plan was to have OHMSS ending as the start of DAF, but it was then used for OHMSS after Lazenby decided not to stay.
So who knows what might have happened. Maybe Peter Hunt would have even directed DAF too, and would have tried to make it a more serious film

[Trip_Aces]

Definitely one of those "what if?" scenarios that makes you sort of want to rewrite history, for sure! I think if Lazenby had stayed on as Bond for DAF, the tone would've been radically different; I imagined the tone taking cues from The French Connection or any of the other hard-boiled detective thrillers of the early 70s. The narrative might've been more dour (possibly) and less glitzy than Connery's DAF film...

I think it could've worked.

[rubixcub]

The problem, I think, is that the tone of DAF wouldn't have changed at all.  A new screenwriter was hired in the form of Tom Mankiewicz, and Guy Hamilton returned to direct, and IMO they set the tone for the next three films.  DAF is the silliest of these with Wint & Kidd's puns, Bambi & Thumper, some of Tiffany Case's more vulgar and/or dumb moments, the "Acme Pollution Inspection" line, and the like.  It had its moments but a lot of things didn't work.  Imagining Lazenby trying to work from the same script, I think the series would've ended up in serious trouble.  In other words, I think Connery was the main element that held a rather tacky and sometimes embarrassing movie together, and Lazenby wouldn't have survived it.

 

Dave

[Trip_Aces]

Good points, rubixcub. I think it was just wishful thinking on my part, ha. Still, I think going either way DAF would've still ended up being the sum of its parts, with or without Lazenby; it's just such an odd film (to put it mildly). I *do* think Wint & Kidd make an offbeat killer duo, and John Barry's score for the film happens to be one of my only two standout things about DAF.

[RedsBaron]

I agree that Lazenby was not suited to play a James Bond saddled with the silliness as the character was written in DAF, nor could he have played a Roger Moore type Bond effectively.

 I do wish Lazenby could have returned in DAF to play the same type of Bond that he did in OHMSS. As it turned out, DAF was a mess of a film, ranking with YOLT, TMWTGG, AVTAK, and DAD at the bottom of the Bond pile.

[Guy Haines]

I agree with rubixcube. In the real world rather than the "what if", the Bond film makers wanted to restore some semblance of "Bond mania" and not only hired Sean Connery again but brought back the director of the film that triggered it, Guy Hamilton. (And bear in mind that the producers were so interested in a repeat of the success of GF that they considered hiring Gert Frobe to once more play the villain, as Goldfinger's "smarter twin brother"!) 

 

DAF did well, very well, but unfortunately the world had moved on beyond the mid 1960s. What did continue was the change of tone of the 1970s Bond films. It probably wouldn't have mattered if Connery, Lazenby, Moore or whoever had played Bond - with a few modifications to suit the actor concerned, DAF, LALD and TMWTGG would most likely turned out pretty much as they did. 

[Odd Jobbies]

Perhaps the most unfortunate twists of fate in the whole Bond canon is that we don't have the same actor portraying Bon in OHMSS and the follow up (which should've been YOLT, but the revenge was reassigned to DAF).

 

Of course the revenge aspect is barely addressed in the pre-titles and forgotten thereafter. But maybe that was done because of the change actor - Eon deciding that the audience wouldn't care about the revenge since the actor had changed. Maybe they were right!

 

Personally i'd like o see the Blofeld trilogy modernised and done properly, like CR. The originals are now such old classics that i think the masses would accept and embrace a retelling.

[Turn]

The whole revenge scenario as OHMSS follow-up seems to come solely from wishful-thinking modern fans. I wonder if ANYBODY, even hardcore Bond fans who were also fans of the books, were clamoring for DAF to follow the novel of YOLT in the early '70s? We'll likely never know as back then it was all about being OHMSS and Lazenby being labeled "failures" and all about Connery's return. If there were fan sites and message boards, there may have been a vocal following, but, again, we'll never know.

 

I know Peter Hunt claimed the beginning of DAF was originally to include Tracy's murder, but considering he didn't write the scripts and Broccoli and Saltzman made the calls back then, who's to say where it would have gone from there.

[Dustin]

Just my thoughts, Turn. It might have been different if Lazenby AND Hunt had come back for DAF. But back in the day people apparently were far more excited that Connery returned than about continuity of one kind or another. And Eon had already pre-hashed the concept of Blofeld killing Bond's 'wife' in YOLT, without much effect on the latter half of that film. Evidently they were prepared to write Tracy off just as fast and with the same amount of consideration.

[Call Billy Bob]

I tend to agree with you, Dustin. I find it frustrating, though, whenever I watch the two films back to back during a marathon.

[AMC Hornet]

I don't. I just accept the change in tone, style and pacing as a product of changing times, attitudes and requirements.

 

My elder brother was an avid Bond fan before I started and he gave up on the series around this time. Without Connery there was no Bond as far as he was concerned, so there's an indication of what EON was up against at the time.

 

As DAF was my first, and there were already six films of varying styles preceding it, and Roger Moore was already being touted for LALD, it was easy for me to accept the shifts in style (same goes for the Addams Family, to which I'd had no exposure until the second film in 1993).

[Jim]

Neither film's getting itself unmade any time soon.

 

Wouldn't have minded OHMSS having some of Diamonds are Forever's cheeky sleaze; it feels terribly neuter and stand-offish. That might be the performances, though.

[Guy Haines]

A bit puzzled about the mention above of Bond's "wife" being bumped off in YOLT. It was Tanaka's agent Aki who dies of poisoning - Kissy Suzuki whom Bond "marries" survives to the end of the film.

 

Regarding putting Tracy's death at the start of DAF, or whichever film followed OHMSS, with Peter Hunt directing and George Lazenby returning - there would have been a continuity problem in casting, in that Ilse Steppat, who played Irma Bunt, sadly died shortly after the release of OHMSS. For DAF, the part would have to be re-cast, unless it was intended that Fraulein Bunt play no part in the next film, and therefore no part in Tracy's demise. (That said, re-casting's been done before, Blofeld being a prime example.)

[Dustin]

A bit puzzled about the mention above of Bond's "wife" being bumped off in YOLT. It was Tanaka's agent Aki who dies of poisoning - Kissy Suzuki whom Bond "marries" survives to the end of the film.

Oh my... I haven't seen it in ages, could have sworn it was the cover-wife. Sorry...

[FlemingBond]

we'll never know, but then they changed everything with DAF, the director, writer, set designer. The film looked and felt completely different.

It would be interesting to see if Lazenby returned, but what if Connery came back and they had kept the serious tone? with him in the role they could have been assured box office while keeping it serious. That would have been great too.

ah well....