11 replies to this topic

[PrinceKamalKhan]

https://hmssweblog.w...pher-wood-dies/

 

RIP to the screenwriter and novelization author for the first two Bond films I ever saw in the cinema. My dad took me to a double feature of TSWLM and MR as a child and I'll always cherish the 2 Bond films he scripted.

 

 

Sir Roger Moore posted this tweet at the news of Mr. Wood's passing:

 

"How sad to hear Bond screenwriter Christopher Wood has died. He wrote two of my best."

 

https://twitter.com/...289879451082752

 

RIP, Mr. Wood.
 

[Grard Bond]

Christopher Wood wrote my two favorite non-Fleming Bond novels, he did a great job and was for me the best writer who got the Fleming style where other writers couldn't.

Especially his Moonraker novel I read many, many times.

 

Thank you.

 

R.I.P. Christopher Wood.

[billy007]

RIP

 

    SWLM was most likely the best Sir Roger movie.

     The novelization is a very good continuation story. Mr Wood made a valid attempt to forward Fleming's style(Especially for the late 1970's).

      He did an excellent job demonstrating 007's attention to detail both in personal style and mission preparation.

 

 

 

[Mendalla007]

Like PrinceKhamalKhan, my first time seeing Bond on a big screen was The Spy Who Loved Me (I had seen Goldfinger on TV before that, though). I also read Wood's novelization at some point during my prime Bond reading days and quite liked it. TSWLM remains probably my favorite Moore film and probably my favorite of the big, over the top Bonds. Moonraker I was less impressed with, to be honest, but I should give it another pass sometime.

 

His contributions to the Bond canon helped make me a fan and gave me a lot of enjoyment in the day. RIP.

[trevanian]

Christopher Wood wrote my two favorite non-Fleming Bond novels, he did a great job and was for me the best writer who got the Fleming style where other writers couldn't.

Especially his Moonraker novel I read many, many times.

 

Thank you.

 

R.I.P. Christopher Wood.

Two of my three favorite non-Flemings, as I give top nod to Pearson's bio of 007, but there are some terrific passages in Wood's novelizations. The part where he is looking at the girl in the zero-gee room on the station (a set built but not seen in the film) is just wonderful, and the part where Bond suits up and goes outside conveys a feeling that I think a lot of people would have in that situation. His memoir about the films was okay, too, though the Moore era and SPY/MR are far removed from my favorites.

[SAWfinger]

Very sad news about screenwriter Christopher Wood, a thoroughly nice guy. There is an obit of him at: http://www.007.info/

[Guy Haines]

Very sad news. His novels of the two films he wrote for managed to convey two of the most fantastical stories of the 1970s Bond era in Fleming-like style - if the late Ian Fleming had been around to cast Bond in an outer space adventure, it would probably have been written in the way the late Mr Wood did it.

RIP.

[glidrose]

Very sad news. One of the most underrated writers in the Bond book & film cult, if not *the* most underrated. I also loved his two Bond novelizations. Shame he didn't get a chance to write an original Bond novel. One of my Bond-related hopes is that he would be brought out of retirement to pen a Bond short story. Alas...
 
Brits of a certain age here on these boards are probably only too familiar with his "Confessions" books and movies. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. But he also wrote four fine "serious" literary novels. "Make it Happen to Me" (which had to be pulped for legal reasons, tho' copies still exist), "Terrible Hard, Says Alice", "Sincere Male Seeks Love and Someone to Wash His Underpants" and his austere, melancholy Hollywood novel "California, Here I Am" (his own favorite). All four books are semi-autobiographical.
 
After doing Bond, Wood turned to action-adventure novels. "Fire Mountain" ("North to Rabaul"), Dead Centre, Taiwan, A Dove Against Death and Kago, Different from, but almost as good as his Bonds.
 
Here are some great quotes from his books:

 

• An Oxford man walks down the street and thinks that he owns it, a Cambridge man walks down the street and doesn't give a toss who owns it.
  • Wood, Christopher. James Bond, The Spy I Loved. Twenty First Century Publishers Ltd, 2006, pg. 58-59.

• It was always the same in my experience, the greatest libertines make the most suspicious fathers, and show me a mother who would part her legs for a dray horse and you will find her daughter has a chastity belt before a christening mug. Why they deny their progeny what they find so pleasant themselves I will never conceive.
  • Wood, Christopher. John Adam - Samurai. Sphere paperbacks, 1972 edition (originally published by Arlington books in 1971). pg. 31-32 (chapter 2).

• The crowd pressed round the dais and the band broke into the national anthem. 'Broke into' was the wrong expression. They ransacked it. Stone closed his eyes and clenched his fists to stop himself laughing as the wailing brass savaged his eardrums.
  • Wood, Christopher. Make It Happen To Me. London: Constable. 1969 (chapter 8)

• One day, thought Stone, there will be a war and when you get to the front you will last five minutes before someone puts a bullet in your back.
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 1)

• "The moneylender and his wife," he said indifferently, jerking his head over his shoulder. "It is always the same in any revolution. The moneylenders are always the first to go."
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 6)

• Every day, thought Stone, is a revelation. At night it seems that you will never see it again, that it has been lost in the darkness. But with the sun, you hold your breath and look, and there it is. Just as it was; as you could never quite remember it.
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 8)

• I'd like to impregnate her with a warm smile, listen to my children call her "mummy", be a comfort to her in her old age.
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 9)

• Everyone was mad only some of them didn't know it.
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 11)

• "The trouble is, Richard, that you always think you can alter people. You say, Oh, yes, he's a little weak and I can't stand the way he hums to himself when he's shaving but when we live together I'll change that, we'll grow together, but you never do. All that happens is that the little things are symptomatic of bigger things and they become more and more important."
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 13)

• I really am interested but I find it hard to make the proper helpful noises. I'm terrible inadequate when it comes to sympathy. I feel things but I can't express them in words.
  • Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 13)

• "I wasn't voted the most serious girl in my class. I was voted the girl most likely to suceed - or maybe it was 'suck seed'. I was never certain."
  • Wood, Christopher. "California, Here I Am". London: Twenty First Century Publishers. 2004.

 

You can read chapter one of his novel "Sincere Male" online at his publisher's website. I guarantee you will piss yourselves laughing.

 

http://www.twentyfir...chapter_one.pdf
 
Go on, give it a go. Show some respect for the dead.
 
On a more sombre, tho' occasionally hilarious note, here is the the first chapter of "California, Here I Am"
 
http://www.twentyfir...aChapterone.pdf
 
Wood was chummy with William ("Solo") Boyd. Boyd had kind words for two of Wood's novels. Of "Terrible Hard, Says Alice", Boyd said it as one of the few convincing examples of accounts of war alongside Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms and Joseph Heller's Catch-22." Of "California, Here I Am", Boyd wrote, "A very funny, shrewd and horribly accurate novel about the movie business, Hollywood-style, written with sustained brio and mordant intelligence."
 
RIP.

[Dustin]

Thank you for going to the trouble of sharing these gems, glidrose; an impressive compilation that promises some fine treasures waiting to be discovered by fans around here.

[glidrose]

Turns out Wood died on May 9th in his apartment in France.

 

http://www.steynonli...-british-end-up

 

http://www.hollywood...mes-bond-833142

 

http://www.telegraph...r-obituary.html

 

William Boyd, who wrote the Bond sequel Solo, described Wood as “one of the most quick-witted, wittiest men I have ever met – up there with Gore Vidal”.

 

I knew that CW had three children - two boys and a girl. I didn't know that one of his sons has died of cancer not long ago.

[thecasinoroyale]

Sad news indeed - a great author.

[New Digs]

RIP. I absolutely love Wood's story on the Moonraker commentary when he recounts Prince Phillip's reaction during the Premiere in the Odeon Leicester Square upon seeing Corrinne go into the woods and to her death!