Upstream - Episode 6: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Ah, George Lazenby.... How briefly we knew thee.... How fleeting our time together was, yet all the sweeter it felt.  It is a true shame your perfect self did not get a better film. Also I truly do w...ish you could act.   Join us as we embark upon the Hauntological journey of the Bond That Never Was.   Find us at https://twitter.com/KillJamesBond Bonus episodes at https://patreon.com/killjamesbond  

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 For you listeners, it's probably been a few weeks, but for us, the news is still very fresh. It's only been a few days. The death of a public figure is a time for us all to reflect and just to be a little bit somber. We like to have fun on Kill James Bond, but the death of someone who has really, who has touched all of our lives in a major way
Starting point is 00:00:21 and who was certainly not an uncontroversial figure, but whose loss really is going to be felt and really the world is never going to be the same without him so uh just at the top of the episode i wanted to take a moment um to uh send an official kill james bond condolences to the family of the rapper dmx uh gone but still in our hearts uh but the good news is that prince philip is also fucking dead lol fucking dead oh he's fucking gone pal and he's in hell as well like we can just say that on the record my mind's in fucking hell yeah he's in hell because he denied islam no i mean they're genuinely right i actually heard that he had converted moments before he died. He said he finally saw the light of Islam. Repented
Starting point is 00:01:10 and said the full shahada. Mashallah. We're beginning Ramadan with... What shall I do, Andrei? Muhammadur Rasulullah. Dev, that counts. That counts. We're taking it. No, wait, fuck!
Starting point is 00:01:26 To begin with, I was born without earlobes Ah. Yeah. Welcome back to season two, the first episode of season two of Kill James Bond. We're done with that Connery shit. Very short season. Bam. Gone.
Starting point is 00:01:58 Never to return, as far as I'm aware. Haven't checked. New year, new me, new Bond, new two-thirds muslim podcast where we're all set to do on her majesty's secret service and get a bond that's gonna take us right through the 1970s we future-proofed james finally we're in that fucking george lads on tour era of james bond we have the lads and be himself let's fucking go i'm so ready for the several films this guy does so sean connery wanted a million dollars he well first of all he didn't
Starting point is 00:02:35 want to play bond anymore because paparazzi but then to try and induce him to do this they were like okay how much how much money do you want to do another bond movie he was like fuck it a million quid a million dollars you're not gonna pay me that and he was right they didn't they got another guy and the guy called they they got they got an australian model called george lazenby or possibly lazenby we're not going to be arguing about how that's pronounced, because I don't know. Um, and like, they screen tested him. And in the course of screen testing him, two incidents happened. First of all, um, he broke a guy's nose, because he didn't know how to pull a punch? So they got him into screen tests. Oh, he went to the Harold Jakarta School of Screen Acting? Yeah, no, he imposed a method acting on that guy, because they got him to screen-test,
Starting point is 00:03:30 and they were like, okay, stage-punch this henchman, and he's like, I don't know what stage-punching is, I'm gonna assume you mean punch this man as hard as I physically can in the nose. Well, I'm on the stage so I'm gonna punch this motherfucker any punch that I do is a stage punch and so he broke this guy's nose and instead of being like holy shit you just broke that guy's nose they're like that's incredible that's exactly the kind of aggression that we want they're like holy shit that's a stage punch and you broke his nose I can't imagine what a real one would be like instead of taking this
Starting point is 00:04:05 as an obvious sign that george lazenby cannot act they're like no fuck this guy's incredible so they they try to get him back and george lazenby does something that no other actor has ever done in bond he's like he gets the callback and they're like, hey, we really were interested in you playing James Bond. And he says, yeah, I'm kind of busy right now, to be honest. I'm filming a thing in Paris. He was not
Starting point is 00:04:36 in Paris. He was not filming a thing. He's like nagging them. He's like, yeah, I've seen this script on Five Other Girls Tonight. It's really good. Yeah, and so they're so keen on his first screen test that they're like, yeah, I've seen this script on Five Other Girls Tonight. It's really good. Yeah. And so they're so keen on his first screen test that they're like, all right, fuck it. How much are you being paid? He says 500 quid a day. Again, he was not being paid for anything.
Starting point is 00:04:57 And they say, fine, we will pay you your fee for whatever it is that you're currently recording. We'll pay you 500 quid a day to come back and screen test for us again. Just getting paid to audition. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. Yeah. That is the kind of big dick energy that George Lazenby carries into the Bond movies. Dudes rock.
Starting point is 00:05:24 And he got it. He got the role. Yeah. He it. He got the role. Yeah. He did. He got the role. He had no acting experience. Nope. The last big role that he had before this, he had done ads for a chocolate company, Fries.
Starting point is 00:05:40 He, you know, modeling, things like that. He had no acting experience before this film and he had none afterwards as well oh fuck we'll get to that he straight up yeah he's like what what he did was he got a haircut to look like sean connery's bond he bought a rolex and stole one of sean connery's suits that sean connery had ordered but didn't collect. Got a Rolex, got a haircut, walked into a meeting with the producers. Broke a guy's nose. And the director, Peter Hunt, and said, he just like bluffed his way through it, claimed he had wide acting credits.
Starting point is 00:06:16 He secured a screen test and then he was like, yo, I have fucking lied 100% of that. He said that to the director and the director was like, buddy, you just fucking walked in here and fooled two of the most ruthless bastards in the business. His words, you are an actor. So, just a king. Start to finish. That's cool. That's cool as hell.
Starting point is 00:06:37 Nowadays, you can't do that kind of thing anymore. But anyway, let's start. Have you tried breaking anybody's nose in the case of... How many noses have you broken during your screen time? I have actually breaking anybody's nose in on the case yeah how many noses have you broken during your screen time i have actually broken somebody's nose once but it was not in the course of acting fair enough fair enough zoom i misspent youth we start with q and m being like well whenever any time bond is not on screen people are always asking where's bond and we don't know where's he got to we've asked
Starting point is 00:07:06 everywhere he's not in amsterdam he's not in cairo he's just kind of fucked off for a bit for reasons that remain unexplained and where he actually is is in portugal just driving around because and in the course of doing that a woman in a much faster car overtakes him and then tries to kill herself by walking into the sea. And our first shot of this new Bond is he lights up a cigarette in the car, he watches her for a bit, and when he realizes that she's going to try and kill herself, he does something heroic, which is not very Connery-like at all. He's like, ah, shit, I've got to go and do something. And so he fucking runs across this beach to try and pick her up and carry her out of the water. And he does. He saves her life. Yeah, he does.
Starting point is 00:08:01 And for his pains, he gets to try to drop the, you know, the thing. Good morning. My name's Bond. James Bond. Miss, um... Don't move, Mr. Bond. And three big guys try and kill him. I mean, I like this a lot.
Starting point is 00:08:21 I don't know where they came from. No, they just followed him there. No, it's a good opening. I'm going to say this a few times, but they're very much trying to make this a departure from Connery's Bond. And they do that in his opening thing is, A, he's getting overtaken by a woman, which is cuck shit. So Connery never would have done that.
Starting point is 00:08:42 And then he tries to save a woman's life, which is also cuck shit. He smiles. He smiles when he says says hello, my name's James Bond he's like genuinely nice to Diana Rigg's character this will become a problem later yes all of the strongest parts of this movie are just where they kind of take it on faith
Starting point is 00:09:02 that this guy can do the Bond thing all of the weakest parts and we see this pretty much from the next moment on, because he fights off these guys. Fine, easy, whatever. And then we get the credit sequence. The editing is appalling. It's all in fast motion, a bunch of weird cuts. But the credit sequence for this, right,
Starting point is 00:09:19 is a series of clips from previous James Bond movies. That's like, yo, you remember this shit? You remember Goldfinger? You remember, uh, Doctor No? You remember Blofeld? And it's like, yeah, okay, fine, but like, if you just had the confidence, like, because he kind of pulls it off in the first scene. All you need to do is show him in the tuxedo, play the Bond theme once, and you're just like, yeah, okay, that's James fucking Bond. He's a new guy. But instead, every so often, they get a bit scared doing that, and they have to tell you how cool he is.
Starting point is 00:09:56 And it just falls apart. Two things I want to bring up here. One of them is the thing I wanted to bring up beforehand, but now just saying that, there's something else. All the previous posters for the connery bond movies all said some shit like sean connery is james bond in yeah thunderball or whatever big sean connery face on the post they weren't as confident about their main guy so it just said james bond is back in on her majesty's secret Service. Awwwww. Like, they didn't believe in him! Uncredited is James Bond. Some of them didn't show his face! Some of the posters did not show George Lazenby's face!
Starting point is 00:10:31 Oh, come off it! I mean, genuinely, that's so fucking sad, right? It's like the Duff calendar with the sticker over Moe's face. But he does get to put his stamp on it, right, because in his first scene he breaks the fourth wall and he says, This never happened to the other fella. And it's a fucking good line, right? It's nice. We'll talk about the sort of varying levels of camp of the James Bond franchise,
Starting point is 00:11:03 but for me this is pitched at about the right sort of level, where it's sort of slightly breaking the fourth wall, and it's like, yeah, no, it's a new guy, and you know that, and we know that you know that, but, like, we're prepared to not take ourselves deadly seriously. And I really appreciate that. Yeah. The fight scene that you correctly surmised is atrociously edited they're all pretty bad
Starting point is 00:11:29 because they're cutting on impact, they're cutting with no shot consistency, Bond will be on the ground and then it cuts to him just being stood up punching a guy and he falls over every time he punches someone, I don't know what was going on there, if he just had a bad balance that day but every single time he lands a punch he follows through with his entire body
Starting point is 00:11:50 and i was like fuck maybe that maybe this was a choice i like i was in the the bargaining phase here um i was like maybe this was a fucking choice maybe they were trying to paint it as like a frantic fight um yeah maybe they meant to do that no they didn't read it they did not mean to do that what it is is it's the case of like we know sean connery had a light attack a heavy attack and a grapple uh they've they've moved his sort of move set onto a new character model and it doesn't quite work as well yeah Yeah, the rigging's a little bit off, he's... So Bond, still essentially just like, on vacation, working for himself at this point, drives to the nearest casino and decides to sort of make a spectacle of himself.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And we get our other big sort of first first point of difference that this is not uh the bond that we previously know because he's wearing a tuxedo with a like a ruffled shirt too it looks good it's like 60s baby all of lazenby's fits in this movie are atrocious they really he looks terrible there's an action sequence later on where he just spends half of it fully walking around in a cardigan it's uh the the there are some there are some nice touches in this scene that i'd like to bring up as as for the acting um one is that when when somebody in the casino brings him a drink he looks at them and he smiles and like he's saying thank you to them silently it's a nice little moment like Like again, this is a nicer Bond.
Starting point is 00:13:25 And also I want to talk about George Lazenby's walk. And I'm going to flag this up three times. This is number one. He's a model. When he walks into the casino, he's a model. When he walks into the casino, he's relaxed. He's got a bit of a swagger in his hip. He's like, he's moving around a bit.
Starting point is 00:13:39 He's got more of a sway than Connery does. And it's a really, really strong character choice because it shows us that this Bond is a little bit less tense he's a little bit more chill he's a little bit more fun it was a little i made a note of it it's a nice little character choice i really enjoyed it it's gonna come back there was also uh there was also a fun editing thing that i pulled up in the he's shown to his room and then he looks out the window and looks at like the pool in the in the back of the hotel whatever that bit's called um and like he just looks at the pool and then like the word casino flashes up in massive letters in the pool and then it transitions to the casino
Starting point is 00:14:18 and i don't know yeah they do a couple of editing things like this, and it's interesting. The director of this, Peter Hunt, he had edited a bunch of the previous Bond movies, and every time he had done that, he had been bugging the leads to be like, Hey, can I direct one of these? Can I direct one of these? Can I? I can do this better than you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they finally gave him one, and it was the only latest in the only latest and he never did another one so this is not it's weird you bring that up because the editing in this is fucking dog shit like it's really why they needed peter hunt as editor as soon as he starts directing the scene to scene and even the line to line editing is awful like
Starting point is 00:15:01 all right so bond is gambling bond is playingander Fair, which is his game, as we know. That's our boy. And another sort of commonality, going back to Sylvia Trench in the first scene of Doctor No, they went back to that well, for how do we introduce a Bond, is, we find a woman who is as big of a gambler as him. The woman from the beach, Tracy, puts, she essentially, she goes all in and then loses,
Starting point is 00:15:34 which you never see Bond doing, which is funny, but like it sets up the gambling thing. She loses everything and then says to the guy, oh yeah, I can't pay this. I don't have any money. The groupies just are like, sorry, what? She's like, what?
Starting point is 00:15:49 I'm sorry, this is... I'm fucking fresh out. Yeah, she's like, no, I just did that because I'm the damn Joker. And I think that's funny. She's self-destructive. That's her character trait. That is her character trait in the singular. Correct. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:00 And so the problem, once again, with George Lazenby as Bond comes back, which is that the script is written for Connery, but somebody keeps creeping into the scenes and turning the big sociopath switch on the back of his head to off. He does some chivalry and some genuine altruism. He's like, oh yeah, I'll pay for her, he like tosses the the sort of 20 000 francs worth of um uh plaques on the table um and he does it in a way that saves her face as well as oh yes oh madam yes we were going to be partners tonight i'm sorry i forgot like he doesn't do it the way connery would have done just be like oh yeah like bitch i'll pay your bills like yeah he does it in a way that like makes her you know saves her reputation which is the connery vibe here would be i have now helped you out sex please right and because the script is still heading in that
Starting point is 00:16:51 direction uh he sort of he buys her a drink a bottle of champagne and like they they go to her hotel room but it feels much different at this point transactional as a cornery interaction you get us and half of it is because uh diana rigg is a genuinely extremely talented actor gonna be and so she's she's carrying this whole movie every scene she's in but genuinely she manages to to to sell that as these are two people who are if nothing else intrigued by each other there's something else in that scene that i i didn't realize was missing until it it came up is just like diegetic dialogue like there are people in that scene that aren't bond or the person he's directly interacting with who just have lines like other people at the table start commenting on shit
Starting point is 00:17:43 and it's like oh i hadn't realized that before now just this was a world populated by like three guys and a hundred extras it's like a staged play when no one who isn't the main character speaks i mean it kind of has been but like he when he bails out this bails out this no no no okay first one is the the pot gets a bit too rich for one guy and he turns to Bond and just goes, like, too rich for my blood. And it's like, oh, someone's talking to me. Someone's actually saying things to our character. Yeah, because Laysenby plays a guy
Starting point is 00:18:12 who you would, like, want to talk to. He's, like, much more of a chit. Yeah. As a Bond. And then when he bails out Tracy, the lass at the table, this elderly lass, is just like, oh, wish someone would do that for me. It was just nice. I really enjoyed that.
Starting point is 00:18:29 But unfortunately, we do have to get through another awfully edited fight scene, because Bond goes to her room, and the classic archetype of the slightly bigger guy who tries to beat the shit out of him shows up making a returning appearance from you only live twice when the guy in the office tried to do this um they have a fight in the hotel room they wreck the hotel room and then this was a this was a weird bit right on the way out on the way out he steals some he has some caviar sent up earlier for like sex reasons.
Starting point is 00:19:08 And on the way out, he grabs some of that caviar and he helps himself. And he says, oh, Royal Beluga, north of the Caspian. Which is like, that's a great shitty bond line of like pretending you know something really specific about a luxury good. Like, ah, sushi at the perfect temperature, 39.4 degrees. But what it is, it's a pastiche of two different Connery moments. It's that and there's a bit in Thunderball, which is genuinely so good it might have been ad-libbed, where he's breaking into Count Lippy's room and having found nothing, he steals a grape off of a bunch on a table on his way out.
Starting point is 00:19:51 And so it just kind of falls a bit flat here. And it's interesting, because I think Lazenby's stronger when he's not being forced to try and fill Connery's shoes that way. The other reason that falls flat as a moment is that George Lazenby doesn't say that line. It's clearly like overdubbed over footage of him walking down the corridor afterwards and his mouth isn't moving in any way. So it just. Yeah. And also he's still chewing.
Starting point is 00:20:19 He's not like. It's a lot of weird ADR. But speaking of the walk, this is walk moment. Number two, he's just had the fight scene. It's like a big high energy fight. But as he walks out of the room,
Starting point is 00:20:32 he's doing that stroll. The ladies and be stroll again. He's very relaxed again, a very strong character choice. It tells us this bond is in control. I made another little note of it here. Lovely bit of acting there. It's good at walking.
Starting point is 00:20:44 It's a good walker and like this is the thing people like blazing because it gets a lot of stick for being a bad actor and sure fine whatever but like one thing i think we've identified is that playing james bond really really does not require you to act. And the ways in which... Hold that thought. Well, we've had to set up a reminder. I can't imagine there'll be a payoff. Anyway. All right, I'll circle back to that.
Starting point is 00:21:18 Yeah, I will. Because first, we have to... Yeah, we got to talk about the soul moment that gets this movie the M on the scum scale. Yeah. The clearly just written for Connery. Yeah. Hey, I found a guy in your hotel room and he tried to kill me. What's up with that?
Starting point is 00:21:40 Is the upshot of that conversation. But the way that it happens is. I'm going to stop playing playing games who was that man in your room you're hurting me i thought that was the idea tonight now who was he now oh i hate that shit so hard it's an interesting line right because there's so fucking much to dig into here. The way in which Lazenby is, like, portrayed as sexual is- it's kind of stronger than Connery's, in some ways? Like, I've written down here that he's like a fucking Tumblr daddy Dom in most of this movie. Fuck, goddammit.
Starting point is 00:22:22 Yeah. He's in great shape, he's better than connery was like very great bod weird face connery's connery's whole thing was like brutality but only brutality whereas with lazenby there is something more seductive to it which maybe makes this scene more pernicious i don't know it's interesting um yeah but he does have an incredible line shortly after this which connery would never say flick the big sociopath switch off again because they're they have sex right and it's actually less coercive than that uh than that drop would suggest like it's really it really It really abruptly changes into sex scene. And then she says that... No, it's that they're about to have sex.
Starting point is 00:23:11 Oh, you're right. She's like, I want to have sex with you. And he has this amazing line where he says, you don't owe me a thing. I think you're in some sort of trouble. Would you like to talk about it? And I was like, did James bond just say that yeah we got woke james bond gonna do a land acknowledgement yeah wife guy bond yeah yeah it's it's very emotionally
Starting point is 00:23:33 confused because it's suddenly we've shifted gears from like violence a second ago but but it's still like an excellent line and lazenby delivers it nicely. Yeah. And I mean, well, they do, in fact, have sex and Lazenby wakes up alone to find that she has taken his gun, which is very funny, but she has left him the two plaques of like 20,000 francs to pay off her debt to him,
Starting point is 00:24:04 even though he has told her you really you don't have to do that and now also to me there's two things here because first of all i have i have a timer that we still haven't decided on a name for but yeah an acceptable name anyway uh pc baby pussy clock um first appearance to first time a a femme fatale has sex with James Bond we talk about this because it's important to see how these Bonds treat women but also because it's just fun to have a number isn't it
Starting point is 00:24:33 Tracy's is 16 minutes and 10 seconds that's a long time for Bond it's a long time in Bond years one of the longest, I think. If it might not even be the longest. I think it might even be the longest.
Starting point is 00:24:49 I think two minutes and 40 is still the record. People aren't going to come close to that for some time. I think. God, I hope. 233. 233. Who was that? That was Jill Masterson. Jill Masterson Jill Masterson
Starting point is 00:25:05 and this is it's interesting because that's a departure again from Connery it's this is a bond who isn't treating this sex as transactional in any way and that's proven because her debt is also just paid off with the actual money
Starting point is 00:25:22 which proves that she isn't seeing the sex as the way she was paying it off maybe that was just something she also wanted to do yeah it's a nice little character there's there's a lot in this movie about bond as like an object of female desire which was never in which never really in connery i don't think yeah, maybe women wanted to fuck him, but that was never important. The important thing about the sexuality in Connery movies is that he takes what he wants, right? And it's far more obvious in this movie because every woman is looking at him like, holy shit, have you seen this guy?
Starting point is 00:26:04 Have you seen the way he walks? Right. Bond in the Connery films, all of which are over, he's never pursued by a woman, but this Bond is. There's a bit, genuinely, and this is also about standing, cousin to walking, where
Starting point is 00:26:20 before they're about to have sex, that's a normal thing to say, shut up. No, no, no, it's fine, it's good. Before they're about to have sex, that's a normal thing to say, shut up. No, no, no, it's fine, it's good. Before they're about to have sex, right, before he even gives her this line about, you know, wondering if she's in trouble and if she needs help, he stands against the doorframe in the room where she is, and he's, I wrote this down, he's standing like a Bond girl! He's got his hips out to one side, and he's like, leaning on the doorframe, and it's like, no, that's the way that someone stands in these movies when Bond is about to fuck them!
Starting point is 00:26:56 You can't have him stand like that, that's interesting to me. Hell yeah. I love Lazenby so much in this movie, honestly. Abso-fucking-lutely. to me hell yeah i love lazenby so much in this movie honestly that's a fucking lily which is a weird thing to say when we're talking about a scene that started with him just like hitting a woman but yeah that's i don't know the script takes turns in the morning bond is immediately kidnapped yeah classic classic classic bond moment yeah Two guys come up to him in the lobby, and one of them is like,
Starting point is 00:27:28 you have dropped something. He's like, have I? And he points behind him, and the second guy is just holding a gun behind a newspaper in a crowded lobby. It's very much just a, hello, sir. Would you like to come this way towards your kidnapping piece? In a kidnapping.
Starting point is 00:27:44 It's like, kidnapping oh go on then let's go yeah they put him in a car a guy puts a knife to his ribs and they take him to meet mark ange draco well but just before that just before that they the james bond has been kidnapped at gunpoint and then at knife point. And we are walking into this unknown building to meet, who knows? Oh, is this going to be another walking thing? This is the payoff. That's some great walking.
Starting point is 00:28:13 Very possibly in order to be killed. This is like a tense scene. And George Lazenby is strolling casually along at knife point. And it's at this point that i realize this is not a character decision this is happening because george lazenby cannot act and this is just the way that he walks in real life and that occasionally occasionally the stopped clock of george lazenby's acting tells the right time. But when he tries to be nice, when he has to be casual
Starting point is 00:28:47 and relaxed, it works great. But as soon as he has to do any kind of violence or aggression or manly connery shit, it's fucking dire. And this is the moment where I'm like, oh my god, this man isn't acting at all. We're just getting pure, unfiltered Lazenby
Starting point is 00:29:04 all over the screen.'s on tour he's just walking he's about to be fucking shot in the back of the head or some shit but he is sauntering his way down there he's swinging i have a broader point about lazy here and bond that i think i'm going to come to at the end but it's also walking related and there is another nice little touch which is as these guys are walking him to presumably his death, they go through a set of little office saloon doors at waist height. And in what I can only describe as a cocky bastard move, he flicks one of them backwards to try and hit the guy behind him.
Starting point is 00:29:42 For no real reason other than to just annoy him and the guy even like catches it and pushes it back out of the way again but i thought that was very like closely observed no i'm just like i was gonna flag that and i'm glad you did yeah so we meet we meet mark hange draco who is the head of the union course the um the largest criminal syndicate in the world after specter and who's so concerned in this movie is the amount and quality of pipe that his daughter is getting laid that's and that's a king genuinely the thrust of this conversation i might want to disavow immediately but like the thrust of this conversation his daughter the contessa the lady we've already met twice
Starting point is 00:30:28 because that's why Bon's been getting his ass kicked every time he like interacts with this woman in any way is because the guys who are kicking his ass are watching her to protect her they're her bodyguards and sort of minders and
Starting point is 00:30:44 the upshot of this is that Draco is like, you gotta fuck my daughter. Bond! Bond, you crazy bastard, you gotta fuck my daughter. Alright. I'll give you the line. It's not any better when he says it. Find her fascinating, but she needs a psychiatrist, not me. What she needs is a man to dominate her,
Starting point is 00:31:06 to make love to her enough to make her love him. A man like you. That's not a Lazenby thing he can even do, I don't think. That's her dad. That's her father.
Starting point is 00:31:22 As the sweetener, he offers Bond a million pounds in gold on the day that he marries Tracy I will give you one million dollars in gold to fuck my beautiful daughter this is a very serious movie I've had many such of these kind of meetings and honestly they
Starting point is 00:31:38 do start to get boring after a while all of us get offers like that all the time and we all do what Lazenby does which is go yeah nam I like her, you know, you're sweet, but... Confirmed bachelor. Wink wink. I'm sorry, I can't... Yeah, I really can't just... I'm not gonna fuck your daughter to make her cool. He basically does say, like, I like the bachelor lifestyle. Unless... unless...
Starting point is 00:32:04 Yeah, he's like, no's like no unless you tell me where ernst stavro blofeld is ernst stavro blofeld where is he and so draco is kind of coy about this and he's like well i'll tell you if you come to have lunch with me and my daughter i'm so glad you said to have lunch with me after that i'll tell you about ernstavro blofeld if you make my daughter fucking come like she's never come before george lazenby you must do this for me george is like oh i don't know if i could do that i need you 007 i need you to do some fucking daddy dom shit on my daughter, because I can't make her stop
Starting point is 00:32:47 making reckless life choices. And so clearly, the healthy thing for me to do is to, like, find a hot guy and get him to do it. I need you to eat my daughter's pussy.
Starting point is 00:33:04 Do not clip that. Fuck, oh my god, I'm so sorry. I will give you to do it? I need you to eat my daughter's pussy. Do not clip that. Fuck. Oh my god. I'm so sorry. I will give you one million dollars, Mr. Bond, to eat out my daughter. This is such a fucking normal guy. My daughter, Diana Rigg!
Starting point is 00:33:19 Yeah, yeah. If someone was like, yo, a million pounds to eat out Diana Rigg, I'd be like, alright, when do I have to get you the money? Like, what are you talking about, dude? I'd be suspicious. I'd be like, what's the cash?
Starting point is 00:33:33 Perhaps not now, I think she is dead. But... So Bond bargains him up. He's like, no, tell me about Blokefield. Diana Rigg hit me up. Anyway. And so they have this sort of, uh, Corsican fiesta type thing, there's bullfighting, uh, Diana Rig shows up in a sort of, like, bolero jacket and, like, a hat, it's very cool, and she fucking stares down her weird dad and she just
Starting point is 00:34:10 fully calls him on this bullshit like you're trying to get this guy to fuck me for some reason that's a weird thing to do and he's getting something out of it besides getting to fuck me and her father's sort of like oh well you. And so she gives him this ultimatum. You've gotta tell him what you know about Blofeld, or you're never gonna see me again. Which is, like, I'm not gonna say it's a healthy relationship, but it's a hell of a lot better boundaries than finding a random secret agent and trying to get him to fuck your daughter. This is just another scene where things just... Why Bond was selected for this pussy-based mission, I'm not
Starting point is 00:34:47 sure. I heard the new guy did that, whereas Connery did not. Yeah, Lazenby does eat pussy. You know what? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Willing to put the pin on that one 100%. We get a montage now. It's a lovely...
Starting point is 00:35:03 Yeah, okay, so what happens here? Yeah, what the fuck? What happens here? Right, okay, no, we don't get a montage now it's a lovely yeah okay so what happens here what the fuck what happens here right okay no we don't get the montage there's a scene first okay we want to talk about the M scene because it sets up a bit I want to do there's there's a scene
Starting point is 00:35:18 where 007 he goes back to MI6 now I think they finally admitted and just walks into m's office and m's like bro you've got to stop fucking wasting all your time looking for blofeld he's gone all right don't worry about it and bond's like come on man come the fuck on dude i'm gonna find blofeld and he's like no operation bedlam this is called he's like don't you can't do it anymore so bond walks out and immediately just doesn't have to force to himself but he talks to money penny he's going money penny resign for me
Starting point is 00:35:49 money penny i need you to tell my boss that i quit i'm gonna go somewhere else so he goes i need you to tell him that i resign on principle so he goes he starts cleaning out his desk um which is another one of those moments where they're like, yo, you remember James Bond from the James Bond movies? They're trying to tie the actor back. His desk is full of shit from previous Bond movies. Like, he's got the rebreather from Thunderball, he's got the, like, honey riders knife. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of this shit. So, you don't need to tell me, this is the same guy i kind of got that from the fact that people call him james bond and he wears a tuxedo and his code name is 007 like it's fine also he keeps he keeps name dropping on her majesty's secret service he just keeps saying that shit so many
Starting point is 00:36:39 fucking title dropping picture of the queen which i suppose would be a normal thing to do for a secret agent but it's fucking nonce shit and he keeps just looking at it and saying shit like sorry mom it's like come on man this is 1969 though so the queen is absolutely fucking smoked up queen era 1969 also DM me please
Starting point is 00:36:58 007 I'll give you a million dollars in gold to fuck this queen aww I don't want to finish that she is single oh actually the queen error now DM me let's see what we got going on
Starting point is 00:37:16 this is a thing where money penny we get some more stuff from money penny in this scene right first of all there's another weird line where they try and convince us that this guy is like the same Bond, right? Because he grabs her ass, and what she says is... Same old James.
Starting point is 00:37:37 Only more so. Same old James, she stares the camera down while she says this also. It's James Bond, but he's hornier now. Which, fine, I guess? Weird to make it explicit like that. But Moneypenny, not only is she much more into Bond than she had been previously, even though she was like, pretty much the only woman who got to express desire for Connery's Bond, here she's really like she's
Starting point is 00:38:05 gonna fucking jump him in the office uh but they actually have chemistry like yeah it's kind of when when when he's not being directed to grope her he's like smiles and he's like oh money penny like england's like last line of defense or whatever like it's actually quite sweet yeah because again george lazenby he's just a nice man interpersonally nice yeah money putting intercedes on his behalf right because when he's trying to resign in print on principle uh she just changes his thing to ask for two weeks leave instead and then separately i thought this was cute both m and bond are like oh god, thank you, I knew I didn't really want that to happen, but it probably would have done if you hadn't, like, intercepted my dumber impulses. And it's like, finally, Moneypenny gets some fucking recognition around here.
Starting point is 00:39:02 Without you. Keeping the whole thing running. So, okay, snap cut back to the end of the scene with Tracy. Portugal. Montage time. He approaches her afterwards
Starting point is 00:39:17 when she's like crying in the car park because she's just done an extreme power move in front of her father. You know, it's tough to do that kind of shit. Oh um and again this is diana rigg so it's well acted it's phenomenal she turns around and it's like it's she looks distraught poor dear um um and the intention of this is to show that now he she believes that he is genuinely interested in her because she previously thought that it was a transactional thing but he was only interested to her to get at the information about blofeld
Starting point is 00:39:50 but now he has that information and he's still interested so she takes the walls down and there's a like a montage set to all the time in the world by louis armstrong thank you so much and it's it's a it's a very long uh montage of them just doing shit like riding horses and running around on the beach um and at this point they're doing it kind of feels like it came from a different they're doing the beach scene from oss sandy set they're just playing paddle ball This guy's got two weeks leave How long does this take place over Yeah right It's meant to imply a whirlwind courtship
Starting point is 00:40:33 But like they could be doing this stuff Back to back to back And it would still like Well there are three scenes that they edit together There's one of them in the garden There's one of them riding and there's one on a beach So I think it's like three days You gotta be fast about this kind of shit You have all of them in the garden there's one of them riding and there's one on a beach so i think it's like three days you gotta be fast about this kind of shit you know yeah
Starting point is 00:40:48 that's all the time in the world yeah not so much so the information that that draco gives him is about a guy who i haven't written the name down of gumbolt a lawyer named gumbolt that's not even the worst name we're gonna have uh it this episode. It's not. It's fully not. Gumboldt. So. He's Blofeld's lawyer. Blofeld's lawyer. Allegedly. Which is so fucking funny that Blofeld has a lawyer. Like just a guy with an office that he
Starting point is 00:41:16 keeps on staff. It's like going to Blofeld's fucking accountant. You know? It's very funny. Blofeld, Blofeld and Blofeld. He's in Switzerlanditzerland there's this there's this scene at the end of the the love montage that takes place over three days where where tracy and bond are sat in the car either side of draco draco's in the middle of the back seat and they're just fucking each other with their eyes the whole time and he's fucking loving it so he looks so sick of their shit he's like i'm gonna be out a million dollars soon and then they pull up to gumbalt's uh building and he does some actual spy shit yeah and he has
Starting point is 00:42:00 to get someone to help him the construction site site across the street, owned by Draco's organized crime group. And so he breaks in to this lawyer's office, and they use the construction crane to ship him up a safe-cracking machine, stroke photocopier... Thing, yeah. Yeah. He has a MacGuffin. Yeah. A gadget. He breaks into the safe.
Starting point is 00:42:28 We have a sort of fun, sort of cringe bit of a moment where like, he sets up his watch on top of the thing while it's working, cracking the safe, and then we sort of see him get bored, and we see him get more bored, so he like like goes through all of the newspapers and then he like gets hold of a copy of playboy that was in this lawyer's office and you he's fully like opening the centerfold and just like woof well do you do you know why that is because uh on her majesty's secret service first serialized in playboy. Absolutely. And it was... So it was a nice little nod. It was a little bit weird to have
Starting point is 00:43:10 Bond just on screen just like unfolding a Playboy like his eyebrows are gone. But it's a nice little nod. So Bond uses this massive photocopier to photocopy some documents which show that Blofeld is having his lawyer write to the College of Arms in London, trying to get his hands on a title, the Comte de Blochamp.
Starting point is 00:43:38 French for Blofeld, I guess. Blochamp. Blochamp. Blofeld, I guess. Blo-shomp. Blo-shomp. Also, like, when he leaves, he takes the playboy with him, which is... Yeah, cute. For some of our 100,000 listeners who are not extremely English, would somebody like to give a brief explanation of what the College of Arms is? This is what happens when you have too much feudalism left over in your society.
Starting point is 00:44:04 So, the Queen is the fount of all honour, this is what happens when you have too much feudalism left over in your society um so uh the queen is the fount of all honor which is why he's like got a picture of her up in his office and as such she may be pleased from time to time to grant arms you know coats of arms things you put on a shield or a banner related to your your genealogy or your noble house. And it's never really explained why Blofeld wants one of these things. No, it genuinely is never explained. He just wants that shit. And at the end, M has a line that's just like, ah, snobbery, innit?
Starting point is 00:44:36 Yeah, right? M remarks on how it's weird, but it's never really explained why. It's never actually explained. I mean, it is very funny that we have the sort of thing of a parasitical foreigner trying to infiltrate his way into the nobility
Starting point is 00:44:54 oh no not the nobility I have all I do what will happen if someone evil gets into that what will happen if a evil gets into that? What will happen if a Greek man happened to marry the princess of the country? That's right.
Starting point is 00:45:11 To be fair, he renounced his Greek heritage, so whatever. So Bond interviews a herald at the College of Arms to try and figure out what's going on. He also finds his own coat of arms uh which good motto eh the world is not enough looking forward to never hearing that again
Starting point is 00:45:33 um and he gets this guy to agree hey you can pose as me blofeld wants me to come to Switzerland and authenticate this grant of arms so I can then say he's the real Count de Bluchon you can fully just like dress as me and pretend to be me and do that and we'll get you some like homework
Starting point is 00:45:58 to study up on armorial grants and stuff so you can sell this a bit um this guy's name is Sir Hillary Sir Hillary Bray Now, this will be important later, not Scottish he just sounds like an
Starting point is 00:46:16 extremely posh English person Anyway Bond goes to Switzerland where he is met by a couple of big henchmen, and Irma Bunt, who... Some names in this fucking movie. Irma Bunt.
Starting point is 00:46:35 Which is genuinely like, wrong aspect ratio Rosa Klebb. Like, same vibe. Just wide Rosa. Yeah, what we wanted here was an austere, older German actor, and also like, but wider. So like, she flies him up to the top of a fucking alp
Starting point is 00:46:55 where Blofeld's institute for vaccines is, and genuinely, all of her lines are delivered like this, right? I'll be glad to get my feet on the ground not ground eyes absolute mr freeze arnold not ground not the eyes also something you might have pulled from that uh that line just then the voice you heard before fraulein bunt that is not george lazenby in order to sort of show that he was a fucking sick spy while he is in disguise as hillary bray he is dubbed
Starting point is 00:47:35 by hillary bray's actor george baker yeah he comes out sounding exactly like the guy he just had master of disguise he's wearing the guy's clothes he's wearing his glasses he's wearing his hat and everything he's smoking his pipe yeah he looks like for all the world like Arthur Conan Doyle's fucking Sherlock Holmes yeah but like if they had done yeah if they had remembered to do this in you only live twice we would not have had a thing to pull for the promo for that episode, because it would not be so funny that everybody who saw him didn't realize that he was James Bond, because he's making an effort within the confines of the movie to disguise himself. And so, he's taken to this
Starting point is 00:48:21 very impressive looking concrete construction on the very summit of an alp called pitt's gloria um whereupon he is like immediately locked in his room and it's like i'm not sure how i want to explain the vibe of pitt's gloria it's kind of like kitsch almost it's baffling it's like something out of an Alex Rider book it feels like it's a knock off of James Bond I swear I was the only one who thought about Alex Rider yeah I 100%
Starting point is 00:48:54 was like this shit's point blank yeah it's like cheap James Bond it's a knock off of itself which is incredible 100% like all of the furniture and stuff James Bond. It's a knock-off of itself, which is incredible. A hundred percent. Yeah. Like, all of the furniture and stuff
Starting point is 00:49:08 is, like, sort of the same Blofeld stuff, the same Supervillain stuff, like the doors with no handles that close on their own, but it's, like, covered in a layer of, like, alpine birch and stuff, and it's just, it feels very strange.
Starting point is 00:49:24 Now, I mean, strange is the word at this point bond has to meet the girls oh my god the patients of the allergy research institute i want to say every time they're on screen and i pulled this at random i pulled this from a later scene but they just make what i can only describe as girl noises so every time they're on screen you'll just hear like they don't really have a lot of dialogue but the chatter is constant just to give you this can you play that again i'm just i'm just taking notes shit do i chatter like an agb um incidentally uh one of those girls jaina lumley absolutely yeah and so they are a uh sort of
Starting point is 00:50:16 multicultural cast of all attractive young women but uh and also for 1969 levels of multicultural by which i mean there's a jamaican one an indian one and that's it yeah let me let me let me read out the full list because i found it here 12 beautiful women from all over the world uh there's an english one there's a hungarian one there is a scandinavian one that's three twelfths of the world surface right. There's a Hungarian one. There's a Scandinavian one. That's three twelfths of the world's surface right there. There's a Chinese girl, a Jamaican girl, an American, another English girl, sorry, an Indian girl, an Australian girl, a German, an Israeli, and an Irish. And all of these people minus two are just fully credited as the Australian girl or the Israeli girl or some shit.
Starting point is 00:51:05 Well, that's actually just how the population of Earth was in 1969. I'm not going to check that, but I assume so. I haven't double-checked. I feel like all of the continents on planet Earth are accounted for here. More or less, like, 20% of Earth's population was English at that point, I think. Well, I mean, technically mean technically maybe certainly managed by the crown um so bond by the way is in full highland dress this is why it's weird and looks fucking ridiculous fucking this was the abiding memory that i had from this movie right i saw it when i
Starting point is 00:51:41 was a kid and the one thing that i remembered was george lazenby in highland dress playing a guy who is seemingly not scottish uh just like he's he's wearing the kilt he's wearing the sort of like coat-y thing too he's also playing playing hillary is very gay yes extremely homosexual he's gone undercover as a gay man. Mm-hmm. And it's very weird. What's also funny is that, like, because George Lazenby looks the way that he does in this movie, and because of the decisions they've made about Bond,
Starting point is 00:52:20 every single woman at that table is trying to fuck him, every single woman at that table is trying to fuck him even though he's doing his best to be like effete and academic he's literally doing everything he can to be unsexual he spends he tries to give them a lecture about genealogy a lecture about genealogy yeah and then one of them fully like this is actually if you count the sort of leaning like a Bond girl, the second instance of Bond being treated like a Connery Bond girl, one of them puts her hand up his skirt to write her room number on his thigh in lipstick. God, that's, I mean, needs someone to do that shit to me. Pretty cool.
Starting point is 00:53:03 God damn. Which I guess is the reason why he was wearing a k that scene because yeah because hillary's not scottish he's not scottish um and then as oh wait shit we should probably talk about why the hell they're all there allergy treatment so the meal that they get is like the shit that they're supposed to be allergic to like the girl who's allergic to corn gets like a plate full of corn the girl who's allergic to chicken gets like a plate full of chicken i wrote that down i was like yes i'll have the entirely unseasoned chicken please it's just literally just a chicken breast on a fucking plate the yeah well felt has allegedly developed a cure for allergies and there's a funny line where because he's playing Hillary is so gay
Starting point is 00:53:46 one of the girls says I know what he's allergic to which is quite funny pussy I'm tricking Blofeld into thinking I'm allergic to pussy so that he'll hypnotise me to eat it better once again sorry I should just cover that fucking base i don't want to leave
Starting point is 00:54:08 anything he's still a fucking better spy because he's like changing a characteristic about himself connery bond wouldn't god imagine connery trying to change this race can you imagine all right fine connery bond might pretend to be japanese but he wouldy trying to be gay? Race is a characteristic. Alright, fine. Connery Bond might pretend to be Japanese, but he would never pretend to be gay. You fucking imagine. I can't do the voice. I'm not going to do any bits here. So Bond goes to meet Blofeld,
Starting point is 00:54:42 and it's not Blofeld, man. I'm fine with- You're just so fucking good! I'm fine with changing Bond, because he's the protagonist, I get that you can do that, but like, sorry, you set up Donald Pleasence in You Only Live Twice, and now it's Telly Savalas. And one thing that we know about Telly Savalas, the guy is not, like, a nerd. And that was Donaldald pleasance's characterization in and you only live twice was this blofeld guy he's kind of a pussy no blofeld this one has big
Starting point is 00:55:13 dick energy and i don't appreciate that at all blofeld he's amazing and this is so they should have got him from the start he's fantastic genuinely right he's he's charming he's like he's having so much fun like just being an evil motherfucker it's so good he's like confident he's like no fuck you actually bond i've got all the angles covered like suck my dick asshole like he's so good let's get this line though to begin with i was born without earlobes now Now, I should explain, this is supposed to be corroborating evidence for his, like, grant of arms, but it is very funny. They also made the decision that he shouldn't just be carrying the cat 24-7. No. He's got, like, two or three scenes where he has the cat on his lap, but when he's walking around the place, he's not just, like, gripping it.
Starting point is 00:56:03 He's just... it's just him. Which is, like, maybe a good choice it makes sense for him to be strolling around the place because he literally fucking owns it and he's like i'm fucking big dick blowfell i don't give a shit like he's also jacked but lazenby's still just walking around lazenby's fucking streling sneaks into this girl's room. Yeah. Bond sneaks into this girl's room where she is being... You discover she is being hypnotized by... She's being sissy-hypnoted by Blofeld, using a series of, like, cassette tapes and spooky disco lights to not be allergic to chicken anymore.
Starting point is 00:56:41 I don't think that's how an allergy works but whatever that's fine not but like whatever it's a bond film they're not gonna get the science fucking spot on also when when they're fucking she's like but i thought you were gay and he's he hits her with well i mean normally i am but you're special and i think we have a real connection and then he after they fuck and after he discovers this he goes back to his own room to find a different one of the girls in there trying to seduce him and he uses the same line word for word lines in order and i was like it's amazing that was 12 of these scenes just back to back to back like Like, it is fully, like, Fox and Henhouse stuff here, is that like, Bond is just here to fuck every single one of these women.
Starting point is 00:57:33 Bond has gone undercover as a gay man and had sex with two women by the end of day fucking one. It's like, come on, man. Having fucking obtained sex by deception, Bond is like... It's illegal, folks. Don't do it. It's legal if you're a cop. That is true. Well, I guess Bond is a cop, so it's fine.
Starting point is 00:57:55 Bond is a stupid policeman. Stupid policeman. Covered under the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Act. That's right. Thanks, Keir. Anyway, thank you, Keir. sources act that's right so anyways anyway yeah thank you kia um bond bond bond like has sex with all these women it convinces them that like they're the the only one who has been able to like break through his homosexuality uh but they're also all really into him so it feels a lot less toxic than it might have done yeah yeah it's a bit they are all like genuinely on board
Starting point is 00:58:26 centrinians is the thing right like it's kind of like girls school sort of total institution thing it's like i would use the word naughty here right is the vibe yeah it's like an early naughtiest film where it's like oh no we've gone on holiday to summer camp but we've accidentally booked into the girls dorm and he's just like fucking left james bond's euro trip is james bond on like camp tour or some shit it's ridiculous right and it fades to black and then like comes back the next morning and you're just left to assume that he's done that 12 times in sequence yeah he has he has a line the next day he talks to a garden he's like you have no idea how the work's piling up as all of these women are looking at him like do me do me it's just like yeah one of them one of them comes by and says like i have to see you tonight and he says I'll see you at 8
Starting point is 00:59:26 and then another one comes by and says I have to see you tonight and he goes 9 o'clock and then a third one walks past and like a third one walks past and like gives him the eye and he just goes 10 and you know what it's rock fine fuck it come out and say it
Starting point is 00:59:42 George Ladzenby once again I'd like to award the Kronstein rosette here out of nowhere oh fuck this guy since Bond arrived in Switzerland he has been followed by like a kind of sweaty
Starting point is 00:59:58 looking guy as is classic who tries to get onto the cable car going up to Blofeld's lair and is just like rebuffed by the guy who is like, Nein! It's forbidden! It's closed! You cannot be in here! And, like, backs him out of there and locks the door. This is Draco. This is Draco's man.
Starting point is 01:00:17 His name is Campbell. And so he attempts to climb up the fucking mountain with crampons and an ice axe, is immediately detected. And, like, despite having been shot at by these guys, essentially tries to conduct some sort of homeowner association neighborhood what shit on Blofeld. He's like, what did Blofeld do? He's doing YouTube's own shit on Blofeld? He tries to haunt it, Blofeld! He's doing YouTube's own shit on Blofeld! Am I being detained? And Blofeld's like, yes. And he's like, oh!
Starting point is 01:00:50 The line that he has is, The authorities will hear about this! The authorities did not hear about it. The authorities do not hear about this, because Blofeld fucking has him killed, right? But, like, genuinely, we get a moment where he's just like hollering up at blowfield like hey you can't push me around like this this is a crime to climb an out
Starting point is 01:01:11 yes this is a private land yeah yeah did you not see the guns and the like henchmen uniforms oh the henchmen uniforms in this great by the way all of these guys are wearing orange ski jackets and like black fur hats which is rings on as well i don't know why not sure maybe that was just leftover well it's time for bond to get captured there's also a henchman with a name oh there is yes there is a henchman here who is a wide-fucking geezer. And his name, ladies and gentlemen, is Grunther. Grunther. Grunther.
Starting point is 01:01:53 Grunther. Naming my child Grunther. This kid coming out of the womb and the mum being like, yeah, yeah, that's a Grunther. I can see it. I asked this before we recorded. The widest baby you've ever seen. Is it funnier if Grunther is like their
Starting point is 01:02:08 first and only child in the light of their lives or if he's like the tenth one and they're in the hospital and the husband's like what do you want to call this one and the wife after like an 18 hour labour is like fuck I don't know fucking Grunther or something
Starting point is 01:02:24 I don't give a shit fuck off i don't know fucking grunther or something i don't give a shit fuck off i don't think it's cool it's like it's like it's like a minor character from beowulf you know it's like a grunther i thought i thought it was grunther and they were like fucking up nope nope it's grunther every time that's his name incidentally the guy playing grunther that's the guy who got his nose broken by george lazenby oh so he's got like an axe to grind oh that's that's why he's awesome that they gave him that that's why he's so good at looking like he fucking hates because the guy broke his nose just a severe axe to cry you can see once you once you know that you can see that his nose has been broken fairly recently, right? It's out of shape.
Starting point is 01:03:06 Oh, no. Oh, God, yeah. No, I can see... Oh, no. This is the thing, right? We're now fighting for the Kronstein rosette for best supporting character between the authorities will hear about this and Grunther. I'm putting my money
Starting point is 01:03:25 down on Grunther. I'm sorry. I mean, yeah. Well, to be fair, if we go... Abby, you've got a casting vote here. I mean... I was actually going to nominate Brunt because I just think that she's fucking great. It might have to be a multiple award. Damn, a three-way tie. I'm willing
Starting point is 01:03:41 to come across to Campbell, actually, because the point of the Cronstein-Rose is underrated side characters who are legitimately quite good. And his character is fun. He's got a couple of scenes where he's doing shit. Just kind of stumbling into stuff and being like, hey, you can't push me out of this.
Starting point is 01:03:58 He deserves more credit. He's the one who ships the big fucking credit. Ships the big fucking like copyright what's it called? Type like copier machine. Yeah, photocopier. Oh yeah, so he is. I hadn't noticed that. Yeah, it's that guy. So he's sort of been like shadowing Bond this whole time. So yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:04:17 Mission accomplished to like shadow him unobtrusively. Yeah. So Bond tries to fuck another one of these women and uh is immediately owned because she's it's it's irma bunt everybody uh and she jumps him and a guy hits him over the back of the head with a with a kosh which is i'm told really good for your brain it's really impressive because he it's it's the same one he had sex with the first time, Ruby, the English one, who incidentally, 11 minutes and 20 seconds. He goes back into her room and it's clearly her in the bed.
Starting point is 01:04:55 It's literally her in a bed. And he approaches her and suddenly it's just fucking Fraulein Bunt. I'm just like, holy shit. Bunt might be like some sort of witch or some shit like that. I'm just like, holy shit! Bunt might be some sort of witch, or some shit like that, I'm pretty sure. This is like the fucking pinbacker bit in Sunshine, where it's suddenly like, oh man, reality's falling apart a bit.
Starting point is 01:05:15 I mean, Bond wakes up, and just as an example of the fucking big dick energy that Tally Savalas has as Blofeld, he wakes him up with Merry Christmas 007 and when Bond tries to be like
Starting point is 01:05:29 Fucking love that line! I'm Sir Hillary Bray, who is James Bond. He's just like, no, fuck off. No, you are King. No, you're not. Shut up, dude. And he breaks his fake glasses, which is very funny. This is where we get to see what it looks like when George Lazenby Shut up, dude. And he breaks his fake glasses, which is very funny.
Starting point is 01:05:47 This is where we get to see what it looks like when George Lazenby is in a scene with, like, an actual really good actor. He's been on screen with Diana Rigg before, but yeah. He's not only carrying this scene, he's, like, bench-pressing this scene with ease. He's, like, doing flexes with, like, one hand with this scene. He's, like, curling the scene. Talisa Val is just, like, he's just kicking this doing flexes with, like, one hand with this scene. He's, like, curling the scene. He's obliterating it.
Starting point is 01:06:05 Like, Taliesin Val is just, like, he's just kicking this scene's ass up and down, and it's beautiful. So what does Blofeld like to do? Blofeld likes to fucking blackmail the United Nations. Yeah. And what he's gonna do is he has invented or discovered something which he calls Virus Omega. is he has invented or discovered something which he calls Virus Omega and behind him we see Blofeld's lab
Starting point is 01:06:28 which contains two what I can only think of now thanks to Thunderball as bond wigglers two bond wigglers full of flasks just wiggling them it's chemistry baby covalent, ionic, whatever you fucking think of
Starting point is 01:06:44 the chemical bond wiggler wiggling those bonds baby Wiggling all sorts of bonds! Covalent, ionic, whatever you fucking think of. The chemical bond wiggler! Wiggling those bonds, baby! Wiggle them up! The Omega Virus is simply a virus that has been sufficiently wiggled as to become very, very virulent. That's what Lippy was trying to do, to bond Yeah, no, the Omega virus is some children of men shit. It will inhibit reproduction, it will cause sterility. And so, unless the United Nations exceeds to Blofeld's demands, and again, Telly Savalas is just like, you know they're going to exceed to my demands.
Starting point is 01:07:21 He's loving this shit. Yeah, he loves it. He's eating this scene. But his demands are quite fun. He's loving this shit um yeah he loves it he's eating his demands are quite fun chewing this scene demands are like lays in peace like how many hundreds of millions of pounds do you want this time it's like actually i don't want that at all uh what i want is complete amnesty for all of my crimes first of all that's that's a so i want to like retire basically as a private citizen and b i want to be count de blochon i just i just want the college of arms to just give me that yeah for for no reason it's just important to me i just want it i want my weird thing that
Starting point is 01:07:51 i want yeah i'm taking off the bucket list here 007 i clearly i don't need money i have out of the game i'm on top i live on top of an alp man i don't need a hundred million dollars what i need i've invented chicken based hypnotism yeah yeah what i've invented sissy hypno i don't need money what i need is legitimacy and they're gonna give me that because if they don't i'm gonna fucking destroy everything um and then he like locks bond in the wheelhouse of a cable car. I don't know why. He does have a good reason not to kill him this time. He actually does, because he's like,
Starting point is 01:08:32 I could kill you, but on the off chance that the United Nations don't believe me when I tell them this, the fact that I've got you here to back me up will actually help convince them. So, kind of, kind of. It's closest to a good reason anyone's had since Doctor No. Also, later on, when he's given the chance, Blofeld will just fully shoot at Bond. Like, without hesitating.
Starting point is 01:08:56 Yeah! Which is what we were missing in You Only Live Twice. Sadly doesn't hit him, but, uh... Yeah. So, because Blofeld doesn't have a fucking broom closet or something, what he has is the wheelhouse of a cable car, which Bond clambers around and escapes out of, with the weird, weird expedient of turning the pockets of his trousers inside out, ripping those pockets off and wearing them as mittens uh yeah
Starting point is 01:09:27 very weird i don't know why you would do that the fastest bond has ever tried to escape one of these rooms as well like he doesn't even sit there for a little bit before having the idea he lit like the door closes and he instantly clocks how he's gonna get off yeah whereas whereas like connery and goldfinger is like waiting for a guy to show up waiting for something to happen to him and like this is why it's one of the strongest scripts is bond does stuff in this on his own initiative uh he is he he saves tracy's life he becomes interested in tracy he like uh he's not even working for MI6 at this point. This is him on holiday.
Starting point is 01:10:06 He's just doing this shit. He's on Christmas vacation doing this. And so Bond sneaks out. Yeah, it is canonically Christmas Eve. And sees the various patients of this clinic open their Christmas presents from Blofeld, which contain a sort of secret transmitter in a compact, and an atomizer full of Virus Omega.
Starting point is 01:10:31 And so they're gonna go back to their home countries all over the world, and then when they are sissy-hypno-instructed remotely by Blofeld, they're gonna uh distribute this this virus i mean this was used to pretty terrifying effect in the criminally underrated channel 4 series utopia uh so you know i have nothing against this kind of uh bacteriological warfare plot uh it's it's very good that's the plan. That's the plan. We get some more badly edited fighting, and then we get this scene, which starts off cringe, and by about five minutes in, I was clapping.
Starting point is 01:11:14 Yeah. The skiing scene. The cringe-based diagram. Talk to me about this scene. Talk to me about this scene. Well, Bond, first of all all incapacitates a guy and then puts on a ski suit and a floppy hat and goggles again the lays and befits atrocious um and it's a it's a fucking ski chase as thunderballball was to the sea, this is to snow.
Starting point is 01:11:46 To snow. They're just like, yo, you ever heard of snow? And so they drafted in a shitload of professional winter athletes to film all of this shit, including, most notably, there's an Olympic skier skiing in front of the stuntman playing Lazenby, skiing backwards holding a camera to film it. Whoa. It's just so fucking cool. Cool! Right?
Starting point is 01:12:11 Not a great scene, but it's the way they did it. So these guys, the henchmen in their sort of orange snowsuits are chasing after Bond in his blue one, they're shooting at him, none of them have- 1.1 of Bond's skis comes off and he's just on one ski he's skiing with one leg and balancing with the other it's incredible um if the annoying thing is that this scene is very badly edited yeah but in a weird twist the more the scene goes on the better the editing gets for some reason across this five minutes so by the end of it i was like whoa you're really getting that fucking there's also a bit right where he i don't know how to introduce i love when you're about to do
Starting point is 01:12:49 a bit because you do a little clap to like uh psych yourself i've actually even like flagged that up in promos i've done before where i just go like right right right brackets clap that he the dev clap um oh no i don't want to sure um there's there's a bit he falls off um he falls off he's about to go off a cliff and he catches himself just in time and like the cliff is is so fucking far you guys you don't it's it's an like this is a fucking massive and he he pulls himself back from it um and just And just a henchman is just coming down. And he fucking smacks the henchman with his ski. And he goes off the edge of the cliff. And it is 16 full seconds of falling.
Starting point is 01:13:39 Where it is 100,000% just a fucking dummy strapped to skis he's not moving, he's just perfectly sailing down in a ski position just for way longer than you could possibly imagine it would go on for and then he hits the ground and it's like cool man, thanks for that scene
Starting point is 01:13:59 he does it again, it happens twice he does this twice in a row he like strangles the guy with a ski... Let's try that again. You better shit another go. And he escapes down this Alp, into a Swiss village, where there is a kind of a
Starting point is 01:14:16 festival happening? Yeah, it's like the Junker News or Swiss. Yeah. It's Christmas, it's a Christmas fair! It's a merry bond miss mr bond now i i want to give you an you blowfeld what day is it why it's christmas eve mr board news from europe 007 we can no longer say merry christmas we have to say happy holidays political correctness gone mad i want to give you an example of the level of pastiche of Swiss stuff that we're doing here.
Starting point is 01:14:49 Bionic and me has a fight with a guy in a room entirely full of cowbells. It's so funny. I have the drop. I have the drop. Yeah. He's like trying to escape from Fraulein Bund minutes He's trying to escape from Frowline Bund And he's like alright I'm gonna nip into this room He just walks in immediately hits his head on a bell
Starting point is 01:15:11 And then like Backs up a little and hits his head on eight more bells At which point The henchman know where he is It's so good Bund makes mistakes in this and it's quite cool Like earlier on during the ski chase He stops because he just like falls straight on his face and eats shit.
Starting point is 01:15:29 It's cool. It's cool that he's a person, you know? He's fallible. Yeah. Now, we have to have something implausible happen. Yeah, Bear laughs at him for like 10 minutes. Yeah. Tracy shows up because she's in love with him right at this
Starting point is 01:15:47 point and that she's been following him she's been shadowing him she has been better than campbell has been um it's been so long since we last saw her i just wrote diana in full caps on my notes she she fucking rescues this movie oh shit like they're gonna they're gonna like well she rescues bond because bond is like shit you know he's like he's sitting on a bench hiding but the henchmen are closing in and then like she skates up and she's like i've got a car like james i've been shadowing you like i'm gonna get you out of here like she she saves the fucking day incidentally uh and uh as further um evidence for my bond brackets Tumblr daddy Dom question mark he calls her
Starting point is 01:16:28 good girl twice in this scene just to really drive that little point home anyway but also he says something which no I don't think I've ever imagined James Bond would say he says thank you Tracy
Starting point is 01:16:42 sincerely and genuinely thank you save my fucking life like thanks and it's like wow wife guy bond we then have a very protracted car chase it's so fucking long i'm i mean this is this is the thing this is a two and a half hour movie that's why this episode can't be an hour long is because it's the longest bond movie until the modern like bladder destroying ones jesus yeah so yeah this might be just strapping for this halfway through this car chase um they just sort of start doing nascar i don't know what's going on like they just they drive onto a racetrack yeah they just they're on a racetrack That's happening on Christmas Eve
Starting point is 01:17:26 Yeah the traditional Christmas Eve stock car race The Swiss traditional Christmas Eve stock car race We're all aware of this Sure fine In the Christmas myth it's where Joseph couldn't get to Bethlehem In time so he got in his stock car And fucking raced on down
Starting point is 01:17:43 It's very traditional By the way i want to stress that tracy is driving she's driving yeah yeah yeah he's just he's just sitting there leaning over to kiss her occasionally just like saying shit yeah which is adorable total inversion yeah bond is the bond girl in this movie i will be defending this thesis um fem bond yeah so they they they seek shelter from the storm, which comes down in a barn. And then Bond fully admits the thing that we've been sort of talking about this whole time. He shouldn't be concerned with anything himself. And he shouldn't be concerned with anything himself.
Starting point is 01:18:28 And the fact that he is falling in love with her back is making him unable to do bond shit, because the bond shit requires him to be a sociopath, and he doesn't want to do that anymore. And so he fully proposes. Bond pops the question. He says, can I be your wife guy? Yeah, that's right. And Ruth goes, alright.
Starting point is 01:18:49 And then, can I simp for you queen? Yeah, he says can I private message you please ma'am? Yo, I just spent five days defending you. Can I get a hello? Bond's like, yo, I did this fan art of you. I didn't know whether it was okay to send it to your business email
Starting point is 01:19:06 I don't have a business email it is okay you're not a fan of me we're not friends you're a fan of Abby all of us are single all of us are single it's okay to have parasocial relationships with us.
Starting point is 01:19:25 That's totally alright. If you want to give me money, you can do that. But I'm in a relationship and I'm not going to notice you. You can pay my dad a million pounds and I need my pussy. I might notice you. I would be willing to accept a million pounds to have someone have sex with me. Maybe. If they're extremely attractive
Starting point is 01:19:45 I mean that seems like a good deal that's the top patreon tier on the killjamespond patreon if you can't see it you can't afford it that's right yeah if you give our dads a million pounds we'll fuck a bit but I've been completely derailed they kind of like fantasize about what their life
Starting point is 01:20:01 together could be like like she makes a joke like mr and mrs james bond of acacia avenue tunbridge wells and like fantasize about what their life together could be like. She makes a joke like Mr. and Mrs. James Bond of Acacia Avenue, Tunbridge Wells. And like... He doesn't have sex with her. He goes to, and then he's like, we should be doing this on our wedding night.
Starting point is 01:20:18 And then they just go to sleep completely separately. Because he is a jammy bastard, he does knock one of the supports of her bed out so that they end up in a cuddle. But they don't have sex. They don't have sex. Can you fucking imagine
Starting point is 01:20:33 Sean Connery? A, I'm waiting for marriage. And B, being like, oh, we shouldn't have sex right now. It's genuinely good. They have actual chemistry. She's carrying all of the scenes. Again, Lazenby sells it because he's not acting he's just nice he's just in the presence of diana rick so obviously he just is deeply he's of course he simps we got
Starting point is 01:20:54 more fucking ski chases to go through here oh yeah like i'm going through my notes here it's like page after page of ski chase ski chase ski chase There's a bit in the ski chase where a guy... Blofeld is joined in. Blofeld is on skis himself, like shooting at Bond. Imagine Donald Pleasence Blofeld doing that. Yeah, well, that's why they swapped out is because Donald Pleasence wasn't suited for the more physical aspects of the role,
Starting point is 01:21:17 is the language used. Yeah. There's a bit where a guy, one of the henchmen, falls into a fucking wood chipper or a snowblower or some shit. Snowblower. Yeah. And,
Starting point is 01:21:28 and Bond's line is he had lots of guts, which is just a non sequitur. The snowblower is now spraying bits of that guy out behind him. It's not really anything anyone says. Quite brutally. The goon after him, like skis through that, like arc of guts.
Starting point is 01:21:45 One of these days I'd like, I'd like someone to die in a weird way and Bond to him, like, skis through that, like, arc of guts. One of these days I'd like someone to die in a weird way and Bond to just be like, fuck. What the hell? Holy shit! What the fuck? That guy's fucking dead! So, in order to escape from Blofeld
Starting point is 01:21:58 and his men, they ski into a big, clearly marked avalanche zone. And then Blofeld does my favourite piece of human resources work I've seen him do. Where he's like, right, you three, you three go on ahead
Starting point is 01:22:14 and get after them. I'm gonna set up a fucking avalanche. And he loves it! He loves it! He sets up an avalanche and he's just grinning like oh fuck yeah I love doing this shit none of those three guys are like are you sure boss
Starting point is 01:22:30 do you want me to hang back a bit if you're gonna set off the avalanche again only employs perfect himbos who are just like okay boss yeah 100% and then they just get killed in an avalanche. They get killed in an avalanche.
Starting point is 01:22:47 Initially they say no, but then Blofeld's like, if you don't do this I'm gonna give you four stars on Hench instead of five. Actually, Abi, there is a bit, right, where Draco seems to suggest that the Hench app is real, because in the first instance, when Bond asks him about blofeld he's like yes some of my men defected to him and it's like so you are telling me that there's a like a job market for henchmen like how would you defect to him what would the process of that be you have to go and get interviewed by blofeld yeah so this avalanche happens all three of those guys get killed, Tracy gets knocked unconscious and captured,
Starting point is 01:23:28 and Bond is, I guess, incapacitated? I mean, they literally say something like, well, no way 007 could have survived that. And then a scene later, it's like, well, fuck. Yeah, he's back at MI6 headquarters, and of course,
Starting point is 01:23:44 he's like, yo, this. And of course, M, he's like, yo, this girl saved my life. We should, and also, I know where Blofeld, this guy we've been looking for, the guy who had the nuclear bombs, the guy with the virus to destroy. I know where Blofeld is, that guy.
Starting point is 01:24:00 And M is like, We just leave her there. This department is not concerned with your personal problems. What? Look, he's in Switzerland on purpose. M says that the UN have already decided that they've received Blofeld's demands and they're like, we're going to fucking give in because like the stakes this time, it's not just one city. It's like all life on Earth bond. The stakes this time, it's not just one city.
Starting point is 01:24:23 It's like all life on Earth bond. If this virus gets out, he's like, yeah, we are satisfied that it's real. And we are giving in because all he wants is his criminal record expunged and a title. Like we give people who donate 10 million pounds to the Tory party that it's easy. Yeah, really? You didn't have to invent the virus. Yeah. Like now she's just given us some pee pee. Surely the cost of
Starting point is 01:24:46 a fucking Swiss mountain base is less than just paying off the government. You would think so. So, I mean, at this point we cut back to the Pitz Gloria where Blofeld is, again, having too much big dick energy because it's Telly Savalas. He's putting the moves
Starting point is 01:25:02 on fucking Diana Rui. He's trying to cock Bond. Just because he wants to cock him. He's trying to cock Bond. I can imagine. Just because he wants to cock him. He just wants to do it. He just wants to do it. He's playing along with it. Meanwhile, Bond, because MI6 has refused to help him,
Starting point is 01:25:16 he's had to go to Draco. He calls up Draco to get his help, but George Lazenby's accent slips when he calls him up and he goes, really, Australian? He's like, hi, Draco, mate. Are you going to fucking help me out? I'm going to fucking blowfell. It's coming from the Aston mine, you.
Starting point is 01:25:31 Fucking Bill Shorten's trying to abolish the weekend, Draco. Get a bit of help here if you're Australian. I apologise profusely. Oh, good morning, Draco. Oh, you big dickhead. Anyway, long story short, Draco and everyone, they attack the base. Yeah, they attack the base with a brief comic interlude where they're flying in, like, fake Red Cross helicopters, and Draco just, like, brass balls his way through air
Starting point is 01:26:01 traffic control. He does really well yeah so like air traffic controller calling him like what are you doing we don't have any records he's like well maybe you should check your records again bitch it's like he goes back and forth this way until he's able to like talk down the air force yeah he says some shit like we've got journalists in here and they're all filming you idiot what are you gonna do you're gonna do something and they're like uh uh uh yeah i i mean i i don't want to cast any sort of judgment on the professionalism of the swiss air force but uh switzerland is like 30 minutes wide if you have a jet there's only so long they can still be in switzerland for yeah yeah
Starting point is 01:26:46 anyway uh they attack the base cool guys strolling around the place they rescue tracy there's a bit where lazenby is like fully sliding across like an icy uh path on his stomach firing a submachine gun the whole way what is it it's It's... Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like a skeleton bob. Or a luge. Yep, there's a bobsled. Shit, where you throw stones. Yeah, he's sliding along a curling thing, because the angels of death
Starting point is 01:27:15 were previously playing curling there. He's sliding along that, fully shooting a fucking fully automatic rifle. It's cool. I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff in this. Whenever there's. I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff in this. Like, whenever there's one of these, you see a bunch of weird old guns, like the gyro jets in You Only Live Twice,
Starting point is 01:27:32 or in this case, another henchman classic, the Sterling submachine gun, where the magazine comes out sideways. So you just see a bunch of guys holding it at, like, hip level with their other arm way out here on the magazine just spraying everything it's cool um yeah draco's man tracy is like i'm gonna go back for bond you can't keep us apart her father just knocks her out he's such a normal man with a normal relationship with his child um he and when we say knocks her out he fully like uppercuts her it's yeah he's straight up his own daughter
Starting point is 01:28:06 he just sure you can's her and it's like it's a special dad attack what the fuck yeah draco's men they blow up the base but i i've made a note here i think they planted the explosives in the wrong spot because they they accidentally explode a miniature of the base. There's a very unconvincing miniature which they blow up instead. The actual restaurant which they in large part built for this movie is still there. I've been there. The restaurant's not bad.
Starting point is 01:28:36 The rest of it is a tacky Bond museum now. Anyway, it's more snow chase this time. It's the location of our first live show. That's right. The location I first met Abby. Yeah, at the TF live show, the Pits Gloria.
Starting point is 01:28:56 James chases Blofeld down the slopes, culminating in them having an insanely dangerous to film fight on a bobsled. Yeah. It's going fast too. It's fucking going. I have been on a bobsled. Like I've actually done, they go about 70 miles an hour and like you cannot like turn around or stand up. You can barely even fucking move your neck in those things.
Starting point is 01:29:22 And they're having a fist fight. The idea that they would be having a gun fight or a fist fight. At one point, Bond comes off his, but grabs onto the back of Blofeld's bobsled, which would have just ripped his fucking shoulders off. But anyway, they have this genuinely quite exciting bobsled fight. Yeah, Blofeld is, we think, killed. He is struck by a tree branch extending across the bobsled track, which seems like a
Starting point is 01:29:45 totally uh safe thing to have should it should have trimmed that hits him in the neck um that's a kill like he's like lifted off the thing incidentally telly savalas did this stunt himself because every stuntman who tried got horribly injured. Oh my god, he's so cool. And he did it fine, so... Wow. Harry Savalas, baby. Right? Jesus. Anyway.
Starting point is 01:30:15 There's a weird directorial decision in this very exciting bobsled chase. There's no music. It's just all... They do that sometimes in the action scenes. In the second fight, the one in the hotel room chase there's no music no it's just all they do that sometimes in the action scenes in the second fight the one in the hotel room there was no no music either which is interesting yeah which coupled with the bad green screen and a very bad adr it's not great it's really the worst in terms of technical competence this film is really a step down but we smash cut back to portugal because blofeld having been killed bond's bond's fucking he's out he's
Starting point is 01:30:48 quit he's not 007 anymore and he's gonna get married yeah they're just calling him all the time instead of any like 007 or anything yep there's a nice touch where the henchman who he beat up in the hotel room at the start is one of the wedding guests. Yeah, because that's one of Draco's guys. It's quite cute. It's just there. Yeah, it's quite cute. Emma's there. Q is there.
Starting point is 01:31:11 Moneypenny is there. And she's crying because, you know. They have a genuinely very touching moment where Bond is about to get in the car. And Moneypenny is sad. And he gives her this little wave. And it's like, aw. He throws her his hat. Q is there.
Starting point is 01:31:24 For old times. And she catches it. And that's why. Q's there. And wave and it's like, aww. He throws her his hat for old times. And she catches it. Q's there and he's like, nice to Bond. He's just like, you know, I know we don't always see eye to eye, 007, but if you ever need anything, you know, you can always rely on me. Yeah, yeah. You ever need an exploding car, 007?
Starting point is 01:31:39 007, if you ever need... 007, if you ever need a divorce in a speedy fashion I have this flamethrower concealed but Q is like 007 I know I always tell you to bring back your equipment in one piece but tonight you can destroy that pussy
Starting point is 01:31:56 007 you've earned it my man Q's like drunk yeah he's doing the electric slide Flicka tries to give him a million pounds and he's like I'm good yeah he hits him with Proverbs 31 13 her worth is greater than rubies
Starting point is 01:32:12 uh it's just nice also there's a scene Bond as a character with character growth and depth yeah it's amazing unbelievable there's also like a really gentle scene with m like way back um where where bond goes to m's like actual house his mansion or some shit and
Starting point is 01:32:33 he's like he just has like a very genuine heart to heart where m is just talking quite quietly and he's like doing like um butterfly shit hitting him he's a lepidopterist and and bond bond says the name of it bonds bond says a fake butterfly name and goes oh that's pretty big for a for a whatever the fuck and the actual butterfly it is is pretty normal size for it but whatever um which i did recognize because i'm a cunt but I was like this is just like genuinely nice there's so many gentle and humanising scenes with Bond in and that is simply because of what you said
Starting point is 01:33:12 earlier Alice which is that someone keeps flipping the big sociopath switch on the back of his head to off well Bond having thanks for listening to Kill James Bond having character growth and listening to Kill James. Bond having character growth and having depth and having agency to move the plot along in his own interests.
Starting point is 01:33:33 I'm really excited for the rest of the George Lazenby movies. If this is a start, it's going to be so good. It cannot be allowed to happen, and so she has to fucking die. Blofeld and Irma Bunt conduct a drive-by shooting in which Bond is uninjured but Tracy is killed instantly and Bond does not realize this at first he's like that's Blofeld he gets back in the car to try to chase after them. And then he realizes that she's been shot. And the bit where it's the first time Bond cries. And until Skyfall was the last one, a cop finds them.
Starting point is 01:34:17 He's like cradling her body. And he's just like, it's all right. It's quite alright really she's having a rest what's going on soon there's no hurry you see we have all the time in the world.
Starting point is 01:34:59 It's genuinely harrowing. Right? It's such a true character moment. That is how the book ends. Yeah, it's such a true character that is how the book ends yeah it's lovely incidentally i have an acting fact about this which is that the way peter hunt got george lazenby to do this was to call him in for the first take of this at eight in the morning and to keep doing it until five in the evening uh and the last take that they shot was the one that they kept, because by that time he was exhausted. And it just kind of works, right?
Starting point is 01:35:29 So you could force this guy into acting if you just gave him enough of a physiological imperative. I want to circle back to Lazenby as we kind of draw this to a close here, and we kind of think about what all of this means, right? Because Lazenby can't act. And playing Bond is, I mean, Roger Moore said that it wasn't acting, right? Like, you can do a lot of sort of physical stuff, you can do a lot of stunts, but in terms of emotions and whatever, there's not a lot going on there. He's kind of a cypher, he's not a very interesting character to play. And in some ways I think quite a frustrating one to play.
Starting point is 01:36:20 And I think it's very interesting, right? The ways in which both a Lazenby-Bond works, and the ways in which it doesn't, are both reflections on just like, that's just what George Lazenby is like. Like the bits where you go, oh that's a perfectly done like, smug, cocky bastard. It's because that's what George lazenby was like um the bits where you go oh but he's got a surprisingly sort of like altruistic and nice side it's like no because that's actually what he was like he's that's just that's just the guy that's um george lazenby in spite of the script delivering like genuinely quite humanizing moments just because he's like genuinely a nice guy and i've made the joke a few times but this is the only george lazenby movie so this is our only
Starting point is 01:37:08 opportunity to to talk about who he is and what he brought yeah to the it's interesting right because part of the reason why it's the only lazenby movie part of it was him right uh his agent ronan o'reilly um better known as the guy who started the pirate radio station Radio Caroline, convinced him, this James Bond shit, it's like yesterday's news. It's not going to keep going. It's about to be the 70s. And in the 70s, it's going to be peace and free love and optimism. And you don't need to be doing this tuxedo shit anymore because it it was dated when sean connery was doing it and that's like convincing it's it goes against the odds that the bond franchise has persisted
Starting point is 01:37:51 as long as it has um and so partly because lazen b was kind of this cocky model he managed to alienate a lot of people uh by just kind of Being a bit of a dick on set Well it's not even just that Is that he was left intentionally Alienated by The director by Fucking something Hunt Peter Hunt
Starting point is 01:38:17 He Was like told people were told just not To interact with Lazenby While he was on set because one figured the more isolated he felt, probably the better he would be at playing Bond, who is categorically a sociopath. And it's like, fuck, I wouldn't want to come back to a set if I was just treated like shit as a matter of course. Sorry, I interrupted you there, Abby.
Starting point is 01:38:40 And it's really interesting. There was a public interview that Diana R rigg did when lazenby quit where she's like she says if he can kind of suffer to do an apprenticeship which everybody has to do and it's like that's so revealing that you think well i got treated like shit for years and years and years and years. So clearly, if he doesn't want to, he's being too proud, right? And I think that says a lot about the way in which actors sort of thought of their profession in 1969. Yeah. It's just like, yeah, no, it's a rite of passage. You have to go.
Starting point is 01:39:23 And especially for Diana Rigg as an actress, Jesus. I mean, God only knows. I mean, some actors still think of it that way. I think the pivotal mistake in this is a story beat. I think if they had set up the fact that James Bond is a codename and this is the new guy and everyone keeps trying to put these expectations of what it is to be James Bond on him, but he saves the day by doing it his way, and by being nice and personable, that would have really played to his strengths. That would have been a really great move, because the best bits of this are where he is in spite of the script just being nice as George
Starting point is 01:39:59 Lazenby, and the worst bits are when he's trying to do an impersonation of Sean Connery, and it doesn't work. Yeah i agree with that no i mean i have anyway that's an unscientific viewpoint that's not what this podcast is about um another sorry one more thing about probably why he left is that i mean the reason why connery left is the british tabloids which were absolute rag trash papers populated entirely by bastards and i don't know what they're like now i haven't checked um i assume they're way better now um we're talking shit about him constantly whereas now the failing new york times the the reason why lazenby wanted to quit part of it was the notoriously harsh and i'm reading the language here notoriously harsh british tabloids were just writing unfavorable stories
Starting point is 01:40:48 about him and how he failed to measure up to Connery to sway public opinion against the movie before it was even released. There's one particular incident, which is during an interview with a reporter, Diana Rigg yelled across the room she was like leaving and and lazenby was still doing the interview something like i'm having garlic for lunch darling i hope you are too just an off-handed fucking statement but this led to an article in which it was just described that our rig is supposedly she hates lazenby so much but she eats garlic before love scenes like it's just tabloid slap this slock fucking shit that just um just was like well fuck i don't want to deal with this so so i mean
Starting point is 01:41:34 he pushed back and part of the reason why he became persona non grata uh with eon so quickly is that when he did the premiere, he showed up in, I mean, he wore a tuxedo, right? But he had grown his hair out. He had grown his beard out and they, they told him,
Starting point is 01:41:53 no, we want you to look like James Bond. And he told them to go fuck themselves. Cause he wasn't going to do another. He'd already said he wasn't going to, he signed a seven D a seven movie contract, including, which is a little bit hauntological right like imagine the lazen be bond 70s as opposed to more right and it's
Starting point is 01:42:13 i mean very different he signed a letter of intent to star in diamonds are forever so like he pulled out of this after having said yes i will um which is probably why he again part of why he became persona on grada you know what fucking fair on him you shouldn't ever let him force you to do a second movie that's exactly right george lazenby george lazenby anti-work activist george lazenby one in the barrel all i need baby see you. See you later. Yeah, that's right. Golden gun. I've done an objectively pretty bad movie. It's time to dip. I admire George Lazenby so much. You're right, yeah.
Starting point is 01:42:51 We are about to decide how objectively bad it is because we have a science-based system on the scum that's smarm, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked violence and misogyny scale out of 007. How do we rate this film for smarm? I'm inclined to say pretty high because of that beluga line yeah well this is the thing right every time he says something
Starting point is 01:43:10 hugely smarmy he then manages to undercut it with the sense of genuine vulnerability later on and i don't know if those things cancel each other out or not i think they don't the one i think it's high it's the one opportunity that we have for them to cancel each other out because it's not like any of the fucking later ones do that shit no fair point so I would say just and maybe I'm biased maybe I'm biased towards George Ladson B himself yeah this guy who we all
Starting point is 01:43:36 love dude the man himself rolls in does a movie leaves fantastic also there's a bunch of photos of him if you look it up in like the 70s where he had a mustache and very long hair and he looks phenomenal oh my god yeah i just want to think about george lozenby in like the brief period in between like the coming off of this high and the destruction of his career that was orchestrated by all of the people that
Starting point is 01:44:04 he pissed off doing that just living his best life with the like moustache and the sunglasses that's fucking I feel like a fucking mountain goat song about that you know I'm gonna say that it cancels out how do we feel about a 1 or a 2 can we go that low
Starting point is 01:44:20 I think we could I think so I'm willing to hit it with a 2 yeah 2 cultural insensitivity well he's only hanging out with swiss guys you don't really have any chances to do anything i mean a guy names what was he going to do be gracious to a guy named grunther it's culturally insensitive because it says that german-speaking women are all kind of like It's culturally insensitive because it says that German-speaking women are all kind of like wide, short-haired battle axes.
Starting point is 01:44:56 It's also noteworthy in that neither of the two major enemies, neither Fraulein Bunt or Blofeld, died in this. Because both of them were supposed to come back. Unfortunately, Ms. Bunt's actress died tragically only a little bit afterwards. In the continuity of this, it means that Bunt fucking kills Bond's wife and gets away with it. Never see her again. Cultural insensitivity also going to be pretty low then. I think it might be.
Starting point is 01:45:17 Even a 1. I genuinely cannot think of a line. I don't want to miss anything. It may be a 1. And that's security because we can't like give it a zero and say that it's unproblematic but like one boys unprovoked violence well i mean he slaps a woman but that maybe comes under m so yeah he slaps a woman he um well the snowblower but then he didn't really orchestrate that that just happened behind him that was that was provoked he was being chased also true um yeah i he doesn't he doesn't like
Starting point is 01:45:57 this is this podcast is not well suited to talk about a movie where it doesn't do any of our four things. Maybe I think this is another fucking one. Jesus. Yeah, he's pretty provoked. He's provoked every time. Okay. Let's give it a one. Now, so far, that's four. And that's a phenomenal thing.
Starting point is 01:46:19 We're about to ruin this clean slate, however, because. So there's things to discuss here because hey he does he does slap tracy he does slap diana rigg he assumes that she has done something to slight him and uses violence against her which is unforgivable just as a fucking fact but he is also the only bond that we have seen so far that's actually in any way tender towards any women ever yep he gets married he cries over the corpse of his fucking wife like this is he says thank you i'm also he smiles i think i have i have a thing here right i think we've been we've been sort of too skewed by connery being such a cunt to every woman that he meets that now we think oh well this level of misogyny is like we feel some affection towards them i'm
Starting point is 01:47:16 not saying that affection is misplaced because i fucking love the guy but listen it's not doing the fucking sex- Not misogynistic. The sexual har- the office sexual harassment seminar shit that he does to Moneypenny, True, true. Where he's just like, hi, how's it going, gonna grab your ass. Not acceptable. And- He also finds out that those women are being hypnotized and how they're against their will and continues to have sex with them. Yep. You're completely right. Yeah, we've been acclimatized to fucking that's right that's
Starting point is 01:47:45 what i was worried was gonna happen was that we would like like we would not try and we would try and fucking change the system from the inside and instead bond would change us that's what i'm scared is happening here we've we've gotten so used to such fucking nuclear tier misogyny that just common garden misogyny is now flying under the radar. However, we have absorbed the cultural values of the 1960s. I can't go higher than five on this one.
Starting point is 01:48:16 Personally. I worry. Well, we gave Dr. Noah three, so how do we feel about a 3 or a 4? I'd go 4. Yeah, me too. Alright.
Starting point is 01:48:29 Which gives it a total score of 8, which still makes it, objectively, the best Bond film this podcast has watched. That's right. People keep saying this, and I have a question, right, to close us out with, which is, people really seem to critically reassess this movie.
Starting point is 01:48:48 Like it did pretty well at the box office, but it got slated by, as we mentioned, the famously good and normal English tabloid press. for my my fellow co-hosts here is how much do we think of this movie's sort of critical rehabilitation is because it's actually good and how much do we think is like film hipster stuff being like oh it's this one bond so we never got to see any more of him and i actually think it's quite good because i'm being a contrarian well it's not good just out the fucking gate it's not good technically i'm afraid as a piece of filmmaking a lot of it is terrible go on to the wikipedia page for this and you look at the reception thing you'll find quotes from people who are like yeah it's the only uh cinematographically interesting bond movie which is a joke people love to use the word when they're about to say it's interesting in the same way that
Starting point is 01:49:45 like a freak of nature is interesting it's interesting in the way that like the room is interesting but like I mean the editing in this I'm sorry to keep hopping on it is atrocious like the 180 rule fucking 360 rule is fucking thrown out we're fucking
Starting point is 01:49:59 filming up and down on tripods with different angles where the continuities out the window like it's a nightmare. It all looks like the cowbell thing sounds. Yeah. All the ADR was recorded in a toilet. It's terrible.
Starting point is 01:50:13 It's not good. No. That's my analysis. I do have a drop which I didn't get to use that I want to use to close us out, and that is Blofeld saying vaccines just to be topical so thank you for joining us as we explored uh season two soon to be followed by season one point one again of kill james bond where we explored the entire tenure of objectively the best James Bond actor, George Lazenby.
Starting point is 01:50:46 There are special vaccines to be prepared. Vaccines which must be modified to suit each individual case. Thank you for listening to what I can only assume will be the first of many episodes with our boy, man, the myth, the legend, George Ladsenby. Kill James Bond will return in two weeks' time with Diamonds Are Forever, starring, I can only hot, fresh Kill James Bond content, you can subscribe to our Patreon, patreon.com slash killjamesbond, all one word, to get next week's bonus episode, which is on the movie Top Secret by the creators of Airplane and Police Squad. and Police Squad. Speaking, of course, of our beautiful patrons. Special thanks to our £15 and above patrons, and those are
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