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Bond: The Legacy

Aired November 21, 2002 - 11:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Actually, Bond isn't back. He's never gone anywhere to come back from. He's been here for four decades now. You know, there's been Brosnan, Dalton, Moore, Connery and Lasenby (ph) a whole legend of men who like them shaken, not stirred, if you will. He first appeared on film 40 years ago in 1962 with "Dr. No." I loved that film. But from then until how, it's been a nonstop movie and money-making machine.
John Cork is the author of the new book "James Bond: The Legacy," one of the leading experts on all that is Bond, movies and mystique. And he joins us this morning from New York.

Good morning. Glad to have you with us today.

JOHN CORK, AUTHOR, "JAMES BOND: THE LEGACY": Good morning to you.

HARRIS: This is a heck of a book you put together here. This is incredible. For anybody who is a Bond-a-file, if I can make that term up this morning, they've got to get this book, because you've got everything from all the Bond men, the Bond women, the Bond mystique, even some of the myths that have been going around with this bond legend.

As we talk, we'll try to flip through as many pictures as we can, because there's so many in the book, but let's start off talking about the Bond men. What struck you as you did your research on all of this?

CORK: Well, the thing that struck me was just how much Connery was able to bring to the role when he created the role, and how each actor as been the right bond for the right time. When we didn't want to spies seriously in the 1970s, we got Roger Moore, who didn't take the role that seriously, and there was Dalton, when we were ending the Cold War and there was a lot of uncertainty, played a more uncertain and angrier Bond. So I think each Bond has been the right Bond for the time. And now, we have Pierce Brosnan, who I think is fantastic.

HARRIS: You know, we talk about taking the movie seriously. It seems as though some very important people did, because in many ways, real life has imitated these movies. The CIA is doing a lot of things that James Bond has done for years.

CORK: Absolutely. They recently financed a private company called In-Q-Tell, and the Q is after Q Branch in the Bond novels, to develop technology to sweep the Internet and pick up e-mails and things like that. HARRIS: All right, I have to ask you about the Bond women. We've talked about the men. Let's give equal time to the women. Everyone has their favorite. How about yours?

CORK: My favorite Ursula Andress from "Dr. No." I mean, fantastic, and still gorgeous today. I actually saw her earlier this week in London.

HARRIS: How is she doing?

CORK: I think she's doing just fantastic.

HARRIS: What is she doing right now?

CORK: Well, she was attending the premiere of the new film, "Die Another Day," and she's actually done some wonderful artistic films in Rome recently, part of a thing called the Que Master Series, which are very limited art films, but she's great.

HARRIS: Let me ask you about some of them. When you do the research, and I know going in, you had to have a lot of ideas, and trying perhaps to go after some of the myths that have been associated with the Bond legend. How about any particular striking myths that you were able to either confirm or to explode?

CORK: Well, the one that struck me the most is that everybody thinks that Sean Connery left the role because he was tired of the hoopla and dealing with the press. That's not true at all. Connery tried to negotiate to be an equal partner with the producers. And the producers said no, we want James Bond to be the star, not any one actor, and had they not played that gamble and had that gamble pay off, we probably wouldn't have Bond films today.

HARRIS: No kidding. It sounds to me like Sean Connery knew what they had, because it seems as though everything that came after this movie from the get-go, this movie set the standard in so many different ways for our ideas of heroes and action films and our ideas of beauty and whatnot, and the formula even for action films like this.

CORK: Really, they were called adventure films before this. And it really took a totally different turn. You had these homespun John Wayne-type heroes who'd never shoot a man in the bock. Bond actually shoots somebody in the back in "Dr. No" to kill them, and It's a real different type of hero is darkly elegant, very sexual. You know, Bond presumably sleeps with three women during the course of the film, although we don't see the gory details, naturally.

But it was a very different kind of hero, and it did set the standard. These films were cut and shot and put together in ways that were very different from the way movies were being done in Hollywood at that time.

HARRIS: One other way they set the standard as well, John, is in the stunts. Some of the stunts, I remember as a kid and young man, we used to wait for the Bond movies to come out to see what was going to be the next big special effects event, because up until that point, you didn't see them on the scale that you see in the Bond movies.

CORK: Right. In the photo you've got out now of the boat jump from "Live and Let Die" set a record. Nobody had ever done a boat like that before. You have the ski jump in "The Spy Who Loved Me." And it's still considered the greatest stunt ever filmed for a movie. They constantly break records. It had the highest jump a fixed position with a bungee cord for the beginning of "Goldeneye." It's a fantastic legacy of stuntwork.

HARRIS: I got to ask you this one on the way out. Which Bond movie was the only film to carry a surgeon general's warning?

CORK: "License to Kill," because Lark Cigarettes did a product placement in it, and some U.S. congressmen got upset about that, and said if it's ever sold to television, it would be advertising, and so they put the surgeon general's warnings to try to forestall any problems on that level.

HARRIS: That's incredible. John Cork, you put together an incredible piece of work here. Good luck with it, and good luck with the rest of your career, too.

CORK: Thank you.

HARRIS: I hope to talk to you again some other time, perhaps more at length about this stuff.

CORK: I would love it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired November 21, 2002 - 11:47   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Actually, Bond isn't back. He's never gone anywhere to come back from. He's been here for four decades now. You know, there's been Brosnan, Dalton, Moore, Connery and Lasenby (ph) a whole legend of men who like them shaken, not stirred, if you will. He first appeared on film 40 years ago in 1962 with "Dr. No." I loved that film. But from then until how, it's been a nonstop movie and money-making machine.
John Cork is the author of the new book "James Bond: The Legacy," one of the leading experts on all that is Bond, movies and mystique. And he joins us this morning from New York.

Good morning. Glad to have you with us today.

JOHN CORK, AUTHOR, "JAMES BOND: THE LEGACY": Good morning to you.

HARRIS: This is a heck of a book you put together here. This is incredible. For anybody who is a Bond-a-file, if I can make that term up this morning, they've got to get this book, because you've got everything from all the Bond men, the Bond women, the Bond mystique, even some of the myths that have been going around with this bond legend.

As we talk, we'll try to flip through as many pictures as we can, because there's so many in the book, but let's start off talking about the Bond men. What struck you as you did your research on all of this?

CORK: Well, the thing that struck me was just how much Connery was able to bring to the role when he created the role, and how each actor as been the right bond for the right time. When we didn't want to spies seriously in the 1970s, we got Roger Moore, who didn't take the role that seriously, and there was Dalton, when we were ending the Cold War and there was a lot of uncertainty, played a more uncertain and angrier Bond. So I think each Bond has been the right Bond for the time. And now, we have Pierce Brosnan, who I think is fantastic.

HARRIS: You know, we talk about taking the movie seriously. It seems as though some very important people did, because in many ways, real life has imitated these movies. The CIA is doing a lot of things that James Bond has done for years.

CORK: Absolutely. They recently financed a private company called In-Q-Tell, and the Q is after Q Branch in the Bond novels, to develop technology to sweep the Internet and pick up e-mails and things like that. HARRIS: All right, I have to ask you about the Bond women. We've talked about the men. Let's give equal time to the women. Everyone has their favorite. How about yours?

CORK: My favorite Ursula Andress from "Dr. No." I mean, fantastic, and still gorgeous today. I actually saw her earlier this week in London.

HARRIS: How is she doing?

CORK: I think she's doing just fantastic.

HARRIS: What is she doing right now?

CORK: Well, she was attending the premiere of the new film, "Die Another Day," and she's actually done some wonderful artistic films in Rome recently, part of a thing called the Que Master Series, which are very limited art films, but she's great.

HARRIS: Let me ask you about some of them. When you do the research, and I know going in, you had to have a lot of ideas, and trying perhaps to go after some of the myths that have been associated with the Bond legend. How about any particular striking myths that you were able to either confirm or to explode?

CORK: Well, the one that struck me the most is that everybody thinks that Sean Connery left the role because he was tired of the hoopla and dealing with the press. That's not true at all. Connery tried to negotiate to be an equal partner with the producers. And the producers said no, we want James Bond to be the star, not any one actor, and had they not played that gamble and had that gamble pay off, we probably wouldn't have Bond films today.

HARRIS: No kidding. It sounds to me like Sean Connery knew what they had, because it seems as though everything that came after this movie from the get-go, this movie set the standard in so many different ways for our ideas of heroes and action films and our ideas of beauty and whatnot, and the formula even for action films like this.

CORK: Really, they were called adventure films before this. And it really took a totally different turn. You had these homespun John Wayne-type heroes who'd never shoot a man in the bock. Bond actually shoots somebody in the back in "Dr. No" to kill them, and It's a real different type of hero is darkly elegant, very sexual. You know, Bond presumably sleeps with three women during the course of the film, although we don't see the gory details, naturally.

But it was a very different kind of hero, and it did set the standard. These films were cut and shot and put together in ways that were very different from the way movies were being done in Hollywood at that time.

HARRIS: One other way they set the standard as well, John, is in the stunts. Some of the stunts, I remember as a kid and young man, we used to wait for the Bond movies to come out to see what was going to be the next big special effects event, because up until that point, you didn't see them on the scale that you see in the Bond movies.

CORK: Right. In the photo you've got out now of the boat jump from "Live and Let Die" set a record. Nobody had ever done a boat like that before. You have the ski jump in "The Spy Who Loved Me." And it's still considered the greatest stunt ever filmed for a movie. They constantly break records. It had the highest jump a fixed position with a bungee cord for the beginning of "Goldeneye." It's a fantastic legacy of stuntwork.

HARRIS: I got to ask you this one on the way out. Which Bond movie was the only film to carry a surgeon general's warning?

CORK: "License to Kill," because Lark Cigarettes did a product placement in it, and some U.S. congressmen got upset about that, and said if it's ever sold to television, it would be advertising, and so they put the surgeon general's warnings to try to forestall any problems on that level.

HARRIS: That's incredible. John Cork, you put together an incredible piece of work here. Good luck with it, and good luck with the rest of your career, too.

CORK: Thank you.

HARRIS: I hope to talk to you again some other time, perhaps more at length about this stuff.

CORK: I would love it.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com