I’m tempted to go with Maybelle Pepper - but then I still seem to struggle, in spite of daily flossing, with pieces of Ruby and Gupta in that space between lower right premolar and molar. Rodney looks like the wiry-sinewy guy suited to help with that. Also, shouldn’t overly inconvenience my digestion, always a bonus these days.
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Hmm; on that vote you weren’t actually meant to eat either Ruby or Gupta but I fear (without any admission of liability whatsoever) that you may have been influenced in a particularly unfortunate internet way of things. I obviously consider myself and this platform in no way responsible for such behaviour, which apparently will do as an exculpatory stance. Thoughts and prayers to the families of Ruby and Gupta.
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Will Mrs JW be silent while we’re eating her? If yes, her. If no, then I’ll go with Ahmed’s boss. There’s something about Rodney that seems sinewy and overly chewy.
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The fat boss. I hate fat meat, make no mistake. But I have to store something for the colder seasons. And when you also have the bones, baby, you‘ve got a stew going!
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Depends on your approach. If you adopt the Brosnan shoulderchew technique, then no, she’ll be still jabbering on. If, as is more humane (marginally more humane) you crack her on the head with a coconut first, then very dead will she be once you start a-gnawing on her tootsies.
I cannot believe I am giving top tips to cannibals now. I suppose it is largely my own fault.
I’ve been in this room for eight years now, Clarice. I know they will never, ever let me out while I’m alive. What I want is a view. I want a window where I can see a tree, or even water. I want to be in a federal institution, far away from Dr. Chilton, and also Dr. Swann ‘cause she’s frickin’ useless.
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This site is so much more then only about James Bond. You learn so much here! 
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September 19
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Pierce Brosnan dodged a bullet in 1987 and, had he been able to take the part, the series would still have stalled in 1989 and there wouldn’t have been a Pierce Brosnan equivalent to “save” it in 1995.
- Truth
- Fiction
0
voters
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Good question, never thought about it like that. I don’t know about ‘universally acknowledged’ but it probably ought to be. Looking at the budgets they doubled from TSWLM to MR, then took a slight dip for the next two films and only increased again, moderately, for AVTAK. That was on par with MR’s $ 30m six years earlier.
It’s true that TLD and LTK got an increased budget of $ 40m/42m respectively. But if you look at inflation between 1979 and 1989 the $ 30m MR budget should have been closer to $ 50m. Bond in the 80s was expected to operate with tighter budgets and still create the feeling - and profits! - of the series’ heyday. An impossible task.
Question now is, would that have been different with Brosnan in the role? Don’t think so, no. The studio suits didn’t squeeze 007 because they hated the cash cow but because they were temporarily inconvenienced themselves after HEAVEN’S GATE. Why would they have invested more into the series with a tv actor in the role?
In the end the crush had to happen and Brosnan was lucky to come on board after the storm.
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While I think things worked out best (particularly for Pierce Brosnan) the way they did, I voted fiction because I think Brosnan would have been popular with the public and more successful in ticket sales in that brief two film stint than Timothy Dalton was (who was good himself, but at the time too different from Roger Moore for audiences to fully accept). As a result, I think the powers that be would have kept Brosnan on for a third film in 1995 or thereabouts had he wanted to continue (and I think he would have wanted to–particularly if at that point the films would have been better funded as they wound up being).
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I think it’s not the question if TPTB would have kept him. The question is, would he have stayed on board? An aspiring (then) young actor (sic!) who had just made it to the big screen, but tied to a franchise in limbo. No chance to do anything else, because the lawsuit might come to an end at any time. And after years of waiting like a panther behind bars, he might have done the same as Dalton to save his career…
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One major factor in the success of GE was the momentum after lots of critics declared Bond is dead during the hiatus.
Take that away and have Brosnan take over from Moore it probably would have been mildly successful but less so with the second. „Stale, been there done that“ and so forth.
And yes, after the protracted legal battle, even if Brosnan had returned, the lack of novelty would have diminished his tenure.
Strange how things work themselves out sometimes.
Still hoping for that „truism“ to become true for dictators.
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It is true!
The great unwashed (probably all with Youtube channels) who don’t understand this Bond-thing in the way that we here at CBn do, always take the lazy fob-off that somehow the audience not “taking” to TD was the root of all failure.
But behind-the-scenes wrangling aside, the shallow decline of the box office take, the slightly staling (not sure that is actually a verb) of creativity, in a marketplace that was clearly taken with big, brash, bold, loud, and new, meant that whoever followed Sir Rog was on a hiding to nothing. One of the master strokes of GE was that it was able to echo classic Bond, while looking just like its contemporary competition (True Lies and the like).
This is not a shot at Brozza, but I question this notion that he was big enough “box office” to have changed history. He was a TV star with pretty much only a popular, but not smash hit, series under his belt (Steele was no The A Team), and so while TLD would have performed the same, maybe better, I question whether he (or anyone else) could have reversed the trend that was emerging. I’m not saying the series was tanking, but what it wasn’t doing was truly competing with its competition at the box office (personally I think it should have pivoted to November as it did when it returned, after Sir Rog left, rather than studios hoping to take on the Lethals and Die Hards of the world in the summer).
I’ve said before, I think Brozza got “lucky” twice - he missed out in '86-87, and in '94 Gibson turned it down.
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I’d even argue that Bond was dead - or rather ‘missing believed dead’ as befits the character. Fact is, during the hiatus it was mainly the hardcore fans that missed him. The wider audience, the cinema creatives and scholars, the critics, they all got by splendidly without Bond.
I think to understand the mechanics of why Bond went down the drain in ‘89 we have to look at the year before.
When I saw this image I thought it looked like taken directly out of DR NO. Now DIE HARD was no Bond film but it managed to successfully transplant that element of the early films and novels, one more or less ordinary human pitted against an army of odds and succeeding by sheer stubbornness and endurance. DIE HARD II did the same on a bigger budget with a bigger profit (and perhaps a little closer to the Bond theme).
Essentially these films and their brethren - LEATHAL WEAPON, UNDER SIEGE, SPEED so on - boiled Bond down to the action bones and delivered nonstop set pieces and shootouts at two thirds of a Bond budget. Because they didn’t need: luxury props, casino scenes, seven different locations on four continents and so on. Yes, they too got costlier with the entries. But once a ‘small’ film like DIE HARD had shown it could attract the same audience as a Bond film ordinarily would that entire business model was in danger.
And the key to this were the ‘ordinary’ heroes and the downsized scale of their exploits; few locations outside the main event/stage. Even when world politics/terrorism/war was the theme (PATRIOT GAMES, CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER and especially THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER) it rarely called for extensive set design. They made some hugely successful and engaging thrillers on at times very modest budgets. Which used to be a strong sleeve of the Eon diet.
While we Bond fans chewed through our annual fix of litBond delivered by Gardner the moviegoing public was dandy with the changed menu at their theatres. I would say, having lived through that hiatus, that there genuinely wasn’t a demand for Bond. And an actor like Brosnan, with the best part of his career still ahead of him, would likely have been hard pressed to stay on board while his peers all worked and prospered.
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Yes, the US summer season of the late 80s had created 2 “styles” - the “grit” of Joel Silver’s outputs, and then the “fantastic” of Batman and Arnold S’s “Total Recall” and even T2. You watch any of them together, so-to-speak, it becomes very apparent how they’re all built the same way.
Bond, on the other hand, was still a '60s product that had slowly evolved on its own, usually successful, timetable. But what helped all those other films be successful was that they felt new, rather than evolved, and it was an impossible task to compete (see LTK). TLD, with its look, pacing, and A/PG rating did feel like the culmination (and perhaps the end) of what preceded. Bond films always had the luxury of being compared to themselves, but now they were being compared to something else.
What should also not be forgotten was how packed that era was - a tent pole release every week. It was sink or swim for every blockbuster release and it was brutal, with no room for a slow burner. You pretty much had your release weekend to grab the attention. If you didn’t, it could pretty much be curtains (Last Action Hero, anyone?).
For me the summer movie season feels less crowded now (especially since Covid, streaming etc) but I still think Bond has made the most of its switch into late Fall. I hold out TND as a good example: it made a ton of money even having Titanic - but only Titanic - to compete with during the same release window.
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An indicator of how little demand there was for a new Bond back in the day? I never saw GE on the big screen. 
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Have to confess: that was the time I had stopped my interest in Bond and even thought the series was over. (I even taped over many Bond films I had recorded with my VCR; it was my film student phase of pretentious movie taste).
Thankfully, GE reignited my love for Bond.
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I was actually hesitant myself. There was that ubiquitous promotional campaign, the Tina Turner song, GOLDENEYE Wilkinson razors and GOLDENEYE suppressed toy guns at the supermarket, that I was reminded of the BATMAN over-promotion (or what us naïve innocent little souls back then considered over-promotion). But then I spontaneously decided to take an afternoon off and watch it at a matinee.
My initial reaction was indeed undecided. It was good to have Bond back (even in that unusual late autumn/early winter slot). And I wished Brosnan all the best for his Bond run. But I also noticed a definite lack of excitement on my part, which I put down to having grown older.
Two years later I would catch TOMORROW NEVER DIES at the first showing, after buying the novelisation, the Cinema and Playboy Special issues, the theme song single, the Dave Arnold Shaken and Stirred CD and a couple of other publications. I noticed my fandom had evolved but I couldn’t yet point a finger on what I felt had changed or was missing. That came a few years later with joining CBn and countless discussions since.
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I’ll just say that in 1986/87 Pierce Brosnan was a big general consensus choice (at the very least here in America) to be the next James Bond. “Everyone” wanted him and expected him–and EON even hired him (briefly). So when he ended up not getting it and a not well known (again to American audiences) actor Timothy Dalton got the gig instead, that undoubtedly had SOME negative affect on the box office. Additionally, the 1989 film would have been vastly different–and likely not revenge-based–with Brosnan in it. I would even venture it would have had more publicity than what Dalton’s Licence To Kill had, though how much more?
But you’re definitely right that moving to the fall to get away from all the summer blockbusters clearly helped the franchise during the '90s.
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But the counter argument to this would be TLD’s decent box office domestically ($ 50m, on par with AVTAK’s). If Dalton wasn’t accepted in the role* would US audiences then have rushed to the cinema in roughly the same numbers as they did for the last Moore?
My own impression, purely based on anecdotal evidence, always used to be that LTK fared as it did because it just wasn’t the best package on offer. Dalton was easily less popular than Brosnan here in Europe, too. It didn’t hinder his first entry.
*Mind you, surely there were some people disappointed about not getting Brosnan. But it’s hard to put a number on that percentage, and it’s likely not that decisive an element for LTK’s make or break.
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Double-Oh, I definitely agree that the whilff of “second-choice” didn’t help TD at all. And I agree that Brozza was (especially in the States) the general consensus and “expected” successor. Perhaps my point is that that alone, was never going to be enough to re-energize the series to the extent the competition still to come would require.
To be fair on Brozza - and TD - there wasn’t anyone out there who would’ve been a “better” choice (in terms of box office potential). Some of the names that had been thrown around - Sam Neill, Simon McCorkindale (whoops spelling, so there you go…!) - none had the ooomph of “star” that I feel the series needed.
It was a different marketplace than the last time around when Sir Rog came aboard. While some might say he was “only” a TV star, he had international name recognition through a number of series (I’d offer guesting on Maverick was as big a factor as The Saint re: US marketplace).
Stardom is one of those “can’t-put-your-finger on it” things, I think Brozza’s profile, especially for Bond, was helped by missing out, more than I think he could have made TLD bigger; in that his success with GE doesn’t automatically apply backwards to TLD, as it were. Not unlike DC in '06 - getting hammered pre-production, definitely helped, I’ll say ‘reset’ rather than lower the bar of expectation.
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