Exactly. Traumatic experiences are usually of little interest to anyone beyond the person who suffered the trauma and his therapist, but now we make movies and multiple-season television series about male dysfunction and rehabilitation–trauma porn.
Films and television series are designed to validate male experience, not condemn it. Go back to Classical Hollywood: in the 1930’s you had the male hero who–in post-World War II cinema–became the troubled hero of noirs and Westerns (think Jimmy Stewart in Anthony Mann movies). We then get the male anti-hero of 1960’s/1970’s cinema–movies still focused on the male with rare exceptions like WANDA by Barbara Loden. Now as SAF points out, we have the male revenge hero.
This is terrific. My ambivalence about Fleming’s work may be that I am not one to wish for things that cannot come true. I do not mourn great lost loves or strive after the unobtainable, so an artist who brands and sells the impossible dream–no matter how well-done–will be off-putting for me to some extent.
“I shall not spend my days trying to prolong them. I shall use what time I have.” Not sure if I got that spot on accurate, but that was Fleming to a tee and also, as really first reflected upon by Bond in Moonraker.
Okay, just wrapping my day on this side of the world, but I’ve gotten several texts and emails from friends asking me if “Shatterhand” is, in fact, the title. My FB feed seems similarly bombarded. Don’t have the time to do a deep dive and my gut reaction is that it’s the usual stirring of the rumor pot, but it does seem to be something blasting about.
Production Weekly has Shatterhand down as the working title for Bond 25. They provided an update on the project today, saying “production is set to begin on April 6th in Pinewood Studios in London, England, as well as Matera, Italy.” This got picked up by some news sites.
Production Weekly- Well, that explains it. Let’s see what Eon says…If anything. Then again, didn’t MGW say something like “and now the worst kept secret in Hollywood” before announcing Skyfall as the title for 24. If, indeed, the cat’s out of the bag (there’s a Bond fan joke in that) the masses will just say “Oh, Cool” whereas the rest of us will say “Okay, they are playing that card.” - Guess we’ll see.
Still not happy with the name. There’ll be a lot of explanatory marketing talk to do in Germany, as the name is associated with something completely different over here. I just hope that someone will finally find out were Fleming got the name from. I read somewhere that he adopted it from a quayside bar in Berlin, but all my researches ended up with people telling me that there are (and never were) no such things as “quayside bars” in Berlin…
Do you remember by chance that old song ‘Schnucki, ach Schnucki’? It’s from 1949 and there’s mention of a “Bar Old Shatterhand”. Given Fleming’s tastes and interests for the oddest curio it’s likely he picked it up in that song.
If there was a real bar with that name, near or far from a quay, in Berlin or Hamburg or Vienna where Hermann Leopoldi the composer was from, then that one in turn got its name certainly from Karl May.
Nice call. It was bugging during my slogging through traffic and now back with my archive drives, I came across the same article. Production Weekly is what it is, but there is a habit of speculation mixed in with their facts. Back in the day, Hollywood Reporter had the best production schedule wrap up and on titles they’d preface certain productions with “Filming As” .
Seems it’s another case of regurgitating prior speculation in the hopes of being accurate so they can claim the “which we first reported in…” bit of fluff. Simply something which can popped back into the news feed and clearly was. I guess the most entertaining part was having a slew of friends look to me rather than the studios for verification.
Still, for all our collective thoughts and speculation in nearly 5000 posts here, it might end up being the case. I’d prefer not myself, but, we shall see. The again I’d still take it over ‘Beyond The Ice’ or ‘Property of a Riscio’.
Shatterhand is the name of Karl May’s alter ego in his series of late 19th century adventure stories, a hugely popular figure and in various ways a precursor of Fleming’s own brand of adventure fantasy, albeit totally fictional. Karl May imagined the Wild West, Arabia and other places without ever having been there.
But I’m not sure it would be a problematic title in German speaking countries any more. The May canon isn’t to youth readers what it used to be. Even its revival during the 60s and 70s of last century was largely due to the popular films of that time. And they in turn are by now more or less a footnote; while everybody knows them they figure by now as their own parody.
My take: “Shatterhand” is the “Blue Harvest” of Bond films.
I could easily imagine EON winking at all the fans on message boards who hoped for “Shatterhand” as the title, making Bond the YOLT-adaptation which had eluded the franchise so far.
So… BOND 25 could turn out to be Blofeld´s last stand? Probability: 10 percent.
She is fantastic, would be awesome to see her join.
Side note: is it me, or does Baz give the impression that Burns is not a new hiring, but has been working on it for a while? Also, he answers a question the forum had a while back regarding whether any of the Hodge script was used - It’s not, Burns is working off P&W earlier script.
With filming due to start in early April, would such casting decisions (especially for what I assume is a fairly major role) not have been finalised by now?
(you’ll have to scroll down a bit to get to the Bond 25 news)
