Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond Hardcover – 1 Mar 2020
I found an other book about the James Bond movies which will be released next year.
It’s a book with over 700 (!!!) pages and with 150 interviews, written by Mark A. Altman and Eward Gross, who also wrote together a well written and acclaimed book about Star Trek.
Could be interesting…
I put that on my list - and the two Trek books too.
The Trek books are really fantastic, so I expect the Bond book to dazzle as well.
Altman is great. He hosts some entertaining podcasts as well.
I got this book last evening from DHL.
Didn’t find the time to really read it, but ofcourse I browsed in it and… well… it’s a very oddly constructed book:
on every page you read a name (from an actor, or director, or writer etc) and then his or her quote, then an empty line and then the next name with his or her quote and so on…
And this is how the entire text of the book is constructed. I’ve never seen a book like this. It looks like a documentary on paper, with a lot of interviews mixed with each other.
It’s not the most economical way of putting a book together, because this takes a lot of extra pages.
Perhaps it would have been a better idea to put the complete interviews behind each other instead of mixed quotes throughout the book.
There are no pictures, drawings, only text.
So I don’t know if it is worth the price.
But time will tell, when I have read the book for real.
I scanned it a bit while at Barnes and Noble and initially had the same perception. However, what I do like about it is that it’s quoting sources directly, and along a linear timeline so it’s easy to find out what Bill Conti says about FYEO, for example.
I may buy it now that other NTTD products will be delayed 'til November.
I enjoy the interview format enormously, especially the contradicting opinions.
When I had an hour to spare this afternoon I read the first couple of pages in this new book and I have to admit it’s a good read so far. Only some of the names I hadn’t a clue who they are.
Finally finished this book and I must admit: it’s a great read! Especially the sixties and seventies. The best sfuff was about CR '67 and NSNA. It’s just more fun to read about the movies when it’s not like a well-oiled machine.
Noteworthy there are almost no quotes of Connery and Moore and that is remarkable and a bit unfortunate, but otherwise a book I can highly recommend.
It is as good as “Some Kind of Hero”, but without the bad editing.
…although italicizing Bond all the time was a bit jarring.
Like a Shakespeare play, it was"full of quotes".
While discussing Richard Maibaum’s relationship with co-scripters, the authors included a pithy line about collaborative writing: “if your collaborators always agree, you have one too many collaborators”. Nice. Then they ganged up on Die Another Day and kicked it to the curb together, after agreeing that the first half was pretty good.
Overall it was a surprisingly brisk read, and an essential for any aficionado’s shelf.