The 007th Chapter – Licence to Kill: Final Contact
We’re in a hotel room.
Well, that experiment fell apart immediately, didn’t it? As the man said, fell flat on its face. Most of these Gardner pieces have opened with that phrase. One could be terribly sarcastic (a stretch, I know) and snidely assert that as this book is not associated with his Bond series, this must actually be an original and daring move. So I will.
Yet something does merit less knee-jerk sniping: which came first, the chicken or the egg? (It’s the chicken, evolution fans). But in this context, who is influencing whom? As Mr Gardner noted, his Bonds were very popular so if, as the film sadly suggests, Eon had hit a creative desert, why not look to popular Bond of the day? I’m sure I’ve said it before (…continuity) but Licence to Kill’s reputation amongst its dog-bothering apologists as being close to Fleming misreads how much Gardner there is here. Hotel rooms. Alliterative names. Real-world threat thing. Genre-ripping. A traitor. Right-on-cue action scenes that tend to go on a bit. Clattering literary references. Jumbled continuity to (much, much) earlier incidents. M being lousy to Bond. A dour, plodding, pompous and frankly unlikeable hero in grim garb. Loads of crimson fireballs. An interesting idea for a villain, but one surrounded by largely faceless goons. Stunning lack of interest in its geography. Female agent, clumsy banter. None more Gardner, is Licence to Kill. If, as I think we should for politeness’ sake, we take Mr Gardner’s happiness at the task at face value, it’s not surprising.
This particular chapter poses interest in that the first half of it contains scenes I don’t recall being in the film, and the second half some that are. I put my certainty at “recall” as there’s nothing you can do to persuade me to watch Licence to Kill. Nothing. Very possibly the scenes I think aren’t in the final product were filmed but deleted but then I’m of the view that there’s a further couple of hours or so of scenes that they could still have deleted without any great loss to humanity.
We join Bond and his room service meal (…whatever its merits as “Bond”, dodgy at best, I’m sure that’s happened before in a Gardner) watching television – quaintly referred to throughout as CNNTV - and making snotty remarks about it (definitely in Nobody Lives For Ever). The blithe stance taken by the television reporter towards Franz Sanchez does little to dissuade those who are persuaded to believe CNN as Fake News. “At that moment Bond had stopped eating, the fresh salmon on his fork hovering between plate and mouth.” Surely it was the fork doing the hovering? Mr Gardner might be right: this book may have little to do with his series of James Bond books as those seemed more carefully written. Still, everyone makes mistakes when they’re overwhelmed with happiness but on the basis the offspring might at some point read this, I’ll stop that analogy there. Get on with your homework.
The commentator’s name is Anna Rack. Hm. Might be an invention of the screenplay, and tells one a lot about how grimly desperate Eon were at this point or, were this in any way, shape or form connected with prior Gardners, a callback to the many anoraks and windcheaters and practical, hard-wearing clobber Mr Gardner has clothed Bond in. But it can’t be that, Mr Gardner said it couldn’t, so let’s chalk this particular stupidity up to Messrs. Maibaum and Wilson.
So President Lopez and his entourage turn up at the Casino, to which Bond’s reaction is “Look as if they came straight from Ruritania.” That’s pure Gardner: pompous literary references to show he’s hangin’ wiv da kidz. I can’t imagine why anyone would have preferred Batman over this.
Odd note in that the cars on show are all referred to in the abbreviated form as “limos”. Seems too casual for the otherwise detailed-to-pedantic Gardner style, a style that will shortly give us a step-by-step-by-step-by-some-more-steps account of what happened between stealing the money and the seaplane and returning to Leiter’s house (short version: he put the money into some suitcases, and ditched the ‘plane). Still, the content is nothing to do with his other books. Nothing much to do with English, either.
“Bond sighed. Well, he’s there, he thought. Where you lead, Franz Sanchez, I must follow. He had a lot to do before then, though, and it had been a tiring day.” An odd shift between first and third person in the one paragraph? Is that conventional, Jim asked himself?
Page-and-a-bit of flashback landing and taking off and flying about which pads things out but strikes one as more Gardner than Eon in its breath-by-breath intricacy leading to nowhere very much. From (hazy) memory, the film just has Bond turn up in Isthmus City with the suitcases: arguably this is all we need, or could want, to know. Perhaps this is a sound example of a film’s advantage of “show, don’t tell” whereas in written form one can’t show, although the decision taken to tell is open to debate. That said, I suspect the ensuing scene of scuttling the seaplane would have been way beyond the budget, so the books affords itself a luxury at our expense that the film does – and could - not.
Unusual passage about Bond and friendship: “Some had an inkling of his arcane work…” (kill them, you’re meant to be a secret agent, you rope-soled crretin) “others just got on with him, liked him for his company and conversation.” Not very likely, with this Bond, is it? Bond at all, for that matter. Perhaps in this bubble universe of Licence to Kill he’s wholly different but so far he seems just as riddled with traditional Garndertics as he has been throughout the run. Book proceeds to tell us about David Wolkowsky; from the description this might be a real person and probably a pal of the author and that’s not unusual for a Bond book (Mr Benson takes it to mad, tragic extremes) but I’m sure there’s a Wolkowsky kicking around the rest of the Gardners, the later ones I think, who is a CIA proto-Leiter. There’s a chap called David Wolkovsky (with a middle “v”) in Scorpius but it cannot be the same person as this book has nothing to do with that one. At all. We’ve been told that. Also, his name is ever-so-slightly different so the conceit of Licence to Kill’s isolation patently remains ever-so-slightly in place. Ish.
Further research (strenuous) indeed establishes this Wolkowsky as a real person and the actual owner/developer of the properties described at length. Spy thriller/subliminal real estate sales brochure crossover fiction. A niche genre, not sure it takes off. Bit like this 'plane.
Blimey, the Titanic sank quicker than this sodding aeroplane. Lost at sea and sinking slowly: welcome, one and all, to Licence to Kill.
“The money was drugs money, so he felt no moral qualms about it, for this loot would be used to bring Franz Sanchez to his final destiny – …” Great! Is Bond going to buy a big bomb or a mammoth man-eating tiger or something dramatic? “…either death or a long spell of imprisonment.” Oh. Well, I’m sure it’s going to be all really exciting anyway.
Quick bit of badinage with this Wolkowsky about Bond potentially breaking into the man’s house on the pretext of adultery – meant to be amusing, comes across as psychotic – and then we meet “Steve”. “A tall, fine-looking young man, and an excellent sailor.” Well, hello sailor. And then… then the purest Gardner one has read to date, dangerously risking pricking the bubble: half a page on the history of the Casa Marina Hotel, so staggeringly boring and padded out it’s brilliant, then a SECRET COMPARTMENT, another hotel room, drawn-out gun description, Bond being grumpy, dark “slacks”, a black roll-neck, doe-skin moccasins, small zippered pouches. It’s absolutely lovely, if you like that sort of thing. A single, wonderful page of concentrated, raw Gardner, breathtaking in its efficient capture of all the characteristics, be they for good or ill, before we rejoin the film.
At which point, Bond is breaking into his second house of the chapter. One can see why the first incident didn’t make the cut – superb, essence-of-Gardner it might have been, but it advanced the plot not one whisper and if it had been on screen, Licence to Kill would have made even less money (apparently possible). Even with this scene there’s a solid nine hours of housebreaking with miniaturised tools including a “rake” – unfortunately not a real rake, that would have been an actual joke, God forbid – before we’re finally into Leiter’s study. Meanwhile, about four seconds have passed on screen. Perhaps this sort of thing is where Mr Gardner “had truck” with screenplays before: the truck would have taken days to bloody describe.
Three – that’s three, mark you - dense paragraphs about a computer starting up and then displaying its folders – here’s exciting – by name. Is anything else on? When does the Indiana Jones film come out?
Right, so, this sets up the meeting with P Bouvier at the bar but unlike the film and going there, because this is Gardner, Bond goes back to his hotel. Superb. He does get value for money, doesn’t he? He “…had left the usual little traps: a matchstick here and a piece of cotton there.” Curiously under-described, for once. I think we should be told. Second thoughts, don’t, we’ll be here all day and there’s a fight to be had: also, check-out’s by 11 a.m. If these are the “usual” traps, how is this a self-contained universe?
“He put the Walther under his pillow, secured the door, stripped off, performed his nightly toilet and slid into bed.” There’s something very upsetting about any sort of sliding going on just after “performing” “his nightly toilet”; I remember at the time that the film was initially threatened with a 18 certificate so I assume this was one of the scenes that definitely had to go, if only because the suggestion of colossal and upsetting incontinence – however true to the aged Gardner Bond – would have clashed horribly with Mr Dalt-Ton’s look of wearied constipation. “Performed his nightly toilet”; it’s so Gardner it practically sings.
After a bit of back-and-forth buying the speedboat – is this in the film? Might have lightened the mood, even if it’s the same joke about Bond handing over massive wodges of cash that is played out on several other occasions, I think – we’re finally at the bar. “The clientele looked to be the dregs of humanity. Some looked to be downright dangerously wicked as well.” He made Cambridge in good time, didn’t he? “…a tired-looking stripper performed in a manner that would make it fun to watch paint dry.” Careful, John: not so long ago you spent around 150 words describing a computer turning on, and the cinema’s beginning to empty. Apparently Lethal Weapon 2’s quite jolly.
“A pair of men in outdated, and slightly mouldy dinner jackets stood inside the door. You did not have to be brain of the year to mark them down as bouncers.” What else would they be, John? Having just checked, my Brain of the Year medallion is capitalised (1991, fourth place Mid-Oxfordshire regional heats (Village Class (Intermediate))). I’m telling you this as it’s taking ages for Bond to walk across the room, edging his way slowly past all the description, and start the film going again.
From here, scene plays out pretty much as I remember it (and no, I’m not checking; you can put yourself through that pleasure, I have toilet to perform), with the amusing size-does-matter gun bit between Bond and Pam Bouvier (Bond is wearing a windcheater: Timothy Dalt-Ton is John Gardner’s Ken Spoon and there is no arguing against it). Pam is wearing “grubby white pants” which suggests she too has problem performing her nightly toilet, and the budget couldn’t stretch to some “slacks” for her, poor mite. Then Dario turns up. Dario… is not physically described, not one word, which lends itself to amusing speculation that they had no idea who or at what age to cast the part. At least Pam gets legs that go on “for ever”, although that would present a challenge for the Casting Director if Charlotte the Deformed Giraffe were to price herself beyond budget, which history tells us she did.
Unusually for a Gardner sequence, the brawl is described in quick and broad detail rather than punch-by-punch, suggesting this is from the screenplay that probably said “Insert bar fight here: make it up on the day, as much as we can afford and insure (won’t be much; we can’t even afford a haircut for Mr Dalt-Ton).” Weird chapter, come to think of it: so little of the start of it advances anything that it’s as if there was an instruction not to include too many new events that would change the actual structure of the film, but outside of that, include as much additional Gardnering as you like as long as it goes nowhere and doesn’t have to be spent on.
“…Bond saw a four foot hole had appeared in the wall. ‘If they will use cheap building materials,’ he said.” Bahamian builders. Hi, Jawn, it’s Cubby. That wise-ass crack about doing things on the cheap? I know you liked it, but it’s gotta go. And while I’m on, what was all that boring cubbible about the goddamn hotel?
“ ‘Kevlar?’ asked Bond, knowing this was the new lightweight combination from which the best flak jackets were made these days.” You’re meant to be escaping, not browsing a catalogue. Classic Gardner, though: punctuate the action with something stopping it stone cold dead. “I still fly a lot. Even got my own little Beechcraft Baron. Keep me hand in.” Your accent’s slipping. Pam Bouvier is one of the Liverpool Bouviers. She stole that ‘plane.
“Under the jacket she wore only a pink silk camisole which gave Bond an admirable view.” Don’t forget she’s only otherwise in her pants. You duhty old man. “His voice carried an air of frivolity.” Gardner’s Bond… no. Dalt-Ton’s Bond… no.
“She looked appalled; and, when Bond did not reply, she asked how many men he had.” At which she was even more appalled. Serve her right for asking such a personal question.
“Pam was in his arms and they both slid towards the deck.” Not incontinence’s best timing, but at least it was mutual, slapping about in their own bilgewater, him in his slacks, her in her grubby pants. Oh, the humanity. Oh, the mess.
With an image of uncontrollable botty sick now in one’s mind, it seems appropriate to leave Licence to Kill right there, to stew in its own juices.
Back to the premise: “…it has absolutely nothing to do with my series of James Bond books.” Perhaps in events (although second helpings of Leiter does cast doubt on this), but not in style. I’d overlooked this one before in considering which book might consolidate the Gardner Bond most effectively. A case could be made for Icebreaker, with its lunatic plotting that stands not one second of scrutiny, or Win, Lose or Die for its TRAITORS and remorseless detail, or Nobody Lives For Ever for being good despite all such things – but insofar as one chapter does it all, there’s a plausible argument for Licence to Kill. It’s not out on its own. Time to burst the bubble, and let it slide into its rightful place in the continuity, alongside its brethren.
For the film, its place still depends on how deeply you can dig.
“James Bond” – and by now, it would be weirder not to have the quotes around the name - will return in the 007th Chapter of Brokenclaw. “Jacques Stewart” was always completely fictional.