That’s all very interesting, thank you for explaining. I think you’re right on every point. I can only add some mundane opinions. The fact that hasty, low-budget 2003 effort was given the blandly awkward title My Name Is Modesty Blaise, which no proper blockbuster would ever use, would suggest that Tarrantino did intend to make and title a Blaise film Modesty Blaise, or some such, at some point (given the fact the '60s film also had the name-only title, he wouldn’t want three of the things out there). However, as you point out, and it’s something I didn’t even consider, perhaps the rights have lapsed now, so even Tarrantino himself may have realised he’d wasted his chance.
Also, as you shrewdly point out, the brand has withered on the vine, which is something fans of most anything can easily forget. Perhaps it’s wouldn’t work now anyway, given that she used to distract security guards etc by flashing her breasts at them. If today’s audiences saw that, the studio would - understandably - have a bounty on their heads.
I remember Reece Witherspoon was attached to a Honey West film - based on the 1950s pulp novels and short-lived '60s TV series about a private eye with Marilyn Monroe looks. That project, though, has been dead for a decade or more.
I’d like to see a Saint film, but acknowledge that it’s known mainly for the Roger Moore series, and to a much lesser extent the Ogilvy one (it’s interesting to note how Roger’s Bond popularity seems to have kept that show alive - Department S, for example, isn’t on ITV4 almost every day). The books themselves I find difficult to read as the prose is so self-indulgently verbose, it’s like wading through treacle.
We’ve had 2 Saint films in the last 20 years. Neither did much, so I think that franchise is probably DOA…
I could be wrong but I think it’s Miramax that owns the rights to Modesty Blaise, not Tarantino. And with Miramax having all its issues in the last few years, it’s a property that kind of just stuck…
Many of the so-called classics of the genre have fallen into obscurity, just look at John Buchan, Sax Rohmer, Sapper, Ambler - they used to be the bestsellers of their time and have inspired countless writers in turn. Today however they are barely known outside a relatively small circle of hardcore fans. They may still be read - don’t count on it - but really known they are no longer. If it wasn’t for the films Sherlock Holmes and James Bond would have shared the same gradual fading into oblivion.
And it’s not even a question of being ‘outdated’ as one might suspect. Robert Ludlum used to be a guaranteed bestseller, yet by now he’s mostly known for a series of adaptations that is so far from his work as to be barely recognisable. Popularity uses itself up so fast and so irredeemably like few other things.
I am an avid reader and my top 2 favorites spy series are Bond and Modesty Blaise, followed closely by the Matt Helm series. That said, while I would LOVE to see period-correct faithful adaptations of Modesty and Helm, I don’t believe they could find anything above a niche following in today’s over the top, CGI-heavy comic book-saturated marketplace that is dominated by the likes of Fast & The Furious and MCU films. And smaller budget movies can’t gain ground beyond an arthouse following for the most part. A Netflix series maybe? I don’t know. In the meantime I will just keep reading my musty old paperbacks from the 60s.
Yes, this is sadly true. Let’s face it, anything from the 60s is now so long in the past as to have mainly curiosity appeal for today’s audience - much like, if you were born in the 60s you likely also didn’t think a lot of silent movies and just laughed at the quirky odd way the characters moved and behaved in those.
Bond is a perfect example, he first set out to investigate Dr No in a polo shirt and shorts, with a handgun and a sidekick with an old wheelgun. In NO TIME TO DIE state of the art he’d have to have a stylish semi-military battledress with assault rifle and enough ammunition to fight an army. And single shots would just not happen because anything under three-shot-bursts is kids stuff…
But to bring this back on topic: the crucial first error was perhaps to choose a book series that’s not particularly popular or high profile to begin with. Mind you, that doesn’t say a lot about the quality of these books, they could be utterly splendid for all I know. But since they are just a couple of books in a vast ocean of thrillers published every year there was no big fanbase that would have eagerly waited for the adaptation.
This is so true. These characters were once known by everyone. Sexton Blake was in so many story papers, there was something like a million words a year across all of them, and he was still popular seventy years after he first appeared.
I’d be interested to know why you, and others, think these properties are now obscure. Perhaps it’s simply because they stopped, for some reason, and therefore lost all momentum they once had? Maybe the lack of relentless film and television adaptation is what did it? Or is popular culture by its very nature ephemeral?
This is slightly off-topic, but I believe the reason Shakespeare and Jane Austen are still famous today is due mainly to the screen. Five years don’t go by without a TV or film adaptation. (Sadly, the snobby academic culture is also to blame: they force young people to study such writers deeply and don’t level the playing field with other playwrights and authors. When I was in university a few years ago, many English Literature students had never heard of Harold Pinter, Alan Bennett, Alan Ayckbourne or even Noel Coward.) I think Dickens may be still read regardless, as he was wittier and had colourful characters. In fact, I always think of him as the literary equivalent of a character actor.
Film and TV has kept Sherlock Holmes alive too, of course, though I dare say Doyle is more widely read than Fleming, and even that can be credited to Rathbone, Cushing, Brett and Cumberbatch.
Which reminds us how vulnerable Bond may be. He’s only a rights dispute away from being forgotten too. One day, he may be in the same position as, say, Flash Gordon.
Whilst I agree with the rest, Sherlock Holmes fits more in line with Charles Dickens or Jane Austen, where the books were immediately an international phenomenon, to the point where the format of the books is, over 100 years later, immediately copied as the basis for the crime/mystery genre. When Doyle killed off Holmes, people in the streets wore black arm bands in mourning, and Moriarty remains the go to description for the ultimate enemy, and is the archetype for every super-villain - impressive given he only appears in one short story, and even there it’s 3rd hand. If you think Sherlock Holmes, the go-to image is not from the adaptations, but from Sidney Paget’s illustrations for the original stories;
Bond, on the other hand, was not that - From Russia With Love being the first book to get any form of recognition, JFK listing it as one of his favourite books if I remember right.
That’s an interest point. You’re right, Bond’s success in print was more of a slow-burn. (And I’ve heard it suggested that Kennedy’s placement of FRWL on that list may have been purely tactical, and not entirely true. It probably was, of course - though the black-arm band thing with Holmes is a myth, but the fact it’s so believable anyway makes that an irrelevance). You’re also on the money with the illustrations - everyone who plays him is compared to those beautiful drawings.
The arm bands thing…yeah, the earliest source seems to be ACD’s son saying it in a biography he commissioned about his dad. It’s the sort of tale I’d like to be true.
Both Conan Doyle sons seem to have been bad eggs, too, though Adrian’s Exploits collection is enjoyed by some, having been eviscerated by the BSI when first released.
The screen no doubt plays a big role - but I’d also say there is a certain quality to them that goes beyond the merely ritualistic regurgitation of world literature canon. Shakespeare has freely ‘sampled’ many themes and plots from contemporaries and predecessors alike. But his works are so deeply infused with authenticity, with the machinations of power and passion that they can - and do! - still challenge those in office. Just think of the Julius Caesar in New York. Or Stephen Greenblatt’s Tyrant - Shakespeare on Politics. You’ll find the bard was not just spot on his own time but would also feel perfectly at home in our world. And many a tyrant who took advice from his work to this day.
With Austen it’s the same in a more personal dimension. Her heroines are baffled by male behaviour, choke on the constrictions society puts on them and stand up against these for nothing more than the simple right to live their lives after their own fashion. This is not a feminist tractate, this is simply everyday reality for countless women around the globe and every bit as topical today as in Austen’s time.
That said, here too the number of consumers familiar with Austen or Shakespeare through film or theatre surpasses that fraction who actually read them. Which is not to say they are entirely relegated to the curriculum. The genre of the historical novel is closely related to the classics and Bernard Cornwell or Georgette Heyer turned their respective niches into comfortable places.
So why then are some authors so fast and so completely forgotten? I’m inclined to say because the chase for the next big thing, the new rage, the bigger spectacle never stops. By definition the thriller is at least in part a topical affair that needs a certain actuality to unfold its full potential. Events, politics, crisis after crisis - everything changes every day and the relative stability we’ve come to expect has been the huge exception. The thriller genre, no doubt one of the most crowded to begin with, is particularly susceptible to these changes. Dracula is still a scary book 120 years after it was published - Greenmantle on the other hand read painfully amateurish even before 1939. And Goldfinger, while being the tallest of tales from a shrewd wordsmith, reeked distinctively of self-parody even when first published.
I won’t argue that this selection is always fair and cricket - but on balance I think the books and authors that stand the test of time often manage to smuggle some other quality beyond thrills and topicality into their works. Some kind of subtext that resonates even decades later.
Another guy who doesn´t understand why the movie failed. How many women go to the movies for fun and watch a gritty spy thriller with a semi-famous lead looking the most time like a mix from junkie and prostitute? Not that much it seems…
Not a spy series, but a big lost opportunity for me is that we never got a proper Travis McGee-series. I liked Rod Taylor in Darker than Amber but all the books could be made in a tv series easily today. Maybe with Josh Holloway or Chris Hemsworth if they beat him up a little…
Not the blame, it´s just a thing with how big is your audience for such a film? It´s a niche thing already with the dark grittiness and r rated and if you can´t attract enough teenage boys you have to fill up with girls but there´s not enough of them interestet in the genre, or how do you think this disastrous result came to light?
I think it’s not a question of male or female audience - it’s a lack of audience in general. The only films that are really, truly catering to just one gender are shown on the internet today.
I mentioned already that the books are only moderately known, even within the community of thriller readers. That might have been a first point; if you are absolutely set on adapting them then it might be a good idea to first push their profile with readers. Most adaptations today pick a very popular book or series where the fanbase is already established and waits eagerly for the film.
Next I think the very low profile promo campaign did nothing to make this stand out from the crowd - there’s no sense of this being significantly different and interesting enough to intrigue people.
I cannot say a lot about the film itself since I just haven’t seen it. The reviews are not glowing but seem to have been set mainly with the NIKITA benchmark in mind, which may not do the film justice. As for the looks of Lively in this - from what I gather that’s what she was supposed to look like, exactly because that’s supposed to be the point of the story. Even if it’s no doubt a cheap shot to make, I don’t really think that’s what kept people away from the theatre.
