Discovering the hidden James Bond (in the screenplays)
Scenes that have been cut, characters who are different, dialogue changes and earlier versions of scripts are just a few things I’ve found when I’ve read the James Bond screenplays. Some of that is inevitable, when screenplays are turned into films, such as if an actor becomes sick — or if a new actor is chosen and the style needs to be rewritten.
But I’ve also found something much deeper, and I’d like to share that with you.
Part I: The missing Dalek
I started posted snippets from the James Bond screenplays in August 2020. Why? Well, as I’ve written here before, there aren’t many who focus on the stories in the Bond films.
Right away, I found some cool things. Such as the missing Dr Who mention in Thunderball. When Bond and all the 00’s in Europe are called in (in the film to look for the missing warheads), Bond says that it’s probably because someone’s dog was missing. But in the script, it says:
BOND: The Daleks have taken over!
And if you look carefully at the film, you can see that Sean Connery is overdubbing himself, so they actually shot the part where Bond talks about Dr Who, a TV series that had gripped the UK TV viewers just as the screenplay was being polished.
This find was later reposted by other Bond fans on Twitter and YouTube, on Reddit, and even by BBC America.
Part II: Some favourites
Let me post some of my personal favourites from the James Bond screenplays.
There has been a long debate in Bond circles if Bond’s contact in Japan, in You Only Live Twice, Mr Henderson got Bond’s drink preferences wrong or if this was a gaffe from the filmmakers. Well, the answer is — almost — in the script. And Bond killing Osato would have been the most savage we would have seen Bond.
This fight with Bond and some intruders into Stacy’s house in A View to a Kill was described very differently from how it was portrayed in the film. The truck chase is only four pages long. But there are also some cut scenes, such as when Bond shows the French police his “family heirlooms”.
More quippy dialogue between Natalya and Boris was cut from GoldenEye. And Q had a brilliant criticism of Bond’s destruction of cars, that I miss very much.
The climax of Diamonds Are Forever were originally much closer to the novel, with Bond climbing on the outside of the boat to surprise Wint and Kidd and defeat their medieval trap for Tiffany Case.
In Licence To Kill, Q would have told Bond about Miss Moneypenny’s crush on him. And when Bond first hit on Pamela, she would have left him.
The criticism lobbied against Bond in Casino Royale was even more harsh. M had lots to say, including how Bond is always introducing himself. Vesper Lynd asked if Bond pays taxes on his poison darts. But we also get the story of how her parents died. A cut scene explains how Bond knew about LeChiffre’s tell. And did you know the entire film starts at a cricket game? But most significantly, perhaps, was where the now iconic final line would have been much less impactful.
In The Spy Who Loved Me, the ending would have had the title spoken in the film.
In Tomorrow Never Dies, we get to hear about how Bond was trapped on a raft for two weeks with a married female Colonel and Stamper was a Ghurka.
Octopussy had a very different joke after Bond saved Octopussy in the film.
In Thunderball, Fiona Volpe wasn’t Italian. She was Irish, and she was called Fiona Kelly.
The World Is Not Enough was even more filled with puns. Some of which were quite blue. And Christmas Jones would probably not have been played by Denise Richards, because she was very different from what we see in the film.
Live And Let Die has several changes. First, Roger Moore’s first line as Bond would have been quite something. The ending doesn’t include Baron Samedi sitting on the front of the train. Instead, there was a quite rude, but also Hitchcockian ending. We cut from Bond and Solitaire starting to kiss to a blinking sign with the text “No entry”.
Part III: SPECTRE
I’d put SPECTRE as a category of its own. There are so many differences in the screenplay from the film that it’s almost like discovering another Bond film.
First, we hear about the leader of SPECTRE in a story that Mr White tells Bond.
Then, let’s take the meeting between Bond and Madeleine Swann.
And, we see more of her Swann’s personality, after Bond has turned her world upside down. Bond shows how he brings a tuxedo. Bond talks about what he would do if he wasn’t an assassin. We also get to know more about Swann’s background. And about Bond’s background.
Most importantly, though, was the change of the character of Blofeld. In the screenplay, that character was called Stockman, there was no cuckoo, and although he was Bond’s step brother, he was not Blofeld.
Finally, of course, the last line of the film tied into the next film, No Time To Die.
Part IV: The end?
You can find things like these in the screenplays, too. No one has, as far as I know, published a definitive collection of shooting scripts, or earlier versions, something I think is quite extraordinary for a popular franchise, such as this. Someone, please, get on it.
But, there are two collections of scripts that I usually point to when people ask me how I’ve found the screenplays I cut material from. This is the first one. This is the other. Happy reading!
Before I go, though, I’d like to share one final thing. After I started posting these excerpts, I’ve had several people reaching out to me to thank me, which is lovely, but even more fantastically, they’ve shared screenplays with me that they’ve found themselves. This is the deeper lesson here, that the James Bond community is very open and generous, and I feel we should honour that.
For your education, I’ve included these rare items in the second collection of scripts above. The most noteworthy of these, I would say, is the 1961 version of Thunderball. This was 1 year before the first James Bond film, Dr No, was released. How was Bond introduced there, if not at the baccarat table with Sylvia Trench? Well, like this.