That's No Moonraker: On Her Majesty's Secret Service

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Date

June 27th, 2020

Summary

Pete and Alex have all the time in the world to discuss the 6th James Bond movie.

Duration

1:31:28

Notes

Film

  • Longest title for a James Bond film and longest movie until it was surpassed by the 2006 Casino Royale.
  • Sixth movie based on the 10th novel (11th book). Ian Fleming wrote this while in Jamaica filming Doctor No.
  • They thought about going straight from You Only Live Twice to The Man with the Golden Gun and Roger Moore. But Cambodia was too unstable to film there. Roger Moore couldn't wait around because he was busy filming "The Saint".
  • The entire ending bit was going to be the cold open for Diamonds are Forever if Lazenby had signed on for another movie.
  • The opening theme features the first use in in a Bond song (and one of the first uses period) of a synthesizer

Podcast

  • They almost say the title of the film a few times, but never exactly; they broke their streak.
    • However they say the most phrases that will become other Bond movies: "the world is not enough", "license to kill", and "SPECTRE".
  • The hosts forgot to rank the last movie.
  • After handing in his resignation, Bond packs up his desk, taking mementos from each of his previous adventures and musical themes from those films play.
    • Exception is nothing from Goldfinger.
    • "Sands through the hourglass" in the credit sequence.

Codename theory

  • "This never happened to the other fellow". Meta-commentary/fourth wall thing? Either way it's fuel for the Codename theory.
  • Alex's wife always assumed the codename theory was true/on-screen Canon.
  • But Moneypenny treats him like he's Sean Connery. There's even the line "same old James Bond".
Headcanon
 Sean Connery Bond retires to Japan after You Only Live Twice. Bond met Blofeld two years ago (the timeline lines up) and maybe they put George Lazenby Bond on the SPECTRE case at that time, giving Moneypenny time to form a relationship with him as well.
 Is it a succession thing like it is in Spectre? Maybe 007 has an understudy.
  Recall that in the chronology of the books, James Bond is so devastated by the events of this movie that's why he is busted down to 7777 at the start of You Only Live Twice.
  George Lazenby Bond retires because his fiancée/wife is killed. They don't have an understudy ready yet because he's only been on the job for 2 years that's why they bring Connery Bond back. And Rodger Moore gets bumped up to 077 but he's not ready to be 007 yet.

Other actors considered

  • Once Roger Moore was out, John Richardson, Hans De Vries, Robert Campbell, Anthony Rogers, then finally George Lazenby.
    • He is Australian, not British.
    • Lazenby went all out: he picked up a suit that Connery had ordered but not picked up to wear to the audition.
    • They wanted him to do the next 7 Bond movies but his agent convinced him to only do one. But then the production (assuming he thought he was too good for them) turned on him and eventually the feeling was mutual.
    • They wanted him to come to the premier looking like James Bond, but by that time he had let his hair and beard grow out so he looked like a hippie.
  • Peter hunt directed, this being his only gig as the lead director for James Bond (although he did second unit stuff on previous movies).
    • After this Peter Hunt directed Gold starring Roger Moore and Susanne York (Superman).
    • If Lazenby had stayed, they would have done Diamonds are Forever next and kept Hunt on as well.

Other notes

  • Apparently this one stays pretty close to the book, it's less cartoony and there are very few gadgets.
  • The movie ends on a total downer. Bond is visibly shaken (and stirred) by the events of the film.
  • Mentioned: Pete's MGM UA collection of James Bond tapes on VHS.
  • The twist ending where you expect the heroes to come save the day and they don't (See also: The Empire Strikes Back).

The opening song

  • They didn't even try to work in the title of the movie into the song.
  • In the tradition of the first two Bond movies, they did an instrumental theme to introduce a new guy.
  • They used the music from this score as inspiration for the soundtrack to The Incredibles. They actually asked John Barry to compose for them, but he wasn't into it and they had to adapt the music from this score.
  • Two songs with lyrics in the course of the movie.
    • At multiple points "Do you know how Christmas Trees are Grown?".
      • Some of the movie does take place at Christmas time in the Alps.
    • The main song "All the Time in the World" AKA "We Have all the Time in the World".
      • Written by John Barry with lyrics by Hal David.
      • Recorded by Louis Armstrong, his last recorded song.
      • They wanted it to be ironic and sound like "What a Wonderful World" and they wanted someone who sounded like Louis Armstrong and thought 'wait, can we just get Louis Armstrong?'
      • The song wasn't culture culturally relevant until 25 years later in 1994 when it was covered by My Bloody Valentine, and later the Armstrong version was used in a Guinness commercial so it became popular with the kids.

Meta Notes

Quotes

  • Pete: There's a lot of things get broken in this film.
  • Pete: Kissy Suzuki owns Artoo-Detoo and C-3PO. I'm glad we solved that.

Star Wars names

Star Wars pun names for On Her Majesty's Secret Service  
Alex
  • Shout out to listener Andy: On Her Worshipfulness' Secret Service.
  • On Leia's Secret Service.
  • On Her "Majes-T16's" Service.
Pete
  • On Her Majesty's Secret Zuckuss
  • On Hermi Odle's Secret Service. With the song "Alderaan in the World".

Link (Patreon supporters only)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/thats-no-on-her-38621166


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