CATCHING BULLETS - Memoirs Of A Bond Fan - Page 3 - General Bond Film Discussion
CATCHING BULLETS Memoirs Bond Fan SKYFALL The Hall wonderful night catching Golden Bullet Royal World Premiere Tuesday 23rd October 2012https//wwwfacebook22585696type=3
Page 3 of 4 - CATCHING BULLETS - Memoirs Of A Bond Fan - posted in General Bond Film Discussion: SKYFALL at The Hall - a wonderful night catching the Golden Bullet at the Royal World Premiere of SKYFALL, Tuesday 23rd October 2012.https://www.facebook...22585696&type=3
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John Cork (screenwriter, co-author of JAMES BOND - THE LEGACY and numerous and definitive Bond documentaries) has just written a great review for CATCHING BULLETS.

Fun, passionate and oddly moving, a memoir through movies...

Mark O'Connell's memoir-cum-Bond love letter arrives with some heady endorsements. Barbara Broccoli (producer of the Bond films with Michael G. Wilson) -- "a wonderfully funny and touching memoir" -- and Maud Adams (Bond girl from The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and, if you really know where to look, a cameo in A View to a Kill) -- "warm, funny and only ever complimentary."

Mark comes to Bond from a unique perspective. Like most Bond fans, he was smitten near adolescence, but he had a further connection--his grandfather was the personal chauffer of Albert R. Broccoli, a name that has appeared on every Bond film save two (Casino Royale, '67 and Never Say Never Again). Mark reviews the films mostly in the order in which he saw them, telling an abridged story of his life using the movies as touchstones. This one conceit makes this book stand out above the crowd.

The book is an easy, fun read, but filled with numerous astute observations. Mark, himself a professional comedy writer, enjoys the humor and absurdity of Bond's world, and this shows in his prose. He has fun with language, at one point calling Bond "spychedelic escapism." That can only be read with a smile on one's face! The films are "bullets." A gathering of Bond fans is a "Royale." He refers to the decade of 007's birth as "the 60s." I've read more reviews and essays on the Bond films than I care to admit, but Mark's passion for (most of) the films and life in general helps this book tremendously. He knows not just about 007, but he knows how to write it down cleverly.

Where the book really takes off is when Mark allows himself to explore his own story and that of his family. Quite frankly, as much as I enjoyed reading his thoughts on the Bond films, I much preferred reading about Mark's journey, his childhood, teen years and his coming into (and coming out in) adulthood. I wish there had been more. The emotional excitement of discovery of a Bond film screening on TV, the hand-drawn posters, the thrill of finding an article in a magazine, Mark describes these wonderfully.

Despite its breezy tone, the book is remarkable accurate in the details. There are a handful of exceptions that I'll note for the purists. Few will notice when Mark attributes a scene setting to "(Felix) Leiter's New York apartment" that it is actually a suite at the Royal Orleans hotel (made famous by a Led Zeppelin song about transvestites and a hotel fire). Fewer will care that one Bond girl's bruises came not from "belt straps," but a whip made from the tail of a stingray. Some will wince when they read a more overt typo, "This is a Bond bullet lensed by the man who shot one of Steven Spielberg's most influential films (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962)." Mark must have intended to write "David Lean." Sometimes, Mark writes a bit past clarity. He notes that Sean Connery "announced his departure before shooting was complete" on You Only Live Twice. Mark is referring to Connery announcing he would not continue to play Bond in future 007 films. Connery did complete filming You Only Live Twice and supported the film.

Later, Mark mentions working with an a stuntman "before he went off to die in a submarine for The World is not Enough." If the reader knows the film--and its production history--there will likely be little confusion that the stuntman lived, but still.

Asian geography may not be Mark's strongest subject. O'Connell writes, "When Bond is allegedly gunned down by a Japanese agent," he refers to a scene where a "Chinese girl" (as she is described in dialog) helps stage 007's death in Hong Kong. A quick review of the scene would have even allowed him to correct the dialog from the scene ("very best duck," not, "good duck."). Later, Mark writes about a scene on a Japanese beach in Die Another Day. The scene is set in Korea. Mark stumbles over the dialog from Licence To Kill when he claims Pam Bouvier wonders why "I can't be your secretary?" The line is reversed; she is asking why Bond can't be her secretary.

Lest anyone be deterred by the above nitpicking, it comes in contrast to some laugh-out-loud fun. Writing about The Man with the Golden Gun, Mark states, "It would be nearly 30 years and The Fellowship of the Rings (2001) before Christopher Lee lived again in a rock with a dwarf kicking at his heels."

In other places, Mark makes acute points. He pins down a key emotional arc issue (such as they are in most Bond films) with GoldenEye. He accurately identifies the best line of dialog ever uttered in a Bond film, and no, it's not the iconic, "Bond, James Bond," but one that when you read what Mark has to say about it, you realize just how right he is. There is even some prescient writing about Judi Dench as M: "if you have Judi Dench as a recurring actor in your series of films, you use her," he states. Then he goes on to speculate about, "turning a 007 film into [a]...road-movie curio where Bond and M pair up for a mission and share driving." This was written before Skyfall, and I would love to have seen the expression on Mark's face when Bond and M started wheeling down the road in the Aston Martin together in that film!

While the book celebrates the Bond films more than analyzes them, occasionally Mark goes off with both barrels, and this is a beautiful thing! Even if you love, for example, the score to GoldenEye, you can also appreciate Mark's viscous pen stabbing away at it. "If there was a bad Sting cover act, then "Experience of Love" would be its encore." "It would be better to have no James Bond Theme than hear it slain on a kettle drum and kazoo for innovation's sake." And it gets better, but buy the book for the rest!

The Bond series has been honored in print many times. Many are large, coffee-table volumes packed with lovely images. Others are serious, academic analyses. There are biographies of key players, production histories and wise-cracking pocket guides. All have their place. Three I have co-authored. But Mark's book stands out for its unique link to the notion of growing up with Bond, of finding your own journey while embracing a hero of your youth. Some anonymous author opining about the virtues of some 80s Bond film can be generic. When one understands the emotional vulnerability of the child who viewed it, and the sense of escape that film offered, it ceases to matter whether you, the reader, enjoyed it or not. When the story is well-told, you understand it.

That is what fiction offers to us at its best - a way to interpret our lives. Fiction is the loves we want, the adventures we can't have, the deaths we will cheat, the lives we will never lead. It is the counter-point to our existence, the dreams we have with our eyes open. Mark captures a bit of that in this love-letter to 007. One feels after reading, that the Bond films aren't bullets, but kisses from a not-so secret lover who comes around every couple of years to add spice to Mark O'Connell's life, and to ours.

(This article was originally posted on Amazon.com)