James Bond: Indie Hero?
March 26, 2009

MGM/Fox re-issued the oddest film in the James Bond canon this week—the Irvin Kershner-directed Never Say Never Again from 1983. Now, purists will cry foul and explain that NSNA isn’t truly a Bond film that should be allowed to stand alongside the Cubby and Barbara Broccoli-produced Bond features of the past half-century. But I saw screw’em—a movie starring Sean Connery as James Bond is a James Bond film, period.

The new Special Edition of Never Say Never Again comes with a trio of light-weight featurettes (all made in one session and broken into three pieces, actually) that contain talking head testimonials from a handful of those involved in the film’s production. Included are director Kershner, screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr., uncredited screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, late producer Jack Schwartzman’s widow

What Kershner and company all eagerly point out in the extras is that NSNA was indeed an independent production, without the organization, detail and salary caps that come along with a studio production. That said, Connery made a helluva lot of money for returning to his signature role and the production became quite problem plagued, from everything from the ever-changing script to the location work in five countries to the runaway budget (hey, nobody said that indie film had to be cheap!).

The best stories to emerge in the featurette both revolve around the film’s luscious ladies. For Carrera’s part, we learn that she was initially spotted by Connery when he was flipping through a Playboy magazine and stumbled across her pictorial. Commenting on her “outstanding physique,” the die was cast and Carrera was hired to portray the lusciously demented femme fatale Fatima Blush. The other tale is related by Kershner and it concerns Kim Basinger, who caused major problems when Kershner discovered that she would look to her then-husband (who reportedly did her hair and make-up) to confirm that she performed well in a scene. The thing is, the husband would be standing just out of camera range and Basinger would immediately look to him the moment Kershner yelled. When the director learned that Basinger was looking to her man for direction, Kershner immediately kicked him off the set. According to Kershner, this did not bode too well for his relationship with his leading lady….But Kershner does say that he was satisfied with her performance, so there’s that….

Posted by Laurence Lerman on March 26, 2009 | Comments (0)