Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody to the Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast,
Part two of the James Bond Never Say Never Again
versus Octopusy Podcasts. Jason, are you ready to jump back in?
Speaker 2: Okay, man, let's go through the checklist really quick, all right,
Walter pbka, silenced check, licensed to kill, check, bazooka, pin check,
jetpack check, weird faberge egg check, and octopus tattoo that
nobody else can see but me. Ready to go? All right?
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties pop culture with your.
Speaker 1: Co hosts A. D.
Speaker 3: Raids and Jason Kolaba.
Speaker 1: Welcome back everybody to the Surely you Can't Be Serious Podcast? Okay, Jason,
Just because kind of all of the James Bond movies
kind of meld together in my brain, I think we
should go over a brief plot outline for each of
these oversimplified as we can get. Okay, So I'll go first.
We'll do Octopusy. This is straight out of IMDb. When
Agent Double oh nine turns up dead at the British
Embassy in East Berlin holding a Russian Faberge egg. Double
O seven is called to investigate. He soon finds out
that the egg is being sought by a collector named
Kamal Khan, who is in league with a psychopathic Soviet
general or Lav, who is hell bent on Soviet domination
despite reprimands from his superiors. Orlov's plan involves smuggling an
atomic bomb into the US Air Force base in West
Germany in the hopes of crippling the country and leaving
it an easy target for Soviet conquest. Bond's investigation of
Khn leads him to India, where he meets a mysterious
woman named Octopussy who is connected to Khan. The bomb
is smuggled the board a circus train, and one of
the men helping Kamal and Orlov is the man responsible
for killing Double O nine. Bond must race against time
to stop the bomb from exploding and killing thousands, and
then running down Kamal Khan before he escapes.
Speaker 2: Octabusy. Okay, all right, so I'm going to give you
the plot outline of Never Say Never Again, which, as
a reminder, is the exact same plot of Thunderbolting. James
Bond double setup makes his way for one last mission.
Two American nuclear warheads have been stolen by Specter. The
British reactivate their double section and send Bond off to
the Bahamas to recover them. There he meets Maximilian Largo,
who is a paramad mastermind set on carrying out his
plan for worldwide nuclear blackmail. On Largo's side, the villainous
fem fatale Fatima Blush. But Bond does have an ally
Largo's girlfriend, the beautiful Domino, who falls for Bond. Okay,
so those are the brief plot outlines.
Speaker 1: It didn't help me at all. Like it's like, boy,
could those have been the same movie? Yes, those could
have been the same movie. You throw out Faberge, Egg
and Circus and those are basically the same movie. So
Mond has got a formula here, right, and we're going
with what works.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: You've got canniping bad guys, you've got cold war atomic danger,
and you've got beautiful women who may or may not
be trying to kill Double O seven.
Speaker 2: That's right, it works. Why change it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Here's one thing that I want to point out to you.
It's a little bit confusing for me. Because I've seen
Thunderball many times. I've seen Never Say Never again many times.
I've read the novel Thunderball, and I've seen Austin Powers
many times. Oh hay, yes, essentially this is the same
plot from Austin Powers. Right, he is holding the world
ransom for one million dollars? Oh, no, one hundred billion
dollars right? Oh yeah, Okay, So of these two plots,
which is the one?
Speaker 1: It's the same. It's the formula, man, it's the same.
I mean, we're here, honestly, plot wise, it's not significantly different.
Speaker 2: Beautiful women both have nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: I can say this. Despite having very similar plots, it
seemed to me that OCTOPUSY had a lot more action
sequences to it, like you've got I mean, it's you know,
it's like how Needham was involved with this one? Can
we have a car chase? Can we have a car
shooting off a bridge? Can we have a guy dangling
from a train? How can we have a guy dangling
from a plane? You know, would you eat it with
a goat? Would you eat it on a boat? So
the boat comes up and never say Never? But I
think that the thematic points make OCTOPUSY a more exciting
movie to watch. What about you?
Speaker 2: Well, I think the plot of Never Saying Ever Again
is more interesting holding the world ransom with nuclear weapons.
To me, it is just more gripping rather than faberge
eggs and a Afghan prince and this weird octopus cult.
Although it it just kind of all melds together into
a Bond adventure for me, I think, I think, I
think Never Say Never Again for me is the winner
on just the plot.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, so let's let's jump from plot. Let's
jump into opening song. Every Bond movie has an opening song,
so let's talk about opening songs.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So the opening song for Octopusy is
All Time High by Rita Kolidge.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, listening to that smooth saxophone sound.
Speaker 2: Okay, So to me, this one is a slower, it's
more melodic, it's it's a ballad. I think they're trying
to capture the Carly Simon feel from the spy who
loved Me?
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts for sure? That they're they're going
back to that. This is this is smoothie and jazzy
all over the place, and you know why they didn't
why they didn't have a song that was named after
the title of the movie.
Speaker 2: Because they can't think of anything that rhymes with Octopussy.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. Thanks for ruining that joke. Yes, that's
the right answer.
Speaker 2: Don't be a whissy, Go watch Octopussy. So yeah, I
agree with you. This does have a little bit of
a yacht rock feel to it. Really Coolidge to me
is the girl who's sang higher and higher from the
early eighties, which that was kind of a big hit.
But it's interesting because this is nineteen eighty three. They
could have used Duran Duran, they could have used Journey,
they could have done something a little more young and peppy,
and they went the opposite way.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, just thinking about this, you got two guys
who were iconic from the decades past. You've got the
sixties Bond and the seventies Bond, And I mean it
makes sense that they would have seventies music with the
seventies Bond, but these guys were at the end of
their era. And you know we haven't I mentioned way
back when we were talking about Raiders the Lost Arc
that Bond is an outright pig a whole lot of
the time. That kind of ended with these two guys
like this. They were they are the They're the dinosaurs,
They're the ones. Once you hit Timothy Dalton, he's not
even having sex, let alone all the you know, inappropriate
zooming in on the woman's cleavage, you know, tricking the
virgin into giving it up by using a trick deck
of cards. There's just so many or thunderball, you know,
wouldn't please let the Well, I I suppose my silence
could have a prized I mean on yeah, oh my gosh,
you are a pig, and that disappears with this. But
I think that the songs are a part of that
deal that they are from a time past. They're not
looking to capture a new audience. They're looking to keep
the audience that they already have hooked in. And I
think if they used Journey or Duran Duran that they're
going to turn a whole bunch of the folks that
were watching them in the sixties and seventies off.
Speaker 2: I understand what you're saying, But they used Duran Duran
two years later in nineteen eighty five with a View
to a Kill, and it's probably the best Bond song
of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, according to you and me, it is because
we were kids of the eighties and so yeah, and
You've Got and you had Live and Let Die too,
which was a totally kick. Well, it's a yeah, but
the song transition started to happen, I guess before they
completely got out of having these actors in there. But
it wasn't there yet. There they're still working on that formula.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's switch back to Never Say Never Again.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So for Never Say Never Again, we have Never
Say Never Again by Lonnie Hall.
Speaker 2: Okay, this one makes James Bond feel even older to me.
Speaker 1: It's just just copa copa cubana.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it does have that seventies feel to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like Fantasy Island or Love.
Speaker 2: You're right, did you watch the video for this?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna poke fun at her, just a touch.
Speaker 1: Pretty lady. You don't like the tuxedo.
Speaker 2: I don't like the tuxedo. I don't like women in tuxedos.
I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Anyway, it depends on the circumstance. But this is not
the right one.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna quit talking. But I think All Time
High charted a little higher than Never Say Never again.
I like eighties music, so I'm not gonna poke fun
at the eighties feel for both of these, even though
they're both kind of seventies feel. Who's the winner?
Speaker 1: I probably like Never Say Never Again. No, I don't know, man,
They're both not going to be anything. They're falling into
my playlist anytime soon. Yeah, it's got to be Never
Saying Ever Again. The readA Coolidge is just I love
the Carly Simon song, but this the readA Coolidge didn't
didn't make it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I'm gonna say Riata Coolidge by a nose,
all right?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Okay, here here's one I want to talk about. Okay,
and it's going to be a little bit hard to
talk about because Never Say Never Again does not have
that opening credits scene. Okay, so that doesn't really count.
We just kind of have to set that one aside.
Octopus's opening credits scene. Yes, a little bit revealing in
their silhouettes.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, this is the one that made me go
back and watch the other ones. Like I was like,
oh wait a minute, were all of the silhouettes completely
naked and really really cold? And some of them were
some you'd be surprised but.
Speaker 2: I think this one was the one day they'd had
a little little nipley. It definitely is a little nippley.
They pushed the envelope, I think on this one even
further so. But so the opening credits, it's always done
by the same guy. It always has that same feel.
But yeah, pushing the envelope on all the naked women.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, and you know, since we're on songs, we
should at least touch on the iconic James Bond song,
which is done by John Barry of course, right He
was asked by the people who were putting together Never
Say Never Again to do the music for it as well,
but out of loyalty to Eon Productions and Kubby Brockley,
he said, no, thanks, guys, I'm gonna I'm not going
to get in the middle of that divorce mess. No
thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay. So next on the list, let's look at the
cast a little bit.
Speaker 1: Okay, So for Octopusy we have mod Adams, who've already
talked about a little bit.
Speaker 2: So I want to touch on mod Adams again. Who
plays Octopusy. She was thirty eight when she did this.
She had been in the Man with the Golden Gun
with Roger Moore. She was Scaramonga's girlfriend, right, So she
is actually a bond girl twice two different characters. Kind
of interesting. She was a playboy model.
Speaker 1: Google what's coming?
Speaker 2: Okay, So let's talk about a couple of the people
who were considered for the role of Octopusy this is
I found this interesting. They wanted Fade Dunaway, which would
have been interesting, but she was too expensive, right, And
so they asked Barbara Carrera.
Speaker 1: Oh right, who was not in Octopussy.
Speaker 2: She was in she was Never seen ever again. So
she plays Fatima Blush from Never Say Never Again?
Speaker 1: Did you say blush?
Speaker 2: Fatima's hard?
Speaker 1: It's real hard not to say bush, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I try to say it like her, because just blush.
Speaker 1: It's blush. I don't care if she's got an accident.
It's blush bush bush. Right. Yes, she was interested, but
then when she found out she could be in a
movie with Sean Connery, she was like, no, no, no,
thank you. I'll go act with Sean Connery. And then
when they said, hey, we can put your body double
in for this loft scene, and she was like, no,
thank you, I'll go ahead and do it myself with
Sean Connery.
Speaker 2: That's right, Thank you very much, Barbara Kaerr. We appreciate you.
But when she turned them down to go work with
Sean Connery and Octopussy, they looked at pursus cambata. Okay,
not positive I'm saying that right. But you will recognize
her from Star Trek the motion picture. She plays Aliyah,
the bald girl that's taken over by Veger.
Speaker 1: Oh, the bald girl, the old like welcome girl.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's who they wanted to play. OCTOPUSY.
Speaker 1: Bad guy is Lewis Jordan. He plays Kamal Khan. He
had been in Gege and this is one from the eighties.
He was in the Swamp Thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, he's the He is the guy from the
swamp Thing. Yeah, and I look at him. It's swamp thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, swamp thing all the way for sure.
Speaker 2: What'd you think of him as a bad guy? I mean,
who is the bad guy in Octopusy?
Speaker 1: Is it him? Or is it orlov? I mean it's
him really to me? Yeah, I mean he's got that
fantastic scene at the end where he's flying the plane. Oh,
by the way, I forgot. I didn't mention this. So
when they're flying the plane. You know, when they're shooting
the movie. That plane was. The way they were going
to do that is they had it on like this
catapult kind of thing, and there's nobody in the plane.
They just have it full of explosives so that you
get a nice big kaboom, an earth shattering kaboom whenever
whenever it hits. And so they shoot it off in
the catapult. They're filming in Utah, and when they shoot
it off, suddenly the wind catches it and it starts
gliding around like unmanned. I mean, there's no remote, it's
just gliding and he's gliding over a freeway full of busys.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, you know, falls in a different spot. It
doesn't even blow up. They had to reshoot the explosion
scene altogether.
Speaker 2: It's just that's the scene where Kamal Khan tells Gobinda
to go go outside and go get him. Yeah, I'd
be like, sorry, you don't pay me enough money. I'm
not doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, he looks at him like out out there, Yeah,
go out there and get him on the outside of
the airplane. Okay, So Gobinda, let's talk about him for
a second, I don't know who this guy is. His
name is Kamir Bindi. H He to me, he's just
a recreation of odd Job from Goldfinger. He gets mad
and he crushes the dice. Yeah, that game very odd
Job like feel to him. He didn't say anything, I mean,
just very few lines like out there octopus a villain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, she was much more of a villain in
the book and this one, I think they kind of
lightened her up. They gave her a backstory which kind
of explained why she was the way she was, which
is her father was the one that James Bond had.
I guess he allowed him to commit Like he's a
bad guy that James Bond allowed to commit suicide.
Speaker 2: But he was thankful for that, so thankful that she
threw herself at him.
Speaker 1: I mean, she saves him several times during that deal.
He's you know, they're in bed and then all of
a sudden, there's a dripping buzzsob yo yo about to
take your head off. That was a really memorable moment
for me as a kid. And then of course shortly
thereafter you and everybody's running in you know, you get
the girls in the the Incredibles uniform. It's what they
look like, Natalie, just to shoot off the bad guys.
But then that guy gets his head smashed through the
tank and gets the octopus on its face just like Alien.
I mean, it just looked like, oh my gosh, guys, come.
Speaker 2: On, Yeah, that blue ring octopus was the really the
main bad guy. And then you have those ridiculous knive
throwing twins. Yeah, you have Stephen Berkhoff, who plays General Orloff.
He you might remember is was in Rambo and Beverly
Hills Cop. He's kind of known during this stretch time
as playing a great bad guy.
Speaker 1: So this is interesting. So there's the actor VJ. In
the movie. The character VJ is played by an actor Vje.
I believe is how you pronounced his last name. But
he had been he'd been a tennis player before this, right,
he was a professional tennis player. And so you've got
some tennis jokes in there, like when the things are
being thrown, somehow he gets a tennis racket and knocks
it away. But he had he'd been a tennis player,
and hadn't gotten his sag card yet, his screen actors'
guilt card yet, And so they weren't gonna let him
do the movie, and so Kubby Broccoli calls in a
favor to Leonard Goldberg, who is the producer of Fantasy Island.
There it is, Hey, there we go all connected, and
gets him a guest spot on Fantasy Island and that
was enough to get him a SAG card and then
he could go and be in this movie.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to talk about Magda for just a second.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: She's played by Christina Waybourne. She's kind of the red
haired girl that Bond seduces earlier in the movie. She
steals the Faberge egg from him and then makes this
sort of exit by she ties a sash around the
balcony and then falls over backward and spirals down using
her dress essentially to escape, right right. Really cool stunt
and that actress actually did that. Oh wow, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't do much else, Like she was on mcgever,
she was on air Wolf. She became one of the eighties.
You're in this TV show for an episode or two.
Speaker 2: A team has to be in there somewhere, probably probably so.
So you also have Lois Maxwell as Miss Moneypenny.
Speaker 1: Just another side note. When Lois Maxwell met Ian Fleming
back in the day when she was first cast, he
started talking to her about how she was the perfect
choice there at this like kind of cocktail party and
he's like and she's like, well, what do you mean
And he's like, well, just the air of sophistication with
full and luscious lips. And she was like, oh really
and kind of leans in a little bit, and she said,
should I say cheese or prunes? And he said prunes
and she said they were about to kiss. She was
ready for the kiss, and then his wife walked, what
you doing?
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's the cast of Octopussy. That of course
leaves out Roger Moore, which we're gonna hold until the end.
So let's put back to never Say Never again. Let's
talk about the cast and never say.
Speaker 1: Never again before we get started the cast the fight sequences.
Do you know who they hired to be the trainer
for the fight sequences in this movie?
Speaker 2: I do know, but give it to me.
Speaker 1: A young Steven Siegal who broke Sean Connery's wrist.
Speaker 2: I heard this. He was on the Tonight Show talking
about this. I know they were training and Steven Skull
got him just right, and he's like, dang, that hurt,
and he didn't realize it for like ten years later.
It just kind of had a constant risk pain and
it was all the way back to that incident Steven
Skull broke Sean Connery's wrist. Okay, So, because Sean Connery
had so much creative input on this movie, he had
the final say on a lot of these actors. Kim
Basinger plays I'm Gonna Pataci. She was actually recommended by
Conrie's wife. She met her at a dinner party. She's
an upcoming actress, she hadn't really quite broken it big yet,
and Conyrie's wife thought she'd be perfect for the part.
Speaker 1: She'd actually been asked to be a bond girl before,
but was afraid of what kind of corner that would
paint her in and turned it down. But then by
nineteen eighty two she's like, Okay, I haven't made it
big yet. I'm gonna go ahead and do this and
get some public exposure. And it definitely worked out for her.
Speaker 2: For me, she's always going to be Vicky Vail from
Batman eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well, yeah, okay, I'm gonna not go ahead
weeks nine and a half weeks.
Speaker 2: So rumor has it that Kim Basinger was a holy
terror on this set, like nobody could get along with her.
She hated everyone, She didn't socialize. Everybody hated her. Then
you also have Claus Maria Brandauer, who played Maximilian Largo.
Speaker 1: I thought that was Phil Collins. I'm just kidding. He
thought that. When I was a kid, I was like,
is that Phil Collins? And then I saw him in Buster.
I was like, I guess it was Phil Collins. No,
he's okay, he I don't know. He just doesn't He
didn't strike fear into my heart. I guess him and
the and the video game face off. It was all
just kind of dumb to me.
Speaker 2: We have to talk about the video game. Should we
do it now or should we wait?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: Largo and Bond meet together in this high falutin five
star fancy casino and they're gonna play this video game
called Domination, which is it's a really effective scene in
the movie. If they lose, they get electric shocks from
the from the game itself. But the funny thing to
me is right before they sit down to play the game.
Bond is walking around the casino and stumbles into an
old school arcade, and then they have like fifteen centipede
stand up video games all over the place.
Speaker 1: I Beth, this probably wasn't too far off of the
truth of what was really going on in some of
the bigger casinos out there. I mean, we're talking about
nineteen I mean this the movie came out in eighty three,
but we're talking about nineteen eighty two. The year before that.
You had Galagha come out. You had Donkey Kong Junior
come out, you had Quicks come out, you had Missus
pac Man come out. I mean, if there was an
arcade video game peak climax, I bet that was it.
Speaker 2: You're probably right. You're probably right. By the way, it's
miss pac Man.
Speaker 1: Did I send Missus? That's alright, it's very not politically.
Speaker 2: Correct, Okay. And they hired Max von Sidou to play Blofeld,
which he doesn't do very much, is not in it
very often.
Speaker 1: But but what a great bad guy he is.
Speaker 2: He plays Jesus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He didn't look like that when
he played Jesus. I mean, he looked much better back then.
But let's not forget he was improving.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, cue the flash music right.
Speaker 1: Now, I feel like I've done that already. Have I
done that?
Speaker 2: You did?
Speaker 1: I did?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is who I really want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Oh so, yeah, there's the Timothy Dalton connection. I was like,
why did I do that? Oh? Yes, because Timothy Dalton
was Barren in Flash Gordon.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's it, all right. So Barbara Carrera plays
Fatima Blush. She is a former Playboy model. She was
asked to play the character Ocoposy. She turned it down
for a chance to work with Sean Connery, and we talked,
this is the type of woman that you're like, I'm
ninety nine percent sure she wants to kill me, but
I still want to sleep with her. She's beautiful, she's sexy,
she's deadly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and her end scene, like her death scene, is
so much better than her counterpart in Thunderball. I mean
I in Thunderball, he just uses her as a human
shield when the assassin is trying to shoot him from
behind the musicians. But oh my gosh, when she's going
on her really nutty rant and then he manages to
pull out the exploding bomb pen that he has, and
then in her rant he shoots her and it doesn't detonate.
She starts laughing and then boom and nothing's left but
her shoes. That's one of the best endings to a
Bad Bond girl I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: That's my favorite scene in the whole movie. And here's
the deal. She's got the drop on him with the gun. Right, Okay,
there's this huge motorcycle chase that's really awesome. She finally
gets him, she's got the drop on him.
Speaker 1: She has him write it out that she was the
best he ever had. It's so random, it's so dumb.
Speaker 2: Write this down, I James Bond W seven. Yeah, I
mean there.
Speaker 1: Was this girl from Philadelphia. I loved it. I loved it.
Speaker 2: And you're right. When he hits her with that Bazuka pen,
it's a just boom and she actually fires back. She
misses him just barely, and then she explodes and it's great.
What a great death. See a couple of other people
we need to talk about. Bernie Casey plays Felix Lighter, right,
which he that is the same guy who plays mister
Ryan from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Speaker 1: Right, the history teacher, and he's also the training ops
guy for spies like us. And so this movie's got
Roan Atkinson in his first feature film performance.
Speaker 2: Yes, he plays Nigel Small Fuscet.
Speaker 1: Oh the names it just so so subtle, so subtle Fawcett.
And then of course he goes on to you know,
he's mister Bean. He's got all kinds of success in
various roles, but one of the most memorable ones in
relation to this is, of course Johnny English.
Speaker 2: I love Johnny English. My kids think that is one
of the funniest movies ever.
Speaker 1: And one of the taglines on one of the posters
was the little brother of James Bond.
Speaker 2: Nice. The last one I want to talk about is
Valerie Leone. She plays quote the lady in the Bahamas.
This is the girl who is fishing while Bond is
wrestling sharks and her lure comes by. He grabs the
lure and she reels him into the boat. He's got
this weird scuba gear outfit on, and so the next
scene he's wearing her overalls. So seeing Sean Connery in
overalls a little hard for me to take.
Speaker 1: Oh, I goess, yes, we can't leave out of the cast.
The guy who's always in the fight with our action
hero mister pat Roach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, who, if.
Speaker 1: You don't know, is the guy who played the big
german in Raiders of the Lost Arc who is fighting
with Indiana Jones. He also plays the guy with his
arms on fire at the earlier scene, the Nepalese guy
fighting with Indiana Jones. He ends up fighting obviously with
James Bond here, and he was also the guy in
Temple of Doom who gets the rock dropped on his head.
Speaker 2: Masure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He and Bond have this really great fight scene at
the spa where Bond is there getting in shape and
they're wrestling and fighting and you know, he's whooping Bond,
He's throwing them all over the place, and they go
and they ended up in this room where Bond picks
up this glass and it's got this unknown substance in there,
and he throws it and splashes it in the guy's
eyes and as he's like screaming about you think it's acid,
he Bond looks at it and says, James Bond, you'urine sample.
This is kind of funny scene, but the thing that
kills him is he backs into all these glass glasses
that kind of stab him in the back. But that
whole scene I thought was great. So for me, Never
Say Never Again has the stronger cast. I think Barbara
Carrera steals the show. She's way more formidable than any
villain in Oxpossy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that probably the
stronger cast members are going to be a Never Say
Never Again.
Speaker 2: I agreed, all right, D So let's let's compare gadgets
from these two movies real quick, and Never Say Never Again.
You've got the laser watch, and you've got the super
cool rocket motorcycle that Q gives to Bond. Right in Octopussy,
you've got the TV watch.
Speaker 1: You've got the TV watch, and you've got the pen
that shoots acid.
Speaker 2: You also have the giant union Jack hot air balloon.
Speaker 1: It's infamous, maybe the best Bond vehicle that has ever been.
I don't know, you.
Speaker 2: Show us up, check me out, can't miss me coming
in to help. I'm not covert at all.
Speaker 1: Right, the whoever makes those how it should have really
ended things at the end of that movie would have
been like, what the heck is that shoot that down?
Speaker 2: Boom?
Speaker 1: Okay, movies over all, right, move on.
Speaker 2: One of the coolest vehicles though. From Octopussy, Bond travels
around in the submarine that looks like an alligator. That's
it's pretty sweet. Okay, so not much on gadgets, but
other than the really cool early version of the Apple
Watch that Bond has an Octopo.
Speaker 1: Seko TV they actually these were real things. It was
black and white. It wasn't color, and I'm pretty sure
that the cleavage shot would have been much more pixelated
than it appeared in the movie. But there was a
black and white TV watch that existed at that time.
Speaker 2: We keep mentioning the cleavage shot. Let's talk about that
for just a second, okay, because it is so silly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like if if my if my fifth
grader did that, I'd be like, you are grounded? What
were you thinking?
Speaker 2: Okay for those who don't remember, when he Bond is
meeting with Q and they're looking at all these gadgets,
bonfinds a video camera that's hooked up to a TV
console and he zooms in on this girl's cleavage, kind
of going in and out like a like a goofy teenager.
Speaker 1: Would he just leaves it there? It's just you're just
watching four screens of boobs for the next two minutes
of the scene. Here are a couple of things that
are interesting about Never Say Never again. Number one, this
was the last film where Sean Connery was clean shaven,
and thank goodness, and I think it was the last
one where he wore the hair piece. I mean, it
was just like, you're just trying too hard to look
like you did twenty years ago. So good job on that.
You still are a sexy man with your gray beard
and your bald head. Everybody loves you like that, so
he's stuck with that. This is the only Double O
seven movie that was directed by an American. It was
directed by Irvin Kirshner, who we talked about was also
the director of Empire Strikes Back. But it wasn't the
first time that Irvin Kershner had worked with Sean Connery.
He had also worked with him in nineteen sixty six
on a movie called A Fine Madness.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is super interesting. I think I think I'm
gonna blow your mind on this. You ready for this?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 2: Largo's ship in the movie is called the Flying Saucer. Okay.
From the book It's called the disco Valante, which means
flying saucer, so they just kind of americanized it. But
it was a super yacht. It was called Kingdom five
k R. The closing credits include the line thanks a
k that refers to Adnam Koshagi, the Saudi arms dealer
who allowed them to film aboard his two hundred and
eighty foot yacht. He later sold the yacht too. Drum roll,
Donald Trump, whoa who renamed it the Trump Princess. That
is no joke. It's currently owned by somebody else, but.
Speaker 1: Still, yeah, that's crazy. This was the last movie to
feature Specter until twenty fifteen, when Daniel Craig's Spector Bond
movie came out.
Speaker 2: Short side story, I remember going and waiting in line
at the movie theater. I'm ten years old, and the
movie people come out to say the seven to fifteen
movie of octopusy has sold out.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: These teenagers behind me are like, octa, what octawah? And
my dad's like if you ever act that way in public? Okay,
So all right, what tidbits do you have on Octopussy?
Speaker 1: So the Faberge egg is the same Faberge egg that
appears in Ocean's twelve and the scenes we talked about
the stunt scenes, you know, where that he's hanging onto
a plane and he's hanging onto a train. The stunt
man who was who was actually doing the part of
hanging onto the train got seriously injured. The train went
further than it was supposed to and he smashed into
some pylons and had significant damage to his leg and
a hip. He was in the hospital for months but
made a full recovery. And then also the actor who
had our Yo Yo Buzzsaw broke his arm when he
fell over the balcony onto Octopussy's bed, but he he
didn't stop filming like he broke his arm, and they
finished all of the scenes that in that movie.
Speaker 2: Nice, good for it. Yeah, all right, here's something I
got on Octopusy During filming. Roger Moore was misdiagnosed with
heart problems. When he got home, maud Adams had her
boyfriend who was a doctor at the time, gave him
a second opinion and pronounced him medically fit.
Speaker 1: We listened to the soundtrack show right yep, and you
remember what diegetic music is? Do you remember what that is? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you hear that the characters here as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this is the only movie that James Bond
actually hears the James Bond tune in and it's you know,
it's being played by VJ at the beginning of Octopusy.
And not only does he hear it, he recognizes, which
is how did he know what his theme music is?
That's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: So they had a couple of little things like that.
Here's an interesting tidbit that I found fascinating. So we
already talked about how Sean Connery and Roger Moore were friends. Yes,
Don Connery wanted a closing scene of the movie to
be him down the street, him bumping into a person, right,
and it turns out that that person is Roger Moore,
and they both kind of turn and look at the
camera and smirk and kind of go their separate ways.
But as cool as that would have been, Kubby Brocker,
there's no way he's going to.
Speaker 1: Go for that, right, Yeah, So what you got instead
was the one time in all of the Bond movies
where James Bond breaks the fourth wall right at the end,
you know, gives that little look to the camera.
Speaker 2: I love. What when they break the fourth Wall. It's
very inclusive of the audience.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, all ah Bert Reynolds, a la Eddie Murphy. So,
of course while they're making these movies, this is a
UK production for both movies, and they're making the movies
at the same time. And sure enough in London, Roger
Moore runs into Sean Connery. And these guys are buddies.
I mean they are friends. They've been friends for twenty
years at this point, and so they run into each
other outside of a hotel room as the movies are
being made, and Sean Connery is talking to him and
he says, so where you headed? And Roger Moore is like, wow,
I'm going to this awful little town south of London
to shoot some of some country scenes, which is which
is the Cuban part right right? And then Roger Moore
is like, so where are you going. He's like, I'm
going to the south of France. Oh okay, Sean Connery,
where are you going after you shoot south of London?
He's like India? And Sean Connery is like oh, and
Roger Moore is like where are you going. He's like,
You're going to Bahamas? All right? Then good luck with
your movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have a great time. We talked about this a
little bit the other night. When you are playing Texas,
hold Them, yeah, you've got pocket eights.
Speaker 1: Jason and I were playing Texas Hold Them literally two
nights ago, and at some point I had a pair
of eights and I showed him to Jason and I said,
you know what this is? He says, yes, I do.
Speaker 2: Pocket eights are known as an octopussy.
Speaker 1: By the way that one comes up in Casino Royale
when they're playing Texas hold Them at the table. Daniel
Craik's character has pocket eights, and so we hand Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love it when they give a little wink to
other Bond movies like that.
Speaker 1: Absolutely So. During during the filming of this, there was
a young production assistant whose job it was to drive
Roger Moore around and he was petrified that he was
going to mess something up or get in a wreck
and kill Sir Roger Moore. And at some point he
was being so careful that more you know, tipped his
paper down from the back and said, you can go
a little bit faster, And that young man went on
to have his own catch line, which was.
Speaker 2: Because it was Carrie elways from Princess ride Way.
Speaker 1: Now you know the rest of the story.
Speaker 2: That is awesome. Okay, here's something I got for you
on Octopussy. The acrostar plane used in the pre title
sequences now hanging from the ceiling of a restaurant in Clearwater, Florida.
Speaker 1: Cool, we go.
Speaker 2: That would be awesome. I would love to go there
and see that. Yeah, I think that'd be super cool.
Speaker 1: I wonder if the wings are up or down.
Speaker 2: There was a video game called James Bond as seen
in Octopussy, and it was developed by Capcom and Parker
Brothers for this movie in nineteen eighty four. It was
designed for the Atari twenty six hundred.
Speaker 1: I don't remember seeing that video game.
Speaker 2: So it was designed for the Atari's twenty six hundred,
the Atari fifty two hundred, the Commodore sixty four, and
Kalico Vision platforms. But it was never released.
Speaker 1: Oh that's why I don't remember exactly.
Speaker 2: If it had been, it would have been the first
James Bond video game associated with the title of a
Bond movie. All right, let's compare Bonds and move into
final judgment.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Sean Conner, cool, sophisticated manly, funny and brief moments,
but ultimately almost infallible as James Bond. Your thoughts, I mean,
I agree with all of that.
Speaker 2: And he's tougher, he seems more physical.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 2: I believe him beating bad guys up a whole lot.
Speaker 1: More than I do Roger Moore, or shooting a gun.
Speaker 2: Or running. My gosh, Roger Moore is the slowest runner.
Speaker 1: Well, and Roger Moore is even said this he doesn't
like shooting guns, which is a terrible I mean, it's
a terrible condition to be in if you're gonna be
playing James Bond. He's like, I always blink before I
shoot the guns.
Speaker 2: You see.
Speaker 1: Roger Moore is definitely funnier. I like his self deprecating
sense of humor, but as smooth as he is, he's
just not quite as cool as Sean Connery. What are
you thinking?
Speaker 2: Okay, this is hard for me because I grew up
in the seventies with Roger Moore movies. So my heart
says Roger Moore because he is funny, and he is.
He is very sophisticated and cool, just not as tough.
I think I favor the Roger.
Speaker 1: Moore move It's a hard question, isn't it. It's hard
Some people are so so stuck in their stance on
this one. But it is a hard question because we did,
we did grow up with the Roger Moore bond, and
so he was kind of bond to us. Going back
and looking at it, he does look a little, for
lack of a better word, prissy in certain circumstances. Yeah, So, honestly,
here's here is my take on it. Right, I would
probably rather watch Roger Moore. Yes, I'd probably rather be
Sean Connery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I go with that.
Speaker 1: I go with that.
Speaker 2: I think in this movie, though he looks a little old,
they I think they both look old to be to
be real both world man, both World. And then Roger
Moore does another one after this it looks even older.
But I think I think you're right. I think I
enjoy some of the Roger Moore movies more, but I
think Connore is a better bond. Okay, you made you
made a come in a few weeks ago, flashback to
our Cannonball Run episode. Yeah you said you enjoyed Roger
Moore and Cannonball Run as and call that one of
his best bond performances.
Speaker 1: I totally I agree with that. I still agree with
that because he was probably cooler in this one and
probably cooler in Cannonball Run.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me throw this out there real quick, all right,
go ahead, Yeah, I'm with you. And everybody has their
own Bond, and everybody has their own opinion, and and
I know that that Connery is kind of the guy
for most of our listening audience. You have two of
the most uncool scenes with Bond in all of Bond movies.
In both of these movies, Okay, so you have Sean
Connery wearing overalls and nothing else, and you have Roger
Moore dressed as a clown trying to undo a nuclear bomb.
Speaker 1: So overall, like in all of Bond history, here are
you picking?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, I think the best Bond
is Daniel Craig.
Speaker 1: I totally agree, There's no question about it. For me,
Daniel Craig is the best Bond that's ever been a Bond.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're I think that's cool that we can
agree on that Daniel Craig is the best Bond. I
think the second best Bond is Pierce Brosman.
Speaker 1: Well, Pierce Brosnan kind of wove together the great parts
of Sean Connery and Roger Moore. He was able to
be funny and cool at the same time. He was
able to be self deprecating but wasn't prissy at all.
It was yeah, yeah, he was. It was a perfect meld.
It was just he didn't have super great movies. So
the way he played Bond was spot on. That was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And we talked. We talked briefly that he
was a great Bond, he just had terrible scripts. Right, Okay,
So Never Say Never Again versus Octopusy, which is the
better movie Octopussy?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay.
Speaker 1: I I just in going back and like I've already said,
I've already said how I feel about the Bonds, and
I talked about the plot points, and I talked about
the action that's involved. But it's a more engaging movie.
It does move, it moves more quickly, it has more
action sequences. The characters to me are more interesting in Octopusy. Yes,
I think that Sean Connery is kind of like Christopher Reeve.
He will always be the original Bond. But but Never
Say Never Again was not a great comeback roll for me.
For for him. I mean, maybe if he this would
have this would have been an interesting idea. What if
he had played the part with his gray beard and
his hair piece gone and played it like that, that
might have been more fascinating. But this one, I just
felt like he was he was trying too hard to
beat the bond of the sixties in his nearly sixties.
I guess I don't know, you know, it was just okay,
what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2: Well, so I want to love Octopussy? Right we talked
how for your eyes only? Was my entry. I love
that movie. Octopussy comes around and when I see it, honestly,
I was disappointed at the movie theater as a kid.
It's it's silly, and the clowns and the bad guys
aren't very good, and the plot is convoluted.
Speaker 1: You have a yo yo buzzsaw.
Speaker 2: The yo yo buzsaw is pretty cool, and the alligator
submarine is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: What about the What about the closing when he's flying
in the plane and he's holding on the plane. That's intense.
That was cool, awesome scene.
Speaker 2: That was a great scene until the guy says, you
go out there and get him, which is great.
Speaker 1: The guy goes flying off the edge when he hit
him in the face at the age.
Speaker 2: A great way to go, which that would hurt like
crazy man, oh my nose. So I give the nod
to Never Say Never Again. I think the plot is
more interesting. I think you get bonus points for having
a super cool battie. Barbara Carrera kills it as Fatima Blush.
I'd love her in this, so I'd rather have Bahamas
and Barbara Carrera.
Speaker 1: Octopusy grossed more in the box office. Never Say Never Again?
Speaker 2: Did it did? So? So Octopusy we talked about had
a budget of twenty seven and a half million dollars
and made one hundred and eighty seven million dollars. Right,
But not only did it make more, but it was
more profitable. I'm sorry. The budget for Never Say Never
Again was thirty six million and the box office was
one hundred and sixty million. Right. It'll a big hit,
just not quite as big as OCTOPUSY. Right. I think
part of that it would have been interesting to me
to see how they both would have done if they
had both been released in June.
Speaker 1: It has been great to do this again. I can't
wait for next week's episode, which is which is going
to be Motley Cruz Doctor Feel Good versus skid Row's
debut album, skid Row Man.
Speaker 2: I can't wait for that one. Those are two of
my all time favorites. I have had a great time
getting into these Bond movies, even though they're not the
best of Bonds that the story to me has been
really fascinating. So I hope you've enjoyed this deep dive
into what was going on behind the scenes, and nineteen
eighty three made for a spectacular year.
Speaker 1: At the box office. If you haven't followed us or
liked our page on Facebook, do that now. We're getting
tons of good responses from folks out there, and we'd
love for you to be a part of it. We
want to build as big a family and community on
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and please tell your friends about us. You know, the
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So let other folks know. D Jason catch you next week.
Speaker 2: Man, all right, man, thanks a lot.
Speaker 3: Right the sun Rasp