Recently Blue Hour Author Patrick Mulready popped over from Colorado to visit London. As part of his trip he took in a Bond tour. He did do other things as well, but here is his report on what he discovered about his favourite spy.
London is a city I have not visited for a quarter of a
century. So when I made plans to go
there earlier this year, there was no way a James Bond fan like myself was
going to miss out on the opportunities to see it as it has been shown in the
films I discussed in "Licence:Reviwed"
The first part of my Bond London experience was a
guided tour in which I visited a number of locations used in the films. I learned that the “back door” to MI-6, as we
see it in “Die Another Day” (2002,) is in fact a cleaner’s closet on the far
side of Westminster Bridge from Big Ben.
And if you take the pedestrian underpass from that closet beneath
Westminster Bridge, you come to the location of the photo shoot introducing
George Lazenby to the world prior to the release of “On Her Majesty’s Secret
Service” (1969.) Speaking of OHMSS, the
College of Arms is a very real place, and, I learned, the location of a chase
scene between Bond and the assistant to the Sable Basilisk (who was, in the
original version, a Blofeld plant.) The
chase involved a climb to the roof of the College of Arms. Sadly, all this was cut from the final film
for time.
Somerset House, located near Waterloo Bridge, is
essentially a large, outdoor exhibition space.
But it featured as a location in two different Bond films. In “GoldenEye,” (1995) with a
bit of exterior
decoration and vehicles thrown in, it doubled as a traffic circle in St.
Petersburg, Russia. In the very next
film, “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997,) its archway gate off the Strand served as
the entrance to the Admiralty Headquarters, as Bond drives his DB-5 to the
meeting.
“The World Is Not Enough” (1999,) featured a
pre-credit boat chase between Bond and Renaud’s Cigar Girl on the Thames and through
several canals. One of those canals is
located at the Tobacco Docks off Wapping Lane.
You may remember this is where a couple of traffic wardens affixing a
tire clamp on a car got drenched by Bond’s high speed fly-by. Those (very real) traffic wardens were part
of a BBC series on television at the time called “Clampers,” and one of those
two wardens, Ray Brown, apparently took some glee in his reputation as the most
hated man in London for his over-zealous pride in immobilizing illegally parked
vehicles. The pair weren’t warned ahead
of time the scene would involve them being splashed, so their drenching came as
something of a shock, and the expletives they uttered would probably have been
inappropriate on film.
Obviously, much of “Skyfall,” (2012) took place in
London, itself. Multiple locations were
used for the foot-race between Bond and Silva, M’s Enquiry Hearing, and the
roof-top scene between Bond and Moneypenny near the film’s end. But did you know the building to which Bond
tails Patrice in Shanghai was actually an office building on Primrose
Street. Daniel Craig never set foot in
China during the making of “Skyfall.”
It’s interesting to note that some of the locales
referenced in the films are based upon very real places. The Les Ambassadeurs Club, where we first
meet Sean Connery’s Bond in “Dr. No” (1962,) is in fact a very real place in
London, and a frequent haunt of Ian Fleming, himself. It’s located not far from the Dorchester
Hotel off Parklane, and dedicated Bond fans will appreciate that the Dorchester
Hotel has long been associated with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman during
the early years of the Bond franchise as the site of important meetings and
press launches of new films.
After the three hour tour, my Bond experience wasn’t
done. As luck would have it, currently
on display in London is the Bond In Motion Exhibition at the London Film Museum
in Covent Garden. This exhibit features
an enormous collection of the vehicles used in Bond films, from Goldfinger’s
Rolls Royce Phantom III, to the actual Aston Martins Bond destroyed in both
“Casino Royale” (2006) and “Quantum of Solace” (2008). Yes, you’ll see the DB5, too – no Bond
exhibit would be complete without that.
But the exhibit is actually a bit cleverer than
that. You see, this isn’t just a display
of cars, aircraft and motorcycles. It’s
a chance for the art and model-making departments within EON productions to
demonstrate what they’ve achieved. From
the model of the submarine Lotus Esprit used in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977)
to the Soviet diesel train engine from “GoldenEye,” there’s a load for all Bond
fans to see, inform and enjoy. I don’t
think people realize just how good the model makers associated with the films
really are. For example, in “Skyfall,”
M’s Jaguar is stopped by police on Vauxhall Bridge, and M looks on in horror as
her offices are demolished in a gas explosion.
All of that was accomplished using models, but you’d never guess that,
watching the film.
The Bond In Motion Exhibition will be in place at the
London Film Museum through the end of 2014.
And
here’s a “did you know?” factoid on which to conclude: in 1999, when the very
real MI-6 learned that filming for “The World Is Not Enough” involved a
location shoot in the Thames just outside their building, they moved to
prohibit it, citing a security risk.
(Really? You mean the world
doesn’t already know where MI-6 is headquartered in London?) However, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, at the
urging of Member of Parliament Janet Anderson, over-ruled MI-6’s objections,
thus allowing filming to take place. Of
the decision, Cook famously remarked, “After all Bond has done for Britain, it
was the least we could do for Bond.”
