The participants for this segment are (in alphabetical order)….

Jon Burlingame is the author of The Music of James Bond (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also authored Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks (Watson-Guptill, 2000) and TV’s Biggest Hits: The Story of Television Themes from Dragnet to Friends (Schirmer, 1996). He writes regularly for the entertainment industry trade Variety and has also been published in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. He started writing about spy music for the 1970s fanzine File Forty and has since produced seven CDs of original music from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. for the Film Score Monthly label. His website is www.jonburlingame.com.

John Cork is featured on the Casino Royale Blu-ray Disc audio commentary track and is the author (with Collin Stutz) of James Bond Encyclopedia (DK, 2007) and (with Bruce Scivally) James Bond: The Legacy (Abrams, 2002) and (with Maryam d’Abo) Bond Girls Are Forever: The Women of James Bond (Abrams, 2003). He is the president of Cloverland, a multi-media production company, producing documentaries and supplemental material for movies on DVD and Blu-ray, including material for Chariots of Fire, The Hustler, and several James Bond and Pink Panther titles. Cork also wrote the screenplay to The Long Walk Home (1990), starring Whoopi Goldberg and Sissy Spacek. He wrote and directed the feature documentary You Belong to Me: Sex, Race and Murder on the Suwannee River for producers Jude Hagin and Hillary Saltzman (daughter of original Bond producer, Harry Saltzman). He has recently contributed articles on the literary history of James Bond for ianfleming.com and The Book Collector.

Lee Pfeiffer is the author (with Dave Worrall) of The Essential Bond: The Authorized Guide to the World of 007 (Boxtree, 1998/Harper Collins, 1999) and (with Philip Lisa) The Incredible World of 007: An Authorized Celebration of James Bond (Citadel, 1992) and The Films of Sean Connery (Citadel, 2001). Lee was a producer on the Goldfinger and Thunderball Special Edition LaserDisc sets and is the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine, which celebrates films of the 1960s and 1970s and is “the Essential Guide to Cult and Classic Movies.”

The interviews were conducted separately and have been edited into a “roundtable” conversation format.

And now that the participants have been introduced, might I suggest preparing a martini (shaken, not stirred, of course) and cueing up the soundtrack album to Casino Royale, and then enjoy the conversation with these James Bond authorities.

Michael Coate (The Digital Bits): Should Casino Royale be considered a James Bond movie?

Jon Burlingame: Yes, but with an asterisk! Fleming had long ago sold the rights to his first novel, and those rights eventually fell to agent-turned-producer Charles K. Feldman. With the enormous success of the Broccoli-Saltzman “official” 007 films, Feldman went the spoof route and tried to send up the Connery films with an all-star, big-budget, pull-out-all-the-stops movie that would make its own splash at the box-office.

Aside from the 1954 Casino Royale done for CBS television, there had been no film adaptation of the first James Bond adventure and so, yes, we need to consider this as a Bond film. Of sorts.

John Cork: Casino Royale is what happens when you make a James Bond movie without James Bond. In 1967, as any billboard or newspaper ad would tell you, “Sean Connery is James Bond.” Here is this producer, Charles K. Feldman, who has ended up with the rights to one James Bond film. He can’t get Sean Connery. He can’t make the deal he wants with Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and he’s just had a hit with a film that made absolutely no sense, What’s New, Pussycat? He decides that if he can’t get Sean Connery, he’ll make the What’s New Pussycat? of James Bond movies. Woody Allen wrote that what Charlie Feldman was “really trying to do is eliminate the Bond pictures forever.” So, in a lot of ways, one can argue that it isn’t a “James Bond” movie. It certainly misses much of the cinematic trademarks of Bond as well as the iconography. There is no gunbarrel opening, no James Bond Theme, no “James Bond will return…” at the end. And the plot itself does not focus on the character of James Bond. In fact, the film intentionally confounds the very notion of there being any single character named James Bond that the audience can follow. Even more audacious, and often overlooked, this is a film where the villain’s plot to destroy the world accidentally works. Spoiler alert: James Bond dies in the end!

On the other hand, the film has all the right ingredients. There are beautiful women, fantastic sets, more genuine Ian Fleming content from the novel than in You Only Live Twice (which is not actually saying much at all), an amazing score, action and daring-do, and jokes that would later end up in other “real” James Bond films. Watched back-to-back with Moonraker, A View to a Kill, or Die Another Day, Casino Royale ‘67 fairs pretty well.

It is also a film that holds such an amazing place in the history of James Bond that it should not be discounted or ignored.

Lee Pfeiffer: Casino Royale should not be considered to be a “James Bond” movie except in the legal sense. It is ostensibly derived from elements of Ian Fleming’s novel but those elements are few and far between. Nevertheless, the screen rights to the book, which was Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, had an erratic history. Initially, Fleming sold the rights for virtually nothing so that the novel could be adapted to a one-hour live television drama. It was broadcast in 1954 on CBS in America as part of the Climax! Mystery Theater program that presented a different story with a different cast every week. Barry Nelson was cast as Bond and is referred to in one scene as “Card Sense Jimmy Bond.” That makes a Bond purist cringe today but as Nelson once told me, the character was virtually unknown and thus, the absurdity of casting an American with a crew cut didn’t strike anyone as abnormal — nor did the attempt to portray him as a Bogart-like American tough guy. The show was an admirable attempt to follow Fleming’s plot but was hampered by a meager production budget and the fact that it was telecast live meant there were no exterior shots — it all had to be presented on sound stages. The program had no impact and Bond lingered for years until producer Charles K. Feldman obtained the screen rights. By the early 1960s producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed a partnership that gave them the screen rights to every other Fleming Bond novel — and United Artists’ production head David Picker agreed to distribute the films.

Feldman hadn’t seen the potential in Bond until the UA series became a blockbuster. He approached Broccoli and Saltzman with a proposition to film Casino Royale starring Sean Connery — but Broccoli and Saltzman weren’t interested. They had just had to take on Kevin McClory as a third-wheel producer on Thunderball because he controlled the screen rights, which was part of a complex legal settlement between McClory and Fleming that compromised the rights Broccoli and Saltzman thought they had obtained outright. They didn’t want another partner on the next film, which turned out to be You Only Live Twice. Feldman had a valuable property but felt he couldn’t compete with the makers of the Connery Bond films so he went in another direction. Having recently produced the hit, mod comedy What’s New Pussycat?, he turned Casino Royale into a similarly-themed big budget, star-packed madcap spoof. Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress and Woody Allen all reunited from the Pussycat team but this time the results were not as favorable. Feldman had four directors (including the esteemed John Huston) shooting simultaneously in different British studios — though none of them consulted each other. The script was written on the fly and the budget soared out of control. In the midst of it all, Feldman fired Peter Sellers before he could shoot his scenes for the climax of the movie. The filming was utter chaos.

Coate: How do you think Casino Royale should be remembered on its 50th anniversary?

Burlingame: As a product of its time. Today, fifty years later, I am able to enjoy it for what it is. An incomprehensible mess, of course, but with so many amusing asides along the way. For every cringe-worthy moment involving Woody Allen or Peter Sellers, there are compensations: I love Orson Welles as Le Chiffre, who came in and did it as a lark (probably to make enough money to invest in his next film); and Joanna Pettet as the love child of Bond and Mata Hari — well, even if you shake your head at the concept you must admit she is spectacular in the part.

There is, however, one unassailable, brilliant, contribution, and that is Burt Bacharach’s score. I had the pleasure of reviewing Bacharach’s original sketches and orchestrations while I was writing my book five years ago. As terrible as the film is, Bacharach’s score is a work of genius. He knew precisely what to do despite the madness, and even if you only consider The Look of Love (his romantic theme for Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress, with its incredible Hal David lyrics and unforgettable Dusty Springfield vocal), well, that was worth the entire effort. Even Leslie Bricusse, who won the best-song Oscar that year for Talk to the Animals from Doctor Dolittle, later admitted that he thinks The Look of Love (also nominated) should have won because it’s “ten times better” than what he wrote.

Cork: I think Casino Royale should be celebrated. The film is a classic, a monument to everything that was right and everything that was wrong with cinema in the mid-1960s. It is baffling, audacious, a pop-art masterpiece as much as any Andy Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein work, at times brilliantly funny, and yet completely infuriating. It was a huge middle finger to its intended audience. On one hand, it is the Star Wars Holiday Special of James Bond films. On the other, it is a movie whose brilliance could not be seen by many Bond fans until they saw so much of it re-digested through the eyes of Mike Myers and Jay Roach in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. It is a James Bond film produced by a man who had grown to hate James Bond. And he recruits some of the most talented names in cinema to make this film: Woody Allen, Orson Welles, John Huston are some of the greatest filmmakers ever, and they all contributed their creative talents. Woody Allen is brilliant in the film. So is Welles.

And that score! Ah, that Bacharach score is some of the most wonderful music ever written for a film. This American Life used to use needle drops from Casino Royale all the time. The Look of Love still raises goosebumps for me every time I hear it. This is a song that charted three times! The single version by Sérgio Mendes & Brasil ‘66 charts in 1968 after they performed it at the Oscars. Isaac Hayes does a fantastically trippy version in 1970, and Diana Krall charts with it on the Adult Contemporary charts in 2001! The original sung by Dusty Springfield, and produced by Phil Ramone, is worshiped by music professionals. The song itself is in the Grammy Hall of Fame. It is one of my favorite scores of all time.

The film is brilliantly shot. Jack Hildyard, who had shot Bridge on the River Kwai for David Lean was the main man behind the camera. He had just come off the similarly insane Modesty Blaise, setting the bar for marrying studio style and Pop Art sensibilities. But Hildyard was supplemented with another cinematographer who had a huge influence on Casino Royale, and that was Nicholas Roeg. So many of the brilliant shots in the film belong to Roeg, including the claustrophobic close-ups and surreal sequences.

The fantastic supporting actors provide amazing moments of comedy. As does Peter Sellers and so many other members of the cast.

It is much better to watch this film as if one were watching a couple of episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Don’t expect it to make sense. Don’t expect to care about any of the characters. Just roll with it. Watch the film for what it is: a celebration and parody of popular culture in the year 1967.

Pfeiffer: The film was often loathed by Bond fans because they felt it represented a waste of a great Fleming novel. However, MGM and Eon Productions obtained all screen rights to the novel — and Feldman’s film version — in the 1990s, leaving them free to make a “real” version of the book. That marked Daniel Craig’s debut as Bond in 2006 and the movie was met with international acclaim. Since then, I’ve noticed that people have taken a more benign view of the spoof version of Casino Royale.

Cinema Retro covered the making of the movie exhaustively way back in issue #6 and in researching the article, I remembered the things I liked most about it. There is a superb score and title theme by Burt Bacharach and some of the best production design work in any film of the period. Much of it is also very funny thanks to the inspired cast and some uncredited jokes by Woody Allen. So for my taste, there is much to love about the movie even if I’m in a distinct minority. My co-publisher Dave Worrall loathes it. It makes for some fun arguments if we’re sitting around a pub.  

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