SYSK’s Summer Movie Playlist: What's the deal with Bond, James Bond?
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Hey everybody, it's me Josh and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know Summer Movie Playlist. It's summertime and we thought what better way to kick off one of the four greatest seasons of the year with a focus on movies because what screams summer more than a nice darkened cool air-conditioned theater and a great movie playing right in front of you. So we're going to start the whole thing off with our July 2010 episode on What's the Deal with Bond.

James Bond. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Hi. With me is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Bryant. Charles Bryant. How is it going, Chuck? It's an odd way to introduce yourself, don't you think? Not if you're a super spy. Are you a super spy? Actually, I wouldn't say James Bond was even a spy. Secret Service? Is that a spy, really?

No, he was an assassin and just general plot disruptor, I would say. He was a blunt instrument of the crown. Yeah, if you wanted the job done and you couldn't, if you didn't have time to worry about the politics or diplomacy, that kind of thing, you sent James Bond. Yeah, get JB on the phone, 007. Yeah. He'll take care of business like Elvis.

You could call him on his car phone long before any car had a phone. Yeah. All right? He was always predating technology. Yeah, as a matter of fact, there's a James Bond theory of entrepreneurial innovation. I believe that. From Russia with Love, 1963, he talked...

I can't remember who he talked to, but he was in his car using the phone. Yeah. That was in his car, and audiences went nuts for it. Oh, yeah. They were like, oh, my God, he's on the telephone. Right. In a car. But that's what they sounded like in England, though. Oh, yeah. Well, sure. Possibly Ghana. Right. So, Josh, where do we start here? We can't not start with Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming.

That's where we got to start. Let's do it. No, there was a colon after that. Oh, Ian Fleming colon was, as everyone knows, and if you didn't, you need to get out from under your rock that you reside in right now, the creator of James Bond in novel form. He was also originally a journalist and a stockbroker. And World War II starts to come around.

And he joins the Naval Volunteer. Royal Navy. Royal Navy. And he was actually, Chuck, did you know, assigned as a spy himself in Washington, D.C.?

Yeah, sort of a spy, you could call it. He was in intelligence, and he would occasionally, he was an administrative guy, but sometimes they would send him out to do field work where he would take secret pictures of documents, just like in the movies. Do you know who was assigned to his spy unit?

James Bond. Yeah. No. Well, the guy who was the inspiration for James Bond, his name was William Stevenson, a.k.a. Intrepid, right? Yeah, one of many inspirations. Right, but in an interview in The Times in 1962, Fleming said, you know, James Bond is this romanticized version of a spy. Bill Stevenson is the real thing. Right, well, romanticized version of himself. Right.

To an extent, sure. Another member of that spy ring was a guy named Raul Dahl, who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Yeah, and a bunch of bawdy books. Right. He also had the non-children's books that were a little racier. Yes. Not many people know that. So, Chuck, let's talk a little bit more about Ian Fleming. Give it to us, buddy. Yeah, I mean, like I said, he sort of based James Bond on

Kind of, I think, who he wanted to be. He was a playboy.

He was an island hopper. An adventurer. An adventurer, a skier. He dove with Jacques Cousteau and snow skied from the tops of mountains in Switzerland. Had a place in Jamaica where he actually wrote all these books. Right. He named the place Goldeneye. And every year he would go to Jamaica and write a book. And I just want to dig him up and throttle him for that because, I mean –

What a life. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Oh, it's time for me to go to my estate in Jamaica and write a book that's going to just make me millions more. Yeah, which he did. And he reportedly picked the name James Bond because he wanted the most boring name he could find.

for his super secret agent. I think he didn't want the name to compete with the actual character. Like why bother giving him some fancy name? Just name him James Bond and have him kick butt. Right. You know what the opposite of that is? Hacksaw Jim Duggan? Yeah. He should have named him that. Yeah. Well then it would have competed with the character. Duggan. Hacksaw Jim Duggan. I could hear that. So yeah, he wrote, see the article says 13 novels written

Well, he wrote 13 books. I got 14. What's the 14th? Well, I've got 12 novels plus two short story collections. Right. For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy in the Living Daylights was another collection. Right. So it seems like it'd be easier to find this out, but I literally saw two different sets of information. Huh. So are we going to go with 14 because you are quite the sniffer? Let's go with 14 total. Okay. 12 novels. All right. But he wrote...

I think he wrote the novels first, maybe? Or did he write the short story books in between? Yeah, they were in between. They were toward the end. Okay. When he was getting fat and lazy in Jamaica. Yeah. Interestingly, though, or maybe it's not that interesting, they made the movies way out of order. Yeah, they did. Dr. No was the first film, but that was the sixth novel. Right, but did you know that they originally, the people who made the official Bond movies, originally wanted to make Thunderball?

it was a story that Ian Fleming came up with with another guy who wanted the rights to make a movie out of it. Oh, really? That fell through, but Ian Fleming went ahead and wrote the story anyway that they came up with as Thunderball. The guy sued his pants off and actually gained custody, gained the rights to the book Thunderball, which tied it up and made them opt for Dr. No to go first instead. There was a lot of litigation over the years in the Bond franchise. Yes.

I guess when you have a franchise that long and that vast, there's going to be people suing people over something. Well, plus it's legendary. He's a legendary character, and he's made a lot of money for a lot of people. Absolutely. The other interesting thing I thought just before we move on was that Moonraker was written in 1955. That was the third novel. That is insightful. And, of course, there wasn't a space shuttle. They changed the setting and all that stuff, but it did involve a nuclear weapon.

So, you know, kind of odd. And Man with the Golden Gun, which was Roger Moore's

Second film was the final novel, and it was released after his death. Huh. So it was way out of order. And in that one, he predicted Hervé Vichy, which nobody saw coming except Ian Fleming. Yeah. You know? Right, yeah. It's weird. Let's talk about James Bond a little bit. Okay. The character James Bond. So it turns out James Bond had a Scottish father.

Which he didn't originally. No, that came about because of Sean Connery. Yeah, Ian Fleming was not a big fan of Sean Connery at first. And then Sean Connery was like, check this out. And he made one peck go up while the other went down a bunch of times. And Ian Fleming just like clapped and squealed and that was that, right? He was a big fan and he said, you know what, you are James Bond.

And he actually went back and changed James Bond's history to kind of match Sean Connery a little bit because he came to see, like, this guy is Bond, right? Yeah. So he gave James Bond a Scottish father. Andrew. And a Swiss mother.

Monique Delacroix. Nice. Yeah. And they both died mountain climbing, right? Yes, when little James was 11 years old. And he went to the orphanage. And he went to an orphanage. He was supposedly born on November 11th, 1920.

But there are different accounts of his birthday and when he was born. And clearly when you have a franchise with Daniel Craig playing him in 2008, he can't be born in 1920. Yeah, because Bodies, the exhibition, wasn't showing in Miami in like 1958 or anything. So yeah, there's a sliding scale there obviously to make it viable. But James, much like his author namesake, Ian Fleming, not namesake,

- That would make him James Bond. Much like the author Ian Fleming was, went to the Royal Navy in World War II, rose to the rank of commander. - Yes. - After the war, that's when he entered the SIS, known as MI6. - Right, which is the sixth branch of the Military Intelligence Directorate. - You got that, buddy. - Right, and his first two assignments, Chuck, were two taps.

weren't they? Assassinations right off the bat. So apparently you have to kill two people to get a 00 status which is the license to kill and he got them like you say right off the bat. Yeah and he was the seventh dude to get them so that's where 007 comes from. The seventh agent. I shouldn't say dude because were there female agents? Yeah there were female agents. Okay. I'm pretty sure. And we should probably take the time here to explain. I like James Bond.

I know that you like James Bond movies, too. Is this the disclaimer? Yeah. We're going to get killed here. We are not members of James Bond fandom, I would say. Right? I mean, I've seen all the movies, but no, I haven't studied the books. I've never read any of the books. I don't think I've seen all the movies. But I do like them in a very recreational manner. So, that being said...

we are not going to get every single thing right here. - Right. - We are going to walk right past information that we just don't know exists. So, in a very friendly manner, if there is anything that you have to say that can round this podcast out even further, we love knowing new things. So please let us know, I guess is what we're saying, right? - Oh, they'll let us know. - They will.

They will. Except for the three dudes that just turned it off and went, well, they have no business even attempting this thing. Right. And then they go give us a one-star rating on iTunes. So back to Bond. He, as we all know, is a sharp dresser, and he loves fast cars. He loves his martini shaken, not stirred. He loves women. Yeah, and do you know if you shake a martini instead of stirring it, you pretty much ruin it? I disagree. I shake all my martinis. Dude. How does it ruin it?

It feathers it, I think. What does that mean? It means it's screwed up. What does that mean?

I like a good dirty martini myself. Oh, you like them dirty? Oh, yeah. Gross. Jared just said word. I like my martinis so light it's basically just a vodka rock. So you just like the vermouth bottle just waved near the glass? Pretty much. I like just a little vermouth, little olive juice, but no olive. No olive juice. I'll put three olives in usually. Really? Yeah. All right. But then I eat them so fast that they have no time to taint the martini. Well, that's why you're not a super spy.

So, Josh, James Bond, a couple of the other traits we should just mention. He is a martial artist. He's a gifted man with his fists and feet. Or if you're Roger Moore, a karate chop. Yeah. He loved the karate chop. Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a big deal in the 70s. And he famously carried a Walter PPK handgun, .32 caliber. Yeah. And that's a little guy. Have you ever seen him? Oh, yeah. They're small. And I've played Goldeneye and...

- I played-- - Best game ever. - I guess I just played GoldenEye. It is a great game. - Yeah, and you know they're bringing that back for Wii. - I've heard. - Matt Frederick of Coolest Stuff on the Planet told us that they are bringing that back because it's still sort of the standard for first person shooters like 15 years on. - Yeah. - It's still a great game so they're bringing it back as is, like completely as it was but with better graphics. - That's gonna be fantastic. - For the Wii. - Yeah. - Pretty exciting. Back to the real life.

Yes. Of the fake life of James Bond. That's what we should have titled this podcast. The real life of the fake life. Yeah. This July 4th, celebrate freedom from spills, stains, and overpriced furniture with Anabay. The only machine washable sofa inside and out where designer quality meets budget friendly pricing. Sofa started just $699, making it the perfect time to upgrade your space. Anabay is

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How about, let's talk about some of the enemies. Dr. No, he was the first one to appear in the films. Dr. Julius No. Right, he's an atomic scientist. Yeah, he was clearly, Joseph Wiseman played him and he was a great, great villain. Goldfinger, you can't talk about Bond without talking about Goldfinger. Yeah. You don't like him? No, not really. I was a big Goldfinger guy. Were you? He tried to laser the crotch of James Bond.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Pretty hardcore. Yeah. It's like Max Scorpio. What's that? In that Simpsons where Homer ends up going to work for the supervillain. Right. Yeah. He's like, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die and be a very cheap funeral.

Oddjob was one of my favorite. He was one of Goldman's henchmen. I loved him too. The big Asian guy with the bowler hat that he could cut the head off a statue with his hat. Yeah, he was huge. Yeah, very big dude. Jaws, we grew up with Roger Moore, so you can't not talk about Jaws. No, he was great too. He was in two of them, right? He was in Moonraker and...

The Spy Who Loved Me? I thought he might have been more than that, but he definitely... No, I looked it up. He was only in two. Two, really? God, he made quite an impression. Yeah, he did. He found the girlfriend in Moonraker, I think, right? Yeah, he falls in love or something. Yeah, the little nerdy girl. And then he pops up again in Happy Gilmore.

Was he in that? Yeah. I didn't see that. Yeah, he was Happy Gilmore's boss on the construction site, and he ends up becoming a fan. Wow. Did he have the teeth? No, he didn't have the teeth. That was just for the movie. But he was a big guy. Yes. Lately, we've had more recent villains that I don't think the new villains compare to.

They kind of come and go, you know? Like in Casino Royale. Yeah, I mean they're okay, but they're all... I can't even tell you who the villain was. Yeah, they're all decent, but they're not iconic characters like they used to be. Right, like Blofeld. Yeah, well Blofeld was the sort of legendary, I don't know how many movies he was in, but he was played by like... Telly Savalas, Donald Pleasence. Yeah, Donald Pleasence was my favorite version. He was good. And Max Van Siedow.

Played him, I think in Never Say Never Again, maybe. Max Von Sydow, he's a class act. Yeah, what did I watch the other day? Oh, Shutter Island. He's in that. And I leaned over to Emily and I was like, you know, I want to see Max Von Sydow play a kindly grandfather in a movie. I don't think he can pull it off. Anytime that dude pops up in the movie, you're like, oh, well, he's the evildoer. Right. He's the villain. Or so you think until Shutter Island falls apart at the end. Don't ruin it.

It ruined itself. Yes, that was Blofeld. He was the bald guy, and he was the head of SPECTRE, which was the Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion. Right. It's a great villainous title there. That's not only a great name, it's your mission statement. Yeah. All wrapped up into one. One of my favorites, Max Zorin, played by the great Christopher Walken. He was the...

Dude, A View to Kill is one of the best Bond movies ever. But that had the worst Bond woman ever. Grace Jones? No, Tanya Roberts. I don't remember her. She was the Bond girl. I don't remember. She was the lady from the 70s show that was one of the late Charlie's Angels replacements.

Tanya Roberts, yeah. Yeah, who cares? It was the 80s. Nobody was paying that much attention. But it was a good song. It was, and Christopher Walken was in it. Grace Jones was in it. She was pretty scary in that. Yeah, she was excellent. Talk about a martial artist. But Max Zorin is, did you know he was the product of genetic experiments by Nazis?

Walken was? Well, not Walken. Max Zorin. Yeah, yeah. I don't remember that. Yeah, and one of the unintended side effects was he was a complete psychopath. I thought you were going to say one of the side effects was his use of punctuation. You are good, man. Everybody does Walken. I can't do a Walken. Let's hear it.

No, it's really just an altered John Travolta. Why are you so weird? Dude, that's great. Thanks. Of course, Chuck, there's 006, Alec Trevelin. Yeah. What was he in? That was one of the Pierce Brosnan ones, wasn't it?

Yeah. I think. Yeah, which I don't remember those. I love Pierce Brosnan. Oh, he was good. The fact that he wasn't James Bond earlier, he's like, oh yeah, you're going to cast Timothy Dalton, are you? Well, I'll go be Remington Steele, jerks. Yeah. Then they tried to get him again, right? I think so. And he was committed to Remington Steele, which was sort of like James Bond for TV. Oh, so did he do Remington Steele first? Oh yeah, he did Remington Steele.

Well, it goes back and forth. Timothy Dalton was offered the role before Roger Moore. Did you know that? No, I didn't. When he was 21 years old, he was going to replace Sean Connery, and Dalton said, I'm too young to play James Bond. And then he comes around years later, just like Brosnan did. Okay.

But I am glad that Pierce Brosnan went in. I just happen to think that his period of movies were unfortunate. I thought they were pretty good. I didn't like them. I'm really happy with Daniel Craig's stuff so far. Well, you know, my statement on that is that was the only direction they could take that franchise. After the Jason Bourne movies, you couldn't have a guy like...

winking at the camera like Roger Moore and slapstick sounds and sound effects. You had to take him in a real bad, bad direction. Yes. And you mean like Simo Haya bad. Yeah. So 006, Alec Trevelin, he is, I think, he informs the character Alex Krychek from X-Files. You think so, huh? Yeah.

Very nice, Josh. Thanks. All right, so those are some of the villains. Clearly not all, but we should also talk about some of the people that James Bond had working on his side at MI6. Right, which we will call from here on out the superfluous characters. No, dude, they're great. M, Q. Yeah. M was the head of MI6, and there were several Ms. M was just a title.

And M was the one that's always frustrated with Bond, yet he knows that he's the blunt instrument of choice, you know, pretty much in every movie. Q. You should say he or she for M. True. Dame Judi Dench took over. Yeah, man, she's doing a great job, too.

Q is the head of the Q branch. - Judi Dench, did you hear that? Chuck just said you were doing a great job, so keep it up. - Keep it up, Dane Judi Dench. Dame, Dane? - Dame. - Dame. - Yeah, she's a dame. - Q is the head of the Q branch, MI6's research and development branch, and Q, as you might know, is the guy who, in all the films, gives James his gadgets. There's always that great scene

where James goes into the laboratory and starts messing around with the gadgets and exasperates Q because he's burning something or he's firing a missile inside and he shouldn't be. That's Q. Right. And he's now been replaced by his former assistant, R. Right. Now, is R John Cleese? Yeah. Yeah, he's doing a good job. But he's the new Q. He just used to be R. Well, because Q died. Right. Lou Ellen? Yes, Chuck.

That was the actor that played the original Q. Is that right? Or the Roger Moore Q that I loved. Right. Who else we got? Felix Leiter, who I like. Jack Lord. Jeffrey Wright. Both played him. Oh, yeah? CIA agent. Uh-huh. And then there's another guy named Hayward Wade. Well, is he CIA? Yeah. I thought they said they didn't know if he was DEA or CIA. Yeah.

He was around before the DEA was. Was he? Yeah. And then you've got, I think Jack Wade is his name, and he was actually played by a couple people, including Joe Don Baker. Oh, yeah. Pierce Brosnan ones. Yeah, yeah. He had a couple of American counterparts. That's a good point. And, little known fact, Joe Don Baker was in, oh, I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was one of the greatest Mystery Science Theater 3000s. Oh, really? Yeah. Bad movie?

And then, of course, we have to mention Moneypenny, who was Em's personal assistant. And Moneypenny, you always knew Moneypenny because James would come in and flirt very much with her. And I always got the sense that if James were to ever settle down with anyone, which he clearly won't, it would have been Moneypenny. Sure. Or at least he made her think that. Right. Every day was Secretary's Day when James Bond was around. He was always just so nice to her and bringing her things from his travels.

Shot glasses and stuff. Right, spoons. She had an extensive spoon collection. Refrigerator magnets. Chuck. Josh. Let's talk about the movie, shall we? Yeah, sure. Let's talk about James Bond on screen because it wasn't necessarily just relegated to the movies. Oh, yeah, good point. So James Bond first appears on –

screen, on the small screen, on a CBS TV series called Climax! With an exclamation point. Really? Yeah. Wow. And he was first played by a guy named Barry Nelson. Barry Nelson, you may recognize as Mr. Ullman, the manager of the Overlook in Kubrick's The Shining, who tells Jack Torrance the ropes. That's the first guy to ever play James Bond. Wow. Was he English? No. American? Yeah, CBS TV series. So we've had a Scotsman...

Quite a few Englishmen, an American, and an Australian. And what? What do you mean, Australian? I mean someone from Australia. That was George Lazenby was Australian. Was he? You know what happened to him? Well, he wasn't much of an actor. Well, it wasn't just that. He, after the success of his Bond movie, I mean, he played James Bond, and it was filmed and produced and released. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the movie. He was like, holy cow, I'm James Bond.

and I'm going to buy a boat and sail around the world for a while. And he came back and his star had already faded because he did one thing and that was that. Oh, really? Yeah. He kind of blew it. He wasn't much of an actor either. But it wasn't just that. It was a combination of those two things. He was a bad dude, though. He got the role, apparently, because he impressed Ian Fleming because he...

had a faux fight scene with a wrestler for his audition, and he actually punched the guy. Like got mad and punched him, and Fleming's like, this is our dude. Wow. Yeah, because Fleming wrote the Bond character as much darker. Yeah, the novel character for sure. Like Roger Moore took it in a very...

- Awful direction. - Specific direction, you know, that was not the least bit like how Ian Fleming had written them. - You're the ultimate Roger Moore apologist. - I love Roger Moore. - He's good in The Saint, and that's why he got the role, I think.

Okay. The TV show The Saint. Sure. All right, so Chuck, let's get back to the beginning again. So we talked about Barry Nelson, and on the big screen, the first Bond ever was Sean Connery, right? Yeah, well, they did a pilot, though, on TV as well. That's the Barry Nelson one. Oh, it was called Casino Royale, though, no? Right, it was based on Casino Royale for Climax. Oh, gotcha. Okay, I understand that. Which I think, you know how they used to do like...

They would have the name of the series, but then there'd be different, like Wonderful World of Disney. Yeah. It was the name of the series, but then there were different documentaries or cartoons or whatever. I think it was like that. And that flopped, and it got canceled. They didn't know what they were doing with TV back in the day. They had no idea. So yeah, you're right. Dr. No was the first film in 1962, and there's been 22 in total.

No? Yes. And we're waiting. And that's official Bond films because they parodied him and other things. Woody Allen played him, for heaven's sake. Yeah. Yeah. In the parody he did of Casino Royale. Yeah. There's also an unofficial Bond film with an official Bond, right? Let's hear it. Never Say Never Again. Never Say Never Again.

Yeah, that was Connery's. That was also fraught with lawsuits as well. You know, that was based on the Thunderball lawsuit. Yeah, they remade Thunderball. Right, and they named it Never Say Never Again because Connery had said after 1971 that he'd never play Bond again. Yeah. Because he played Bond, what, for the first like six movies, something like that?

- One, two, three, four, five, and then George Lazenby, then he came back and did Diamonds Are Forever. - And then after that came Roger Moore. - Yes. - And then Roger Moore had a pretty good run. So Sean Connery stops playing Bond, George Lazenby comes along, does it once, leaves,

Sean Connery has to come back another time. After Sean Connery, they get Roger Moore. In the midst of Roger Moore's run, Sean Connery makes another Bond film. That's when we were kids, too. Twelve years after the last one he'd made. Yeah. Right? And, yeah. Kim Basinger was the Bond chick in that one. Yes, she was. And they called it Never Say Never Again because he'd said that he would never play Bond again. Never, Trebek.

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Bye.

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Timothy Dalton. I guess we might as well venture into his years. Yeah, I saw those when they first came out in the theaters, and I didn't think anything of them. I don't know if they were over my head or whatever, but I didn't like them. They were pretty good. Living Daylights and License to Kill. They were both... Are they good, really? Yeah, I mean, it was definitely a more novelistic Bond. He was a darker and a little more bad dude. I mean, it might have had something to do with it was coming off the heels of Roger Moore.

in his vaudeville act that he brought to bond and Dalton had a two picture run and then was replaced by who everyone thought should have been bond before Dalton Pierce Brosnan for a one, two, three, four films. Right. And then they went the inevitable direction with a blonde bond with Daniel Craig. Is that inevitable? You think, well, I meant the inevitable way of making him a tough dude, but yeah, the, his blindness was not inevitable.

You know, you make fun of Roger Moore, but he had a seven-picture stint as James Bond. Yeah, and that was our childhood. Trust me, dude, at the time, I loved it. But then when I got older, I revisited all of the Sean Connerys, and then I saw the butt-kickingness of Timothy Dalton, and now Daniel Craig, and now I'm kind of like, Roger Moore was kind of a joke to me. No? You still stand by it? I do. All right. I like Roger Moore. Sam Neill was considered at one point.

I could see him as James Bond. Yeah, he would have been bad. He was great in Dead Calm. Yeah, that was a good movie. You know, I don't know that this even qualifies as a podcast. People are going to be like, you guys are just kind of chit-chatting. Chuck, there's also theories, tons of them. Best one, actually the only one I could find really, is the Codename Theory. Have you heard this? I have not. Cracked got a lot of...

for it by it's a fan theory that basically says James Bond is it's a name that goes along with 007 and there's each actor was playing an actual different person

who had assumed this undercover name, James Bond. Really? Which explains the changes in personality. Yeah. It explains why Sean Connery was so suave and Roger Moore was so goofy. Sure. It explains why Daniel Craig and Timothy Dalton were so violent. Right, right. It explains a lot of stuff, actually. It explains George Lazenby's departure because his wife, the only time James Bond has ever been married, died.

In that one Honor Her Majesty's Secret Service Yeah he had a wife Most people don't know that And she was killed by Blofeld Uh huh Right Yeah So he leaves After that That explains that right Absolutely There's actually holes in that theory

Do you know them? I know a couple. Like, for example, George Lazenby recognized gadgets that were debuted during Sean Connery's tenure. Oh, right. If he was a new person, it would be new to him. He'd be like, what's this dart gun? Right. Exactly. Right. And I think The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore is recognized from his college days at Cambridge as James Bond. Oh, yeah. Which would mean that he was using the name before then. But it's still a pretty cool theory.

If you want any cool theory shot down, I recommend you go to commanderbond.net, mi6.co.uk, or jamesbondwiki.com. Those are some good sites. I'm going to retract my Roger Moore bashing a little bit. Okay. I actually liked...

like four out of seven of his films. Okay, see? So you're right. Sometimes I forget about the awesomeness of Live and Let Die and Man with a Golden Gun, For Your Eyes Only. Those are all pretty good. It was like Octopussy, Moonraker was really silly, does not age well at all, and View to a Kill. I just can't get behind that one. View to a Kill is awesome.

What about The Spy Who Loved Me? That's the one with the underwater lotus. Yeah, yeah, great movie. And I have one last fact. Are you ready? Oh, yeah. The legendary Bond producer, co-producer, Albert Cubby Broccoli. Yeah.

His family invented broccoli. They crossed cauliflower with rabe and invented broccoli. And he actually left the family farm to go to Hollywood to pursue his fortune when he was like 18. Are you making this up? I am not. He invented broccoli? His family did. His parents, grandparents. That's a pretty good fact. Broccoli. Very cool. Good for him. They're in trouble now, though, because MGM is in trouble.

Yeah, but they're saying it's just a blip on the radar. If you listen to anybody who's attached to the Bond 23 project, they're like, this is fine. Yeah, it's being delayed big time, though, because MGM's over their heads financially. If you know anything about MGM, if you're an insider at MGM, we want to hear from you. Let us know what's going on with Bond. That's funny. We've got to talk about Bond Girls. That's one of the hallmarks of Bond films in America.

Usually there's two Bond girls at least. There's a hot villain and a hot aide that helps him out in some way. Sometimes she turns out to be a villain, but there's usually two Bond girls, and he's equally attracted to both. Like Grace Jones? Yeah, he's attracted to her for some reason. They are femme fatales. Like I said, Bond cannot help but fall for them, even though it might mean he has to eventually kill them.

After he makes sweet love to them. Right. And I'm going to go ahead and ask you what your favorite Bond girl is. I just recently realized that Carrie Lowell was a Bond girl. And I used to have the biggest crush on her when I would watch... Wild Orchid?

no Law and Order reruns on A&E. They used to show Law and Order for eight hour blocks on A&E. I'd be like, I'm not going to class today. I'm just going to watch Law and Order. She was on a lot of them. She would be my favorite Bond girl. I'm going with Ursula Andress. She was hot.

Dude, back in the day, she played Honey Rider. And that's another hallmark of the Bond women is they usually had really awful names that hinted at sexual innuendo. Yeah. You know? Plenty-o-tool. Honey Rider, Pussy Galore. Actually, Solitaire, Jane Seymour, she was pretty good in Live and Let Die. Like, she was actually a really good actor. Okay. Moonraker, of course, had Holly Goodhead. And...

A View to a Kill had Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton. They didn't even give her a cool name. So, Chuck, what's the best Bond theme song? Well... Let me take a wild guess. I'm going to say Live and Let Die is probably my favorite. I would have put $1,000 on that. Or, what's her name? Carly Simon, Spy Who Loved Me, Nobody Does It Better. Love that song. Dude, Carly.

Best Bond theme song, if it's not Duran Duran's View to a Kill. Oh, okay. If it's not that, it is Nancy Sinatra singing You Only Live Twice. Yeah, that was awesome. Yes, it was. Shirley Bassey, just another little factoid. She did two. No, she did more than that. She did Goldfinger, she did Diamonds Are Forever, she did Moonraker. Two.

Moonraker. That's three total. I was also a big fan of Sheena Easton's For Your Eyes Only. Yeah, she did a good one. And Rita Coolidge, All Time High from Octopussy. Didn't Tom Jones do Thunderball or something? He did. Yeah. He did Thunderball. And since we're talking about the songs that have really gotten lame in recent years, like the Chris Cornell one and Garbage.

You probably didn't even remember they did songs. - Garbage did the one for-- - World Is Not Enough. - Oh, okay. - Pierce Brosnan. And Sheryl Crow did one. - Did she really? - Yeah. - Wow, that is lame. - And Madonna did one, and now it's gotten to the point where they're just like, like the last one, they put Jack White with Alicia Keys. - Up next is Miley Cyrus. - Oh, God. Say it ain't so. - Bond 23.

- What else do we have here? - This is the podcast that won't die. - No, I do have-- - It's like James Bond, it just goes on. - I do have a couple more facts. - Okay. - Well, first of all, before we move on, if we're gonna talk about the songs, we need to talk about the opening sequences, the title sequences. When you're a young Baptist boy,

And there are naked silhouetted women jumping on trampolines. Yeah. It's very titillating. And arousing. And arousing for a young boy named Chuck. I'm titillated and aroused. And then the opening sequence of the films typically is some awesome action scene. And then the title sequence comes up. There'll be like a seven minute action scene. They call that a cold opening, buddy. A cold opening? Uh-huh. That's very nice.

And I just got a couple more facts for you, Josh, and then I'll let you put this to bed. All right. What would you say is the highest grossing Bond film of all time, adjusted gross? Adjusted gross, I would say Casino Royale. No. Top two all time, Thunderball and Goldfinger. You're a liar. Adjusted gross. You know, Casino Royale worldwide netted like almost $600 million so far. Bunch of money.

- Thunderball and Goldfinger did more. - Did they really? - Yeah, Thunderball in 1965, dude, grossed $141 million. - What? Wait, is that worldwide or US? - That's worldwide. - Okay. - And that is close to what License to Kill grossed in 1989. That grossed like 150-something. And Thunderball, 30 years more, grossed $141 million. - Right, but what I'm saying is,

Casino Royale grossed $600 million. Well, I mean, yeah. That's not an adjusted gross, though. You can't compare 1965 dollars. Oh, I see. You're figuring inflation in. Yeah, that's why it's called an adjusted gross. And that's about it. I mean, we could say the cars he used real quickly, the Aston Martin, obviously. My favorite is the Lotus. The Lotus, the Alfa Romeo, and then that new Audi that's pretty cool. Do you like the Audi?

Yeah, I mean, it looks awesome. Okay. But I do miss the Lotus and the fact that it could also be a submarine. Right. And lastly, Chuck, I would like to say to all the kids of our generation, if you ever noticed a similarity between Inspector Gadget and James Bond, you are dead on. Yeah. You think so? Yeah.

All right, so that's about it. If you want to know more about James Bond, like I said, there are three, at least three really good websites for all things Bond fandom. You can check out our website by typing James Bond. It brings up a bunch of stuff in the handy search bar. And now, if you can believe it, it is time for Listener Mail. Listener Mail.

Yes, Josh, I'm going to call this Samurai Stuff from Thomas. Guys, I'm a total samurai geek. I practice Japanese sword-based martial arts, kendo, and ayado. I've read all this material about samurai, and your podcast was a very good introduction, and I thank you for it. However, I'm kind of surprised you did not mention the greatest samurai of all time, Miyamoto Musashi. This guy was the epitome of everything samurai were supposed to be, a dedicated soivant who

a poet, a painter, a calligrapher, a philosopher, a general, and an all-round butt-kicking killer. Not only did he write The Book of Five Rings, he also killed 60 men in single combat before age 40, not to mention all the guys he killed in warfare. At one point in your podcast, you talked about the wooden katana called bokung in Japanese. Yes, it was a practice sword, Josh, but it was also a weapon in its own right. Because Japan is such a wet climate, swords were sometimes destroyed by rust,

Bokken were cheap and easy to replace, and Musashi was famous for winning some of his greatest battles with the wooden sword. Ow. I know. Can you imagine, dude? Ow. Getting smacked to death. Well, he says instead of cutting someone's heads off, he would brain them, which I guess means... Like you crack their skull open. Yeah, until their brains come out.

Also, he was a big fan of using two swords at one time, sometimes two katana, sometimes the short and the long, whatever it took to do the job. You guys rock. I love your show. I'm grateful for the Samurai Show from Thomas.

Well, thank you, Thomas, for the extra information. As I said, we are always interested in knowing everything we possibly can about a subject. So if you have anything to tell us about James Bond that we missed, that we got wrong, that we need to know, we want to hear it, wrap it up and send it in an email. Don't forget to spank it on the bottom and maybe serve it a dry martini, shaken, not stirred. Address it to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com.

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Yeah.

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