The Spy Who Loved Me/Production

Given the relatively poor financial returns and generally unfavourable response of critics to its predecessor, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), The Spy Who Loved Me was a pivotal film for the Bond franchise. The project was plagued with difficulties from the outset, the first being the departure of Bond producer Harry Saltzman, who was forced to sell his half of the Bond film franchise in 1975 for £20 million. Saltzman had branched out into several other ventures of dubious promise, including an unfilmed biopic about Cuthbert Grant starring Sean Connery, and consequently was struggling through personal financial reversals unrelated to Bond. Saltzman offered his shares in the company as collateral for his loans, and UBS attempted to foreclose on them. When Saltzman's attempted hostile takeover of Technicolor led to a lawsuit, Broccoli refused to allow him to use Danjaq funds, leading to a deadlock in the company as Saltzman refused to allow another Bond film to go forward. This was exacerbated by the twin personal tragedies of his wife's terminal cancer and many of the symptoms of clinical depression in himself.
Under Danjaq's distribution agreement with United Artists, it was required they produce a Bond adaptation every eighteen months or run the risk of losing the rights to the series to United Artists if they did not. However, Saltzman continued blocking production on another Bond film and refused to allow Broccoli to buy his shares. Maurice Binder and Broccoli held negotiations about selling Saltzman's shares to Adnan Khashoggi, David Frost, Lord Hanson, and Lord Harlech. Saltzman finally agreed to sell his shares directly to United Artists so that another Bond film could go forward. Although Broccoli initially objected to the deal, he acquiesced after Saltzman received a counter-offer to sell his rights to the rival studio Columbia Pictures.
Another troubling aspect of the production was the difficulty in obtaining a director. Guy Hamilton, who had directed the previous three Bond films as well as Goldfinger (1964), was initially set to direct. However, in November 1975, he left after being offered the opportunity to direct the 1978 film Superman, although Richard Donner subsequently took over the project. Steven Spielberg, who had finished Jaws (1975) months earlier, approached Broccoli about wanting to direct the next Bond film, but Broccoli declined his offer. By December of that year, Broccoli hired Lewis Gilbert, who had directed the earlier Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967), after screening his then-latest film, Operation Daybreak (1975).
Since Ian Fleming permitted Eon to use only the name of his novel but not the actual plot, Fleming's name was moved for the first time from above the film's title to above "James Bond 007". His name reverted to the traditional location for Moonraker, the last Eon Bond film based on a Fleming novel before 2006's Casino Royale. However, the credit style first used in The Spy Who Loved Me has been used on all Eon Bond films since For Your Eyes Only, including Casino Royale.
==Writing==
Broccoli commissioned a number of writers to work on the script, including Stirling Silliphant, John Landis, Ronald Hardy, Anthony Burgess, Cary Bates, and Derek Marlowe. The British television producer Gerry Anderson also stated that he provided a film treatment (although originally planned to be Moonraker) very similar to what ended up as The Spy Who Loved Me. Bates's script featured Bond and his former ally Tatiana Romanova teaming up to stop a SPECTRE hijacking of a nuclear submarine coordinated by Hugo Drax from a base underneath Loch Ness. Burgess's draft, featuring characters from his previous novel Tremor of Intent: An Eschatological Spy Novel, featured Bond fighting the criminal organization CHAOS in Singapore and thwarting a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth II by a bombing of Sydney Opera House. Andrew Biswell of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation described it as "an outrageous medley of sadism, hypnosis, acupuncture, and international terrorism." Landis, working in the same office as Burgess, wrote a separate screenplay about Bond stopping a kidnapping of the Pope in Latin America.
Eventually, Richard Maibaum provided the initial draft, and at first he tried to incorporate ideas from all of the other writers into his script. Maibaum's original script featured an alliance of international terrorists—including the Red Brigades, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Black September Organization, and the Japanese Red Army—attacking SPECTRE's headquarters in Norway and deposing Ernst Stavro Blofeld, before trying to destroy the world with nuclear SLBM attacks on the world's petroleum reservoirs to make way for a New World Order. Maibaum did location scouting in Budapest for the concept. However, this was shelved because Broccoli felt it was too political.
After Gilbert was reinstated as director, he decided to bring in another writer, Christopher Wood. Gilbert also decided to fix what he felt the previous Roger Moore films were doing wrong, which was writing the Bond character too much the way Sean Connery played him, and instead portray Bond closer to the books "very English, very smooth, good sense of humour". Broccoli asked Wood to create a villain with metal teeth, Jaws, inspired by a metal brace-wearing henchman named Sol "Horror" Horowitz, and his short bald accomplice Sandor inspired by Sluggsy Morant in Fleming's novel.
Broccoli agreed to Wood's proposed changes, but before he could set to work there were more legal complications. In the years since Thunderball (1965), Kevin McClory had set up two film companies and had been cleared to produce a rival Bond film after the imposed ten-year moratorium had expired. He was in development of a film project, with the working title Warhead, in collaboration with Sean Connery and novelist Len Deighton. McClory had learned of Broccoli's plans to use SPECTRE, an organisation that had first been created by Fleming while working with McClory and Jack Whittingham on the very first attempt to film Thunderball, back even before it was a novel, in the late 1950s. McClory filed a injunction against Eon Productions alleging copyright infringement. Not wishing to extend the already ongoing legal dispute that could have delayed the production of The Spy Who Loved Me, Broccoli requested Wood remove all references to Blofeld and SPECTRE from the script. In June 1976, McClory was awarded the sole rights to SPECTRE and Blofeld.
Broccoli decided to include the KGB in the film as Bond's allies after showing a group of Russians a James Bond film during the production of The Blue Bird (1976) in the Soviet Union. When they enjoyed the film but commented that it could not be shown there because it was too "anti-Russian," Broccoli decided to include characters such as Amasova and Gogol who would be "not a hero, not a villain, but acceptable in terms of Russian distribution."
Tom Mankiewicz, who worked on the three preceding Bond films, claims he was called in to do an extensive rewrite of the script. Mankiewicz says he did not receive credit, because Broccoli was limited to the number of non-British in key positions he could employ on the films to obtain Eady Levy assistance. Vernon Harris also did uncredited rewrites on the script.
==Filming==
Tom Mankiewicz claims that Catherine Deneuve wanted to play the female lead and was willing to cut her normal rate from $400,000 per picture to $250,000, but Broccoli would not pay above $80,000. Marthe Keller and Dominique Sanda were also considered, while the original frontrunner Lois Chiles was not pursued after her agent informed the producers that she had retired. Before the casting of Richard Kiel, Will Sampson, David Prowse and Jack O'Halloran (according to O'Halloran) p.252 Freese, Gene 75 Years of Bare Knuckle Brawls, 1914-1989 McFarland, 19 Oct 2017 were considered to play Jaws.
The film was shot at the Pinewood Studios in London, Porto Cervo in Sardinia (Hotel Cala di Volpe), Egypt (Karnak, Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Gayer-Anderson Museum, Abu Simbel temples), Malta, Scotland, Hayling Island UK, Okinawa, Switzerland and Mount Asgard on Baffin Island in the then northern Canadian territory of Northwest Territories (now located in Nunavut).
As no studio was big enough for the interior of Stromberg's supertanker, and set designer Ken Adam did not want to repeat what he had done with SPECTRE's volcano base in You Only Live Twice "a workable but ultimately wasteful set" construction began in March 1976 of a new sound stage at Pinewood, the 007 Stage, at a cost of $1.8 million. To complement this stage, Eon also paid for building a water tank capable of storing approximately . The soundstage was so huge that cinematographer Claude Renoir found himself unable to effectively light it due to his deteriorating eyesight, and so according to Ken Adam, Stanley Kubrick visited the production, in secret, to advise on how to light the stage. For the exterior, while Shell was willing to lend an abandoned tanker to the production, the elevated insurance and safety risks caused it to be replaced with miniatures built by Derek Meddings's team and shot in the Bahamas. Stromberg's shark tank was also filmed in the Bahamas, using a live shark in a saltwater swimming pool. Adam decided to do experiments with curved shapes for the scenery, as he felt all his previous setpieces were "too linear". This was demonstrated with the Atlantis, which is a dome and curved surfaces outside, and many curved objects in Stromberg's office inside. For Gogol's offices, Adam wanted an open space to contrast M's enclosed headquarters, and drew inspiration from Sergei Eisenstein to do a "Russian crypt-like" set.Ken Adam: Designing Bond. The Spy Who Loved Me: Ultimate Edition, Disk 2
The main unit began its work in August 1976 in Sardinia. Don McLaughlan, then head of public relations at Lotus Cars, heard that Eon were shopping for a new Bond car. He drove a prototype Lotus Esprit with all Lotus branding taped over, and parked it outside the Eon offices at Pinewood studios; on seeing the car, Eon asked Lotus to borrow both of the prototypes for filming. Initial filming of the car chase sequence resulted in disappointing action sequences. While moving the car between shoots, Lotus test driver Roger Becker so impressed the crew with his handling of the car that for the rest of filming on Sardinia, Becker became the stunt driver.
The motorcycle sidecar missile used in one chase sequence was built by film staff at Pinewood and used a standard Kawasaki Z900 and a custom-made sidecar outfit. The sidecar was made large enough so that a stuntman could lie flat inside. It had two 10-inch scooter wheels on each side, a Suzuki 185 engine, and the detached projectile was steered through a small solid rubber wheel at the front. A heavily smoked perspex nose allowed the stuntman sufficient visibility to steer the device whilst being entirely hidden from view. A pincer-type lock held the sidecar in place until operated by the pilot via a solenoid switch. The sequences involving the outfit were sped up, as the weight of the sidecar made the outfit very difficult to control.
In October, the second unit travelled to Nassau to film the underwater sequences. To create the illusion of the car becoming a submarine, seven different models were used, one for each step of the transformation. One of the models was a fully mobile submarine equipped with an engine built by Miami-based Perry Submarines. The car seen entering the sea was a mock-up shell, propelled off the jetty by a compressed air cannon, whilst the first underwater shot of the car was a miniature model filmed in a test tank. Three full-size bodyshells were used to depict the actual car-to-submersible transition. During the model sequences, the air bubbles seen appearing from the vehicle were created by Alka-Seltzer tablets.
In September, production moved to Egypt. While the Great Sphinx of Giza was shot on location, lighting problems caused the pyramids to be replaced with miniatures. While construction of the Liparus set continued, the second unit (headed by John Glen) departed for Mount Asgard, Baffin Island, where in July 1976 they staged the film's pre-credits sequence. Bond film veteran Willy Bogner captured the action, staged by stuntman Rick Sylvester, who earned $30,000 for the stunt. The scene of Bond skiing off the mountain was inspired by a Canadian Club Whisky advertisement in Playboy magazine of Sylvester performing the same stunt. This stunt cost $500,000 – the most expensive single movie stunt at that time. Additional scenes for the pre-credits sequence were filmed in the Bernina Range in the Swiss alps.
The production team returned briefly to the UK to shoot at the Faslane submarine base before setting off to Spain, Portugal and the Bay of Biscay, where the supertanker exteriors were filmed. On 5 December 1976, with principal photography finished, the 007 Stage was formally opened by former Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
The end credits state "James Bond Will Return in For Your Eyes Only", but Moonraker was produced next instead, to capitalise on the success of Star Wars.
==Music==
The theme song, "Nobody Does It Better", was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, written by Carole Bayer Sager, and performed by Carly Simon. It was the first theme song in the series with a different title to that of the film, although the title is in the lyrics. It was nominated for the Best Song Oscar but lost to "You Light Up My Life".
The song met immediate success and is featured in numerous films, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Little Black Book, Lost in Translation, and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). In 2004, it was honoured by the American Film Institute as the 67th greatest song as part of their 100 Years Series.
The soundtrack to the film was composed by Marvin Hamlisch, who filled in for veteran John Barry, who was unavailable to work in the United Kingdom because of tax reasons. The soundtrack, in comparison to other Bond films of the time, is more disco-oriented and included a new disco rendition of the James Bond theme titled "Bond 77"; several pieces of classical music were also included in the score. For instance, while feeding a duplicitous secretary to a shark, Stromberg plays Bach's "Air on the G String", which was famous for accompanying disappointed characters in Hamlet cigar commercials. He then plays the opening string section of the second movement, Andante, of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 as his hideout Atlantis rises from the sea. The score also includes two pieces of popular film music scored by Maurice Jarre. The Doctor Zhivago theme, which is played on Anya's music box during the pre-credit sequence, and the theme from Lawrence of Arabia, which appears as background music during a desert sequence.
==References==
Category:Production