My Life as a Mankiewicz (25 page)

He said, “Absolutely, Mr. Mankiewicz,” and took off.

Dad looked at me and said, “Wow, a limo.”

I said to him, “Yeah, everybody who makes a couple hundred thousand a year takes a limo now and then.” Which was really stupid and crass. He grinned. What I was trying to say was, “I'm independent.” It's the stupidest thing I ever said to him.

Boyo

Ian Fleming was still alive for the first two Bond films. He had a house in Jamaica called Golden Eye. Cubby would tell you the reason the Bond movies got started in the first place was Harry and Cubby had optioned all of the books except
Casino Royale
and
Thunderball.
They couldn't get those two because they were already optioned by two separate parties. But all the other books they got. They had a deal with United Artists, and
Dr. No
, the first one, was made for $1.2 million. Sean got $25,000. Nobody had ever heard of him. And United Artists was almost unwilling to put up the $1.2 million, saying, “God, we don't know, there's never been a picture like this.” John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. It was 1960. He was charming the world, and he had written
Profiles in Courage
, which won a Pulitzer Prize. Somebody asked him in a press conference, “What do you read for relaxation?” And Kennedy said, “Well, when I really want to relax and have some fun, I read the exploits of a British secret agent named James Bond.” No one had ever heard of the books. All of a sudden, everybody was buying James Bond books, and United Artists said, “Let's go.”

Cubby always said they might have gotten it off the ground anyway, but still, “I've got to thank President Kennedy for getting the financing for the first one.” Charlie Feldman made a picture of
Casino Royale
with five James Bonds and Woody Allen, but it was not a hit. The Broccolis finally bought it back and made it with Daniel Craig.
Thunderball
was owned by a man named Kevin McClory. He knew to play ball with Cubby and Harry because, by that time,
From Russia with Love
had been made,
Goldfinger
had been made. It was clear you weren't going off with your own James Bond. The world was in love with Sean Connery.
Thunderball
says, “Produced by Kevin McClory, Executive Producers are Broccoli and Saltzman.”

Later on, McClory and Sean decided to make a picture called
Never Say Never Again
that was based on
Thunderball.
Broccoli and Saltzman sued and went to court, and the court ruled that McClory and Connery could make
Never Say Never Again
, but it had to be a remake of
Thunderball.
Other Bond characters that were in the other books and had been in movies were not allowed to be in it, like Q, the guy who made all the gadgets, who was not in
Thunderball.
Sean asked me to write it. I said, “I can't.” He was fighting with Cubby. “The Broccolis have been so wonderful to me, and for me to go off and write the picture now…” I told Sean I thought he was fabulous and I wished him luck. Sean understood.

When they finished the picture, Sean called me and asked, “Would you take a look at the rough cut? We're going wrong in some places.” It was for Warners, and I was at Warners.

I called Cubby and asked, “Do you mind if I take a look at the picture?”

He said, “Please do, and give him every suggestion.”

I saw the movie and it wasn't bad at all. I had a couple of ideas. We all went back to Bob Daly's office. Bob Daly and Terry Semel were running the studio. Terry started off. “It seems to me the problem is—” and Sean said, “Now, quiet. Let's hear from boyo there.” I'm a little older, but still I'm boyo to him. “Boyo wrote
Diamonds Are Forever
, which makes no fucking sense at all, and it was wonderful.”

Sean returned to James Bond, and Kevin McClory was the producer, a snake in the grass to do that. That's the kind of behavior Cubby wouldn't tolerate. That was not gentlemanly, not ethical behavior. Sean had sued Cubby and Harry and United Artists for money he thought was owed to him. Sean's way of getting back at them. I had always talked to Sean about if you ever really want to hang it up as Bond, you should do a farewell to Bond film where he is just a step slower and he realizes the villain that he's up against is a little faster, and he has to use his wits. The leading lady should be somebody your age, like Sophia Loren, who was still so beautiful. At the end of the picture, you do what Fleming wrote. You go back to Scotland and retire with Sophia. He didn't do it.

At Different Stages

The only time my father and I ever worked together on the same lot, on different movies—it was toward the end of his career—was when he was doing a picture called
Sleuth
with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine at Pinewood, and I was writing
Live and Let Die.
We would drive in together, and we had a totally different relationship then because I was free and clear. I didn't need anything from him, and we really got along wonderfully. He had one soundstage for
Sleuth.
It was that one magnificent set by Ken Adam, the house. Two actors. That's the whole movie. The Bond film had seven soundstages.

Dad walked onto our stage, which contained a big underground cave, a lagoon, a mechanical shark swimming around, guys with machine guns, and a rubber inflated version of Yaphet Kotto. Dad looked at it and he said, “My God, what do you people do in here all day?”

Roger Moore, God bless him, said, “Oh, please don't tell him, Tom. He'll just go out and make a film exactly like it.” It's now called the James Bond stage. You can flood it, and we later used it on
Superman
for the Fortress of Solitude. Revolutionary at the time.

Back in London, a car would always drop Dad off five blocks from the hotel so he could walk. He liked to walk. One night we were walking, and he said, “Tom, I think if this one works out, I just may hang it up.”

I said, “Oh, Dad, you're just tired.”

He said, “No.” And son of a bitch,
Sleuth
was a big hit. Olivier was nominated. Michael Caine was nominated. Dad used to joke, “The only film I've ever done where the entire cast was nominated.” He was nominated for Best Director. I think he thought, okay, this is a way to go out after forty years of doing this.

After that he pretended to be interested in making films. Redford came to him with
All the President's Men.
Paul Newman, who lived nearby in Westport, Connecticut, brought lots of projects. Dad would always find an artificial reason not to do them. I knew now he was never going to do another picture. So Sleuth was the last one.
Cleopatra
pretty much did that to him: it was such a physical ordeal. He took so many drugs on the film to get through it. For a year and a half, he was a half-assed junkie taking pills. He was always a master of self-control. I don't think he ever drank too much. His one vice was his pipe. He used to talk about when he was a compulsive gambler, but I don't think he ever was a compulsive gambler. He was always very measured. So for him to be a half-assed junkie before he got off it, I think was humiliating for him. It was a terrible ordeal.

While I was writing the script in London, I got into tarot cards. A lot of scenes are with the lovers and the hanged-man death cards. I started to do people's tarot. I was pretty accurate. Things happened. (Obviously, it's pure luck.) Michael Caine and I were friends. He had a house just outside of London, on the Thames. He was having a big Sunday brunch all day, and he asked, “Bring your tarot cards, will you? Everybody's asking, they want to get their tarot done.”

It was no fun in the beginning, because everybody was drinking and having a great time, and I was in the corner at a table doing people's tarots. I got through with all of it except for this little girl that Michael was banging. She was very shy. I knew he was going out with her. She was Miss Guyana. I said, “Well, I guess I'm finished.”

She said, “You haven't done mine yet.”

She sat down, and I started doing the cards, and I said, “You're presently in love.”

Michael was listening, behind her. She said, “Yes, I am.”

Michael was giving me the high sign, like “Look out.” I said what the cards said: “You're going to marry this man.”

He was shaking his head, like “No, no, no!” She said, “I am?”

I said, “You're going to have a child.” And he was going crazy. That girl is Mrs. Michael Caine, Shakira Caine. They got married, and they had a child, and they're still married. Shakira is one of the most beautiful women in the world. She played a small part in
The Man Who Would Be King
with Michael and Sean. She is still convinced I have some higher power. I run into them every couple of years, and she'll say to other people, “He knows things.”

Location, Location

We started the picture with Cubby, but Harry took over the actual producing. Cubby and Guy and I went to New Orleans and Jamaica to find locations. A lot of the Bonds were written on the fly on those trips. You'd see something, and all of a sudden it would become a sequence. We were driving around Jamaica on the back end of the island, and we saw a wall and fence and a sign—”Warning, trespassers will be eaten.” We screeched to a stop. It was a big crocodile farm. The now-famous sequence where Bond hops over the tops of the crocodiles was born. The guy who owned the farm was named Ross Kananga, a white guy. The villain played by Yaphet Kotto was Dr. Kananga. I named it after him.

When you were in New Orleans, everything was fine. The minute you went out into another parish, it was like going back a century. The local sheriff ran everything. (You saw what happened after Hurricane Katrina, how miserably black people were treated in the parishes outside of New Orleans.) There was a big boat chase in the picture going through the bayous, and we were going to shoot in one particular parish and drop a million dollars, which would have been huge. We met with the sheriff, and he was thrilled to have us: “James Bond, goddamn.” He said, “I understand there's a lot of nigras in the cast.”

We said, “Well, yes.”

He said, “Now are there any nigras on the crew?”

We said, “Yes, we will have some on the crew.”

He said, “We're happy to have you shoot here, but I don't want nigras behind the wheels of your trucks driving. It could upset some folks to see a lot of black people driving.”

Cubby said, “Well, sheriff, I guess we'll just have to spend our million dollars in another parish.” God bless him for saying that.

The sheriff said, “No, hold on, hold on. Okay, but keep it down to a dull roar, will you?”

And Cubby said, “We'll keep it down to a dull roar.” As we were leaving, he said to the transportation captain, “I want a black guy behind the wheel of every vehicle. Fuckin' cracker.”

That's 1972. You're in the back country. You're not in New Orleans with the big city folks anymore. The rules were different out there. When Dick Donner shot
The Toy
with Richard Pryor, there were many death threats on Pryor. They were shooting outside of Baton Rouge in that parish. They had police and state troopers living in the motel where Richard was. They were scared.

Cubby and Harry staged a huge press conference in Jamaica, where we were shooting. Press from all over the world came because Roger Moore, who was quite well known, was starting his career as James Bond. There must have been four or five hundred press. The first question was inevitable. “What does it feel like to take over from Sean Connery?” Nobody mentioned George Lazenby. Next up—”Why are you doing this?”

Roger answered, “When I was a young acting student at RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, I was in a play and we were lucky enough to have Noel Coward in the audience. After the play was over, Noel came backstage and said to me, ‘Young man, with your devastating good looks and your disastrous lack of talent, you should take any job ever offered you. And, in the unlikely occurrence you're offered two jobs simultaneously, take the one that pays the most money.' And, here I am.” He disarmed everybody. Noel Coward had just died. He said, “And pity Noel couldn't be here to watch me as Bond, because when he saw me in the play, I only had four expressions. Now I have six.” Well, you just had to love him.

One of the first days shooting, Roger was supposed to run for a double-decker bus. There was a bus chase, and the top half of it was sheared off by a low bridge or something. Guy Hamilton said, “All right, Roger, just run across the square and hop onto the bus and that's a cut.”

Roger said, “I think I ought to tell you something, Guy. I can't run.”

Guy said, “You can't run?”

Roger said, “Well, of course I can run. But when I run, I look like a giant twit.”

Guy said, “All right then, run for us.” And he ran. Roger has such long legs that he bounded when he ran, sort of like Bambi. He was perfectly in shape, but it did look kind of odd. Guy said, “All right, then, Roger, on action, walk briskly toward the bus.” Oh boy, look at James Bond, he can't run. But Roger was absolutely a delight.

Now, the big thing about
Live and Let Die
was in the beginning, I wrote Solitaire black. In the book she was white. I made some changes. Fleming believed in the British Raj. He was, in essence, a racist. In the kindest way. It wasn't vituperative racism. In the book
Goldfinger
, it says, “The swarthy Yid lifted his eyebrow,” referring to Goldfinger, who was clearly Jewish. In
Live and Let Die
, a lot of it took place in Harlem, and it was African Americans. But the last movie Fleming must have seen with African Americans in it was
Gone with the Wind.
This was 1972, and they were making
Superfly
and
Across 110th Street.
In the book, the black people were saying stuff like, “Sho'nuff.” Waiting on the levy. Waiting for the
Robert E. Lee.
Cubby and Harry asked me, “Which one do you want to do next?” I thought
Live and Let Die
was great because it was black, and it was of the times.