John,
Re your comments below:
> you're preaching to the choir here. but sadly, movie
studio
decisions are
> driven by marketing departments, and those people
believe that
making a story
> period limits its mass appeal. and if the Bond movie
franchise is
about
> anything, it is about mass appeal
Good points, but, except for the three screenplay
novelizations he did during his run with the character,
Benson wasn't dealing with EON, but with the Fleming literary
estate. It was the Fleming estate that insisted that, in the
original novels Benson wrote, Bond must remain a contemporary
figure.
Interestingly, since Benson left the series, the Fleming
estate has contracted with a writer named Charlie Higson to
write a series of YA novels about Bond as a high school
student ("The name's Potter. Harry Potter.") These are set in
the late '30's, and put Bond on track to become the WW2
veteran and '50's/'60's Cold Warrior he was in Fleming's
novels.
JIM DOHERTY
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Dec 2006 EST