In "A Big Bushel of Bond", I had a whole rant about the way George Lazenby was done over by critics and fans.
Well, turns out that story was the Broccoli estate's narrative, and I drank the Kool Aid.
The REAL story is, critics and fans responded quite well to "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", and the studio wanted him to make 3-4 more of them, but it was Lazenby who bowed out.
The studio wanted to control his life to make him LIVE like Bond for the image of the character and franchise, and Lazenby wanted to grow his beard, and smoke pot, and be a hippie, so he told them to go fuck themselves.
He thought he'd get to branch out, and do stuff like "Easy Rider", but that stuff never came, and he faded out of Hollywood.
Personally, I smell sabotage by bigwigs in that.
So, of course they'd cover their asses in the official documentary on the Bond franchise.
Aaanyhoo, I'll link this post in the comments of that old one.
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1 comment:
I've often said OHMSS is very underrated, and Lazenby acquits himself well, especially given the enormous shoes he had to fill.
[OHMSS also has the best (IMHO) Bond one-liner in the franchise. During a ski chase, Bond sends one of the pursuing baddies into a snowblower, where the unfortunate henchman is ground up and spit out as bloody pulp. Bond quips: "He had a lot of guts."]
For sure, Lazenby committed career suicide by not returning as Bond given the opportunity. Don't know that there needed to be any blacklisting shenanigans; I think Lazenby thought he'd made it and would have his pick of prime roles. Turns out, he was very wrong, and now he's little more tgan a footnote.
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