Classic 😂 ❤❤❤

Great story - for context though, at this time his wife was dying of oesophagus cancer at their home in Virginia so being away from her for a UK publicity tour was probably the last thing he wanted. The medical costs almost bankrupted him. She passed away a couple of months after this event ^ @calvindyson the backdrop to Gardner's life at the time of writing his final books is pretty dark

I doubt very much that any of this is true.

@@orbisrex why would I make it up?

@@rogerrambo4172 There are just a few things that sound off. John Gardner was a recovering alcoholic all his life. He last had a drink in 1959. So your comments about him not being able to wait until he could get a drink are mere speculation. He knew he could never drink again as it would kill him if he started on it again. Comments like that are very insensitive and not something to joke about. I've interacted with Mr Gardner in the past by email and he seemed like a perfect gentleman who always had time for his fans. This account doesn't sit right with me.

Right?! I love Star Wars but not enough to spend THOUSANDS cosplaying it for a weekend. The way it was set up, most people could do a Galactic Starcruiser stay OR a Disney vacation...no way could they afford both, and who wants to go to Disney World and not take full advantage of the Disney parks? The second I read about, I thought "they're shooting themselves in the foot with a laser blaster." If they'd made it into a "dinner cruise" (that is, an immersive restaurant/dinner theater experience), they might have done better.

Maybe said endorsement was what helped the park succeed after it almost closed.

Never knew the difference

It is pretty great

@@dondevice8182 Never been there, but I'd go just for Phantom Manor (their version of The Haunted Mansion) alone.

I will be there in a few weeks. This will put a new spin on my Disney experience. Slip-on shoes and attache case at the ready,

I want James Bond wearing the Mickey Mouse ears in the gun barrel sequence

“My name is Mickey Mouse” -James Bond in Spectre

This would be the same Michael G Wilson who thought it was a good idea to make James Bond Blofeld's adopted brother.

"Grow up 007, I don't have time for your juvenile quips".

Gardner has certainly put into perspective a lot of things I used to consider the 'worst' decisions in Bond histoy 😅

@calvindyson I thought mind control ice cream was possibly the most ridiculous thing he'd written up til now, but I was strangely all for that, I liked it.

@@sgtfrozty I mean, I'd do anything for a Cornetto. Wouldn't most people?

Makes the double-take pigeon look gritty by comparison.

There was one, at King's Island in Ohio. Never made it. Apparently it was a first person Star Tours / Theater Seats Shaking style ride

@@adotgif It was at London's Trocadero also.

On an episode of the James Bonding podcast back in 2017, the hosts Matt Gourley, Matt Mira, and guest Paul Scheer came up with ideas for what they wanted a James Bond amusement park to look like haha.

If Disney ever acquired the rights to Bond... "No one thrills like James Bond, No one kills like James Bond, No one runs up his foes' doctor's bills like James Bond!"

I’m thinking of snow white lol

He'd prefer Disneyland...bye!

That's very kind of you and does somewhat help give me some motivation to finish these books! 😂 thank you very much!

@@calvindyson you’re almost done. Hopefully the GoldenEye novelization is better

This is very true actually, I've been unfair to Dench's M about this in the past!

It's a deleted scene but I did like how Robert Brown's M goes to Paris to personally bale Bond out rather than send Q or Moneypenny! He also travels to the USA to confront Bond in Licence to Kill.

@@jamesatkinsonja It's an elaborate con: 1) Hire this "secret agent" who always leaves a trail of very public destruction in his wake. 2) Send him to classy or exotic locations you've always wanted to visit. 3) Oh, what's that? 007 has gone rouge in Miami? "sigh" I suppose I'll have to go and sort this out myself again...

Well, he walks from set to set at Pinewood.

He has form for pulling his gun on parents and children in amusement parks.

Reminds me of that scene in Van Damn's Sudden Death set around an ice hockey game where he fights the Penguin Mascot!

@@jamesatkinsonja Lol. I wonder if Bond would have mistaken a little girl at Euro Disney for that assassin from The Living Daylights who impersonates a child and carries an explosive Teddy Bear.

DON'T DO IT JOE! 😂😂 ... Or maybe do it? I'd love to hear your thoughts on these!

I have to admit, the Disneyland thing was what has kept me going too (as well as the LTK and GE novelisations!) Alan Partridge is exactly how I read some of Gardner's writing. Especially when he's referring to some outdated 80s technology etc...

Alan Partridge trying to write a James Bond style novel was an episode in the recent 'Oasthouse' series and it was...something!

@@jamesatkinsonja Haven't listened to that but I might just have to now.

So what you're saying is... Gardner needs to Stop Getting Bond Wrong!

Additionally, Michael Caine had a half brother who spent all his life in a psychiatric hospital as he suffered from epilepsy. His mother keep his existence such a secret that Caine himself had no idea he existed until a newspaper discovered the story in the early 90's [he noted the irony of the hospital being called 'Cane Hill'].

This is a bit of a shameful admission but I dont think I've seen any of the Beverly Hills Cop films... I maaaay have seen the first one when I was much younger but I've been meaning to get around to watching them for some time! :D

@@calvindyson Oh poo haha. hope you do one day mate. heres the james bond ride behind the scenes i was talking about by the way kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fbloYLmevMiYk2w.html&ab_channel=RetroVHSGamingVideos

​@@calvindyson The original film has Stephen Berkoff from Octopussy as the villain! He was also a Russian villain in Rambo 2 around the same time.

@@jamesatkinsonja VERY good point as always james. as well as a young Mike from 'Breaking Bad' so this movie deserves some acknowledgment. I hope you got see the link for the 007 ride by the way? sometime youtube links don't appear in comment scetions because of spam. all the best as alway :)

​@@DafyddBrooks There's a chapter about this in one of the Bond Ref Books. I think it's James Bond The Secret History by Sean Egan. They shot it on 70mm. In fact a Gun-Barrell promoting the ride stayed up on the wall at the Trocadero in London years after it's closure, with no context (the walkway to Piccadilly Circus Tube Station where it was is no longer publicly accessible due to The Trocadero closing).

At least we were spared the mental image of Bond fighting Brian Blessed, Actually hang on!

Or on It's A Small World. Especially if the ride stops, but the soundtrack doesn't... (When I brought up the possibility on a Bond message board, another poster said that happened to them so often they didn't even go on the damn thing anymore. They went on to say that this never seemed to happen on The Haunted Mansion so they could at least enjoy "Grim Grinning Ghosts" for a while...)

It interesting that a Charles and Diana appearance was considered for The Living Daylights. It would have been actors playing the parts, although the real Charles and Di did visit the set. Luckily Eon decided to get away from doing that (the Thatcher scene beggars belief, bringing politics in anyway, but especially with as divisive a PM). The funny thing about Jackal is you're still on the edge of your seat right up to the hero shooting the assassin, even though De Gaul was very much alive after 1963. Just good storytelling I guess, especially as we're hooked into The Jackal's hugely methodical work. And Hugo Drax's desperation to catch him. Films are a bit different to novels in that you can't really show Prince Charles, Princess Diana and their sons being blown up and shot at. And especially by Irish Nationalists. If they've gone ahead with it, they probably would have been denied filming permits in the UK. And who knows the film might even have been banned in the UK!

​@@davidjames579 The Thatcher scene is also baffling as it's such a 'comedy sketch' at the end of a generally 'serious' film! The 'Charles and Di' cameo would have been so out of place in Daylights [probably in a similar vein to the deleted 'magic carpet' sequence]. Agreed re-Patriot Games-the Irish element was quite controversial already [to the extent apparently John McTiernan backed out of directing as he was Irish-American] and taking the 'real world targets' out was an easy change to take [although the extensive changes in the adaption lead to Clancy distancing himself from the film]. That we know the ending but it sucks us in anyway is why 'Jackal' is such a great book. The Michael Caine Film 'Eagle has Landed' has a similar premise with Churchill.

​@@jamesatkinsonja Yes! Janet Brown played Thatcher in various things then, so it was something of a cabaret act or what you'd get on Not The Nine O'Clock News/Mike Yarwood. Like you say a real tone shift. The scene is like your typical authority figure gets huffy watching/hearing Bond shagging ending, but thank god Eon didn't continue with using real people. That said Jonathan Pryce's performance as Elliot Carver always reminded me of Michael Howard! It's interesting Harrison Ford signed onto Patriot Games as he's half-Irish American, and he wasn't contractually obliged, since Alec Baldwin played Ryan in the last one. The book and the film were both controversial, although Clancy and the film-makers were savvy enough to make the villains not the actual IRA, but a splinter group, who kill off IRA members for not agreeing with them (and The IRA try to kill them off for going further than they would). The story even has basically Sinn Fein give Ryan information after it's appalled by the homicidal attack on Ryan's family. And they add in English traitors aiding the Irish splinter group to balance things out. But yes the film was criticised for making Irish Republicans the plugin villain of the week, against All American Good Guy Ryan. It's a good thriller though with some great performances, including from Sean Bean, and score by James Horner. Yep! The Eagle Has Landed. Where of course Churchill is shot dead! Except it's an impersonator. And for anyone watching Inglourious Basterds for the first time, they must have been thinking, this plot to kill Hitler: Zero tension there!

And met George Lucas. Bond would have congratulated him on Star Tours.

@@davidjames579 There is also the fairground bit in Passenger 57 which came out the previous year to this book [92]!

I do think that some of them could be interesting movies

In the books Bond is certainly a lot more vulnerable and sensitive than he was portrayed in the earlier films-for example in 'You Only Live Twice' after his wife's death he goes to pieces and suffers from PTSD-which is something picked up and developed in the later films [mainly as Calvin's excellent 'Emotional storytelling' video stated as the Bond actors wanted meatier material to work with] and Fleming's Bond is often attracted to damaged woman [such as Tiffany Case]. M in the novels was very much a parental figure to him but in a very 50's 'men don't show feeling' way-M's reaction to Bond's collapse is concern for him but he'd never tell Bond that directly and he's full prepared to fire him for poor performance before being talked out of it.

He's very much presented as a 'father' to Bond but in a 50's 'show no emotions' way. This is best shown by 'You only live twice' where he's worried about Bond but is fully prepared to fire him until talked out of it, instead find an 'easy' mission for him to recover...but of course never talking to Bond directly about his feelings as that was just not done at the time.

Probably just a coincidence given a 'White Knight' to quote wiki is 'a literacy stock character...an heroic warrior fighting against evil'.

I did actually try to picture Craig's Bond taking Mathilde to Disney World! Then again as Calvin said, Dalton seemed to enjoy his date with Kara in the fairground and he was a 'serious Bond'. I'm sure Roger's Bond would have a ball there.

They do feel like the same few plot elements shuffled around [Bond teaming up with a foreign agent who becomes his love interest has been done many times at this point for example].

I'm looking forward to reading the GoldenEye novelisation and tbh I'm half way through Seafire and kind of enjoying it but overall I'm VERY excited about moving on to a different author in a few books time! Gardner's longevity is so crazy... To think he wrote more Bond novels than Fleming himself!

@@calvindyson i know. I really cannot wait for you to return to the Fleming timeline with Devil May Care

It seems like the publishers were fine with getting a book a year from the author as long as the sales were solid [Gardner's successor Raymond Benson churned out 9 books in six years]. I think they also wanted to keep with the film series and be contemporary [as you got less alternative timelines or reboots back then] and a lack of imagination. Of course this complete changed when in the 2000's you had 'guest' authors often writing period novels along side spin offs Young Bond and Moneypenny diaries [Anthony Horowitz said he was delighted but surprised to be asked back and was told they liked consistency with the author to help sales rather than continue the guests which might explain why they stuck with Gardner so long back in the day]. .

@@jamesatkinsonja Thank you for explaining this background.

Although, I think Flicka was a bit better than Tracy, I can see Flicka being more compatible with Bond than Tracy.