I have that book -- forgot I did! The author mentions in a side note that it's a little unclear on some things who came up with what, that each "making of" or book told it differently, etc. I'd be interested in reading Sackler's draft, but that part about Brody being so paranoid he freaked out the shark was in a swimming pool...lol.
Ultimately it seems to me Tristan and Sackler's names should've been swapped out on the final writing credit of the movie -- or just all three of them should've been listed. If anything, more of the finished film seems to bear her contribution than Sackler's, whether it was coming up with the ending, the water skiier sequence (apparently hers), the removal of the adult "Boyd" character, more of a reliance on the teenagers, etc.
It's very odd, almost seems spiteful on Universal's part that they MAY have argued against her credit since they fired her and Hancock. Gottlieb basically rewrote the movie on the fly but the outline and the set-pieces were already in place when he got there, and he had to adjust accordingly to some key elements that were set.
I just know from paying attention to these things plenty of other writers have been credited for far less on movies too. Must've been politics involved in how the WGA figured it out at the time, as Sackler and Gottlieb were both veteran writers with lots of "cred" and she wasn't nearly as experienced.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER by Ian Fleming (1956, 229 pages). James Bond returns in this follow-up to MOONRAKER, this time with the assignment to infiltrate a diamond smuggling operation in order to discover who is behind it all. Bond takes on the identity of Peter Franks, a small time crook who is supposed to carry diamonds smuggled out of Africa through London and into the United States. James connects with the beautiful and mysterious Tiffany Case, a contact for the Spangled Mob, who makes sure he gets the diamonds to America. Upon arrival Bond teams up with Felix Leiter (now ex-CIA after what happened to him in LIVE AND LET DIE), infiltrates the Mob and meets up with one of its leaders, Saraffimo Spang. Bond also meets his two sadistic henchmen Kidd and Wint, and as usual, Bond gets more than he bargains for. I found this entry in the series to be lackluster – the main issue I have with the novel is a lack of a good villain. While Kidd and Wint are decently evil they are just henchmen, and the two main villains are just sort of there and not ominous (like, for example, Sir Hugo Drax in MOONRAKER). In addition, if Fleming was going for a “fish out of water” thing with the Englishman (Bond) in America to tackle the Mob or a noir-esque type novel, in my opinion he did not do a very good job of it. The stronger moments in the novel occur when Bond and Case spend time together, and the death of the jockey at the hands of Kidd and Wint is pretty intense. But overall though I would say the novel is weak and anti-climactic.
In 1971 the Bond franchise coaxed Sean Connery to come back and play the role of James Bond one last time for the film adaptation of DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. Because the book’s main villains are not “larger than life,” the filmmakers and writers went big by making Blofeld the main villain. The film retains several elements from the book – the film mainly takes place in Las Vegas like the novel; Kidd and Wint are retained (as is their homosexual relationship), the diamond smuggling pipeline plot is retained, Felix Leiter is found in both novel and movie, and the ending of the film mirrors the extended (and much more sinister and dark) sequence in the book. Some homages to the novel are also contained in the film, such as the “mud bath” opening sequence (inspired by the mud bath sequence in the book in which the jockey dies) and the scorpion in the desert (inspired in part by the opening sequence of the book). However, the film adds quite a bit that is not in the novel: for example, the fight with Peter Franks in the elevator (one of my favorite bits in the movie), the car chase down the Vegas strip, the Willard Whyte laboratory in the desert where the satellite weapon is being constructed, the character of Plenty O’Toole as well as Bambi, Thumper, and Willard Whyte, and the final climactic showdown on the oil rig among other things. And while there is a Shady Tree character in the novel (a grotesque Mobster figure), in the movie he is an older Vegas comedian.
The character of Tiffany Case also differs from book to movie. In the novel her backstory is pretty horrific; she got gang raped at the age of sixteen by men from her mother’s brothel which, in addition to other things, led her into the life she lives. Her character is tragic; she can be strong but oftentimes goes through extreme mood swings due to her traumatic past, and I think that Bond connects with her in the way he does because of it (at one point in the book he decides that while he intends to get information out of her concerning the smuggling pipeline, he will not use romance as a weapon to get that information). In the film Tiffany Case is a “loveable mercenary”; I do not feel she has as much character depth in the film as she does in the novel which makes her’s and Bond’s relationship have less depth. John Barry’s score has a great love theme for Tiffany Case (one of my favorites), and his theme for Kidd and Wint kind of captures their quirkiness. Whereas Ian Fleming’s novel continues the adventures of a very solitary and distant character, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER as a film is more entertaining and accessible. Connery is a charismatic actor, and while I enjoyed seeing him playing the role again, I think the film suffers from his being too old. I used to dislike the film because I felt it was dated and kind of corny, but watching it again I feel it is slightly better than the novel even though it is still somewhat corny and flawed.
The failures of DAF as a film I think stem chiefly from the sense of being a less than satisfying follow-up to OHMSS, but that of course was the result of Connery returning and a desire to forget Lazenby (which is why it's only implied at best in the teaser that Bond's obsessive pursuit of Blofeld is tied to seeking revenge for Tracy). Charles Gray was the worst of the three Blofelds and his "death" was very unsatisfying and not definitive enough.
OTOH, I think Jill St. John gave the best performance of her career as Tiffany in that after being in one of the worst knockoff Bond films "The Liquidator" she got her chance to be in the real thing at the very latest point in time when a "60s bombshell" type could fit into the Bond universe even as this film is already transitioning more into the 70s Bond style. I'll admit the character is stronger in the beginning (her entrance is my favorite next to Ursula Andress's) and by the end she seems to have lost a couple IQ points but at least she gets to have the last word in the tag.
-Did this in reverse order since I saw the movie again and only learned from the credit that it was based on a novel, which I'd forgotten. Found it on Kindle and went through it after the movie which is what I recommend because it's easier to breeze through just after seeing the movie, especially when you discover that the film is a 75% faithful adaptation that retains a great deal of dialogue from the book (something screenwriters were more conscientious about back then whereas today I don't think they really bother if a film is based on a book).
-The film of course is the story of uptight middle-aged banker Arthur Hamilton who feeling at a dead-end in his life and his now loveless marriage is drawn by a phone call from an old friend Charley Evans whom he thought dead, to a mysterious address of "The Company" which takes dissatisfied men, gives them new faces through plastic surgery and a new identity so they can be "reborn" and experience a second chance in life. Cadavers are used to stage the deaths of their original personas. In Hamilton's case, he is transformed from fiftyish John Randolph into 40 year old Rock Hudson who is given the new identity of Tony Wilson, artist. It sure sounds implausible, but give credit to both actors for making you still believe they are playing the same character. Initially, John Frankenheimer envisioned the same actor doing both parts and he'd first approached Laurence Olivier, but Paramount nixed the idea, wanting an American box office star and they had pushed Hudson. Hudson wanted to do it, but felt he couldn't credibly play the "before" character of Hamilton so that led to the casting of Randolph as Hamilton (his first film role after years on the blacklist).
-The film then shows Hudson as Wilson in his new life in Malibu as an artist where the Company has furnished him with a valet to attend to his needs and he is financially set. But then the theme of how despite a new face and identity, one can never completely change who one is sets in as "Wilson's" efforts to paint go nowhere, and he hesitates to venture out of the cocoon of the Malibu house. He finally goes for a walk on the beach and meets the free-spirited Nora (Salome Jens) who soon is getting him to loosen up by taking him to a wild Bacchanalian grape stomping orgy (which in this "uncut" version we have to see nudity of a type most out of place for a 1966 film, and frankly it goes on WAY too long. Frankenheimer here presages some of his tasteless sequences of his bad 1980s films "The Holcroft Covenant" and "52 Pick-Up" that go on forever and serve no real plot point in their extended bad taste). Then a party with his neighbors turns into a disaster when "Wilson", drunk starts spouting off about his past life as Hamilton. And it turns out his neighbors are all "reborns" themself who aren't pleased with this breech of protocol that by extension would put them at risk. Nora is exposed as a company underling who had been sent out to get him to adjust to his new life and she then disappears form the film. In the wake of this, "Wilson" then goes back to New York to confront his former wife. He discovers she's moved on has thrown out almost everything of Arthur Hamilton's and talks about all the silences she'd had to endure. After this, feeling a failure as "Wilson" he goes back to the Company demanding to start over again with another operation and a new identity where he can be in control.......but things are about to reach a grim finale.
-I went back to the novel because I was frustrated in my attempts to find a copy of the shooting script. There was another cut scene from the film in which "Wilson" before visiting his former wife in New York, first visits his married daughter who had been established as living in the west. A scene was filmed with Evans Evans (Mrs. Frankenheimer) as Arthur Hamilton's daughter and for the first time I learned that Leonard Nimoy, while waiting for Trek to be picked up, had played her husband. The scene established them having a newborn child. Supposedly that ghostly image that is the final shot of the film was part of this cut scene but we may never know. At any rate, I felt the story could have used that scene once I learned about it, and failing to find the shooting script from the vendors that sell film scripts, I found the novel on Kindle and went back to that.
-It was surprising as I noted to find that so much of the film's dialogue does come from the book. That said the narrative structure is much weaker and you can see where the cinematic improvements to the narrative were made. For one thing, author Ely never gives us the real name of "Tony Wilson". The "Arthur Hamilton" name was a screen invention. This from the outset makes the character much harder to get a handle on in the book's narrative. If the theme is you can never escape who you are, then it would make a lot more sense to establish the "real" person first, but instead we start with him making the decision to go to the company and we learn about the phone calls from "Charley" later on. There are a number of other things unique to the novel like a disturbing scene of a company nurse giving him sex before the operation. The biggest surprise is the total absence of the Nora character. This makes the scenes of his unsatisfying life as Wilson more disjointed though we see more sinister group activity by the other "reborns" living nearby who are keeping a careful eye on him. This results in Wilson giving them the slip twice to first go to Denver to see his daughter and her husband and then to his former wife in New York. Comparing the scenes with the wife, we see in the book a lot more cold indifference regarding the 'death' of his former self and not much willingness to talk about him at all which leaves "Wilson" shattered inside. I suspect the daughter scene was different in the filmed version that was cut since the scene with Mrs. Hamilton in the film is much different. In the novel it takes place while she's throwing a party with others and is anxious to be over and done with Mr. Wilson's visit about her late husband. The film made it a different and more poignant scene and I suspect that it was the same in the cut version with the daughter.
-The ending of the novel doesn't have the film's shock value. The scene with the "all purpose clergyman" is there and the dialogue he spouts comes from the novel but the scenes are reshuffled in the movie so that the final scene in the book is a conversation with the Old Man director of the Company and it ends with "Wilson" facing things with sad resignation to his fate instead of the horrifying one the film gave us.
-End result, I would say the film is better than the novel from a structure standpoint and has some good moments. But is it still a classic that it's been made out to be? I have to say no. Frankly, the story runs too long especially in the Hudson-Wilson establishing himself scenes and one plot hole is left where Wilson is surprised at the airport by a man who seems to recognize him. In the book we learn this was a plant from the Company to get him acclimated to his new identity by having strangers to him know him as "Wilson". This is never established in the film and it almost leaves the implication (never otherwise hinted at) that maybe the reason he's become "Tony Wilson" with all this elaborate fake ID etc. is because perhaps there really was a Tony Wilson who was done away with at one point! (That itself would have made the Company even more sinister. That perhaps their cadavers are the real possessors of the identities they give to their clients). The grape orgy scene as I said goes way too long and becomes exploitative. At times I almost think the story might have worked better as an hour long Twilight Zone episode with appropriate Serling intros and closes (much as another film of this era, "The Swimmer" also seems like an extended cinematic Twilight Zone episode).
FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE by Ian Fleming (1956, 259 pages). Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH issues a death warrant against James Bond in an effort to make up for failed operations in the past. In a grand plan designed by Chess Grandmaster Kronsteen and Colonel Rosa Klebb (head of Operations and Executions), the sinister organization enlists homicidal Donavan “Red” Grant (their best executioner), the beautiful and seductive Tatiana Romanova, and the lure of a Spektor decoding machine in order to murder Bond and pin a sex scandal on him which will, in turn, embarrass British Intelligence. The plan is put into action and Bond falls into the trap. This book is easily, for me, the best Bond novel Fleming had written up to this point. It is full of suspense, good characters (including the very likeable Darko Kerim Bey, Bond’s contact in Istanbul), and climaxes in two suspenseful confrontations (Bond versus Grant/Bond versus Klebb). To a contemporary audience the plot may seem rather goofy (especially since sex scandals are not all that scandalous anymore); however, in the context of Cold War relations between Russia and Great Britain and attitudes toward Russia in the West, the plot probably hit emotional nerves with audiences at the time. Interestingly, Fleming had gotten tired of writing Bond novels and rewrote his original ending (where Bond and Romanova brought things to a romantic close) to something more like a cliff-hanger that allowed Fleming the freedom to continue with Bond’s adventures or end the character (fortunately, he continued the series).
The book was, of course, made into a film in 1963 – of all the Bond books Fleming wrote up to that point, the film version of the book is the most faithful to the entire story arc of its novel with some exceptions (the prologue, the chases post-confrontation on the train, the ending). It is an immensely satisfying and entertaining film that improves on some of what the novel does while thoroughly honoring the source material. For me, FRWL started what I consider to be the Golden Age of Bond films (FRWL, GOLDFINGER, THUNDERBALL, OHMSS). There aren’t a whole lot of significant differences between the movie and the book, though there are some things to note:
-Maybe the biggest change between the novel and the film concerns Bond’s enemy: in the film it is SPECTRE (with Blofeld at the helm), not SMERSH.
-The train sequence in the book is well written and suspenseful in its own ways, but the fight between Bond and Grant is over relatively quickly. The film ups the ante and, in my mind, created one of the most memorable fight sequences in the entire franchise. It is aggressive, brutal, and intense – one ‘feels’ the fight and the tension, so I commend the filmmakers and actors for doing such a great job in the execution of that sequence.
-Minor thing here, but I wish Daniela Bianchi’s hair was dark to match the characters hair in the novel. Nonetheless, she is stunningly beautiful as Tatiana in the film.
-I must commend Pedro Armendáriz’s performance as Ali Kerim Bey (name changed for obvious reasons). He matched the cadence and rhythm of Kerim’s lines in the book perfectly, and every time I read the book I hear his voice as Darko Kerim Bey’s voice.
-The prologue in the film is not in the book, but I think it is a decent introduction to Grant’s character. The book characterizes him as a homicidal maniac who does his best killing when the moon is full – all sorts of psychological stuff going on there. In the film Grant is more suave (played really well by Robert Shaw) and more of a ‘normal’ assassin or perhaps symbolically Bond’s opposite/darker side.
-Although it is not my favorite score of the series, I really like Barry's score and his 007 theme. It adds excitement, drama and tension to the visuals really well.
-I have to admit I am not a fan of the boating scene toward the end of the film as Bond and Tatiana make their escape. After the epic fight between Bond and Grant, the boating chase seems tame and anti-climactic. But that is a minor complaint. In the end, I thoroughly enjoy both the book and the movie. Both are gems in the franchise.
