Casino Royale: the lost script

[Blowfeld]

Casino Royale: discovering the lost script
The ‘Shakespeare of Hollywood’ wrote it, but the original screenplay of Casino Royale sat unread for years. Could it be the finest 007 thriller never made?

When he took the part of Dr No in the first James Bond film, Joseph Wiseman had no inkling that the franchise would become such a success. As he admitted in 1992, he thought he’d signed up for "another Grade-B Charlie Chan mystery". How wrong. Next November, 50 years after the premiere of Dr No, the 23rd Bond film will be released, directed by Oscar-winner Sam Mendes, co-written by Oscar-nominated John Logan and starring Daniel Craig as the bare-knuckled Bond he debuted in 2005’s Casino Royale.

The Bond films have come a long way since 1962. The likes of Mendes, Logan, Paul Haggis and Marc Forster signing up to be involved is worlds away from even a decade ago, when the series seemed to be heading into self-parody.

Much of the current creative renaissance stems from the decision to return to the spirit of Ian Fleming’s novels. Craig’s Casino Royale was an adaptation of Fleming’s first novel. Published in 1953, the book merged the traditions of vintage British thrillers with the more realistic and brutal style of hardboiled American writers such as Dashiell Hammett.

But Craig’s debut was not the first attempt to film the novel, but the third. The first was a one-hour play performed live on American television in October 1954: Barry Nelson starred as crew-cut American agent "Jimmy Bond" out to defeat villain Le Chiffre, played by Peter Lorre, at baccarat to ensure he will be executed by Soviet agency Smersh for squandering their funds. Due to the format, this was a much-simplified version of Fleming’s novel, with little of its extravagance or excitement.

The book features a wince-inducing scene in which Le Chiffre, desperate to discover where Bond has hidden the cheque for 40 million francs that he needs to save his life, ties Bond naked to a cane chair with its seat cut out and proceeds to torture him by repeatedly whacking his testicles with a carpet-beater. This could clearly not be shown on television, so instead Bond was placed in a bath, his shoes removed, and viewers watched him howl with pain as, off-screen, Le Chiffre’s men attacked his toenails with pliers.

The second attempt to film Casino Royale was altogether different. Also in 1954, Gregory Ratoff bought a six-month film option on the novel, and the following year bought the rights outright. An extravagant bear of a man who had fled Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ratoff was a well-known actor, producer and director – he had directed Ingrid Bergman's first Hollywood film, Intermezzo, in 1939. He was also a close friend of Charles K. Feldman, the playboy producer and super-agent.

In January 1956, the New York Times announced that Ratoff had set up a production company with actor-turned-agent Michael Garrison, and planned to film Casino Royale that summer in England, Estoril and San Remo, with Twentieth Century-Fox slated to release it. The article mentioned that Fleming himself had written an adaptation of the novel, but that Ratoff was instead negotiating with a "noted scenarist" to write a new script.

Ratoff died in December 1960, and his widow sold the film rights to Casino Royale to Charles Feldman. The long-dormant project soon became a potential goldmine. In March 1961, Life magazine listed From Russia, With Love as one of John F Kennedy’s 10 favourite books, and the Bond novels rapidly became best-sellers in the United States. Three months later, one of Feldman’s former employees at Famous Artists, Albert "Cubby" Broccoli, formed EON Productions with Canadian producer Harry Saltzman after buying the rights to the rest of Fleming’s novels.

In response to the growing popularity of Bond, Feldman turned to Ben Hecht to write a script for Casino Royale. Known as "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", Hecht was a novelist, poet and playwright who had written or co-written several classic scripts, including The Front Page, based on a play he had co-written; Underworld, for which he won the first best screenplay Oscar in 1927; the original Scarface; and Hitchcock’s Spellbound and Notorious. Hecht also worked uncredited on dozens of other screenplays, including Gone With The Wind, Foreign Correspondent and a few other Hitchcock films.

The fact that Ben Hecht contributed to the script of Casino Royale has been known for decades, and is mentioned in passing in many books. But perhaps because the film Feldman eventually released in 1967 was a near-incoherent spoof, nobody has followed up to find out precisely what his contribution entailed. My interest was piqued when I came across an article in a May 1966 issue of Time, which mentioned that the screenplay of Casino Royale had started many years earlier "as a literal adaptation of the novel", and that Hecht had had "three bashes at it". I decided to go looking for it.

To my amazement, I found that Hecht not only contributed to Casino Royale, but produced several complete drafts, and that much of the material survived. It was stored in folders with the rest of his papers in the Newberry Library in Chicago, where it had been sitting since 1979. And, outside of the people involved in trying to make the film, it seemed nobody had read it. Here was a lost chapter, not just in the world of the Bond films, but in cinema history: before the spoof, Ben Hecht adapted Ian Fleming’s first novel as a straight Bond adventure.

The folders contain material from five screenplays, four of which are by Hecht. An early near-complete script from 1957 is a faithful adaptation of the novel in many ways but for one crucial element: James Bond isn’t in it. Instead of the suave but ruthless British agent, the hero is Lucky Fortunato, a rich, wisecracking American gangster who is an expert poker player. Screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr, who travelled around Europe with Gregory Ratoff, says he didn’t write it, but it seems likely Feldman sent this script to Hecht as a starting point to see what he could do with it.

Of the remaining material, two of the scripts are missing title pages and so are undated and without a credit, while the other two are from 1964 and are clearly credited to Hecht. There are also snippets of notes, letters, and three pages of "notes for an outline" dated December 17 1963, which feature scenes in Baghdad, Algiers and Naples and culminate in a raid on a German castle. These pages may have been Hecht’s first stab at coming to grips with the novel.

Of all the Bond books, Casino Royale was one of the more problematic to adapt for film. On the one hand, it’s one of Fleming's strongest novels (Raymond Chandler and Kingsley Amis both felt it his best): intense, almost feverishly so, and richer in characterisation and atmosphere than many of the others.

But the novel is also short – practically a novella – with little physical action in it other than the infamous torture scene. Bond also falls in love with his fellow agent on the mission, Vesper Lynd, and even considers proposing marriage to her before he discovers she has been coerced into working for Smersh and has betrayed him. She kills herself, and the novel ends with Bond reporting to London savagely that "the bitch is dead". Although Hecht was tackling the novel 10 years after it had been published, these are all elements it seems hard to imagine in a film adaptation.

But these drafts are a master-class in thriller-writing, from the man who arguably perfected the form with Notorious. Hecht made vice central to the plot, with Le Chiffre actively controlling a network of brothels and beautiful women who he is using to blackmail powerful people around the world. Just as the theme of Fleming’s Goldfinger is avarice and power, the theme of Hecht’s Casino Royale is sex and sin. It’s an idea that seems obvious in hindsight, and Hecht used it both to raise the stakes of Fleming’s plot and to deepen the story’s emotional resonance.

This is visible in the surviving pages of two separate undated drafts. Judging from the plotlines and character names, they were written after the December 1963 notes, but before the three drafts from 1964. Hecht wrote to Feldman on January 13 1964 to say he had 110 pages of "our blissful Casino Royale" ready to be typed and sent to him, but that if he could wait three days he would be able to send him 130 pages of what he refers to as a first draft, which will bring it up to its conclusion. As there is no other material dating from January 1964 in his papers, it seems likely that these are excerpts from that time. Hecht also adds that he has "never had more fun writing a movie".

Both draft fragments feature a British secret agent called James Bond who gambles against a Colonel Chiffre, aided by an American agent called Felix Leiter and a French agent called Rene Mathis. In both, Bond falls in love with Vesper Lynd, who betrays him and kills herself. Both drafts stick closely to the atmosphere of the novel, while adding several new plot elements and characters. These include Mila, one of Chiffre’s former brothel madams and a former lover of Bond’s. Surnamed alternatively Vigne and Brant, she is a classic femme fatale, trying to seduce Bond in her night gown. Bond turns her down – just.

In one of the undated drafts, Chiffre escapes at the last moment and Bond returns to London following Vesper’s suicide, where M tells him to take a holiday in Jamaica. Bond says he would rather stick around in case M has any errands for him. This suggests Feldman may have been considering slotting the film into Broccoli and Saltzman’s series, as he didn’t have the rights to any other Bond novels. The James Bond in these pages is a deft blend of Fleming’s character and the film version as portrayed by Sean Connery. The second Bond film, From Russia With Love, premiered in England in late 1963, but the series had not yet solidified: perhaps as a result, there are no vodka martinis or "Bond. James Bond" lines.

The 40 pages of the draft dated February 20 1964 elaborated on many of the scenes and ideas in these pages, but add an unusual gimmick. Bond is precisely the same character as he was in the other drafts: suave, laconic, ruthless and predatory. But he is not James Bond. Instead, he is an unnamed American agent called in by M who is given the name James Bond. M says that "since Bond’s death" MI6 has put several agents into operation using his name: "It not only perpetuates his memory, but confuses the opposition."

After this scene this agent is indistinguishable from Bond, and doesn’t seem American at all. It may be that Feldman was also considering how to make the film with an actor other than Sean Connery. There are very few logical inconsistencies in Hecht's material – this gimmick sticks out like a sore thumb.

The draft opens with a pre-titles sequence – itself a nod to the Connery films – in which Felix Leiter arrests senior United Nations diplomats and the beautiful prostitutes who have ensnared them in honey traps. Then we cut to M informing his new Bond about the villain he is sending him after. Instead of being a rather small-time agent on the run from Smersh, as he is in the novel, Chiffre is now the head of a massive operation being run by Spectre against the free world’s leaders and scientists, using brothels and honey traps to film them and then extort them for secrets. Bond is assigned to work with fellow MI6 agent Vesper Lynd and sent to Hamburg to check out one of Chiffre’s brothels.

Hecht introduces more new characters in this draft, including Lili Wing, a beautiful but drug-addicted Eurasian madam who once had a fling with Bond, and her girlfriend, Georgie, who carries a black kitten on her shoulder.

Many of the scenes are darkly comic, and some of the sexual antics are politically incorrect even for the Sixties, with references to politicians being attracted to children and a car chase through Hamburg’s red light district ending with Bond drenched in mud disguised as a lesbian wrestler.

The most significant new character is Gita, Chiffre’s beautiful wife. She and much of this draft returned in the final two surviving sections of script, which are dated April 8 and April 14, 1964. The first has 84 pages, and covers most of the plot. The second is 49 pages long and is an addition to it, indicating which pages are to remain untouched from the draft of a week earlier. Taken together, they form a near-complete story. Taken with the rest of the documents, with gaps in one draft often being filled in by others, these 260 or so pages give a strong sense of what a completed final Hecht screenplay would have been like.

The April 8 pages revert to Bond being the real thing. He flirts with Moneypenny, M gives him his mission, and he’s off: it reads just like an early Connery Bond film. The April 14 draft switches back to the counterfeit Bond idea, but adds to and improves the earlier draft in other ways. The first third of the story follows Bond and Vesper as they track down the incriminating rolls of film that Chiffre has collected for Spectre, which are being transported from a warehouse in Hamburg by a protected van.

The Hamburg car chase culminates in Lili Wing being captured by Chiffre’s men and fed into the crusher of a rubbish truck, while Bond uses Gita Chiffre as a shield. She is shot by mistake by Chiffre’s henchmen. Bond commandeers the van and impersonates one of the eye-patched henchmen in the darkness. During a car chase in the Swiss Alps, the van goes over the cliff and explodes with the films in it, Bond escaping at the last moment.

As a result of Bond ruining the extortion scheme, Chiffre loses half of his budget allocated to him by Spectre, and sets about trying to win it back. Then we relocate to northern France and the area around the fictional Royale. Vesper gives Bond instructions from M to accompany her to the casino there to finish Chiffre off for good. This is ingenious in several ways. In the book, Le Chiffre and Bond duel without ever having met each other. Now, Bond is directly responsible for his precarious situation and the reason he sets up the baccarat game, and we have a rematch.

In addition, Madam Chiffre, with half her face destroyed by bullet wounds and speaking metallically through a tube inserted in her ripped out larynx, is a classic Bond villain, a sinister presence lurking in the shadows waiting to exact revenge on 007. In undated handwritten notes, Hecht wrote that a man torturing a naked Bond in this way on screen would seem to audiences like he was not only indulging in "a far-fetched and unmotivated type of cruelty", but also a "yelping pansy".

The torture scene is faithful in spirit to the novel, but perhaps even more brutal, and contains many of the best lines of dialogue. Chiffre quietly continues to ask a naked Bond the location of the missing cheque while encouraging his wife to thrash him with the carpet beater. At one point he tells her to stop, adding: "M’sieur Bond may want to change his mind while he is still a m’sieur." Bond refuses, of course, and when asked about the check later, gives the memorable reply "Up your gizzard, you fat pimp." Chiffre also briefly waterboards Bond with whisky in an attempt to get him to talk.

Just as it seems that Bond is destined to die he is rescued by Specter’s assassins, who let him go but scar his hand so they can identify him in any future operations, and then shoot Chiffre who has hidden in a cupboard. The "brothel Napoleon", as Bond calls him, dies with silk dresses and negligees draping over his corpse.

Bond recovers in hospital, and proposes to Vesper. She accepts, but shortly after confesses she has been working for Spectre all along, then takes her life with cyanide. But just as it seems that the film will end with a grief-stricken and impotent Bond, a doctor prescribes him with testosterone, and a minor character, Georgie, returns and tries to seduce him. Bond is surprised and delighted to find that his body responds to her advances, and order is restored as he plants two solid kisses on her mouth and we fade out.

All the pages in Hecht’s papers are gripping, but the material from April 1964 is phenomenal, and it’s easy to imagine it as the basis for a classic Bond adventure. Hecht’s treatment of the romance element is powerful and convincing, even with the throwaway ending, but there is also a distinctly adult feel to the story. It has all the excitement and glamour you would expect from a Bond film but is more suspenseful, and the violence is brutal rather than cartoonish.

On Thursday April 16 1964, Hecht sent a letter to Feldman attaching an article from Time about Bond and saying he would write up a critique of their "current script" on Monday. He added some comments on Bond, including that he felt the character was cinema’s first "gentleman superman" in a long time, as opposed to Hammett and Chandler’s "roughneck supermen". But Monday never came: Hecht died of a heart attack at his home on Saturday April 18 while reading.

At some point, Feldman went to Broccoli and Saltzman and tried to broker a deal to film Casino Royale in partnership with them, but he wanted too large a share and the talks broke down. It seems he also claimed that Goldfinger had plagiarized Casino Royale and threatened to sue – perhaps he felt that the scene in which gangster Mr Solo is crushed at a scrap yard was too reminiscent of Lili Wing’s death.

Furious that he had not come to an agreement with Broccoli and Saltzman, Feldman approached Connery to see if he would be interested in jumping ship. Connery said he would for a million dollars, but this was too much for Feldman’s blood and he turned him down. He decided to take a new tack, signing an unknown Northern Irish actor, Terence Cooper, who he kept on salary for two years, and recruited Orson Welles, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, Woody Allen and several others. A set report in Time in May 1966 revealed that after Hecht’s "three bashes" at the script, it had been completely rewritten by Billy Wilder, after which Joseph Heller, Terry Southern, Wolf Mankowitz and John Law had all taken their turn at it. Much of the film was improvised on the spot, and Woody Allen also worked on it.

Very little of Hecht’s work made it to the screen apart from the idea of calling other agents James Bond to confuse the opposition, which grew into the main theme. Eventually released in 1967, it was a bloated and incoherent comedy that wasted the prodigious talent it had assembled, and the title Casino Royale was indelibly linked with a cinematic disaster rather than Fleming’s novel. Finally, in 2004 EON gained the rights to the novel, and set about filming it with Daniel Craig.

The big question raised by Hecht’s material is what would have happened if Feldman had managed to come to an agreement with EON, and Casino Royale had been made with Sean Connery in 1965 or 1966. Perhaps it would have divided the audience, as Goldfinger took Bond into superspy territory, and even a disfigured villainess might not have been enough for viewers so recently awestruck by the Aston Martin DB5’s ejector seat and Odd Job’s hat, especially if coupled with James Bond watching the woman he loves take her own life.

Then again, perhaps it would have deepened Bond as a character and taken the series in a different direction. Casino Royale might even have been regarded as not just a classic Bond film, but as a classic thriller. We’ll never know, but Hecht’s surviving material offers a glimpse into a cinematic genius at work, and an alternate James Bond adventure as rich and thrilling as anything yet brought to the screen.

* Jeremy Duns is the author of the spy novels 'Free Agent’ and ‘Free Country’ (Simon and Schuster)

This story can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... cript.html

[Blowfeld]

A screenwriting legend's doomed attempt to kill Bond is revealed in this forgotten script extract, unearthed by Jeremy Duns

By Ben Hecht 4:10PM GMT 02 Mar 2011

Part one:

The Death of James Bond

INTERIOR – OFFICE OF M, HEAD OF BRITISH SECRET INTELLIGENCE

M sits behind a flat-topped desk. A man of 45, strong faced, sharp witted. Our hero enters…

M: Good morning, Mr Bond.
OUR HERO: Mr Bond?

(smiling)

I knew there was a mistake, M – that you hadn’t sent for me.

M: No mistake, James Bond.

OUR HERO: An excellent name. Would that I were worthy of it, sir.

M: I think you are.

OUR HERO: Thank you.

M: The death of James Bond was quite a blow to the department. But he left us a fine gift – his name. Since Bond’s death we have put several agents into operation with his name. It not only perpetuates his memory but confuses the opposition. Considerably. Is that clear, Bond?

BOND (hereafter his name): After a fashion.

M: You will have to change your tailor, haberdasher and, of course, armament.

BOND: I’m quite happy with my 38 automatic.

M: Won’t do. An automatic is likely to jam up when overheated. I’m giving you Bond’s own guns.

He hands Bond two guns.

BOND: (examining them) Good enough. But if you don’t mind, I’ll not start drinking martinis.

Bourbon, neat. No water. No ice. Sometimes a beer chaser.

M: Sacrilege. But no argument.

The door opens. A man enters. He carries a briefcase.

BOND: Now that I’ve been properly baptised, I take it you have some little James Bondish errand in mind.

M: Quite so. Let’s have the report, Hadley.

The man, Hadley, removes a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.

HADLEY: (reading) To M from head of S. Project for elimination of sex corruption campaign waged by Specter espionage organisation in Free Europe. A chain of superior brothels employing an army of superior prostitutes are undermining the characters of important Free World statesmen, scientists and philosophers. To date, this sexual assault on the Free World has been responsible for the defection of nine German, eight British, eight American, and 11 French nuclear experts and political VIPs.

M: Hold it.

Hadley pauses.

M: Interested, Bond?

BOND: Subversion by lechery. A sad misuse of sex.

M: Not entirely new, but never before so brilliantly organised.

(to Hadley) Page two, paragraph three…

HADLEY: (reading) Chief of Specter’s sexual operation not definitely known. S inclined to believe rumours that head of Specter’s new vice empire is Colonel von Chiffre, alias Big Belly, alias Herr Zero, one of Specter’s most ruthless agents.

M: (to Hadley) Hold it.

(to Bond) No question of it in my mind. Chiffre is the degenerate genius we have to put out of business. How do you stand on it, Bond?

BOND: Raiding brothels is a bit out of my line. In fact, in Jamaica my hotel and gambling casino included a sort of annex for male and female diversion. Had nothing to do with it, myself. Sprung up on its own. Where there’s a demand for a product, the product will usually appear.

M: We have it all in our archives, Bond.

BOND: Then you know how I stand on brothels. Strict neutrality.

Part two:

Gita’s revenge

INTERIOR – A LUXURIOUSLY FURNISHED ROOM OVERLOOKING THE SEA BELOW

The woman rises from the bed. The two Doberman dogs, male and female, follow behind her as she walks slowly toward Bond. It is Gita. Her beautiful face is mutilated. Its right jaw has been removed. The right side of the face hangs unhumanly boneless. Bond stares at her. He recognises the woman he used as a shield in the Hamburg gun battle around the garbage truck. Gita stands over the chair-pilloried Bond.

GITA: You remember me, Mr Bond?

BOND: (coolly, as he stares up) You’re a bit changed.

GITA: You will be changed, too, Mr Bond.

Otto hands Gita a curious implement. It is a thin, four-feet-long wooden rod. On its end is a thin slab of wood, six inches square. The implement looks like a cross between an oversized fly-swatter and undersized rug beater.

Gita’s misshapen face grimaces at the implement in her hand. She is possibly smiling.

CHIFFRE: Indeed, M’sieur Bond, my wife has been looking forward eagerly to meeting again the man who altered her appearance.

BOND: I fired no bullet at her.

CHIFFRE: True. You only used her beauty as a shield. To save your life. In a fair fight, shall we say. But I do not fight fair.

186. ANOTHER ANGLE We see that there is another oddity to the pillory chair in which Bond is imprisoned. The chair has no rungs. The sturdy wooden legs have been reinforced with eagle-irons.

187. ANOTHER ANGLE Chiffre, Gita and Bond.

CHIFFRE: (to Gita) Wait.

Gita nods, smiles with her wrecked face and idly examines the curious implement she holds. The swatter at its end is efficiently affixed to the long handle.

CHIFFRE: (quietly and with no anger in his voice) You are a brave and clever agent, M’sieur Bond. But you are an Englishman.

And all Englishmen are fools. They will rush forth like simpletons to remove the female they love from the villain’s hands. I banked on that, M’sieur Bond. And here you are – baccarat.

BOND: (tensely) You’re a bit long winded, Colonel Chiffre.

CHIFFRE: You should be grateful for that, M’sieur Bond.

He looks at Gita. Her mutilated face is grinning crookedly at the pilloried Bond.

CHIFFRE: You were given a cheque by the casino cashier for eighty million francs. Being a man of great cunning, you hid that cheque – in that café where you sat with Vesper Lynd. Where did you hide the cheque, M’sieur Bond?

BOND: A foolish question, Chiffre.

CHIFFRE: (still, smooth spoken) I desire that cheque, M’sieur Bond.

BOND: I imagine you do. Perhaps you will find it.

CHIFFRE: That may be possible. But I hope you will shorten our search by telling us the hiding place.

BOND: (tensely) You’ve got me trussed up. Go on, shoot.

CHIFFRE: I am not interested in killing you, that could have been done easily, since you joined us. I prefer the cheque to your unnegotiable corpse. I do not have to tell you why.

BOND: (grimly) Yes, you can skip that.

CHIFFRE: You have a reputation for making beautiful females happy, M’sieur Bond. My wife Gita is not as beautiful as she was, but you are going to make her very happy in the next half hour. Let me explain how. She is going to whip you, M’sieur Bond. She is going to destroy your manhood, slowly – blow by blow. If you refuse to tell me where the cheque is hidden, you will be turned into a eunuch.

Chiffre pauses.

Then, softly – Where is the cheque for eighty million francs?

BOND: (his face sweating) You’re a stupid, fat pig, Chiffre.

Chiffre is silent. Bond speaks again, viciously.

BOND: Chiffre, the brothel Napoleon, who is going to end up in front of a Specter firing squad. Twelve rifles pumping bullets into his fat belly. It’ll take at least two volleys – until your guts are hanging out – sad there’s one fat pimp less in the world.

CHIFFRE: (quietly) Well spoken, M’sieur Bond. But you lose. I am not going to kill you.

He turns to Gita and adds sharply: Start.

Bond is silent. He slowly closes his eyes. Sweat bathes his face and body.

Gita strikes with her wooden swatter, swinging it up from the floor, under the chair.

The two Dobermans bristle at Bond’s cry of pain.

A deep glee is in Gita’s wrecked face as she strikes again and again. Agony brings groan after groan out of Bond. His head lolls under the torture.

Finally a scream comes from him. The two large dogs add their wild snarling to his cries.

CHIFFRE: (to Gita, sharply) Wait, Gita.

Bond’s face and body are running sweat. His eyes are rolled up. A blessed unconsciousness has almost blotted out his agony.

Chiffre picks up a whiskey bottle from a table near him. He pours whiskey into a glass. He grabs Bond’s hair and jerks his head upright. He thrusts his gun barrel between Bond’s teeth and prises open his mouth.

Then he pours the whiskey slowly and carefully into Bond. Bond gags, sputters and begins to swallow.

Bond revives. His bloodshot eyes stare miserably at Chiffre. After a pause, Chiffre speaks.

Chiffre turns to Otto.

CHIFFRE: (curtly) Get the girl.

A smiling Otto exits. Chiffre slaps Bond’s drooping face.

CHIFFRE: Your attention, Bond.

Bond looks up in agony.

When the ancient Romans crucified a political rival, they often allowed him to watch the rape of his beloved females – wife, daughter, mother. I am going to revive that ancient custom for your eyes.

189. ANOTHER ANGLE Anton switches on a bed light. The bed is in front of Bond. He stares at the bright pillows.

CHIFFRE: Do you wish to save your beloved female from sexual assault?

BOND: (stalling for time) If I tell you…

CHIFFRE: (intently) She will not be touched.

He leans over Bond.

Where is it?

BOND: (speaking with difficulty) In a saltshaker under the booth seat.

CHIFFRE: A lie. My men have searched thoroughly. Where is the cheque?

BOND: (closing his eyes) Up your gizzard, you fat pimp.

Gita begins her beating again. Bond yells his pain. He bites his lips.

Snarls come from him as Gita strikes again and again.

This story can be found http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... cript.html

[FormerBondFan]

A screenwriting legend's doomed attempt to kill Bond is revealed in this forgotten script extract, unearthed by Jeremy Duns

By Ben Hecht 4:10PM GMT 02 Mar 2011

Part one:

The Death of James Bond

INTERIOR – OFFICE OF M, HEAD OF BRITISH SECRET INTELLIGENCE

M sits behind a flat-topped desk. A man of 45, strong faced, sharp witted. Our hero enters…

M: Good morning, Mr Bond.
OUR HERO: Mr Bond?

(smiling)

I knew there was a mistake, M – that you hadn’t sent for me.

M: No mistake, James Bond.

OUR HERO: An excellent name. Would that I were worthy of it, sir.

M: I think you are.

OUR HERO: Thank you.

M: The death of James Bond was quite a blow to the department. But he left us a fine gift – his name. Since Bond’s death we have put several agents into operation with his name. It not only perpetuates his memory but confuses the opposition. Considerably. Is that clear, Bond?

BOND (hereafter his name): After a fashion.

M: You will have to change your tailor, haberdasher and, of course, armament.

BOND: I’m quite happy with my 38 automatic.

M: Won’t do. An automatic is likely to jam up when overheated. I’m giving you Bond’s own guns.

He hands Bond two guns.

BOND: (examining them) Good enough. But if you don’t mind, I’ll not start drinking martinis.

Bourbon, neat. No water. No ice. Sometimes a beer chaser.

M: Sacrilege. But no argument.

The door opens. A man enters. He carries a briefcase.

BOND: Now that I’ve been properly baptised, I take it you have some little James Bondish errand in mind.

M: Quite so. Let’s have the report, Hadley.

The man, Hadley, removes a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.

HADLEY: (reading) To M from head of S. Project for elimination of sex corruption campaign waged by Specter espionage organisation in Free Europe. A chain of superior brothels employing an army of superior prostitutes are undermining the characters of important Free World statesmen, scientists and philosophers. To date, this sexual assault on the Free World has been responsible for the defection of nine German, eight British, eight American, and 11 French nuclear experts and political VIPs.

M: Hold it.

Hadley pauses.

M: Interested, Bond?

BOND: Subversion by lechery. A sad misuse of sex.

M: Not entirely new, but never before so brilliantly organised.

(to Hadley) Page two, paragraph three…

HADLEY: (reading) Chief of Specter’s sexual operation not definitely known. S inclined to believe rumours that head of Specter’s new vice empire is Colonel von Chiffre, alias Big Belly, alias Herr Zero, one of Specter’s most ruthless agents.

M: (to Hadley) Hold it.

(to Bond) No question of it in my mind. Chiffre is the degenerate genius we have to put out of business. How do you stand on it, Bond?

BOND: Raiding brothels is a bit out of my line. In fact, in Jamaica my hotel and gambling casino included a sort of annex for male and female diversion. Had nothing to do with it, myself. Sprung up on its own. Where there’s a demand for a product, the product will usually appear.

M: We have it all in our archives, Bond.

BOND: Then you know how I stand on brothels. Strict neutrality.

Part two:

Gita’s revenge

INTERIOR – A LUXURIOUSLY FURNISHED ROOM OVERLOOKING THE SEA BELOW

The woman rises from the bed. The two Doberman dogs, male and female, follow behind her as she walks slowly toward Bond. It is Gita. Her beautiful face is mutilated. Its right jaw has been removed. The right side of the face hangs unhumanly boneless. Bond stares at her. He recognises the woman he used as a shield in the Hamburg gun battle around the garbage truck. Gita stands over the chair-pilloried Bond.

GITA: You remember me, Mr Bond?

BOND: (coolly, as he stares up) You’re a bit changed.

GITA: You will be changed, too, Mr Bond.

Otto hands Gita a curious implement. It is a thin, four-feet-long wooden rod. On its end is a thin slab of wood, six inches square. The implement looks like a cross between an oversized fly-swatter and undersized rug beater.

Gita’s misshapen face grimaces at the implement in her hand. She is possibly smiling.

CHIFFRE: Indeed, M’sieur Bond, my wife has been looking forward eagerly to meeting again the man who altered her appearance.

BOND: I fired no bullet at her.

CHIFFRE: True. You only used her beauty as a shield. To save your life. In a fair fight, shall we say. But I do not fight fair.

186. ANOTHER ANGLE We see that there is another oddity to the pillory chair in which Bond is imprisoned. The chair has no rungs. The sturdy wooden legs have been reinforced with eagle-irons.

187. ANOTHER ANGLE Chiffre, Gita and Bond.

CHIFFRE: (to Gita) Wait.

Gita nods, smiles with her wrecked face and idly examines the curious implement she holds. The swatter at its end is efficiently affixed to the long handle.

CHIFFRE: (quietly and with no anger in his voice) You are a brave and clever agent, M’sieur Bond. But you are an Englishman.

And all Englishmen are fools. They will rush forth like simpletons to remove the female they love from the villain’s hands. I banked on that, M’sieur Bond. And here you are – baccarat.

BOND: (tensely) You’re a bit long winded, Colonel Chiffre.

CHIFFRE: You should be grateful for that, M’sieur Bond.

He looks at Gita. Her mutilated face is grinning crookedly at the pilloried Bond.

CHIFFRE: You were given a cheque by the casino cashier for eighty million francs. Being a man of great cunning, you hid that cheque – in that café where you sat with Vesper Lynd. Where did you hide the cheque, M’sieur Bond?

BOND: A foolish question, Chiffre.

CHIFFRE: (still, smooth spoken) I desire that cheque, M’sieur Bond.

BOND: I imagine you do. Perhaps you will find it.

CHIFFRE: That may be possible. But I hope you will shorten our search by telling us the hiding place.

BOND: (tensely) You’ve got me trussed up. Go on, shoot.

CHIFFRE: I am not interested in killing you, that could have been done easily, since you joined us. I prefer the cheque to your unnegotiable corpse. I do not have to tell you why.

BOND: (grimly) Yes, you can skip that.

CHIFFRE: You have a reputation for making beautiful females happy, M’sieur Bond. My wife Gita is not as beautiful as she was, but you are going to make her very happy in the next half hour. Let me explain how. She is going to whip you, M’sieur Bond. She is going to destroy your manhood, slowly – blow by blow. If you refuse to tell me where the cheque is hidden, you will be turned into a eunuch.

Chiffre pauses.

Then, softly – Where is the cheque for eighty million francs?

BOND: (his face sweating) You’re a stupid, fat pig, Chiffre.

Chiffre is silent. Bond speaks again, viciously.

BOND: Chiffre, the brothel Napoleon, who is going to end up in front of a Specter firing squad. Twelve rifles pumping bullets into his fat belly. It’ll take at least two volleys – until your guts are hanging out – sad there’s one fat pimp less in the world.

CHIFFRE: (quietly) Well spoken, M’sieur Bond. But you lose. I am not going to kill you.

He turns to Gita and adds sharply: Start.

Bond is silent. He slowly closes his eyes. Sweat bathes his face and body.

Gita strikes with her wooden swatter, swinging it up from the floor, under the chair.

The two Dobermans bristle at Bond’s cry of pain.

A deep glee is in Gita’s wrecked face as she strikes again and again. Agony brings groan after groan out of Bond. His head lolls under the torture.

Finally a scream comes from him. The two large dogs add their wild snarling to his cries.

CHIFFRE: (to Gita, sharply) Wait, Gita.

Bond’s face and body are running sweat. His eyes are rolled up. A blessed unconsciousness has almost blotted out his agony.

Chiffre picks up a whiskey bottle from a table near him. He pours whiskey into a glass. He grabs Bond’s hair and jerks his head upright. He thrusts his gun barrel between Bond’s teeth and prises open his mouth.

Then he pours the whiskey slowly and carefully into Bond. Bond gags, sputters and begins to swallow.

Bond revives. His bloodshot eyes stare miserably at Chiffre. After a pause, Chiffre speaks.

Chiffre turns to Otto.

CHIFFRE: (curtly) Get the girl.

A smiling Otto exits. Chiffre slaps Bond’s drooping face.

CHIFFRE: Your attention, Bond.

Bond looks up in agony.

When the ancient Romans crucified a political rival, they often allowed him to watch the rape of his beloved females – wife, daughter, mother. I am going to revive that ancient custom for your eyes.

189. ANOTHER ANGLE Anton switches on a bed light. The bed is in front of Bond. He stares at the bright pillows.

CHIFFRE: Do you wish to save your beloved female from sexual assault?

BOND: (stalling for time) If I tell you…

CHIFFRE: (intently) She will not be touched.

He leans over Bond.

Where is it?

BOND: (speaking with difficulty) In a saltshaker under the booth seat.

CHIFFRE: A lie. My men have searched thoroughly. Where is the cheque?

BOND: (closing his eyes) Up your gizzard, you fat pimp.

Gita begins her beating again. Bond yells his pain. He bites his lips.

Snarls come from him as Gita strikes again and again.

This story can be found http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film ... cript.html

This reminds me of Lee Tamahori's idea of James Bond being a codename.

[katied]

It comes off as a bit of a mess-especially the stuff with Bond being a code name one moment and the real thing in another draft of the story.