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4 - The Dead Are Alive: The Exotic Non-Place of the Bondian Runaway Production
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
This chapter dissects the opening sequences of Skyfall (2012) in Istanbul and Spectre (2015) in Mexico City in order to argue that Eon's predilection for runaway productions has begun began to influence the textual composition of the James Bond film series. Eon Productions often modifies the narratives and settings of its Bond features in order to exploit the increasingly global availability of funding schemes, tax incentives, and cheap labor, and to secure, on a global scale, profitable distribution deals, enhanced visibility, and greater revenues from merchandizing. In the process, the Bondian runaway production fashions a colonial imaginary of exotic non-places, which has since long been a staple of the brand of Bond.
Keywords: runaway production; Global South; exoticism; non-place; Mexico City; Istanbul
From the outset, the James Bond film series was conceived as a runaway production. Bond-producer Harry Saltzman, a Canadian born in Quebec, relocated to the United Kingdom in the mid-1950s, where he founded Woodfall Film Productions with director Tony Richardson and writer John Osborne in 1958, famously engendering a wave of British Kitchen Sink classics such as Look Back in Anger (UK: Tony Richardson, 1959). In 1961, while at Woodfall, Saltzman secured an option on nine Bond novels from Ian Fleming but struggled to complete the financing for the films. It is at this stage that the second producer of the Bond film series, Albert R. Broccoli, an Italian-American hailing from New York, entered the picture. Broccoli moved to the United Kingdom in the early 1950s, setting up Warwick Films with Irving Allen in 1951. Warwick's base in the UK granted Broccoli and Allen the distinct benefits of a “runaway production:” it enabled the duo to circumvent the British quota requirement; to tap into the resources of the Eady Levy, a British fund that subsidized domestic film production through a tax imposed on ticket sales; to bypass tax regulations in the United States; to hire high-skilled laborers that were considerably cheaper than those available in Hollywood; and to retain creative freedom in the production process.
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- The Cultural Life of James BondSpecters of 007, pp. 81 - 102Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2020
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