‘Daniel Craig Is Not Bond’ – Ian Fleming

That’s exactly what Ian Fleming is telling me from across Jamaica, from across 53 years to be exact. The image above is our new Epson CX300 high-quality scan of our old copy of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (New American Library 1953) – I have read it 4 times idea for idea, if not word for word; it’s only 144 pages in a pocket-size format. I have marginal notes and internal notes and underlines and plenty of this – @ – to signify a point, phrase or paragraph I want to read again or quote at some other point in time. And today, in my 4^th reading, I found a bombshell that I shall now explode.

But first, here is James Bond explaining to Mathis how he got the license to kill, to be 007:

It was a pretty sound job. Nice and clean too. Three hundred yards away. No personal contact. The next time in Stockholm wasn’t so pretty. I had to kill a Norwegian who was doubling against us for the Germans. He’d managed to get two of our men captured – probably bumped off for all I know. For various reasons it had to be an absolutely silent job. I chose the bedroom of his flat and a knife. And, well, he just didn’t die very quickly.

For those two jobs I was awarded a Double O number in the Service. Felt pretty clever and got a reputation for being good and tough. A Double O number in our Service means you’ve had to kill a chap in cold blood in the course of some job. (page 109)

Tough, not brutish, not sadistic, not animal. ‘Kill in the course of a job’ means kill if you have to, not because you want to. Bond shifts paradigm:

Now, that’s all very fine – the hero kills two villains; but when the hero Le Chiffre starts to kill the villain Bond and the villain Bond knows he isn’t a villain at all, you see the other side of the medal. The villains and heroes get all mixed up. (page 109)

It’s the animal, the madman in Le Chiffre mixing up the distinction between hero and villain. In Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, the roles are reversed; the hero becomes the villain – James Bond. He is all mixed up; he is villainous; he is all animal; he is all madman.

There’s no lesson from Casino Royale (the movie) except brutality – and how to play baccarat with millions of dollars at your disposal. There’s a lesson from Casino Royale (the book) about learning. Here Bond tells Mathis about the devil:

So, Le Chiffre was serving a wonderful purpose, a really vital purpose, perhaps the best and highest purpose of all. By his evil existence, which foolishly I have helped to destroy, he was creating a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness could exist. We were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness, and we emerge from the acquaintance better and more virtuous men. (page 111)

Borrowing from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, I see that Daniel Craig’s James Bond has created a norm of badness by which, and by which alone, an opposite norm of goodness now exists – Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond. With Daniel Craig’s James Bond, we were privileged, in our short knowledge of him, to see and estimate his wickedness. So I hope we emerge from that acquaintance better and more virtuous men (embracing women). Otherwise, we haven’t learned at all and Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale was all an exercise in futility.

It’s Bond, James Bond

Perhaps, I’m paranoiac, or I’ve seen too many movies, or read too many books, but an improbable thought occurred to me a few minutes ago, thinking of Bond, James Bond, the one I love – okay, it’s Pierce Brosnan. But I loved Sean Connery too, as the first James Bond. Those were the days. Early 1960s. I remember Dr No. I was in college at the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, Laguna; a Filipino, a very shy country lad, I had grown up reading Reader’s Digest and Time magazine and western novels and Perry Mason and going to 3 movie houses on 1 weekend watching all those films, sometimes double feature. When Dr No came to Los Baños, my friends and I went to see it. We were all awe-struck by it, in different ways. I was the short story writer and columnist; Nestor Pestelos was the essayist, philosopher and editor of our student paper Aggie Green & Gold; Rem Torres was our resident economist; and I forgot the name, yes, Aniceto Llaneta was our poet. Our name was legion; we were peoples. Nestor was Tagalog, from Tiaong, Quezon; Rem was Tagalog, from San Pablo City; I was Ilocano, from Asingan, Pangasinan; Aniceto was Bisaya (Waray), from Catbalogan, Samar. We had our differences, but we got along fine, thank you. I was the queer guy. They would smoke and I would inhale the other way. They would drink their San Miguel beer and I would drink my Coke.

As I was saying before I interrupted myself: What if what I’m seeing is not what it seems? What if danielcraigisnotbond.com is not really ‘Daniel Craig Is Not Bond’ but a sleight of hand?

But first, I must explain where I’m coming from. In the mid-1970s, I worked as a copywriter in one of the most creative (no thanks to me) advertising agencies in the Philippines, Pacifica Publicity Bureau. My good friend Orli Ochosa and I learned much from Nonoy Gallardo, our creative chief, and Telly Bernardo, VP, who had recruited us. And one lesson was to turn a negative into a positive, to use a negative feature of a product or service as the very selling point itself. If you remember the smashing series of ads for Volkswagen, the Bug, you know what I mean. The idea behind those Bug ads was very simple and I can summarize it in 3 words: Small is terrible.

In the case of danielcraigisnotbond.com, more popularly referred to as CNB, which is all about Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale, what if the idea being sold is simpler, because you can read it outright? ‘Daniel Craig is not Bond.’ You read it often enough and you remember, ‘Daniel Craig is not Bond … Daniel Craig is not Bond … Daniel Craig is not Bond.’ In a little while, you forget not. It becomes a positive. It becomes a mantra, an invocation to a god. To be sure, a primitive god, but a god nevertheless.

That would be psychological. What if Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson know the science and art of psychology?

Turning a negative into a positive: Taniap. Jonas Fernis tells me (2004, maxfunds.com/) that Taniap is ‘Wall Street’s oldest game.’ His examples:

The CEO of Sunbeam was given a massive stock option package? This aligns his interests with shareholders. ¶ Cisco is getting expensive? It’s got a great-looking chart. ¶ high-rick bons? High yield. ¶ Stocks? Represent great value.

But what if that’s not how danielcraigisnotbond.com is done; what if it is a clever new trick of an old trick? In marketing, negative publicity is still publicity, and that is ever wanted. If I am right, I would have to congratulate Broccoli & Wilson. If I am wrong, nice try.

In any case, the battlecry of CNB is ‘Home of the Casino Royale boycott.’ What boycott? Okay, let’s hear more about the boycott.

The image I’m showing here (above) is from Sunshine Hanan who captions it ‘The World Is Not Enough’ (flickr.com/). That’s the idea. You can look at boycott as a world in itself, but that world is not enough; the world that is enough is James Bond. That’s what we’re talking about.

The whole idea is not simply to boycott Daniel Craig’s Casino Royale but to express utter disapproval of the spirit of the company Broccoli & Wilson gang-raping the chaste idea of the perfect Bond that is Pierce Brosnan. I shall refer to it here by name; the name’s Dumb, James Dumb.

I’m not anti-Daniel Craig; I’m anti-Daniel Craig as James Bond.
I’m not only anti-Daniel Craig as James Bond; I’m pro-Pierce Brosnan as James Bond.

Daniel Craig has the nerve to say, according to Devin Zyle, about the movie script for Casino Royale (22 Nov, commanderbond.net/):

Paul Haggis had sprinkled his magic dust on it. I was honestly wanting to dislike it. It would have been an easy decision. I could have said, ‘That’s very nice. Good luck with it.’ But it was too much. I sweated when I read the script. I thought, this is a great story, probably because it adhered to the book quite closely.

He says Casino Royale (the script) adhered to Casino Royale (the book) ‘quite closely’ – it tells me that Daniel Craig did not read the book. That’s a PR statement he made; the PR man didn’t read the book either!

I’ll show you. James Verniere talks about Daniel Craig (21 Nov, townonline.com/): ‘His Bond is a cold-hearted killer and screaming madman … wears his lacerations like a Marquis de Sade-approved badge of honor.’ That only shows that James Verniere reads Marquis de Sade, the famous sexual pervert. Here is what Ian Fleming says of his James Bond in the book, talking to Mathis about Le Chiffre (page 110): ‘I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him – but out of personal revenge and not, I’m afraid, for some high moral reason or for the sake of my country.’

James Bond wouldn’t scream like a madman while killing for some high moral reason or even for his country. That would be suicidal.

If you want a James Bond adhering to the book quite closely, listen to Ian Fleming. Read the book! and then you will know that Daniel Craig the actor is not who you want to perform, Casino Royale the movie is not what you want to watch.

The press releases hide the truth. Okay, Daniel Craig in Casino Royale is Bond, James Bond – but he is the dark Bond, James Bond. I want the light.