Rumsfeldia: Fear and Loathing in the Decade of Tears
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Deadeye
DeadEye (1987)
Cast:
James Bond 007: Ray Lonnen
Morgan Buckner: Clint Eastwood
M: Edward Woodward
Permanent Under-Secretary (FCO): Sian Phillips
Felix Leiter: G.W. Bush
Spear: Pierce Brosnan
Jim O’Malley: George Kennedy
Portuguese Agent: Marina Sirtis
Lord Dalton: Julian Glover
Jane Moneypenny: Phyllis Logan
Q: Desmond Lewellyn
Tanner (MI-6 Chief of Staff): James Villiers
Producer: Albert R. (“Cubby”) Broccoli
Story and Screenplay: Michael G. Wilson, Richard Maibaum, Clint Eastwood
Directed by: John Glen
Plot: British Secret Agent James Bond is part of a team of MI6 agents involved in war games on Gibraltar, with the SAS acting as their opponents. A mysterious assassin (later identified as Spear) infiltrates the exercise and starts killing-off the MI-6 team. Bond gets wise to what is going on after nearly being killed himself. He then jumps on
Spear’s truck and the two (along with a driver) engage in a moving fight through the narrow hillside streets of Gibraltar, before the vehicle goes over a cliff with Bond and Spear’s driver. The driver is killed and Bond parachutes down to a passing yacht (where he flirts with a beautiful lady). Spear, unseen by Bond, got out of the truck just before it went over the cliff.
After the opening credits (title song by British shock-rocker Billy Broad) the scene shifts to Westminster, where the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (PUS-FCO) is being grilled by a Parliamentary committee about failures of the intelligence service. Lord Dalton is particularly critical, pointing out that the FCO has taken its eyes off the real enemy – the Soviet Union – and become an apologist for the Reds.
After the grilling by the committee, the PUS-FCO takes out her frustration on the new M and James Bond. Once she leaves, M tells Bond how unimpressed he is with what happened on Gibraltar, and the fact that one of the terrorists got away (they know this now because the body was not found) – and the fact that Bond dallied on the yacht for nearly six hours. M wants the man identified. With Q’s help Bond uses the computerized Identasketch to identify the missing assassin as an IRA renegade who uses the code name Spear. According to MI-6 records he is an assassin for hire, linked to (but not necessarily and employee of) an exiled American crime boss named Jim O’Malley, who lives in Malta.
Bond is given rough treatment by his irritable superior who states: “My predecessor may have thought you were great, but frankly, after Gib, all I see is an overrated pretty boy with an inflated expense account. As far as I’m concerned, the OO section is an anachronism, as are its operatives.” Bond also flirts with Jane Moneypenny (recast with a younger actress and given a first name). Bond seriously considers retiring, but the new M decides he has one more mission for him.
After being outfitted by Q, Bond is sent to make contact with O’Malley in Malta and smoke out who Spear was working for. Bond’s cover is as a henchman for a British mob boss who wants to hire Spear.
Bond persuades O’Malley he is what he seems to be, and seduces O’Malley’s secretary, and spies O’Malley meeting with Spear and an unknown figure (Eastwood). A little research leads Bond to identify the mystery man as General Morgan Buckner, a man considered to be the right hand of the United States President.
Bond is captured by O’Malley and his men, and interrogated by Spear, who has a psychotic hatred of the British. It turns out Spear identified Bond and blew his cover. O’Malley’s secretary has been killed, and now Bond is to die by being crushed in an industrial garbage compactor. A shoot-out interrupts Bond’s execution and he manages to escape. O’Malley is killed, but Spear gets away. Bond’s savior is a female Portuguese agent who is following Spear and his boss. After some reluctance she concedes to Bond that Portuguese security is aware of a plot by Spear to commit some unknown terrorist act on their territory. Bond points out that Spear killed several MI-6 agents, and that the two have a common foe. Once they agree to work together, they decide they have to locate Spear’s real boss, Morgan Buckner.
Bond decides to go to an old friend, who is now CIA station chief in Rome – Felix Leiter. Leiter is reluctant to communicate with Bond at first, since the special relationship is long past. However Bond points out that he is after Morgan Buckner (and why) and Leiter admits that Buckner is bad news. Leiter himself is disaffected with his own government, and agrees to help Bond. All Leiter can contribute is what he learned in a secret briefing not too long ago that Buckner is heading-up a project called Deadeye, which he promised would change the face of Europe. Leiter doesn’t know exactly what Deadeye is. Killing the MI-6 agents on Gibraltar seems to have been an effort to neutralize the British Secret Service. Leiter also confirms that O’Malley had been used by the CIA, but was cut loose years earlier because of his criminal activities. Evidently Buckner recruited him sometime after that, probably as a cut-out.
In London, M meets the PUS-FCO at the gallery of the House of Lords, where Lord Dalton is condemning the British policy of co-operation with the Soviet Union and warns of an impending attack by the Communists. PUS-FCO points to Dalton as an example of the problems HMG has in their Soviet relations (“American fascist son one side; Soviet Reds on the other – and a would-be Mosely trying to pass himself off as the next Churchill. These are tense times M.”). She then rebukes M for putting Bond into the field and for his working with a Portuguese agent against the Americans. M reminds his boss that the Americans killed his other OO agents, and that the Americans cannot be trusted. PUS-FCO informs M that the government will not put-up with the Secret Service bringing down the wrath of the Americans on HMG. “If this cocks-up, the PM will personally feed you to the Yanks, and I will be right there to help him.”
Bond tracks Spear to Pamplona, Spain. After a fight, Bond and the Portuguese agent chase Spear through the running of the bulls. The trail then leads to an old Monastery on the Spanish-Portuguese border, which is not inhabited by simple monks. Bond and his Portuguese ally reconnoiter it, and are captured by Spear and some of his goons.
Buckner then delights in telling Bond his master-plan – which he points out has the President’s approval. The converted monastery (on the Spanish side) has a tunnel leading to an underground facility inside Portuguese territory (which oddly has Soviet markings and Cyrillic signs). The ground station controls a hunter-killer satellite called Deadeye, which has been moved into a shadow orbit with a Soviet spy satellite. At the next speech from the throne (due in a few hours) Deadeye will fire a microwave pulse at Westminster, destroying Parliament and the Sovereign. Lord Dalton (Buckner’s ally) will arrange to be away, and as one of the few surviving members of Parliament will rally the nation behind him in demanding a revenge strike on the USSR. Proof of the USSR’s guilt will be found in a Soviet satellite having supposedly fired the pulse, and the location of the Soviet-like ground station conveniently located within the territory of one of the USSR’s allies. During the tension that follows, the Deadeye will also fire on the USSR from behind the cover of a British satellite. This, in Buckner’s reckoning, should start a war between Britain and the USSR. Once Britain and the USSR knock each other out, Europe will be “ripe” for the United States to control it “our way.”
Buckner knows Bond obtained information from Leiter, and indicates they will “take care of that weak sister very soon.” Buckner counted on Leiter betraying him if any British agent should ask questions about him.
Bond is put into a bullring, where he serves as the bull to three matadors who come in to slay him. Bond kills them and escapes. With the help of his Portuguese ally he gets to Buckner and kills him in a western-style quick draw (an homage to Eastwood’s westerns). The duo then destroys the Deadeye seconds before it fires. In the round-up, Spear is missing.
Based on what Buckner told him, Bond returns to Rome and kills Spear (who has kidnapped Leiter and is waiting for Bond to rescue him).
In the end sequence PUS-FCO grudgingly thanks M for averting a disaster. They remark on a newspaper story about Lord Dalton’s abrupt nervous breakdown, which has caused him to be committed to a mental hospital. M meanwhile is irritated that Bond hasn’t reported in.
The final seen shows Bond in a romantic setting with his Portuguese ally.
James Bond will return.
------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary:
After Michael Billington played James Bond in 1980’s Colonel Sun, the next film – originally titled For Your Eyes Only (after the Fleming short story with the same title) – underwent close to six years of development Hell. Originally intended as a standard Cold war thriller, involving Bond in a race with a Soviet operative to recover a lost nuclear targeting system, the storyline lost relevance as NATO disintegrated and Europe’s relations with the Soviet Union and the United States changed. By early 1986, the original plot seemed dated.
The creative team of Cubby Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum were compelled to create a new story. To do this they felt they had to depart from Fleming’s original cold war premise and develop and original plot which would reflect current global realities. During the development of the new script, which was now named Deadeye, exiled American actor and director Clint Eastwood was added to the project, originally as a plot consultant. He would later take on the part of the master villain General Morgan Buckner in the final production. Of his role, Eastwood would say that he played Buckner in an effort “to kick Rumsfeld in the ass.”
Before production began in mid-1986 Michael Billington had committed to other roles and was not available. In his place actor Ray Lonnen was cast. Lonnen had played an anti-James Bond type of secret agent on a British television series called The Sandbaggers, and the comparison between that role and his portrayal of Bond was inevitable. (In the film Lonnen’s Bond even takes a shot at his Sandbaggers’ persona Willy Kane by remarking he wouldn’t be caught dead in a low rate hotel [in The Sandbaggers Lonnen, as Kane, had repeatedly complained about their group not having James Bond’s unlimited budget]). The production team felt that Lonnen could carry the role – despite The Sandbaggers’ baggage. They also found his chemistry with Eastwood and Catherine Zeta-Jones added to the overall feel of the film.
Roy Marsden, who had played Willy Kane’s boss in The Sandbaggers, was originally considered for the part of M, but this idea was vetoed by Marsden himself, who felt that having him in the film would turn the film into a confusion between the television show and the Bond film franchise: at worst it might be seen as a parody.
The film was a box office success in Europe and Asia, and became a cult classic in the United States where it was not officially distributed, but became available through several underground networks. Eastwood’s portrayal as the psychotic ideologue Buckner was widely interpreted there, as Eastwood had intended, as a deliberate parody of President Rumsfeld himself.
When President Rumsfeld called the film garbage, choosing to wax nostalgically about Sean Connery’s excellent portrayal of a real Bond, Eastwood referred to Rumsfeld’s disparaging of the film as “the best endorsement I can think of.” Actor Sean Connery disavowed the American President’s laudatory comments about him, adding that he thought Eastwood “got it right.”
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DeadEye (1987)
Cast:
James Bond 007: Ray Lonnen
Morgan Buckner: Clint Eastwood
M: Edward Woodward
Permanent Under-Secretary (FCO): Sian Phillips
Felix Leiter: G.W. Bush
Spear: Pierce Brosnan
Jim O’Malley: George Kennedy
Portuguese Agent: Marina Sirtis
Lord Dalton: Julian Glover
Jane Moneypenny: Phyllis Logan
Q: Desmond Lewellyn
Tanner (MI-6 Chief of Staff): James Villiers
Producer: Albert R. (“Cubby”) Broccoli
Story and Screenplay: Michael G. Wilson, Richard Maibaum, Clint Eastwood
Directed by: John Glen
Plot: British Secret Agent James Bond is part of a team of MI6 agents involved in war games on Gibraltar, with the SAS acting as their opponents. A mysterious assassin (later identified as Spear) infiltrates the exercise and starts killing-off the MI-6 team. Bond gets wise to what is going on after nearly being killed himself. He then jumps on
Spear’s truck and the two (along with a driver) engage in a moving fight through the narrow hillside streets of Gibraltar, before the vehicle goes over a cliff with Bond and Spear’s driver. The driver is killed and Bond parachutes down to a passing yacht (where he flirts with a beautiful lady). Spear, unseen by Bond, got out of the truck just before it went over the cliff.
After the opening credits (title song by British shock-rocker Billy Broad) the scene shifts to Westminster, where the Permanent Secretary of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (PUS-FCO) is being grilled by a Parliamentary committee about failures of the intelligence service. Lord Dalton is particularly critical, pointing out that the FCO has taken its eyes off the real enemy – the Soviet Union – and become an apologist for the Reds.
After the grilling by the committee, the PUS-FCO takes out her frustration on the new M and James Bond. Once she leaves, M tells Bond how unimpressed he is with what happened on Gibraltar, and the fact that one of the terrorists got away (they know this now because the body was not found) – and the fact that Bond dallied on the yacht for nearly six hours. M wants the man identified. With Q’s help Bond uses the computerized Identasketch to identify the missing assassin as an IRA renegade who uses the code name Spear. According to MI-6 records he is an assassin for hire, linked to (but not necessarily and employee of) an exiled American crime boss named Jim O’Malley, who lives in Malta.
Bond is given rough treatment by his irritable superior who states: “My predecessor may have thought you were great, but frankly, after Gib, all I see is an overrated pretty boy with an inflated expense account. As far as I’m concerned, the OO section is an anachronism, as are its operatives.” Bond also flirts with Jane Moneypenny (recast with a younger actress and given a first name). Bond seriously considers retiring, but the new M decides he has one more mission for him.
After being outfitted by Q, Bond is sent to make contact with O’Malley in Malta and smoke out who Spear was working for. Bond’s cover is as a henchman for a British mob boss who wants to hire Spear.
Bond persuades O’Malley he is what he seems to be, and seduces O’Malley’s secretary, and spies O’Malley meeting with Spear and an unknown figure (Eastwood). A little research leads Bond to identify the mystery man as General Morgan Buckner, a man considered to be the right hand of the United States President.
Bond is captured by O’Malley and his men, and interrogated by Spear, who has a psychotic hatred of the British. It turns out Spear identified Bond and blew his cover. O’Malley’s secretary has been killed, and now Bond is to die by being crushed in an industrial garbage compactor. A shoot-out interrupts Bond’s execution and he manages to escape. O’Malley is killed, but Spear gets away. Bond’s savior is a female Portuguese agent who is following Spear and his boss. After some reluctance she concedes to Bond that Portuguese security is aware of a plot by Spear to commit some unknown terrorist act on their territory. Bond points out that Spear killed several MI-6 agents, and that the two have a common foe. Once they agree to work together, they decide they have to locate Spear’s real boss, Morgan Buckner.
Bond decides to go to an old friend, who is now CIA station chief in Rome – Felix Leiter. Leiter is reluctant to communicate with Bond at first, since the special relationship is long past. However Bond points out that he is after Morgan Buckner (and why) and Leiter admits that Buckner is bad news. Leiter himself is disaffected with his own government, and agrees to help Bond. All Leiter can contribute is what he learned in a secret briefing not too long ago that Buckner is heading-up a project called Deadeye, which he promised would change the face of Europe. Leiter doesn’t know exactly what Deadeye is. Killing the MI-6 agents on Gibraltar seems to have been an effort to neutralize the British Secret Service. Leiter also confirms that O’Malley had been used by the CIA, but was cut loose years earlier because of his criminal activities. Evidently Buckner recruited him sometime after that, probably as a cut-out.
In London, M meets the PUS-FCO at the gallery of the House of Lords, where Lord Dalton is condemning the British policy of co-operation with the Soviet Union and warns of an impending attack by the Communists. PUS-FCO points to Dalton as an example of the problems HMG has in their Soviet relations (“American fascist son one side; Soviet Reds on the other – and a would-be Mosely trying to pass himself off as the next Churchill. These are tense times M.”). She then rebukes M for putting Bond into the field and for his working with a Portuguese agent against the Americans. M reminds his boss that the Americans killed his other OO agents, and that the Americans cannot be trusted. PUS-FCO informs M that the government will not put-up with the Secret Service bringing down the wrath of the Americans on HMG. “If this cocks-up, the PM will personally feed you to the Yanks, and I will be right there to help him.”
Bond tracks Spear to Pamplona, Spain. After a fight, Bond and the Portuguese agent chase Spear through the running of the bulls. The trail then leads to an old Monastery on the Spanish-Portuguese border, which is not inhabited by simple monks. Bond and his Portuguese ally reconnoiter it, and are captured by Spear and some of his goons.
Buckner then delights in telling Bond his master-plan – which he points out has the President’s approval. The converted monastery (on the Spanish side) has a tunnel leading to an underground facility inside Portuguese territory (which oddly has Soviet markings and Cyrillic signs). The ground station controls a hunter-killer satellite called Deadeye, which has been moved into a shadow orbit with a Soviet spy satellite. At the next speech from the throne (due in a few hours) Deadeye will fire a microwave pulse at Westminster, destroying Parliament and the Sovereign. Lord Dalton (Buckner’s ally) will arrange to be away, and as one of the few surviving members of Parliament will rally the nation behind him in demanding a revenge strike on the USSR. Proof of the USSR’s guilt will be found in a Soviet satellite having supposedly fired the pulse, and the location of the Soviet-like ground station conveniently located within the territory of one of the USSR’s allies. During the tension that follows, the Deadeye will also fire on the USSR from behind the cover of a British satellite. This, in Buckner’s reckoning, should start a war between Britain and the USSR. Once Britain and the USSR knock each other out, Europe will be “ripe” for the United States to control it “our way.”
Buckner knows Bond obtained information from Leiter, and indicates they will “take care of that weak sister very soon.” Buckner counted on Leiter betraying him if any British agent should ask questions about him.
Bond is put into a bullring, where he serves as the bull to three matadors who come in to slay him. Bond kills them and escapes. With the help of his Portuguese ally he gets to Buckner and kills him in a western-style quick draw (an homage to Eastwood’s westerns). The duo then destroys the Deadeye seconds before it fires. In the round-up, Spear is missing.
Based on what Buckner told him, Bond returns to Rome and kills Spear (who has kidnapped Leiter and is waiting for Bond to rescue him).
In the end sequence PUS-FCO grudgingly thanks M for averting a disaster. They remark on a newspaper story about Lord Dalton’s abrupt nervous breakdown, which has caused him to be committed to a mental hospital. M meanwhile is irritated that Bond hasn’t reported in.
The final seen shows Bond in a romantic setting with his Portuguese ally.
James Bond will return.
------------------------------------------------------------
Commentary:
After Michael Billington played James Bond in 1980’s Colonel Sun, the next film – originally titled For Your Eyes Only (after the Fleming short story with the same title) – underwent close to six years of development Hell. Originally intended as a standard Cold war thriller, involving Bond in a race with a Soviet operative to recover a lost nuclear targeting system, the storyline lost relevance as NATO disintegrated and Europe’s relations with the Soviet Union and the United States changed. By early 1986, the original plot seemed dated.
The creative team of Cubby Broccoli, Michael G. Wilson and Richard Maibaum were compelled to create a new story. To do this they felt they had to depart from Fleming’s original cold war premise and develop and original plot which would reflect current global realities. During the development of the new script, which was now named Deadeye, exiled American actor and director Clint Eastwood was added to the project, originally as a plot consultant. He would later take on the part of the master villain General Morgan Buckner in the final production. Of his role, Eastwood would say that he played Buckner in an effort “to kick Rumsfeld in the ass.”
Before production began in mid-1986 Michael Billington had committed to other roles and was not available. In his place actor Ray Lonnen was cast. Lonnen had played an anti-James Bond type of secret agent on a British television series called The Sandbaggers, and the comparison between that role and his portrayal of Bond was inevitable. (In the film Lonnen’s Bond even takes a shot at his Sandbaggers’ persona Willy Kane by remarking he wouldn’t be caught dead in a low rate hotel [in The Sandbaggers Lonnen, as Kane, had repeatedly complained about their group not having James Bond’s unlimited budget]). The production team felt that Lonnen could carry the role – despite The Sandbaggers’ baggage. They also found his chemistry with Eastwood and Catherine Zeta-Jones added to the overall feel of the film.
Roy Marsden, who had played Willy Kane’s boss in The Sandbaggers, was originally considered for the part of M, but this idea was vetoed by Marsden himself, who felt that having him in the film would turn the film into a confusion between the television show and the Bond film franchise: at worst it might be seen as a parody.
The film was a box office success in Europe and Asia, and became a cult classic in the United States where it was not officially distributed, but became available through several underground networks. Eastwood’s portrayal as the psychotic ideologue Buckner was widely interpreted there, as Eastwood had intended, as a deliberate parody of President Rumsfeld himself.
When President Rumsfeld called the film garbage, choosing to wax nostalgically about Sean Connery’s excellent portrayal of a real Bond, Eastwood referred to Rumsfeld’s disparaging of the film as “the best endorsement I can think of.” Actor Sean Connery disavowed the American President’s laudatory comments about him, adding that he thought Eastwood “got it right.”
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Must admit, I would have loved to have seen that running of the bulls scene, that'd be a great James Bond bit. An interesting reflection on how things have changed to make James Bond movies had moved in such a direction. The changing cast are a nice choice as well, reflecting some of the exiles from the US.
Holy smoke. It has finally reached the point when the American government is the villain in James Bond movies!
Spookily, I was just watching Octopussy last weekend and thought that its premise would be so butterflied away in Rumsfeldia. Deadeye is practically a mirror of Octopussy. Instead of the Soviets hatching a plot to gain greater control in Europe by creating European distrust in the U.S. nuclear presence, the Americans are trying to gain greater control in Europe by instigating a nuclear war between the U.K. and the USSR!
I wonder just how far this will go.
By the way, its good to see you back.
Spookily, I was just watching Octopussy last weekend and thought that its premise would be so butterflied away in Rumsfeldia. Deadeye is practically a mirror of Octopussy. Instead of the Soviets hatching a plot to gain greater control in Europe by creating European distrust in the U.S. nuclear presence, the Americans are trying to gain greater control in Europe by instigating a nuclear war between the U.K. and the USSR!
I wonder just how far this will go.
By the way, its good to see you back
.It's kind of like in Tomorrow Never Dies when fake Rupert Murdoch tries to instigate a war between the UK and China for profit. America is now seen as evil as Rupert Murdoch!Holy smoke. It has finally reached the point when the American government is the villain in James Bond movies!
Spookily, I was just watching Octopussy last weekend and thought that its premise would be so butterflied away in Rumsfeldia. Deadeye is practically a mirror of Octopussy. Instead of the Soviets hatching a plot to gain greater control in Europe by creating European distrust in the U.S. nuclear presence, the Americans are trying to gain greater control in Europe by instigating a nuclear war between the U.K. and the USSR!
I wonder just how far this will go.
By the way, its good to see you back
I'd love to see that scene too, as well as the chase on Gibraltar. I could see the running of the bulls scene being somewhat similar to the Il Palio scene at the beginning of Quantum of Solace.
Great update Drew!
HUZZAH! IT LIVES! *dances the Dance of Joy*
An excellent synopsis. I'm not even a fan of James Bond, and yet I want to watch this movie.
An excellent synopsis. I'm not even a fan of James Bond, and yet I want to watch this movie.
Plus, wouldn't the Bond films at least need some kind of American cooperation? They weren't entirely British financed.
Maybe is an european co-production; with a lot of expatriate and the bulk of the holliwood production now being some glorified propaganda piece or at least not very on tune with the taste of the rest of the world, european cinema industry can take a larger piece of the pie.
Also, I'm surprised G.W. Bush wasn't rounded up and imprisoned, in retribution for his brother's role in the abortive coup (did we ever find out what happened to the plotters? I'm assuming Jeb is either dead or in prison, but Powell was hinted at surviving back in Gumbo).
G.W. ran for it and became one of the exiles in Europe.
Jeb is in a Rummydungeon.
Come to think of it, I wonder what effect the recent secessionist movements will have on cinema and the media in general. Although there will no longer be the political stranglehold on Hollywood, the upcoming blockade will make any new Hollywood films inaccessible to the international market. Meanwhile, the United States government will need somewhere else to make its propaganda films - somewhere in the Midwest perhaps.
As for Hawaii, the only immediate effect will be the cancellation of Magnum P.I. (if it is still produced in TTL).
As for Hawaii, the only immediate effect will be the cancellation of Magnum P.I. (if it is still produced in TTL).
ThePest179
Banned
Something that just occurred to me is that it seems unlikely that Rumsfeld would have all of his political enemies committed in a mental asylum, only the more popular or "professional" ones. Could he try to frame people, particularly those of a low income background, of being drug abusers, or failing that, sex offenders?
Not really necessary, honestly without Hollywood competition we can see the euro movie making industry flourish and this will attract investor...and frankly while Europe and URSS are much closer due to the USA being now 'crazyland' i don't see them french-kissing under a tree.
Europe will remain a little wary of the big bear just beyond her border (and nuclear weapon target can be changed pretty quickly) and surely they will monitor/block/obstacolate/hinder too much investment from Russia.
I certainly agree with the European film industry reaching heights unseen since before World War I. However, Soviet oil will certainly reach new heights as well. With Texas and Venezuela running dry, Saudi Arabia in turmoil, Nigeria fighting the PJO, pretty much the only major oil states left are Iran (under the Pahlavis ), Iraq (Soviet client state), Indonesia, and Soviet Central Asia and Azerbaijan.
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