The past couple weeks at work have been pretty slow for the most part. I’ve had some books to deliver but I’ve had several days where I’ve either gotten all of my work done pretty early or I’ve come into work in the morning with nothing there for me to do. Scott, the guy I share an office with, has had a similarly tedious time with his job during that time. Predictably, this has lead to even more extended pop culture conversations than we usually have in a given week, and several visits to wikipedia whenever we’ve brought up an obscure movie one of us barely remembers, or a random actor who came up in a conversation. Yesterday I mentioned Ryan O’Neal after a story Scott told me – which involved him buying lunch from Quizno’s and then absent-mindedly walking out with chips and a drink when he’d only ordered a sandwich – reminded me of a scene in What’s Up Doc?, a 1972 movie that starred O’Neal and a very young Barbara Streisand. Scott couldn’t remember who O’Neal was, so he read a bit from his wikipedia page, which detailed the various domestic disputes he and his sons have gotten into. This was quite hilarious in a most unintentional way.
Later in the day, Scott ended up on the wikipedia page of British actor Roger Moore, or rather Sir Roger Moore, I should say (he was knighted 5 years ago). One of the pictures on that page seemed to tell us more about his altruism (or possible lack thereof) than he might want people to know. In the picture, which was taken on his 80th birthday just over a year ago, Moore is wearing a very nice grey suit and is holding something in each hand. If you zoom in on the photo (see below) you can see a $1 bill in his left hand, which was presumably drawn from the huge roll of money in his right hand, which he seems to be putting back in his pocket.
The photo is cropped a bit and even in the full picture you can’t see the entire context of the photo, but in looking at it Scott and I guessed that he had the bill out as a tip for someone. I mean, what else would he possibly be doing with a $1 bill? Getting a Cherry Coke or a Snickers from a machine perhaps? If he was intending to give that as a tip, then he’s either a lousy tipper or he’s fallen on hard times. It’s an amusing photo to see; a wealthy movie star who has been a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for five years wearing an expensive three-piece suit and holding a large roll of cash in one hand and a solitary Washington in the other. Is our economy that bad? Is Sir Roger Moore reaching the point where he can only afford to give $1 tips to valets or bellhops?
If the U.S. government is going to designate tens of billions of dollars for bailouts of large corporations like A.I.G., Bear Stearns, and General Motors (that last one hasn’t happened yet, but the liberal union-friendly Democrats in Congress want it to) because those are institutions which are – we are told – vital and “too big to fail”, then surely a bailout for Sir Roger Moore should be in order. Sure he’s British and is most famous for playing two iconic British characters (James Bond and Simon Templar), but the James Bond series of movies have been vital to the long-term financial success of landmark American film studio United Artists (started in 1919) and its parent company MGM Studios (founded in 1924), and Roger Moore, having played Bond in seven movies, is a man inextricably linked to that character and that series. We can’t have him in such a state, as it’s not just him who could be hurt, but also the James Bond image and the studios who produce his celluloid exploits. Stated plainly: he is just too big to fail (and if you saw Moore’s last turn as James Bond in A View To A Kill, then you know that sentence could have multiple meanings). We need to get the Senate Appropriations Committee working on this right away.
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Speaking of Bond, the 22nd James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, will be released tomorrow and I’ve already bought my ticket. I’m going with a small group from church, and the ringleader who sent out the email asked that all the men going wear a suit and tie. I don’t have a proper suit coat at my apartment so I may have to settle for my dark jacket. The previous Bond film, 2006’s Casino Royale, was the first one of the series that I watched in the theater, and only the second one that I’d seen period (the first was Moore’s first Bond film, Live and Let Die). So needless to say, I’m not a huge aficionado of the series, but I really enjoyed Casino Royale, which was light years above anything Roger Moore did with the series.
I’m hoping the new movie will be just as good, though my expectations have been somewhat muted after I read a review in this week’s Dallas Observer in which the writer (Robert Wilonsky) praised Casino Royale before calling Quantum of Solace “easily one of the worst” films in the series. For much of his stated criticism of the movie and its supposed failures, he blames director Marc Forster, who he thinks was in over his head helming a James Bond movie when his “biggest action sequence to date involved Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton getting it on” in 2001’s Monster’s Ball (which is a terrible choice for a first movie to watch with a girl, I might add). It’s a clever line, though only if you forget the more visually rich sequences in such Forster-directed movies as Finding Neverland and Stranger Than Fiction, or last year’s adaptation of The Kite Runner for that matter. Mocking Forster’s filmography is a low blow when other directors who worked with the Bond franchise had similarly thin résumés in the area of action filmmaking. Before John Glen directed 1981’s For Your Eyes Only (the first of five Bond movies he would direct), his sole directorial credit was one episode of the TV series “Man in a Suitcase” (which aired 30 episodes in its only season, which ran from 1967 to 1968). 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (which is widely regarded as one of the best entries in the franchise) was Peter Hunt’s directorial debut, though in his case he had worked as a film editor for several years (and four previous Bond films) before his first turn in the director’s chair.
So that’s what’s on tap for tomorrow evening. Traffic can be bad around here so I’ll probably go to the theater straight from work. My brother called while I was writing this and told me he had tomorrow off from work and might drive up here to watch the movie with the rest of us. When I mentioned the suit and tie requirement, he seemed unfazed, which is odd because he’s rarely seen in something so formal as khaki pants, let alone a suit and tie. So we’ll see how that goes.
Hope everyone else has a great weekend.
