Some Folks, You Just Can’t Reach.

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After a bit of a vacation – my wife insists on calling it “time in lock-up” – I’ve been vexed about what to use as a subject. More political scandals have popped than potential fathers for Anna Nicole’s baby. In the ADHD world of American politics, the Senate and House have passed differing resolutions to ramp down the war in Iraq; apparently because they never traded business card last January and all the while, the Department of Justice is trying to get past its case of recto-cranial insertion. China continues to ban the crap out of me, firing me down a hole of teh internets obscurity…buried alive…buried alive…

KHAAAAAN!!

Instead, because it’s really starting to annoy me, I want to take a bite out of the meat-and-cheese-heads at danielcraigisnotbond.com.

That’s right Jim, that’s my beef. Only here will you find hard-hitting commentary on a story that ran its course about a year ago – oh yeah baby, I’m the rusty spot on the cutting edge.

For those Luddites among you who do not know this saga, the Daniel Craig is Not Bond people are a group of chronic soreheads who became shrill like frightened schoolgirls when Sony and Eon fired Pierce Brosnan for Daniel Craig. They claimed that he could not play the part because he is blond, too short and (my personal favorite) he looks like a boxer. Oh yeah, he’s really blond.

Daniel Craig, they whine, is not sufficiently suave and will kill the legendary secret agent. He is, they bleat, going to destroy the legacy of Ian Fleming and the 007-film franchise because he is not sufficiently in line with the casting of Sean Connery, Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.

If I boil this down to its barest parts, this sounds a lot like my 3 year-old when she wants the pink toothpaste but is forced to use the blue toothpaste.

I’m sure that its been pointed out to these gas bags that in Ian Fleming’s mind, Sean Connery was also entirely inappropriate for the role. Connery was too big, Fleming noted and he also took exception with Connery for being overly muscular (he looked like a body-builder, after all) and , like Craig, not sufficiently suave. Further, as a keen observer of the human condition, Fleming also noted that Connery was a native of Scotland and upon further investigation, this was not the same place as England at all.

Fleming’s first choice was apparently David Niven. Niven was a fine actor as well as a decorated veteran of the Second World War and by all accounts a delightful man. But as Bond, I think that Niven’s casting would have required that the main villain of Doctor No be changed from a psycho with metal hands to a corrupt but insecure Soho banker.

In the climax of the film, Bond would wither Loans Assessor No into mush as he repeatedly says witty things in between martinis in a flurry of pulse pounding after-dinner chat. His ego shredded by the merciless onslaught of British sarcasm and received pronunciation, Loan Assessor No turns himself in to the authorities while Bond remains comfortably seated in order to aid digestion.

When the film was released, Fleming was so impressed with the lump of Scottish muscle that he retconned Bond’s history to include Highland Scots in the family tree.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

Casino Royale, with Daniel Craig as James Bond, was among the best-reviewed Bond films of all time and it was also either first or second best in the history of the franchise at the box office. Sadly, it did lack the campy aspects of previous films;

1. Super-sexualized leading ladies: I can’t imagine how we outgrew lines like; “Good evening Mister Bond, my name Professor Velvet Manlicker”. The low in this was casting Denise Richards as a hot pants-wearing nuclear physicist named Christmas Jones who spawned one of the worst lines in the history of all possible universes when it was noted that Bond thought that “Christmas only comes once a year…”

Yes, let’s do our best to preserve that caliber of film-making.

2. High-tech gadgets; Casino Royale was bereft of wristwatches that folded out to reveal an Aegis-class destroyer. The most advanced piece of technology in the film was whatever they used to keep Caterina Murino from flopping out of her bikini while riding a horse.

3. Black hair.

Personally, I was pleased that they took the material a little more seriously for a change and hired a guy who looked like he could actually throw a punch.

When Michael Keaton was cast as Batman with Jack Nicholson as the Joker, purists shriveled. Ditto for when Star Trek was rebooted with a bald Englishman or when that other guy took over for Jesus after the crucifixion.

They were wrong too – welcome to the club.

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