SHAKIN' NOT STIRRED: So there's a James Bond musical in the works with book by novelist Dave Clarke and music and lyrics by country composer Jay Henry Weisz (neither of which mean anything to me, but I'm not a musical guy).
So how do you approach this? As a Roger Moore-style romp with puns and in-jokes and fourth-wall breaking? As a dark and brooding serious Daniel Craig? As reference to the whole body of work? I don't much like Roger Moore's James Bond (but see The Spy Who Loved Me and For Your Eyes Only), but that style seems suited to the stage.
Any suggested numbers? If there's not a chorus line of Bond girls dancing to a number called "Shakin' Not Stirred", I'm going to very disappointed.
1) I think you start with the premise that Bond himself doesn't sing. Maybe he gets a patter number, but the lead's songs are all about exposing his inner life - and no one should care about Bond's inner life. (If Bond is singing, you don't really have a Bond musical, you have a Matt Helm musical - which sounds like a fantastic idea, actually.)
ReplyDelete2) Make the Bond girl a nightclub singer. That gives you 2-3 diegetic songs. (And if they can be licensed, they should be Bond movie themes - Nobody Does it Better and You Only Live Twice would probably work best.
3) Set it in the '60s. The enemy should be SPECTRE or possibly even SMERSH. Not too winky - you don't want it too Matt Helms-y or worse, Austin Powers-ish.
4) If you don't go to Intermission with Bond suspended over a shark tank or the equivalent, something is very wrong.
5) The mission is a mission - a dossier Bond has been assigned to which he has no personal connection and which is not a plot to strike at MI-6 itself.
I'd approach it like "Action Movie: The Play" and just add songs. Though you'd probably end up with something closer to "Archer: The Musical" instead of "Bond: The Musical."
ReplyDeleteI cannot tell you how tired I am of spy movies where the enemy is -- SURPRISE!!! -- forces within the agency itself. That's all M:I movies, I think. How about an external enemy? Crazy, I know.
ReplyDelete(It wasn't a great movie, by the Chris Pine Jack Ryan film from a couple of years ago had a fantastic plot twist: the enemy was who you thought the enemy was)