Happy accidents

I was just standing there and doing that thing just by the sea and I couldn't believe that it appealed so much. I really sincerely couldn't believe it. I was really lucky that they liked it so much because I don't, you know, here I stand there with a shell and that's it. That's the fantastic opening. I was only lucky.

1:02:18 · jump to transcript →

I was lucky. Ursula Andrus recalls how she and Dr. No's costume designer, Tessa Pendergast, created the now famous white bikini. When I got there, we had no wardrobe. So we had to get right away the bikini, right away the little dress for the Chinese dress. And it was so strange. There was a girl who had a boutique, and she was also making dresses.

1:02:49 · jump to transcript →

It was pretty good, but I never had any idea at that time that they would either be making them into films or that I would ever be working on them. Dana Brockley remembers the day that her husband, legendary producer Cubby Brockley, and his new partner, Harry Saltzman, sealed their deal for the Bond films with United Artists. It happened to come on our second anniversary.

1:22:07 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

It was this crazy idea. And it stayed. And it stayed. To put his hands on the money inside. Get in there and grab all the money. Sure? You think that carpenter was lucky the way things work out. That he was lucky to go and joust that bank. It wasn't true. His good fortune stopped that day. Because later...

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Tim Lucas

Kinski, also a renowned stage actor, had no respect for that trash, as he called it, and likely thought of himself as a failure at this point in his career. Yet this film turned things around for him forevermore. This was the first film he made that was literally shown everywhere around the world to great success. It was followed by David Lean's Dr. Zhivago, which I believe he actually shot first, but it happened to be released later.

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Tim Lucas

He made some good movies after working with Leone, but there's no question he was never better than he was in Leone's hands. Thanks to this film in particular, he made such a global impression that echoes of his character not only continued to resonate through his own later work, but he also became the model for the wonderful character Elliot Belt in the French Lucky Luke comic strips by René Gauchini and Morris. It's available in English now. Look for Lucky Luke, Volume 26, The Bounty Hunter.

1:45:24 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

may have been inspired by Mario Monicelli's 1959 film The Great War, which also happened to be a United Artists release. In brief, The Great War is a film starring Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman as two rogues conscripted into the Italian army in 1916 at the height of the Austrian-Italian conflict of the First World War.

1:01:50 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

Unfortunately, while standing nearby and giving some last-minute instructions to a member of the Spanish camera unit, Di Giacomo happened to use the word VI in another context, and this captain overheard him, and then this happened. Fortunately, a couple or a few of the other camera units happened to be already rolling.

2:12:31 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

It all greatly evokes the shattered landscape of Italy as it stood, for better or worse, when Leone was yet a young man contemplating his future. He has peopled it with the heroes of a more innocent time and made them as crafty as they need to be to live even so little as another year. And here he gives us a powerful vista of the many who were not so lucky, the witnesses of this final showdown, death multiplied around the circle of the gold doubloon.

2:20:24 · jump to transcript →

you know, people in the adult film business, softcore, hardcore, anything, they did a fabulous, lengthy interview about whatever happened to Pat Barrington. And it was pretty good and pretty sad. And then a couple of weeks later, it was gone from the site. I didn't read an explanation. I mean, maybe they did, but I don't know whether... So I don't want to quote from anything, really, because I don't know what's really true and what isn't, okay? But apparently...

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Now, Apostolof says this is a real skeleton. That's what he told me. Yeah. He's got some nice camera work on this. Well, I think... I think Caramico knew his stuff. You know, what's interesting about Caramico, he did all these number of low-budget films. Guess what happened to Count Dracula? Stuff on that level. And then, years later, he's shooting Dallas. He became a big TV DP. You know? He's passed away now, but...

1:08:27 · jump to transcript →