The Backstory:
The Man with the Golden Gun
“Profile of a Misspent Youth”
“What to paint?”…This artistic conundrum happens a lot with Bond…even after 5 read and rereads of the novel, copious note taking and numerous pencil sketches in my notebook…I was still at a loss. All the visual images that I painstakenly noted down - with page references and quotes - all seemed cliché and obvious. My SOP (standard operating procedure) involves lists and categories: cars; guns; cigarettes; liquor; food; accessories; clothing; foliage; animals; direct quotes; media references; signage…you name it…and I filled them up with this story. It was evidentiary overload. So I started all over again from scratch. I tried to ignore elements that I had previously referenced, and tried to let my mind run free. Needless to say, it’s easier said than done…but then there was this flash…the imagery really needed to be about Scaramanga and the whys and wherefores of his criminal behavior.Chapter Three - ‘Pistols’ Scaramanga - provided numerous clues as well as the working title of the painting. We find M reading the top secret dossier on Scaramanga with a profile of his past and present activities as a hitman for Castro, the Mob, and the KGB. The paragraph on ‘Origins’ was the clincher, and I could see yet another vintage poster in the works - this one an imagined version in Spanish that Scaramanga’s father ‘might have’ produced to advertise his Travelling Circus in Catalan and Trieste, and highlight the roles in which ‘Pistols’ spent - or misspent - his youth. The section, ‘Motivation’ also supplied more visual potential with the incident that transformed Scaramanga from a misguided circus performer into a cold-blooded assassin. I could envision images on the poster of Scaramanga in his role as a trick shot artist with his golden gun and as a Mahout - in “gorgeous turban and Indian robes” who rode the elephant “Max” about the ring. The death of Max at the hands of the local police, and the subsequent shooting of the police officer by Scaramanga was the catalyst that “transformed Scaramanga into the most vicious gunman of recent years.” The inclusion of Max the elephant was a must, and, since a circus really isn’t a circus unless there are lions, an image of the King of Beasts was de rigeur. Plus, a certain balance in design and imagery is crucial, so Leo El Rey filled the bill.Because Scaramanga was working with the Cuban Secret Police - the DSS - visual references of Cuba seemed to go hand-in-hand with other elements that are mentioned in the book - so I included an expensive leather cigar case with the Cuban flag - a case, incidently, that I bought some months ago “on a whim.” Cuban cigars that I brought back from my last trip to the UK gave me the perfect props to go with the case. My dad’s old Ronson lighter with Scaramanga’s initials engraved on the side seemed highly appropriate, as did the image of the zaftig Cuban girl - “Havana’s Finest” indeed!Scaramanga travelled on a Cuban Diplomatic Passport, so research provided me with a vintage image that could be the platform for ‘things’ Jamaican to rest upon - since all the action of the story takes place in Jamaica. Fleming is well known for introducing local colour into his stories, and he mentions numerous flora and fauna, including a Gekko lizard, lignum vitae trees with their blue blossoms, pink bougainvilla and yellow canna lilies. I enjoy having floral elements to soften up some of the hard edged imagery, so all three were included in the painting, and the Gekko was a perfect creature to be hungering for the Chopping Fly on the Cuban passport. And peanuts…which elephants don’t like nor eat…but patrons to the Circus love to buy.The sign for 3 1/2 Love Lane and the matchbook of the Thunderbird Hotel represent the beginning and the end of Scaramanga’s relationship with Bond. A relationship that had M wondering if he had just signed James Bond’s death warrant.

The Backstory:
Live & Let Die
“Harlen - a Mecca for Voodoo, Jazz & Jive”
A writer is always looking for some literary device to give their characters their own “voice” as well as an identity that will differentiate them from the other characters in the book. Ian Fleming, I believe, used regional and ethnic ‘patois’ to achieve that literary goal. His own linguistic abilities in French and German allowed him to write scenes or describe elements in the books in those languages with a degree of authenticity and accuracy, perhaps unparalleled at the time. No one questioned his motive in that regard. Foreign villians spoke English with scrambled syntax, punctuated with phrases in their own language. Bond could respond in their own tongue, and frequently used that ability to overcome suspicion, as well as to impress, especially if his “opposite number” was a woman. Regional dialects and patois were used to great effect in Fleming’s books - they were an entertaining element, and supplied local colour to a scene. Italian mobsters and hitmen, Russian assassins, Nazi sympathizers, Japanese criminals and cops - everyone was distinguished by the way they spoke. Live & Let Die is no different - dialects and patois are applied liberally throughout the book. Bond’s Jamaican assistant, Quarrel, spoke with his local Island patois. Mr. Big’s henchmen at Ourobouros Worm & Bait Shippers spoke like one imagined a henchmen would: brief, slangy, puncutated with abuse and filled with curse words. The cabbies spoke like a visitor to New York would imagine a NY City cabby spoke: terse, critical and rude. The NY cops spoke in Brooklynese: dropping endings on words and tossing curse words around liberally. Mr. Big, alone, spoke in an intellectually superior manner - to distinguish him from his fear-filled workers and to show him to be a formidable opponent to Bond. Bond and Leiter’s excursion into the depths of Harlem and the night club and jazz scene is an example where discretion is thrown to the wind and an attempt at humour is paramount - and where Fleming is giving his creative exercise full reign - to capture the literary voice of the denizens of this dark chapter. To say this would be considered politically incorrect these days is an understatement, yet many writers today employ the same verbal tactics, and literary notables of the past, almost too many to mention, have done the same.As an artist, I am always looking for some visual device to create a distinctive and alternate universe to the cliché-ridden films adapted from the books. Live & Let Die was a tough cookie. But the element in the book that stood out to me - and one that most likely would never make it to the film world, was when Leiter was describing to Bond the music born and bred in Harlem at the Savoy Ballroom - “Every big American band you’ve ever heard of is proud that it once played here - Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Noble, Sissle, Fletcher Henderson. It’s the Mecca of Jazz and Jive.” Leiter mentions Smalls Paradise: “Much the same as this, but not quite in the same class.”That did it. I now had the working title of the painting - “A Mecca of Jazz and Jive.” As a kid starting to play the trumpet in the third grade and continuing all the way through College, I knew what I had to paint. I found promotional posters from the late 40’s and 50’s of the Duke, Louis Armstrong and Small’s Paradise, and using opaque gouache, tried to capture them as closely as possible. I have always loved big band music and Louis is one of my favorite trumpet players of all time, so my own (much unplayed these days) trumpet would take a premier place in the layout. The counterpoint to the beauty of the music would be the horrifying cult of Voodoo, used by Mr. Big to achieve his evil aims. M tells Bond to read Patrick Fermor’s book on Voodoo, “The Traveller’s Tree” - so I added that to my list of items to paint. Solitaire gives Bond numerous insights into the cult and the description of Mr. Big offers more to the reader (and artist). I chose the pair of lemon yellow gloves that lay at the base of Lord Samedi’s iconic throne of cross and top hat, and added two white chicken feathers for visual counterpoint. To the end of the white ivory whip used by Mr. Big to chastize Solitaire, I added the single Russian letter that stands for SCH, the first letter of Spion - a spy - that was carved into Bond’s hand in Diamonds are Forever. The addition of these elements inspired me to add Voodoo to the title of the painting - which now became “A Mecca of Voodoo, Jazz and Jive.”The world of boxing was discussed while Bond and Leiter were at Sugar Ray’s - the eponymously named bar on Seventh Avenue and 123rd Street - where the walls were covered with photos of Sugar Ray Robinson, at the time one of the world’s great boxers. That demanded an autographed photo of Sugar Ray, as a souvenir for Leiter. When Bond and Leiter finally made it to Mr. Big’s bar - aptly named The Boneyard - there the “sour-sweet smell” of marijuana “rocked them as they pushed through the heavy curtains inside the swing door.” Leiter tells Bond, “Most of the real hep-cats smoke reefers.” So a leaf cluster of the ‘green leafy substance’ made its way to the layout…The M.O. of Mr. Big’s operation was smuggling gold coins from Captain Morgan’s treasure trove in Jamaica, slipping them into Harlem, and selling them to help fund SMERSH’s spying campaign in the US - so I tossed a few of them into the picture. Perfume - especially expensive ‘French Perfum’ - is de rigeur for the Bond ladies, and Solitaire’s favorite was Balmain’s Vent Vert. While she was dabbing that luxe perfum on herself, Bond was smoking “three packs a day” of his favorite brand of US cigarettes - Chesterfield’s. I short-changed Jamaica in this painting, despite all of the final action taking place there, so two images from Jamaica were fitted into the scene…the emerald-colored hummingbird and the Hibiscus…both mentioned in the last chapter, “Passionate Leave.”Wrapping up the elements of the painting is the addition of the Chopping Fly - my nod of artistic respect to one of Fleming’s great book cover illustrators, Richard Chopping.

The Backstory:
Octopussy
“Not So Tickety-Boo…Death, Instead of Cartier”
Put yourselves in the shoes of Major Dexter Smythe, Royal Marines (Retired).
You’re living the life of luxury off stolen Nazi WW2 gold bars by selling bits of them to Chinese import/export merchants. You live on the island of Jamaica in a small villa on the ocean. You lose money gambling at poker at the Queen’s Club on the Island. You are a member of the prestigious Prince’s Club and have an exclusive entrée to the Government House. Yet you look with scorn upon the “international riff-raff” with whom you must consort for company. You are addicted to whisky, cigarettes, barbiturates, Secconal, Panadols, and brandy with ginger ale. Your heart is so bad that TNT pills are the only thing keeping you from having a massive coronary thrombosis.
You dream of the little things in a luxurious life…Bentleys, Monte Carlo, penthouse flats, Cartier watches, champagne, caviar, and a new set of Henry Cotton golf irons.
You know…the “little things” that wealth can bring you.
…If your past never catches up with you…
Then into your life walks someone from the British Ministry of Defense…a tall man in a dark-blue tropical suit. The name’s Bond…James Bond. And all your dreams and plans and secrets come crashing down to reality.
The man knows almost everything about you and your wartime past. Where you served. Who you killed. What you stole. What gun you used. And where you sell your stolen Nazi gold…
It all came down to the man you killed on the edge of a cravasse near the Austrian mountaineer’s refuge on the slopes of the Kaiser Mountains…the man was the guide you hired to lead you to the gold bars hidden in a cairn a few yards from the hut. A treasure covered by stones and wrapped up in an old Wehrmacht ammunition box…
The man was James Bond’s ski instructor when he was a young boy…a father to Bond when he needed one the most. So the death and killing was personal.
You have a choice. Turn yourself in to the Government and confess your crimes. Or take the coward’s way out. Bond gave him an option: “It’ll be about a week before they send someone out to bring you home” he said.
It was the old version of leaving the guilty officer alone with his revolver…
So what would you do?
Smythe went to the beach and with his diving gear, looked for a Scorpion fish to spear and feed to his favorite octopus - “Pussy.” It was a scientific experiment. Could an octopus eat a poisonous fish and survive?
It was a scientific experiment that went wrong. Very wrong.
The scorpion fish lunged up from the sea bed and with it’s poison-tipped spines pierced Smythe’s chest. “You got me, you bastard! By God, you got me!” Smythe screamed into his Pirelli mask…
Smythe had no more than fifteen minutes left to live. Fifteen minutes of hideous agony.
But his Pussy was there…waiting for him, with tentacles outstretched…waiting to shake his hand…and she did. Dragging Smythe quietly, relentlessly, downwards, as he thrashed with convulsions until he lost consciousness…
Smythe took the easy way out - but not by choice. What would you do?
For my painting of Octopussy, I chose to include those sea creatures that Smythe called his “People”…he loved them and believed they reciprocated his affections.
Reef swimmers, like Smythe, avoided the three most dangerous denizens of the deep: the Scorpion fish, the shark and the barracuda - and of the three the Scorpion fish was the most deadly. So I included the fish Smythe speared on his trident, and the barracuda, watching hungrily over the scene.
…artistic license allows the inclusion of some fish named in the story, and some not. There are two bright red Jewel fish with whitish spots, a Butterfly fish with orange stripes, an iridescent indigo blue Hamlet fish, and a Cow fish - chosen because it added a humerous visual to an otherwise grim scenario.
…de rigueur is the octopus that drowned Smythe - his tentacles grabbing the Pirelli mask and wrapping around the Henry Cotton golf club that represents a broken token to Smythe’s shattered dreams.
…the Cartier Tank watch became a “sank watch” that swirls to the bottom in glints of black leather, gold and sapphire cabochon.
…I couldn’t find a Pirelli full-face mask of the period, so I had to adopt and adapt one and gave it the Pirelli logo on the face mask glass - a logical placement that I saw on other diving masks.
…and the stolen Nazi gold bars, of course.
The only thing I was forced to leave out? The Chopping fly - my usual visual tribute to the Master of the Bond book covers.

The Backstory :
Risico
”Flick Knives & Florians”
In creating imagery for this painting, it seemed logical that a Venice canal scene should dominate the painting. A search in my photo archives from a Venice trip I made in 2012 produced a combination of images that I turned into a single visual, forcing the perspective to draw the eye toward the distant church that was nearby where I stayed - the Madonna della Orto.
Buildings in Venice can be painted the most vibrant of colours, so I tried to capture that in the buildings lining the sides of the canal. Because architecture is so important in Venice, I saw in my minds’ eye, a stone arch and window that would act as the foreground tableau for some of the food Bond was served by Colombo and Kristatos, as well as his venture into Café Florian for an Americano. Whilst there he would no doubt enjoy the unbiquitous cornetto - the Italian croissant - while listening to “French culture-snobs” discuss the the faults of the facade of St. Mark’s Square…”
Bond also impulsively buys a postcard for his secretary - who at the time of the writing would have been Loelia Ponsonby - so the postcard shows up on the table.
The Dove and the King’s Medal represent Enrico Colombo: the good guy. The stone lintel at the top with the grotesque face and pair of switchblade knives (flick knives, in the story) represent Kristatos and the “dark side” of the smuggling operation. The poppy flowers and pods are obvious: they are the source for the Russian-supplied opium that Kristatos would convert to heroin.
And last but not least, is my “tip of the hat” to Richard Chopping: his fly is perched near the food, as one would expect. (A big thanks to Tom Cull for his suggestion of placement.)
As Fleming wrote and summed up the participants of the operation, Colombo’s men “all had lugers, carried under the jersey inside the trouser-band, and flick knives in the pocket. It struck Bond that Colombo had made a good life for himself - a life of adventure and thrill and risk, It was a criminal life - a running fight with the currency laws, the State tobacco monopoly, the Customs, the police - but there was a whiff of adolescent rascality in the air which somehow changed the colour of the crime from black to white - or at least to grey.”
A whiff of adolescent rascality, indeed! We should all take a whiff of that on occasion.
A sentence like the above is one of the real pleasures of Ian Fleming’s writing. We are constantly finding those not-infrequent poetic turns of phrase that give the reader a real insight into Fleming’s predilections and preferences, and how he wove them into the adventures of his most famous character, James Bond. Because of the descriptive nature of the writing and the secondary relevance to the “action” plot that most readers focus on, these evocative outliers in the story are frequently overlooked or ignored completely. Such is the case generally between the movies and the books. Risico is one of those short stories that apparently doesn’t “make it” as a action movie. As a short story, however, it is brilliantly written, conceived and executed. It’s tight narrative, frequent use of the local patois of the Italian characters, exotic locales, and Fleming’s excellent prose and ability to write gives the reader - and artist - those detailed visuals that we all love.
The Hollywood writers and production houses must have thought differently - they borrowed bits from the story, mostly characters and their unique names, to add as filler to whatever was their current film. Because of the brevity of the short-story plot, they combined those “bits” with other elements whenever it suited their fancy.
In 1981 when EON productions made For Your Eyes Only they vivisected the novel of the same name and added “color” from Live and Let Die, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Risico. They adopted the names of the smugglers from Risico who were Italians, and turned them into Greeks: Enrico Colombo became Milos; Kristatos the Drug kingpin became Aris Kristatos; and Lisl Braun, the “luxus whore” of Colombo, became a Countess by the name of Lisl von Schaff. Beyond that, nothing from the short story Risico makes its way into the film. The basis for FYEO the movie - discovering secret Missile Command Systems - had nothing to do with the original For Your Eyes Only either, nor the other novels, and it had nothing at all to do with the plot of Risico. Risico was about Bond stopping by any means the smuggling of heroin into the UK via Italy and Russia. Perhaps it was to do with the times - technology and space were much more interesting than the mundane and ordinary world of the narcotics smuggler.
As interesting as the names of the characters were, even more so to me, were the places Bond travelled to, the cafés and restaurants in which he ate, the humorous depiction of train travel in Italy, and the mesmerizing and magical verbal visualization of what it was like to arrive in Venice for the first time - from outside the city - to the Grand Canal and train depot.
As readers of Literary007 will know, the plot of Risico has Bond meeting up with double agent Kristatos at a restaurant in Rome owned by Enrico “The Dove” Colombo, the ruthless drug kingpin who reputedly smuggled heroin into England…there Bond engages in his second favorite past time - eating and drinking. On the menu are fresh figs, melon with proscuitto, Tagliatelli Verdi, Chianti and coffee - while armed with two hundred thousand pounds to pay Kristatos for information leading to the whereabouts of Colombo.
In Venice, Bond pretends to be a wealthy writer, to try and influence anyone whom he met…
But first let us read what Fleming wrote about travelling to Venice by train: “The Laguna is a smart, streamlined affair that looks and sounds more luxurious than it is. The seats were made for small Italians and the restaurant car staff suffer from the disease that that afflicts their brethren in the great trains all over the world - a geniune loathing for the modern traveller and particularly for the foreigner…” Bond had a gangway seat over the axles, and “he kept his eyes inside the train, reading a jerking book, spilled Chianti over the tablecloth and shifted his long, aching legs and cursed the Ferrovie Italiane dello Stato.”
But when Bond arrives in Venice, this sentence hypnotized me as a reader and artist: “But at last there was Mestre and the dead straight finger of rail across the eighteenth century aquatint into Venice. Then came the unfailing shock of the beauty that never betrays and the soft swaying progress down the Grand Canal into a blood-red sunset, and the extreme pleasure - so it seemed - of the Gritti Palace…”
The Risico text continues with Bond throwing 1000 lira notes around the city - “like leaves in Vallombrosa” and seeking out food and drink at places like Harry’s Bar and Café Florian. Bond - as he resumes his search for the whereabouts of the smuggler, Colombo - strolls through the “backstreets” of Venice, visits churches to try to “uncover a tail,” and then goes to Café Florian for an Americano coffee.
The real action in the story begins with a prearranged meeting in Venice with Lisl Baum, the result of a not-so-chance meeting in Rome set up by Kristatos. The rendezvous is disrupted by Colombo’s henchmen. Bond is captured, knocked out and later on board Colombo’s ship, questioned about his motives. Colombo shares food with Bond as a peace offering; on the menu are whisky, smoked Provolone, sausage from Bologna, olives, and fresh figs. Bond is convinced Colombo is the “good guy”- who worked for the English and Italian Resistance in the war and received the King’s Medal for his efforts. He realizes that it was, in fact, Kristatos - playing “the biggest double game” - to keep the protection of the US and to throw the British an innocent victim. Colombo convinces Bond to help sabotage Kristatos’ shipment of Russian-supplied raw opium, fresh from the poppy fields of Albania and the Caucasus. In the process Bond kills Kristatos, saves Colombo’s life, and thus ends the smuggling operation. As a reward, Colombo “gives” Lisl to Bond…to indulge in his "favorite past time…"