Die Another Day novelization

[FormerBondFan]

Does anyone here have the novelization of Die Another Day?

[James]

No, I don't. Is it better than the film script? I presume the sillier gags were taken out.

[Nick]

dcistheantichrist said:

Does anyone here have the novelization of Die Another Day?

Who do they get to write those? Is it Benson?

[Kadov]

nick said:

dcistheantichrist said:

Does anyone here have the novelization of Die Another Day?

Who do they get to write those? Is it Benson?

It is indeed Raymond Benson who wrote the novelization (I happen to have a copy).

james said:

Is it better than the film script? I presume the sillier gags were taken out.

It's been a while since I looked at it (I'm not fond of Benson as a fiction writer and his Bond novels were dreadful, low quality stuff as if written for kids). From what I recall, the novelization was your basic movie tie-in book, a prose version of the script. I'll pull it off the shelf and give it a look so I can provide specifics.

[alex]

kadov said:

nick said:

Who do they get to write those? Is it Benson?

It is indeed Raymond Benson who wrote the novelization (I happen to have a copy).

james said:

Is it better than the film script? I presume the sillier gags were taken out.

It's been a while since I looked at it (I'm not fond of Benson as a fiction writer and his Bond novels were dreadful, low quality stuff as if written for kids). From what I recall, the novelization was your basic movie tie-in book, a prose version of the script. I'll pull it off the shelf and give it a look so I can provide specifics.

I don't really bother with novelizations. I wonder if the writer has much scope to change things if he doesn't like the screenplay he's working from.

[Kadov]

kadov said:

nick said:

Who do they get to write those? Is it Benson?

It is indeed Raymond Benson who wrote the novelization (I happen to have a copy).

james said:

Is it better than the film script? I presume the sillier gags were taken out.

It's been a while since I looked at it (I'm not fond of Benson as a fiction writer and his Bond novels were dreadful, low quality stuff as if written for kids). From what I recall, the novelization was your basic movie tie-in book, a prose version of the script. I'll pull it off the shelf and give it a look so I can provide specifics.

Just glanced through the novelization. It contains the major set pieces of the film, starting with the surfing sequence. Benson does expand the Asian sequence because he has Bond spending some time in South Korea, after escaping from M, before he makes it to Hong Kong. This part could have been in an early draft of the script but may have been dropped from the final shooting script.

In Cuba, Bond's encounter with Jinx is essentially verbatim with the film's dialog. The London sequence begins, just as in the film, with Gustav Graves parachuting down to a horde of journalists and TV newscasters. "Verity," the Madonna character, does appear in The Blades Club, along with her flirtatious exchange of dialog with Bond.

Bond meets M in the abandoned underground station. Of course, the Q scene and the invisible car are kept intact. Just as in the film, Bond shoots the car's manual into pieces.

The Ice Palace sequence? Check. Jinx captured and questioned by Zao? Check. How about her great dialog? Well, it's slightly different:

"Who sent you?" Zao asked.
"Your mother. She's very disappointed in you."

I think in the film she says, "Your mama," whether you care or not.

Then Bond is doing the wind-surfing thingie, and the car chase with Zao unfolds as Bond tries to make it back to the Ice Palace. Yeah, I'd say the book basically follows the film and includes some, if not all, the gags.

[Kadov]

alex said:

I don't really bother with novelizations.

That's what I should be doing. But I get these novelizations anyway, because I'm really a fan of the books (the Fleming ones), and my collection of Bondian books somehow feels incomplete without these novelizations.

alex said:

I wonder if the writer has much scope to change things if he doesn't like the screenplay he's working from.

Alex, I remember reading an interview of John Gardner in one of those Graham Rye publications of the James Bond 007 Fan Club. Gardner mentioned that, when writing novelizations, he tries to fill gaps in sequences. For example, in Licence To Kill, he includes a sequence where Bond meets up with a married woman (his mistress) after the action set piece where he skies behind the plane, escapes with Sanchez's money, and commandeers the plane. Bond then hooks up with his mistress because he needs a safe refuge and some time to organize his next plan of attack in Isthmus. Gardner explained that film narrative is different--you can have gaps, and the editing can suggest a visual cue that something off screen has happened. But in a novel, those kinds of gaps are awkward. From that interview, he also suggested that the novelization of Licence To Kill was difficult to write because the script kept changing.

[Remo]

Does the Bond writer have to sign a deal to write the movie tie-in? It sounds like a real chore.

[Kadov]

remo said:

Does the Bond writer have to sign a deal to write the movie tie-in? It sounds like a real chore.

It's essentially treated as a separate project, a separate deal. It was Cubby Broccoli who suggested that John Gardner write the novelization to LTK. It became a side project in addition to the regular Bond novels that Gardner was writing. Here's what Gardner had to say when he was interviewed by Raymond Benson:

"I'm not going to do another. I was asked to do it. We [Gardner and Glidrose] felt it was a gesture of goodwill to Cubby. Cubby approached us.... This was a one-off idea, and I thought it might be fun. It wasn't. I did it, but I wouldn't want to do it again.... I started working on it and the screenplay changed daily. It drove me mad. I also had to pad out the book a bit. There are huge jumps in the screenplay, which you can do on screen; but with a book you need to explain things. So I had to add a lot to explain how Bond got from here to there, that sort of thing."

This is from 007 Magazine, October 1995. Note how he states that he won't do another novelization again after LTK. Yet he ended up doing one for GE. I remember reading another interview where he states that he had mounting hospital bills, so he probably just whipped out the GE novelization out of pure necessity.

[FormerBondFan]

Is the novelization a little more realistic than the movie?

[Jake]

Oct 13, 2008 13:28:18 GMT -5 FormerBondFan said:

Is the novelization a little more realistic than the movie?

I would guess so. ;D

[Stockslivevan]

I took a glance at a Benson novel (non-Bond) and from what I've read, totally unimaginative. This is how it is:

"He walks into the door, closes it and sits on a chair and thinks"

You're never told what the door, room or chair looks like, what it feels like, ect.

However, this isn't the reason I'm not reading any non-Fleming Bonds, I'm just simply not interested. I say the truest Bond is in Fleming's books, nothing could ever come close. Fleming just has that characteristic that's hard to emulate and I hear Sebastian Falks' attempt at writing "as Ian Fleming" failed.

[Gambit]

Benson was more of a fan than an author. He always gave the impression of being out of his depth.

[harrypalmer]

I've read numerous Bond related comments from fans in various places in the past few weeks suggesting Eon should adapt a few of the Benson novels.

So Raymond must have few fans!

[FormerBondFan]

Nov 6, 2008 14:05:58 GMT -5 harrypalmer said:

I've read numerous Bond related comments from fans in various places in the past few weeks suggesting Eon should adapt a few of the Benson novels.

So Raymond must have few fans!

I don't think Bond movies based on Benson's novels would suit DC.