Personal blog - and temporary home page until new website is finished - of writer, editor and graphic artist Christopher Mills


Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The Lost Bond Theme

Over at Tim Lucas' Video Watchblog site, he has a fascinating post about the original, unused theme song for the independently-produced 1983 James Bond film, Never Say Never Again, which featured Sean Connery reprising his immortal role of Agent 007.

Personally, I've always liked NSNA – it's superior to most of the "official" Bond films of the era (even if it is a remake of Thunderball), and has a top notch cast, including Kim Basinger, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Bernie Casey. Granted, the pacing is a little too leisurely at times, but it's the uninspired (and uninspiring) musical score by Michel Legrande that really wounds it.

The song, which is vastly superior to the tune used, was composed by Stephen Forsyth and Jim Ryan and performed by Phyllis Hyman, and you can hear it here.

Lucas' blog (always a fascinating read) explains why it was replaced in the finished film by an inferior song by NSNA composer Legrande and singer Lani Hall.

3 comments:

Paul Bishop said...

WOW! Cool info. Thanks for the heads up.

Charles Gramlich said...

weird.

Sidney said...

I always loved the line from their "Q": "Things have been awfully boring 'round here. Hope we're in for some gratuitous sex and violence."