(cont...). But there's so much of that that goes on. Dick Maibaum came up with a wonderful thing which we put back into Moonraker, which is not in the film... I keep thinking I've seen it in a film because it s been in about three scripts. His idea was for a nice butterfly jewel pin; the wings start to flap, and it takes off and kills someone, and comes back to rest. Sometimes someone gets a wonderful idea, and they sit around waiting for a script they can fall into.

B: Broccoli has had the Acrojets booked for two years; he didn't get them into Moonraker, so they'll go into the next one.

M: Harry was always the one for leaping onto an idea. I remember in Golden Gun, at one point we were going to have an elephant stampede in Thailand. Bond was going to be riding an elephant amid all these elephants that were working in the cane fields, and there was going to be a stampede. We found out that the elephants that work in the cane field wear shoes, I mean they wear coverings on their feet. Well, Harry went crazy and he decided oh, the stampede was everything, and six months later it was not in the picture. Cubby was in Bangkok, and he got a call saying, Your elephant shoes are ready. Harry had ordered 300 pairs of elephant shoes... well, I guess United Artists owns them, so if anyone needs any elephant shoes... they're very expensive, too.

B: I would think so... about as expensive as an airplane with the wings sawn through...

M: Well Harry loved to do that. On Diamonds are Forever we got a call telling us that our boats were ready, for the boat chase, on Lake Mead. Except there wasn t any boat chase on Lake Mead. Harry had gotten two dozen boats, and they were sitting there The boat chase had been in an earlier version of the script. That happens a lot.

B: Do you expect to be involved any more?

M: No, really. I've got a lot of commitments now, between the series, and a two picture deal with Warner Brothers... I love Bond, I'd love to see Bond turn back. I think it's a perfect time. I think Bond as a series of set pieces and chase sequences has played itself out that way. I speak quite candidly as someone who is responsible for having turned it in that direction, not that I did it myself, but that I was there as it moved in that direction, and I helped move it in that direction. I think the more Bond can get back to, say, From Russia With Love, which is my favorite Bond picture... if one looks at that again there's enough outrageous sequences to keep you going, but I think there's more tension in a fistfight between Robert Shaw and Sean in a train compartment than there is in a space station blowing up, but you learn by doing and in that way, I'm saying, the audience wanted it, and we wanted to do it that way, and now it's time for something else.

B: As I understand it Moonraker is actually not doing as well in North America as they had hoped it would.

M: I don't know that but obviously as expensive as it was they'll make a large profit on it.

B: Oh sure... I m not saying they won't make millions, but hopefully, the fact that it's even a little slower than they thought will give them pause to think...

M: One shouldn't underestimate Cubby's perception... Cubby stands behind every movie he's ever made... Let me put it this way: Cubby loves Bond; Bond has been his life. He loves that character, and I have faith that Cubby will make the adjustments that should be made. And I'm not being a company man when I say it, because I'm not waiting for any checks from Cubby Broccoli. The man loves the character too much; he's dedicated the better part of his professional life to the presentation of that character on screen. If there's one person in the world who listens to reactions from theatres (and I m not just talking about grosses), from writers, and from fans, it's Cubby; he's got his antennas out all the time.

B: There does seem to be time to make the changes... It doesn't seem as though time is running out.

M: I think properly handled, and I have confidence in Cubby, there is no end to the Bonds.

B: It really seems that Bond is a character worthy of being placed along side such time tested people as Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes.

M: Oh, certainly. Absolutely. I think the true test of Bond is that next year, when some person walks in to see Moonraker, wherever it's playing, he is a character that has survived three decades in film. I don't know a character, outside of Tarzan, who has done that. I suggested once to Patrick Plunkett, who's the master of the Queen's household in London, that Bond be knighted by the Queen. They had never knighted a fictional character before, but I suggested that since people are knighted sometimes for the amount of money they brought into the country, and the amount of employment created, and the presentation of England to the world, I would say that Bond... yes, since Robin Hood, represented England well to the rest of the world better than any other Englishman.

B: Do you have anything you' d like to say?

M: Thinking back over the interview, the only thing I'd like to say is that when I say the pictures became more Disney, or more entertainment, in no way do I apologize for it. I think Bond pushed that kind of entertainment to the limit, and I think it's more a question of changing tack, and getting back to that real character, but I don't think, throughout most of those films, that a mistake was made. I think it was Bond as entertainment; you've had Bond as a tight, more suspenseful story, and I think it's time to switch tack, but in no way do I want to infer that I apologize for those films. I think they gave an awful lot of entertainment to an awful lot of people, and I think your members probably saw all of them more than once, and enjoyed them. Obviously a lot of people did because they wouldn t have gone otherwise. I think there is a difference between presenting a Bond film, and adhering to Ian Fleming's Bond. I love Ian Fleming's Bond; and, as I say, I think that is the tack the pictures should take now. The other has been pushed to the limit.