VICES
"Here's a man who's always right on
the edge of his own death. He can't fall in love or have commitments. He can't.
He'd be dead tomorrow... All these qualities of Bond, like a love of smoking,
or a love of cars. Drinking bourbon when he was in America or rough red wine in
Italy. Or gambling. They're all things that are right. They're about living that
moment. He's living with death, so everything is heightened - touch, taste, smell,
the risk of gambling. I see it very connected to who he is."
- Timothy
Dalton, Rolling Stone, July 16, 1987
Okay, breakfast is good, and a little martini, but what about the real vices -- the bad stuff. Sex, drugs and rock and roll? Well, Bond hates rock and roll (you would too if you had to walk around with Duran Duran music following you everywhere in A View To A Kill). Bond's main vice, women, is covered in another chapter. So what's left? A lot, actually. Booze, drugs, gambling... Meet James Bond, party animal:
SMOKING
Bond acquired this habit from Fleming, who was smoking about 70 cigarettes a day when he died of a heart attack. Fleming and 007 both smoked specially made cigarettes with a higher than average tar content from the tobacconists Morlands of Grosvenor Street, called "Morland Specials." The cigarettes themselves have three gold bands on the filter, signifying Bond's (and Fleming's) commander rank in the secret service. (NOTE: 007 switched to a low-tar blend in John Gardner's books and, later, H. Simmons of Burlington Arcade. Later works by Raymond Benson have Bond continuing to use this brand). He carries them in a wide gunmetal case. He lights them with a battered black oxidized Ronson trademarked monogrammed gunmetal cigarette case. In continuation novels by Jeffery Deaver, Bond is a former smoker.
Connery, Lazenby and Dalton's Bonds smoked (Dalton's Bond was paid to smoke Lark cigarettes, although his films came with a written cancer warning). Roger Moore's Bond smoked cigars. Brosnan's and Craig's don't smoke at all.
On average, Bond binges on half a bottle of spirits and 60 to 70 cigarettes a day and, like any real man with a substance abuse problem, he's not always at his physical best. Thunderball, the ninth Bond novel, begins with Bond staring bleakly at himself in the bathroom mirror, hung over and coughing so hard from smoking that black spots swim before his eyes. M, the boss to whom Bond is always obedient and servile (unlike the movies), then orders him to go to a detox clinic. Feeling angry and helpless, Bond walks out of the office and throws a tantrum in front of Miss Moneypenny.
Bond filmmakers are apparently afraid that Bond smoking onscreen would now be a bad influence on kids -- but I guess shooting people and kicking their cars off cliffs isn't as big of a worry for them.
MY NAME IS BOND - JAMES BOND, AND I'M A DRUG ADDICT
MY NAME IS BOND - JAMES BOND, AND I'M A DRUG ADDICT
"He stirred the champagne with a scrap of toast so that the white powder whirled among the bubbles. Then he drank the mixture down with one long swallow. "It doesn't taste," said Bond, "and the champagne is quite excellent."
- Moonraker, Chapter 5
If there was one thing James Bond liked more than scrambled eggs, it was Benzedrine. He takes some in Live And Let Die before swimming through Shark Bay. He takes it again in Moonraker, The Spy Who Loved Me, and in You Only Live Twice. Of course, he only did this during missions, to keep an edge, except in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, when he consumed the barbiturate derivative seconal in order to induce a state of "cosy self-anaesthesia" in his London flat. But unless you're going to swim underwater for several miles and battle deadly barracuda to attach a limpett mine to the hull of a yacht, don't try this at home...
RACISM
The Bond of the books hates foreigners -- this hatred goes
beyond skin color to include accent, odor, diet and even their clothing. He hates
Russians, but not because of their politics - as he hates people from countries
allied with Great Britain, too. He hates Turks. He hates people from the
Balkans (although he likes their tobacco). He has a "horror" of black people and
the Chinese (it must be mentioned here that the only people from these races that
he meets are throwing steel-rimmed hats at him and feeding him to sharks, so he's
not meeting a good cross-section). He finds French people to be ridiculous. Americans
are all loud-mouthed idiots (which is usually true). Italians? "Good for nothing
but wearing monogrammed shirts and spending the day smoking and eating spaghetti."
(Goldfinger.)
A chapter in Live and Let Die, for example, is titled "Nigger Heaven" and describes a room in a Harlem club in which the "air was thick with smoke and the sweet, feral smell of two hundred negro bodies."
The Bond of the films is a little better: although he talks down to Quarrel in Dr. No, by the time of Live and Let Die he is seducing a black female operative. In A View To A Kill he's gotten positively kinky, enduring a masochistic session of sex with African-American May Day.
The Bond of the books would have killed her just because of her haircut.
Fleming was known to have a spanking fetish and in almost every novel Bond tells a girl (usually one with a masculine and muscular derriere) that he wants to spank her. Rape is portrayed as a fantasy in several of the books. In Casino Royale, Bond wants to marry Vesper Lynd (the girl he refers to at one point as a "silly bitch") because having sex with her has "the sweet tang of rape", a line that is unlikely to make it onto the screen.
SO WHAT IN THE HELL IS CHEMIN-DE-FER?
Chemin-de-fer is a quickened form of Baccarat, where there is no stable banker, but the shoe revolves around the table, staying with one person only as long as that person continues to win or voluntarily passes. In fact, it was probably this train-like movement around the table that produced its name (which is French for "railway" or literally, "path of iron"). Baccarat is a game that was ideal for the high-class settings in which James Bond often found himself. Baccarat has long been considered the highest stakes game in any casino, and is often played in baccarat pits set off with velvet ropes and well-dressed staff not available to other casino players. While any gambler could roll out of bed and sidle up to a slot machine, the tuxedoed gentleman was the expected player at the baccarat table. It is important to note that James Bond does not play traditional baccarat, which requires no skill and has little drama, but rather a variation called Chemin De Fer. One of the most important distinctions between the two is that in baccarat, all the player's decisions are made for him. The objective in baccarat is to get the closest to nine, and there are standard rules about when a player or the banker must take a card or stand in order to achieve this goal. All that is required for the player is that he bet on whether his hand or the banker's hand will win.
In Chemin De Fer, the player actually gets to make his own decisions, and can also choose to be the bank. These elements provide for some much tenser moments between players at the baccarat table Bond never loses at Chemin-de-fer. Why he never loses is simple: nobody else on this planet has a clue how to play it.
Bond plays the game in numerous novels – most notably Casino Royale, in which the entire plot revolves around a game between Bond and SMERSH operative Le Chiffre (the unabridged version of the novel includes a primer to the game for readers who are unfamiliar with it). It is also featured in several filmed versions of the novels, including Dr. No, where Bond is first introduced playing the game; Thunderball; the 1967 version of Casino Royale (which is the most detailed treatment of a baccarat game in any Bond film); On Her Majesty's Secret Service; For Your Eyes Only; and GoldenEye. In the United States and other parts of the world, the growth of baccarat or Chemin de Fer has paled in comparison to the growth of other online casino games. Thus, when Casino Royale, the first Bond book and one which featured Chemin de Fer prominently, was remade into a movie for modern audiences, the game which the plot of the book revolved around was made no limit Texas hold’em poker. Interestingly, in this game, a hand with a pair of eights is called an "Octopussy." (A hand with a pair of eights is actually seen in the movie.)
It should also be noted that if you ever do go to a casino and play Chemin-de-fer, the other players will look hung over, broke and desperate - not the photo at right...
