The Neon Bible - Flashback: Casino Royale
Take one deluded producer, two huge egos, four directors, five 007s and half-a-dozen writers. Sprinkle with cash. Add jokes to taste. Shake, stir - voila! Casino Royale: a cocktail recipe for disaster
Charles K Feldman (producer): I love the movies, always have. I like money too, but only because it lets me makes the movies I want to make.
Orson Welles (actor, Le Chiffre): The movies need people like Charles Feldman: rich, jolly generous men who're happy writing cheques.
Charles K Feldman: I was determined to work with Peter Sellers and Woody Allen again after What's New Pussycat? Without those guys, that film wouldn't have been half as successful as it was, and it was very successful. So when I decided to make Casino Royale, they were at the top of my list.
Graham Stark (actor, Cashier): Feldman owned the rights to Casino Royale and planned to make a frenetic episodic comedy of it, with an all-star cast.
Val Guest (director): Charlie found out when he bought the book that all he got was the title. Harry Saltzman and Cubby Brocolli had already used everything in the book except the baccarat game, so the whole thing had to be structured around that.
Woody Allen (actor, Jimmy Bond): I was offered a lot of money and a small part. My manager said, 'Why not? It could become a big movie and it will keep you going in cinema.' So I went to London. I was on a good salary and per diems. But they didn't film me for six months. That's one example of how utterly wasteful that project was.
Graham Stark: The film started shooting mid-January 1966 with an enormous budget, huge sets and a script that apparently was being written 10 minutes before each scene was shot.
Norman Dorme (assistant designer): No one was given a script in advance which is something that never happens.
Woody Allen: Charlie was generous, the kind of guy you could go to when you needed a favour, but he was crap to work for. When you see those other big-time producers, they were so cheesy and drippy. Charlie was charming and funny. He would go over to the baccarat table and lose $100,000 the way you'd lose your Zippo lighter.
Bryan Forbes (British writer/director): Charlie came into my life brandishing a cover of Casino Royale. He told me he wanted to have five James Bonds and would guarantee me an all-star cast - Peter Sellers and David Niven and Orson Welles. 'You can write it wherever you want. Do you like the South of France?' Gifts started to arrive - half-a-dozen silk scarves, theatre tickets. Charlie was talking Monopoly money to secure my services. Every time I expressed doubts, he sweetened the deal.
Peter Sellers (actor, Evelyn Tremble): People will swim through shit if you put a few bob in it.
Woody Allen: Charlie was a genius. I once saw him on one phone to Peter Sellers, on a second phone to United Artists, and on a third to the Italian government. He was a big-time charming con man and I never trusted him for a second. An out-and-out, hundred-times-over proven liar.
Deborah Kerr (actor, Agent Mimi/Lady Fiona): Charlie was a very sweet and kind man, for all his idiosyncrasies.
Bryan Forbes: I said ‘yes’ to Charlie and then thought about the basic idiocies of the script. Five Bonds! That meant departing from the novel. I called one of Charlie's assistants [to withdraw from the picture], who went into a fit on the phone. I stuck to my guns.
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