007, The Ivory Tower, and the Common Man

Bond is in trouble again folks. We find our hero immobilized, as a slow and painful death creeps closer to him. The villain is goading over his impending victory, drawing it out – when just at the last minute, the jaws of death slowly withdraw and Bond is spared to go on and win the day.

Now the Bond villain speech has become something a mock-able trope in action movies – Jason Lee's Azrael, when prompted for a missing piece of the puzzle in the film Dogma states: “No no, I've seen way too many Bond movies to know you never reveal all the details of your plan, no matter how close you are to winning.” The TV Tropes entry on “Bond Villain Stupidity” lists just 12 entries for non-Bond films, but there are likely countless more out there. Now, there are some “legitimate” reasons why a villain might choose to keep an incapacitated hero alive, notably: the villain wants to break the hero's spirit, a good fight, to manipulate the hero, or get the hero to switch sides. For our purposes, we won't be considering these as the logic behind this death trap, because as we'll see, this villain monologuing is actually central to the allure of the character of 007.

We'll start with the central villain of classic Bond: Ernst Stavro Blofeld, if only because he is the supposed head of SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion), a key villain in at least three movies, and the mastermind behind the murder of James' wife. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (OHMSS) – we discover two key facts about Blofeld and Bond's respective lineages, specifically their family mottoes: Blofeld's is “Of Heights and Soaring”, whilst Bond's is “The World is Not Enough” (which eventually became the title of a 1999 film installment in the series, TWINE). Blofeld's family motto here underlines a character trait that is common among all Bond villains; megalomaniac-ism and vanity. One thing could be considered fairly standard for a Bond villain, they don't dream small, from volcano lairs (You Only Live Twice, YOLT), to plains to kill every person on earth from a space station (Moonraker) and complicated impersonation plots (Diamonds Are Forever and Goldeneye). But more importantly, Bond villains are more than regular people, they are geniuses, shrewd businessmen, clever manipulators of people, politically and socially well connected, and oftentimes rich, which doesn't even include those villains (such as TWINE's Renard) who are also superhuman in physical ability (in Renard's case, that he couldn't feel pain).

Now Bond's family motto seems to suggest a certain haughtiness and arrogance, but yet can also have a secondary interpretation. In the film TWINE, the villainess tries to coax 007 by saying that she could have given him the world, and he replies with his saying that “the world is not enough”. In 007's eyes, a world's worth of physical, tangible possessions is insufficient, so what is enough? Bond is repeatedly presented in the books as a “civil servant” for Her Majesty's government, while he does have a housekeeper (May), he has few luxuries as possessions (outside of a car), and doesn't even have access to London's elite gentleman's clubs, requiring M to gain admittance for work in the novel “Moonraker”. Bond is a man of pleasures bending into the intangible: honor, loyalty, ingenuity. Bond is an English gentleman, but one with a blue collar upbringing: his father worked for the arms company Vickers, his parents died in a climbing accident, he was raised by an Aunt, and while he did get high-end education from Eton and Cambridge, he went there under scholarship (a point which is emphasized in Casino Royale, and which results in a fair degree of resentment for the character as portrayed by Daniel Craig). Bond is an everyman; he has little property, lives comfortably at home, but not lavishly, but can proffer his duty in service of his country.

Bond and his villainous counterparts represent the central dichotomy of elitism versus populism. Other than the post-Dalton films, most of the villains are not presented as seeming “regular” - they are smarter than the everyman, but they are also presented as fairly androgynous: they don't have girlfriends, wives, or even lovers, and the few female sub-villains that do exist are also androgynous: Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love (FRWL), May Day in A View to a Kill (AVTOAK), and the ones that are overtly sexual use physical attraction either as a weapon (Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye) or with passive disinterest (Elektra King in TWINE). Bond on the other hand, appreciates the passion and touch of a beautiful woman, the roar of the engine in a fast car, and the taste of fine drink. Now, one could see a hangup with this reading – the tuxedo is, after all nearly as synonymous with 007 as a shaken martini, and almost unavoidably the symbol of wealth and privilege, and still for Bond it is a disguise more than anything, and perhaps more importantly, a sign of 007's capacity of to blend and adapt – essentially his world-knowledgeableness. Bond can effortlessly go to any spot on the planet and is as informed as any local (Bond in The Living Daylights after he and Kara Milovy narrowly escape a crashing airplane: “I know a great restaurant in Karachi. We can just make dinner.”), he is the ultimate everyman – at home everywhere, and street smart, not book smart.

This conflict between suits and shirts is no new one; I think of the recent song “Red Solo Cup” by Toby Keith which has the line: “And Freddie Mac can kiss my ass” (though the entire song is a plaudit of the proletariat, and a condemnation of the snooty elite). Toby Keith has not had to worry about money issues for quite a while, but he is still appealing to his fan base, which is hard-working, appreciates simple pleasures, and harbors resentment for suits who get rich without breaking a sweat or getting their hands (or three piece suits) dirty. When Goldfinger, or Blofeld, or Mr. Big, lords over Bond, who is precariously situated in a death trap, what we're really seeing is an allegory of the regular everyday man: competent, capable, hard-working, but appreciative of simple pleasures, versus the characterization of the elite: morally hollow, erudite to the point of arrogance, and overdeveloped beyond the point of humanity. Bond wins because of his human-ness more than anything else, and the villains again prove their vanity by believing that they are more than human and somehow better.

The Right Way or the Highway

“If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it isn't.” - Crimes and Misdemeanors

I was asked a question recently that quite dramatically shone a light on strange dichotomy in improv that I had (until that moment) never noticed, but now seem to see everywhere. Here are the two dicta of improv that are at the root of all the trouble:

1. Play the reality. If you want to leave a room, do it. If someone is acting crazy, say it.

2. Raise the stakes. Increase the tension, the consequences, and the frustration with every move.

The way I see it (to back up a few steps), goes all the way to back to basics. Now, full disclosure, I am a hardliner populist when it comes to improv, which means that I think anyone can improvise, because, well, really anyone can. The absolute definition of improvisation is to “do without prior preparation” - which means every single person on the planet improvises everyday; when you walk out of house in the morning, you encounter a dynamic world, one that would be impossible to accurately predict every last encounter of to make a complete plan. In effect, we improvise every action we do that is not pre-rehearsed, from driving your car (because the traffic patterns will have to be adapted to) to talking on the phone (because we have no idea what Becky said about Amber, but we'll need to figure out how we feel about it in the moment) – though these are, arguably, fairly simple tasks that some presets to them (we know how to drive the car, and we know whatever is going on with Becky and Amber based on past experience). But in terms of theater, whenever anyone steps on stage on does something that is not pre-written, rehearsed, or practiced – it is improvised. As a result, literally anyone can improvise by the mere act of going on stage and doing/saying something.

Now, that's an awesomely populist framework, but anyone who's ever seen or done improv knows that there is a difference between good and bad, and enjoyable and un-enjoyable improv (much as there is for really any human endeavor). There's no questioning that a talented and experienced improviser can create something more interesting and watchable than someone who is not those things. The difference here is simple – anyone can improvise, but not everyone can improvise well.

The context of the question I was asked was during a scene in class; I was lecturing how one player just seemed to kind of take the punishment of another character without really reacting to it, and the student's response was simple – he didn't understand how to play the scene truthfully (he said that with the character acting as he was, he just wanted to leave) and also how to have a good scene. In real life, when someone acts strangely, it's true that most people would just leave (or maybe try to see what was wrong with them), but this makes for boring scenes. We go watch theater because we want to see people doing the things we can't do in our lives (because of the consequences, often), but still acting human (because not reacting to a crazy person is, well, crazy). It's the difference between just improvising, and improvising well. A good improviser knows how to carefully play with the balance between adding the strange or ridiculous, while at the same time keeping the reality alive (often in the form of emotional reactions).

Just as any improviser can improvise and doing it well requires striking that balance, it should be though of this way:

1. There is no wrong way to improvise.

2. There are, however, some ways that work better, and make the work more interesting.

(Writ another way: there are strong choices, and there are weak choices.)

Ultimately, this is the long-term goal of teaching improvisation (and comedy, in general): to learn the very distinct line between playing the reality and playing the dramatic scene. And there is a very fine division between knowing when to deploy “playing it real” and “upping the drama”. Learning the fine points, and the often very subtle intricacies of a scene, and when to deploy which one is what distinguishes a good improviser from a great improviser. There are few, if any hard rules, but being an artist is knowing when to follow the preexisting rules, and when to break them; when to leave the room, and when to stay.