This is a rough suggested treatment for a James Bond
film.
It
is the story of an attempt by the Mafia to blackmail
the West for £100 million using as a lever an automatic
warhead stolen from one of Britain's rocket sites. The
target is a new "Cape Canaveral" build on the
GRand Bahamas.
The scene is in England, the English Channel and Nassau.
My concern has been only to stitch together a more or
less plausible narrative based on this plot and to make
it as fast-moving and packed with incidents as possible.
To my mind the chief weakness in the treatment is the
thinness of the Mafia threat and this must be considerably
strengthened, perhaps by more attention to the Mafia
meeting in London.
There are other weaknesses which would need to be tightened
up here and there bit it seems to me that the main thread
of the story stands up fairly well.
I am badly in need of good Italian names for the Mafia
gangsters and these could perhaps be obtained from the
Venice telephone directory!
In
order to keep the feet of this film firmly on the ground,
production will have to be particularly brisk
so as not to allow the audience time to worry about probabilities.
Production will also have to be particularly strong in
portraying the Secret Service and the Mafia. Any suspicion
of cardboard must be avoided and the acting throughout
should be under-played and without exaggeration.
There are no very expensive props except and American
helicopter and an American submarine and these could
probably be obtained without much difficulty.
More
subsidiary incidents should be added where there is
any sign of the pace flagging but, for the time being,
my invention has run out.
I saw George Raft the other day in a film and he is
as good as ever. He might be useful. Ernest Cuneo should
definitely be used as the Cap Mafiosi who comes to London
to set up the spiel.
No other suggestions for the moment.
