Live and Let Die: Gator Bait Edition

Well, after both Weng-Chiang and Revelation of the Daleks were destroyed on a hardrive crash with the rest of my Mac; I decided to buy a PC and Sony Vegas Pro. Instead of starting Sony Vegas with a Doctor Who edit, I tackled one of my favorite Bond films, Live and Let Die.

Now, I know that there are plenty of Bond fans who don't like this film or Moore's Bond, calling one of the worst in the silly, campy, over the top Moore era. However, this is actually a pretty down-to-Earth film that can be saved by removing a few bits and making it flow faster. I present Live and Let Die: Gator Bait Edition.

what kind of fanedit: True Fanedit/TF
tagline: The Roger Moore Era begins...
original film name: Live and Let Die
new film name : Live and Let Die: Gator Bait Edition
film studio name : United Artisits
edit crew name : Grievous Angel Draven
Date Original Film Was Released : July 6, 1973
Date Edit Was Released : July 7, 2009
Original Runtime : 122 minutes
New Runtime : 109 minutes
Amount of time Cut/Added: 13 minutes cut
Cuts removed/added/extended :
1. Used UA logo from Carrie with the 04 logo's fanfare
2. Entire Film is cropped to 2:35:1 to match the rest of the series (Except the opening titles, which were zoomed out on.)
3. The 77-85 Gunbarrel is used, with blood chromakeyed to give a darker look
4. Opening shot taken from The Interpreter, since original shot didn't crop well and was too grainy
to use
5. Entire Pre-title sequence is presented in Black and White, except for select elements
6. New shot of film title inserted in the opening credits (opening wasn't available clean, so I had to
recreate one of the shots)
7. Rosie Carver's line "The man who served your Champagne was not a hotel waiter cut (Bond
recognizes the waiter as the man from the Voodoo shop, without Rosie's help)
8. Scene with Bond and Solitaire on the boat cut (bad acting from Dr. Quinn, and it implies that
Bond doesn't want to finish the mission when he clearly says that he will one scene later)
9. Cab driver's jive-talking cut in New Orleans (I simply hate Jive talking in all its forms)
10. Mrs. Bell's line "Oh Shit!" cut (feels out of place)
11. Plane escape scene rescored with "Chateau Fight" from Thunderball (One of my problems with this film is that George Martin didn't write enough score for the action scenes that would
usually have a score)
12. All of J.W. Pepper has been cut, along with most of the Boat Chase
13. The Boast chase now goes as follows: Bond escapes, Kananga's henchman steals the boat,
we follow Kananga's henchman until he pull up to the dock when Bond attacks him, throws
gas in his face, and causes the boast to explode and crash.
14. Poppy fields and approach to the Underground Lair now scored with He's Dangerous from
AVTAK (See #11)
15. Final scene in the lair rescored with Octopussy music by John Barry (I recreated almost all the sound effects to accommodate the new score)
16. Tee-Hee fight scene rescored with Palace Fight from Octopussy and an instrumental of We
Have All the Time in the World from OHMSS
17. New end credits

Fanedit details:
SL DVD
2:35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio

Your intention for this fanedit: To remove excessive blacksploiation elements and moments of sheer silliness.

Your way to achieve your intention: By cutting away some of the most criticized scenes in the film.

Hardware and software information (what did you use to create your fanedit): Sony Vegas 8 (Video & Audio), Hypercube (to decode the AC-3 files), VirtualDub (for file conversion), DVD Architect (to assemble the DVD release)

Time needed for the edition: 3 weeks

persons involved: 1


I should be releasing this soon. In the meantime, how about some framegrabs:

Might be interesting, though I do like LALD the way it is. I like the lack of music at times and don't necessarily agree that adding music makes scenes better (just look at No Country for Old Men). If I were you, I'd reconsider using We Have All the Time in the World in any form, as that is Bond and Tracy's theme and shouldn't be used for just any body girl (Vesper maybe, but not Solitaire).

Either way, good luck.

Neat idea. looking forward to it.
I would love to see a version which is the opposite: even more of a blaxplotation version. replace bond's theme with SHATF'S. Remix it with FOXY BROWN?
give it a hint of GRINDHOUSE fx.

Sounds good KBM. My thought behind using We Have All the Time in the World was that it represents a picture-perfect ending, until Baron Samedi shows up and a variation of the LALD theme begins playing. I agree that it's very much the Bond+Tracy theme and wouldn't use it normally, but it seemed suitable.

I love Moore's Bond and Live And Let Die is actually my second favorite Bond film, behind Goldfinger. I'm curious why you chose to present the pre-credit sequence in black and white with some elements left in color.

And KBM a blaxploitation cut of LALD sounds pretty interesting.

Frantic Canadian said:

And KBM a blaxploitation cut of LALD sounds pretty interesting.

Click to expand...

Yeah i know. One day...

Sounds interesting, I always thought LALD could have been better. I would agree that many of the worst Bond movies are Moore movies, but I still kind of like Moore as Bond. If anyone was to be that cheesy kind of Bond they picked the right guy, but most of his stuff could do with some improvement, LALD is no different. Looking forward to this.

Nice. We need more Bond fanedits around here. Look forward to seeing it.

I haven't seen this flick in an eon (har!), but how did you cut J.W. Pepper completely? Doesn't he kind of factor in at the end?

Nope, there isn't a single moment of J.W., he's only mentioned by the ranger that the henchman steals the boat from, and he's listed as a "cut character" in the end credits.

Sweet! How close are you?

And will you go on to fix up The Man With The Golden Gun? I'd love to see that.

Also I'm pretty curious (just like a previous poster) as to why the pre-title scenes are black and white, but not the rest of the movie. Is there any specific motivation or just something you thought would be cool? It sounds to me like something that might feel weird in the movie, but I'll have to wait and see.

Well, seeing as how Bond doesn't appear in the pre-titles, the story is supposed to be pretty dark, and this was Moore's debut, I decided that it would be a good move stylistically to have the pre-titles in B&W. To put it in perspective, if I had edited The Living Daylights, the pre-titles would be B&W until Bond turned his head to the camera. Also, I'm probably not going to do TMWTGG yet, I'll probably take care of The Spy Who Loved Me or Octopussy next. I need a lot more experience before I even try to make TMWTGG a passable film.

Grievous Angel Draven said:

Well, seeing as how Bond doesn't appear in the pre-titles, the story is supposed to be pretty dark, and this was Moore's debut, I decided that it would be a good move stylistically to have the pre-titles in B&W. To put it in perspective, if I had edited The Living Daylights, the pre-titles would be B&W until Bond turned his head to the camera. Also, I'm probably not going to do TMWTGG yet, I'll probably take care of The Spy Who Loved Me or Octopussy next. I need a lot more experience before I even try to make TMWTGG a passable film.

Click to expand...

I'm more curious about the fact that you're leaving certain elements in color whereas the rest is black and white.

Sounds like a wonderful experiment, can't wait to see it. I like the film a lot the way it is I even like Sherrif Pepper I just don't like him in Man with the Golden Gun (which just needs an audio edit of that damn slide whistle). The only improvement i can think is to either cut the boat chase down or add some of George martins music into also into the scene at the airport, missing music. But using John barry cues would be out of place with George Martins sleazy wakka guitar vibe which makes live and let die one of the more unique Bond pictures.

This is getting me all excited. I need to start thinking about some Bond edits myself.

Well, I've run into a big problem. I can't seem to get the chapters I've made on DVD Architect to register on my chapter menus! That and the 5.1 file I exported under "AC-3 Studio" says "downmixed stereo" on DVD Architect. What can I do to repair this?

EDIT: Chapters fixed! Still need help on the 5.1 though.

Well, it's fixed, and the DVD is just about ready! I should have it uploaded by the end of Monday.

No pepper, no slide whistle.

XLNT!