Roger Moore relied on Valium and beer to steady his nerves during the filming of For Your Eyes Only, particularly for scenes shot high on the cliffs of Meteora in Greece, where the actor struggled with vertigo.
A Return to a Grounded Bond Adventure
Following the box office success but high cost of Moonraker, EON Productions opted for a more modest budget of $28 million and a grounded tone closer to Ian Fleming's novel for For Your Eyes Only, which airs on ITV1 this afternoon. Rather than a sci-fi adventure, the film sees Moore's Bond on a classic Cold War mission to locate a missile command system before it falls into Russian hands.
The production faced an early challenge when Bernard Lee, who had played M since Dr No, died of stomach cancer in January 1981 after filming had begun. Producer Albert R Broccoli refused to recast the role out of respect, instead expanding Q's part and changing the script to say M was on leave, making For Your Eyes Only the only 007 film without Bond's boss on screen.
Vertigo and a Dangerous Stunt
The film famously opens with Moore's Bond dropping Blofeld in a wheelchair down a chimney. The villain could not be named or shown properly for legal reasons, as Kevin McClory owned the rights to Thunderball and claimed sole rights to Blofeld and Spectre, which EON disputed. Disposing of the character so casually was Broccoli's way of showing that Bond's success did not depend on him. McClory later made his unofficial remake Never Say Never Again in 1983, and the rights issue was not settled until 2013, after which Christoph Waltz played the villain in Spectre and No Time To Die.
For the Meteora scenes, Moore would take a little Valium and drink a tall glass of beer to get through close-ups while shooting climbing scenes high on the rock face. The worst for Moore was being above a four-foot drop, while his stuntman Rick Sylvester was hung over a twenty-foot one. Sylvester, who had performed the ski jump opening of The Spy Who Loved Me, had to act as Bond falling off a cliff, involving a sudden rope jerk that could be fatal.
Monks Sabotage the Shoot
The stunt went without problems, but Sylvester later said: "From where we were [shooting], you could see the local cemetery, and the box [to stop my fall] looked like a casket. You didn't need to be an English major to connect the dots."
Heights were not the only challenge, as Eastern Orthodox monks at the monastery atop the Meteora rock formation proved a nuisance. The monks disapproved of the violence in Bond films, but a Greek Supreme Court ruling said the religious order only owned the interiors, while exteriors and surrounding landscape belonged to the government. Moore reportedly tried to smooth things over by saying he had been a saint, having played The Saint before Bond. The monks protested by hanging washing out of windows, covering the monastery with plastic bunting and flags, and placing oil drums to stop helicopter landings. The crew built a set on a neighbouring rock and filmed interiors at Pinewood Studios on a set designed by Peter Lamont.
