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You know what? Fuck Chuck Norris. Sean Connery is a real winner.
And today that suave, woman-hating Scottish bastard is 79 years old! And still in a league of extraordinary gentlemen all of his own.
And, of course, it doesn’t even have to be said - but of course it has to be said! – the man wasn’t just James Bond, HE WAS JAMES BOND. They had tried to get this character off the page and onto the screen before, and it was a miserable failure. And Sean, the former bodybuilder who won a contest, created and dominated the mindset of this character, well, ever since then. Granted, he had some help from the director of some of the early Bond films, Terence Young, who really hammered some slightly gentlemanly qualities into the Scottish rogue, but even still.
Sean Connery was the original Clive Owen. The man is all brute, all animal. But he operated with this masculine sense of cheese and charm that makes the fact that the early Bond was certainly an asshole and sometimes acted like a bit of a rapist and made you like him. Made you want to be him, made you want to go on an adventure with him, made you want to be the victim of some of his horrible advances.
In fact, when Sean briefly left the series after You Only Live Twice before of financial disputes, so heavy was the loss to the series, that the opening (see below) of the following film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in the series had to use a meta moment of breaking the fourth wall to actually inform the audience that the filmmakers were well aware that this new guy was not Sean Connery.
Defying all the odds, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service was actually a truly great film, but it’s star, Australian model George Lazenby, didn’t stay in the role, leaving the series because of, again, disputes over pay with the producers. So who did they call back? Sean Fucking Connery. Of course.
This is about Sean Connery, not Bond history in general, so I’ll spare you a lot of details about the how’s and the why’s of the Great Bond Battle of 1983: Sean Connery’s Never Say Never Again (the title coming from it’s star’s declaration that he would never play the role of British superspy 007 again) and Roger Moore’s Octopussy. When the dust settled, Octopussy actually won at the box office but poor Roger Moore lost at a much more serious game, the eternal tournament of life called YOU ARE NOT SEAN CONNERY, SIR.
This is a man that could appear in a (classic) film like Zardoz like this…
…and not give a shit. Ah, Zardoz. Look at that outfit. Who knows what that tells you if you’ve never seen the underrated sci fi classic. Obviously, you can guess it’s just ridiculous. And Sean Connery is his brutal best in it, playing a hunter and a cad, some of the things he’s at his best doing, it would seem.
And see, that’s the thing about Connery. He’s a good, solid actor. And he’s appeared in many a film of real, strong quality. And he’s also appeared in just outright shitty movies too, like The Avengers and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or Entrapment. But he’s also been in a lot of really in between movies that are maybe ridiculous, but fun and good in different ways. Maybe just because of him, like Rising Sun starring Wesley Snipes. I mean, that movie, based on the novel by Michael Crichton, is a fucking joke, and I still love it. Or Medicine Man. Oh my God that movie is silly. The same with The Hunt For Red October. But it’s Sean Connery. It’s the man who claimed that he was offered the role of Morpheus in The Matrix and Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings and turned them down and he’s going to do his own thing.
“An open-handed slap is justified – if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning. If a woman is a bitch, or hysterical, or bloody-minded continually, then I’d do it.”
-Sean Connery, in an interview with Playboy magazine, 1965.
Even his misogyny is ridiculous and lovable. You applaud the things he says the same way you do Don Draper, the difference, of course, being that Don Draper is a fictional character sending up the way we were and Sean Connery is a guy who, well… he’s from a previous generation, alright? And it’s one who’s values we’ve hopefully (started to) migrate from distantly.
“There are women who take it to the wire. That’s what they are looking for, the ultimate confrontation. They want a smack.”
-Sean Connery, in an interview with Barbara Walters in 1987.
And he’s got the voice. Someday there needs to be a Pixar comedy that’s entirely voiced by Sean Connery and James Earl Jones, just having a massive distinct voice off.
I think I could probably sit here and jack off a list of all the great Sean Connery movies out there. And you’d read it and you’d just nod your head, saying, “Yeah!” or however you exclaim excitement and enthusiasm. But whatever film or role of his you know and like the best, my point is that you have one. He may not be your most beloved actor, but you recognize this man as a force within the film world.
“Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain. And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.”
-Norman Mailer, from “Petty Notes on Some Sex in America,” which first appeared in Playboy magazine, and then in his 1966 collection, Cannibals And Christians.
Almost done working my way through Mad Men season 2 on DVD in preparation for tomorrow’s return of the show. One of the hardest storylines to deal with so far is that of Betty Draper, Don’s perfect wife who can’t help but evoke ideas of Grace Kelly. Her slow realization that Don’s been cheating on her is hard to take in as all the fragile little pieces of her world break. But then you start to get upset with her for having been so naive, and letting this occur literally right under her nose. But then you have to remind yourself of the place of women in the 50s and 60s and how there’s no way Betty could’ve known any different.
And on top of it, Don Draper is Don Draper. We want to see him screw around on his wife because, frankly, he’s just a cool guy. He makes a certain level of sleazy look good. He makes it glossy and sexy. It’s amazing what we’ll let a man get away with if we know he’s tortured on the inside.
Granted, every day should be a day of appreciation and love for the woman who went through the agonizing torture of thrusting you out into the world, but this is our special Hallmark moment to celebrate, so you should be making the most of it!
I was going to do a really cheap post here and talk about nothing but my favorite MILFs…
…and maybe post copious amounts of pictures of them…
…pictures on top of pictures on top of pictures…
…but I decided against it. That’s far too below the high minded super intellectual-ness that is both myself and Counterforce. Well, for the most part.
“She’s an ethereal angel,” he says of his mother, a former ballerina. “Nobody looks like that woman. If I could meet my mother and marry her, I would. I would be with my mother now, if she weren’t my mother, as sick as that sounds.”
That makes perfect sense, Shia. Not weird, not creepy at all. I’m not going to take any cheap shots here or talk about an Oedipus complex or anything related to that. He goes on to say:
“The nudity was weird, especially when her friends came over,” he tells Playboy. “All of them would just be naked around the house. That was strange for me, and it was really bizarre when my friends were there.
Oh, I should clarify there: Shia talks about how his mother was a bit of a hippie and would happily walk around naked whenever he had friends over. Maybe that’s a bit weird, I don’t know. I’m not going to judge. But I’ll play devil’s advocate here: She’s just being a good host? Who knows. More:
“You’ve got your little buds over, and Mom’s, like, playing naked connect the dots or whatever. She’s in the middle of goddess-group time, where it’s literally a bunch of naked women tracing auras around one another’s bodies with incense and then sitting together and humming for prolonged periods of time.”
You were a lucky boy, Shia. I hope your momma and you have an awesome day today. Do something great for her, okay?
Sean Connery with 
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