Post by ©DURANMANIA Board Team on Jan 3, 2005 2:40:36 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Duran Duran and Liz Hurley 007 Mystery[/glow]
Did British actress Liz Hurley appear in an unused Bond promotional video made by Duran Duran? This is the intriguing question being asked by Bond fans after a recent report and the group's comeback tour, writes Steven Woodbridge.
After a break of 18 years, the British band started their new live Easter tour last week, playing venues such as Nottingham, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast and Birmingham. This has enabled Bond fans to check out some claims made earlier this year in a UK newspaper concerning A View To A Kill, Roger Moore's last Bond film in 1985.
The short article, which appeared in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph (7th Feb), was entitled 'Revealed: the girl behind the curtain'. It claimed that a long-running row has been taking place between Liz Hurley and the 1980s supergroup who performed the theme song to Moore's farewell Bond movie.
The group (consisting of John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, and Simon Le Bon), originally intended to employ a promotional video for their Bond song that was very different from the Paris Eiffel Tower one eventually used.
According to the report, Nick Rhodes shot a film in 1985 which starred the then-unknown young actress called Elizabeth Hurley and showed her in a series of fleeting sequences, including behind a shower curtain posing seductively. Indeed, the appearances are so quick you can miss them in a blink of the eye.
Nearly 20 years later, in their Christmas special concert, and now again in their April 2004 comeback tour, the band have been using stills and pieces from the unused film as part of the backdrop on stage when performing the AVTAK Bond theme.
An unnamed source apparently told the Telegraph in February: "They have wanted to name Hurley as the mystery woman, but she's absolutely determined to stop them".
A spokesman for Duran Duran, asked for a reaction, told the Telegraph in February: "There was such a video, but I'm afraid I cannot comment further".
When the UK TV channel ITV 1 recently screened a recording of the band's Christmas live performance, British viewers were given a good opportunity to make their own judgements and to catch some glimpses in close-up of the mysterious AVTAK alternative video.
The actress in the sequences certainly looks strikingly similar to Liz Hurley. Attendees at the band's live venues last week, however, were giving mixed reactions. The mystery still stands.
It is not the first time Miss Hurley has been connected to Bond. For at least the last three Brosnan Bond movies, various newspaper gossip columns floated her name as a possible Bond woman.
Hurley was indeed a Bond woman at one point. She was a narrator on a British history of 007 documentary, posing in the associated publicity for the project in various 1960s-style outfits. The documentary ('The World of James Bond'), made by MGM/UA in 1996, was a 42 minute promotional video to tie-in with the UK release of 'Goldeneye' on video.
Duran Duran, who took their name from the famous 1960s sci-fi film 'Barbarella', have been playing a rousing rendition of AVTAK on their comeback tour. Even though it was criticised at the time, the song rose high in the British pop charts and, ironically, has since become a firm favourite with audiences as one of the 'traditional' Bond themes.
The AVTAK Eiffel Tower promotional video also exemplified how tie- in videos in general (a very new development in the early to mid-1980s) could be used to market both pop group and feature film, a trend which had become commonplace by the end of the 1980s.
This became an integral part of the marketing for the Bond movies.
Did British actress Liz Hurley appear in an unused Bond promotional video made by Duran Duran? This is the intriguing question being asked by Bond fans after a recent report and the group's comeback tour, writes Steven Woodbridge.
After a break of 18 years, the British band started their new live Easter tour last week, playing venues such as Nottingham, London, Glasgow, Manchester, Belfast and Birmingham. This has enabled Bond fans to check out some claims made earlier this year in a UK newspaper concerning A View To A Kill, Roger Moore's last Bond film in 1985.
The short article, which appeared in the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph (7th Feb), was entitled 'Revealed: the girl behind the curtain'. It claimed that a long-running row has been taking place between Liz Hurley and the 1980s supergroup who performed the theme song to Moore's farewell Bond movie.
The group (consisting of John Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Andy Taylor, and Simon Le Bon), originally intended to employ a promotional video for their Bond song that was very different from the Paris Eiffel Tower one eventually used.
According to the report, Nick Rhodes shot a film in 1985 which starred the then-unknown young actress called Elizabeth Hurley and showed her in a series of fleeting sequences, including behind a shower curtain posing seductively. Indeed, the appearances are so quick you can miss them in a blink of the eye.
Nearly 20 years later, in their Christmas special concert, and now again in their April 2004 comeback tour, the band have been using stills and pieces from the unused film as part of the backdrop on stage when performing the AVTAK Bond theme.
An unnamed source apparently told the Telegraph in February: "They have wanted to name Hurley as the mystery woman, but she's absolutely determined to stop them".
A spokesman for Duran Duran, asked for a reaction, told the Telegraph in February: "There was such a video, but I'm afraid I cannot comment further".
When the UK TV channel ITV 1 recently screened a recording of the band's Christmas live performance, British viewers were given a good opportunity to make their own judgements and to catch some glimpses in close-up of the mysterious AVTAK alternative video.
The actress in the sequences certainly looks strikingly similar to Liz Hurley. Attendees at the band's live venues last week, however, were giving mixed reactions. The mystery still stands.
It is not the first time Miss Hurley has been connected to Bond. For at least the last three Brosnan Bond movies, various newspaper gossip columns floated her name as a possible Bond woman.
Hurley was indeed a Bond woman at one point. She was a narrator on a British history of 007 documentary, posing in the associated publicity for the project in various 1960s-style outfits. The documentary ('The World of James Bond'), made by MGM/UA in 1996, was a 42 minute promotional video to tie-in with the UK release of 'Goldeneye' on video.
Duran Duran, who took their name from the famous 1960s sci-fi film 'Barbarella', have been playing a rousing rendition of AVTAK on their comeback tour. Even though it was criticised at the time, the song rose high in the British pop charts and, ironically, has since become a firm favourite with audiences as one of the 'traditional' Bond themes.
The AVTAK Eiffel Tower promotional video also exemplified how tie- in videos in general (a very new development in the early to mid-1980s) could be used to market both pop group and feature film, a trend which had become commonplace by the end of the 1980s.
This became an integral part of the marketing for the Bond movies.