Ability over Appearance: Sir Godfrey Tibbett was originally a jockey. Patrick Macnee, who stood at six feet tall, was considered too big for the part, so his character was changed to a horse trainer.
It was a collaboration between my personal designer Azzedine Alaia and [costume designer] Emma Porteous. The film company liked my personal wardrobe. The look is something out of Walt Disney. May Day is a fantasy character. When I did my first make-up, I was afraid John [Glen] would think it was too strong, but he loved it and even said I should add more colour.
I was in [Hurly Burly] in New York. They sent me the script, it seemed like a good job. I knew there were lots of good reasons to do it. How many times does an actor get to be in a Bond film? That would be just fun to do that.
In a interview made during the production, when asked about the "personality, brains and acting talent" of Bond Girls, Tanya Roberts said that the James Bond scripts "don't give you that kind of room to manoeuvre. People don't go to the Bond films to see characterisation. Why should they?" In the same interview, she also said that, despite this, she was a big fan of the franchise.
Breakaway Pop Hit: The opening song is still a permanent fixture in Duran Duran's set list over thirty years later, despite the film being widely considered as one of the weakest of the James Bond series.
Zorin's 'Main Strike' mine, supposedly in California, was partly filmed at Amberley Working Museum in West Sussex, England. The rest of it was filmed at the rebuilt 007 Stage (renamed "Albert R. Broccoli 007 Stage" in honor of the Bond producer) at Pinewood Studios.
For the pre-credits scene, Iceland doubled for the water/iceberg scenery in Siberia and the ski sequences were filmed at Piz Palü in Switzerland.
007: In The Aim Of The Assassins (or 007 At The Aim Of The Killers)/The Preview To A Death (Latin America)
007 In The Target Of The Assassins (Brazil)
007 And The Look of Death (Finland)
Agent 007 In The Line Of Fire (Denmark)
The Prospect of Death (Czech Republic)
Death-Sprint (Hungary)
Corpsing: Zorin lets out a chuckle before plummeting to his death. This wasn't in the script - Walken legitimately cracked up at the absurdity of the situation and it was left in.
Roger Moore considered A View to a Kill to be the worst film of his 12-year tenure as James Bond. He felt he was too old for the role and should have left the franchise a few years earlier, being particularly uncomfortable acting with actresses with half of his age (Tanya Roberts was 22 years younger than him) and joking later "I was only about four-hundred years too old for the part". In addition, Moore was also horrified by the violence of the scene where Zorin brutally murdered the mine workers.
John Barry reportedly didn't like the producers' idea of having a pop-rock band performing the title song.
Creator Couple: Grace Jones was dating Dolph Lundgren at the time. He was visiting her on set one day when an extra was missing, so John Glen asked him if he wanted to get a shot at it. Lundgren appears as a KGB agent during the confrontation between General Gogol and Max Zorin at the racetrack, standing several steps below Gogol. This is how Lundgren's acting career began.
The script says May Day is 28 years old. Grace Jones was 37 at the time of the film's release.
The script says Max Zorin is in his late thirties. Christopher Walken was 42 at the time of the film's release.
James Bond is supposed to be between 35 and 40 years in the novels and most of the movies. Roger Moore was 57 years old at the time of this film's release.
Bond being bailed out of a Paris jail by M, following his failed taxi chase of May Day. The scene shows Bond collecting his personal effects, including the wristwatch with garrote wire from From Russia with Love, the ink pen filled with acid from Octopussy, and a cigarette lighter that's actually a flamethrower.
The flamethrower lighter was eventually reused 4 years later in Licence to Kill.
Bond observing Zorin's pumping station.
Stacey getting fired by her boss, who refuses to believe her accusations against Zorin. Stacey is shocked, but Bond comforts her and curses her boss.
Zorin and his henchmen arriving at city hall right after Bond and Stacey.
Enforced Method Acting: When May Day screams during the mine sequence when sparks fly around her, her screams are for real. Grace Jones didn't know that sparks would go off from the electric cables around her as a special effect for the scene.
Fake Russian: KGB agent Pola Ivanova is played by a Brit born in Nigeria, Fiona Fullerton. General Gogol, as usual, is played by German-born Walter Gotell. Swedish-born Dolph Lundgren (Grace Jones' boyfriend at the time) makes a cameo appearance as a KGB agent.
Roger Moore did not get along with either of his leading ladies.
Moore made it no secret that he didn't get on with Grace Jones.
Roger Moore: If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything. So I will say nothing about Grace Jones.
He and the crew also did not get along with Tanya Roberts due to her diva-like behavior. For example, when she and Bond have to steal a set of miner's overalls in order to infiltrate the Big Bad's operation, Roberts refused to film the scene until she had a pair of custom-made overalls that flattered her figure. When Bond sees her and says "Pity you couldn't find one that fits", that was an ad-lib from Moore, lampshading the unlikelihood of there being many petite-framed women working in a mine. The dirty look she gave him was real, and the producers kept the scene as a Take That! to her entitled attitude.
That said, both actresses praised Moore in later interviews, and lamented the news of his death.
According to John Taylor, the title song was written at a point where Duran Duran were falling apart. Due to their acrimony, John Barry got frustrated working with them.
One-Take Wonder: B.J. Worth's Eiffel Tower jump was done in one take. This annoyed Worth's back-up stuntman Don Caldvedt so much that he made an unauthorized jump and was eventually dropped from the production.
Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Roger Moore is often purported to have been horrified to discover during filming that he was older than Tanya Roberts' mother. This is very likely untrue, as Roberts' mother was actually older than Moore, not the other way around (she was born in 1923, he was born in 1927), though they were certainly close enough in age that one could imagine it made Moore feel awkward when he found out.
John Kennedy said that he enjoyed reading [the Fleming books]. They were out suddenly in paperback. I, of course, read them. When the first Bond films came, they made an enormous impression on everybody. I was in high school, I guess when From Russia with Love came [out]. I admired [Shaw] so much anyway as an actor. In fact, I was part of a theatre company once that he was a star of.
Duran Duran bassist John Taylor was also a fan. He approached Albert R. Broccoli at a party, and somewhat drunkenly asked "When are you going to get someone decent to do one of your theme songs?"
Reality Subtext: Zorin's "Main Strike" is scheduled to happen on the 22nd, the same day as the Kennedy assassination; the Texan oil driller Conley is a reference to Texan Governor Connally, who was also shot but survived; and Sir Godfrey Tibbet is a reference to JD Tibbet, the policeman Lee Harvey Oswald was originally arrested for shooting.
The story is a lot like Goldfinger, replacing gold with microchips and Fort Knox with Silicon Valley. The part where Zorin illustrates his plan to his criminal investors with a miniature model in the middle of a boardroom table and having his dragon kill the investor who wants no part of it is a dead giveaway. The villains are even introduced the same way: cheating at a gambling pasttime.
The story also flows somewhat similiar to that of Live and Let Die as it begins out with Bond sleeping with a member of an intelligence service, replacing the Italian agent with a member of MI6. Also, May Day has replaced Rosie as the black woman Bond sleeps.
The Red Stapler: It has been suggested that the pre-titles sequence helped initiate interest in snowboarding.
Refitted for Sequel: The assassination via poisoned butterfly and leap from the Eiffel Tower appeared in early drafts for Moonraker.
Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Two stunt parachutists, B.J. Worth and Don Caldvedt, were hired to do the jump from the Eiffel Tower. Sufficient footage was obtained from Worth's jump, so Caldvedt was told he would not be performing his own descent. A frustrated Caldvedt parachuted off the tower without authorisation and Worth sacked the former for jeopardising the continuation of filming in the city.
Star-Derailing Role: Tanya Roberts spent the first half of The '80s as a sex symbol in TV series and movies like Charlie's Angels, The Beastmaster and Sheena. She believed that A View to a Kill would be her last blockbuster and that she would win more serious roles after that. However, her performance as Stacey Sutton made this the first Bond movie to get nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award. That, added with the negative reviews, essentially drowned her cinematic career immediately, and afterwards she was generally relegated to B-rate erotic thrillers for the next decade. A View to a Kill ended up being the last successful film of her career, and the only remarkable job she had after that was in That '70s Show, from 1998 until 2004. She retired from acting in 2005.
When Stacey comes out of the shack in Silicon Valley wearing a pair of coveralls, Bond comments "Pity you couldn't find one that fits" and Stacey gives him a dirty look. This scene was not in the script. Roger Moore ad-libbed the line and Tanya Roberts' reaction was genuine; because Roberts had refused to film the scene until the wardrobe department made her a pair of custom-fitted coveralls that would look flattering on her. And, because Roberts was so difficult to work with, John Glen decided to leave it in.
In the scene where May Day disrobes before sleeping with Bond, Grace Jones wore a diseased-looking strap-on dildo into the scene just to mess with Moore. His reaction is genuine.
Zorin's laugh right before he plummets to his death was improvised by Christopher Walken:
I was hanging there and I was about to fall off the bridge on to some mattresses. It struck me as funny, that's all. It wasn't so much the character as [me] laughing at the situation.
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