Q&A Hollywood
Q: Does the Mr.White character appear in the original James Bond novels? He's a big part of the new movies, but I don't remember him from before.
A: By the time Daniel Craig (“Knives Out,” 2019) became James Bond, they had almost run out of source material. In fact, his first Bond film, 2006's “Casino Royale,” is his only one directly based on a novel.
The character of Mr. White — played in the film by Danish actor Jesper Christensen (“The Debt,” 2010) — does appear in that book, but not by name. In both the book and the movie, he is [spoiler alert for the 16-year-old movie and 69-year-old book] the assassin who kills the main villain, Le Chiffre (played by Mads Mikkelsen, “The Hunt,” 2012). In the book, however, he doesn't get a name.
They pretty much had to name him in the movie because they were expanding his role significantly. The bit at the end of the movie that sets up the plot of the sequel, a bit that centers around Mr. White, does not appear in the book.
That's essentially where the Craig movies depart from the source material entirely. (Though 2008's “Quantum of Solace,” the second Craig film, took its name from a Fleming short story, the plot is entirely original.)
In “Quantum of Solace,” viewers learn that Mr. White works for the criminal organization Quantum. This, too, was created specifically for the films. It was made to replace SMERSH, the organization Bond frequently fought in the novels. It was a part of the government of the Soviet Union and thus was in need of an update.
Q:Why do some movies have bleeps for censorship but others have dubbedover words?
A: It seems to be a matter of taste for the broadcaster, and a matter of budget.
If you're a network and you want to play a movie that was produced for theaters (where people can say whatever they want as long as they're willing to take the higher audience rating), you basically have three options: you can play a loud “bleep” sound over the not-TV-friendly word, you can simply mute the sound while the word is said or you can play a version that overdubs the offending word with something innocent (anyone who's watched a Die Hard movie on TV knows what McClane was really saying when they heard, “Yippee-ki-yay, melon farmer” or “Mr. Falcon”).
In a question-and-answer session on the social media platform Reddit (these sessions are known as Ask Me Anythings, or AMAs), a TV network employee who works in the censorship department said that cost is a notable factor.
“Mostly we just drop audio over a word in a movie if need be,” said the employee, who chose to remain anonymous. “Recording over the voice is handled by the studio and can be quite costly since it involves bringing in actors or impersonators.”
But the other options have their own drawbacks, too.
Dropping the audio leads to a lot of silence in a particularly foul-mouthed movie, to the point that viewers might think there's a signal problem. Meanwhile, bleeping draws more attention to the censored word than a silence or an overdub (unless it's a “Die Hard”-level bad one), meaning the bleep is arguably the more political choice.
“The bleep of censorship invariably draws attention to the material it was intended to conceal; circles it, if you like, by loudly omitting it,” TheVerge.com columnist Maria Bustillos wrote. “Bleeping also serves as proof that there is a watcher: someone looking out for us in advance.”
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