Episode 03: James Bond in Space with Amanda Ohlke

Written By Emily Olsen
Join Emily and Alexa as they chat with Amanda Ohlke, Director of Adult Education at the International Spy Museum, about James Bond's adventures in space through the decades, and how those adventures reflected the public imagination over time. Ohlke also provides a sneak peek at the upcoming exhibition "Bond in Motion," now open and on view at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, until April 2025.

Show Notes:

INTERNATIONAL SPY MUSEUM

DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971) 

MOONRAKER (1979)

ART CRIME in JAMES BOND

2016. < https://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/sep/17/culture.features>

  • Nairne, Sandy. “How Goya’s Duke of Wellington was stolen” The Guardian. August 5,

2011. < https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/aug/05/art-theft-duke-

wellington-goya>

  • BBC, “Five masterpieces stolen from Paris modern art museum,” 20 May 2010.

< http://www.bbc.com/news/10130840>

—

Transcript:

Intro Music (“Space” by Music Unlimited)

Emily

Hello and welcome to the Art Astra podcast. I’m Emily Olsen.

Alexa

And I’m Alexa Erdogan.

Emily

Together we explore intersections of the arts and space studies. Today, we have a special guest as we explore space in popular culture, specifically in the James Bond movies. We have with us Amanda Ohlke, Director of Adult Education at the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. 

As a key member of the Museum’s creative team since 2004, she’s helped develop the museum’s exhibitions for reopening in 2019 with special emphasis on curating exhibitions on topics such as economic espionage, pop culture, sabotage, and terrorism. Ohlke was also heavily involved in developing the Museum’s “Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains” exhibit as well as the Operation Spy immersive experience. Her recent paper on “Mata Hari: Ripe for Recruitment” is in an upcoming anthology from the University Press of Kansas. 

Ohlke curates in-person public programs for the Museum including the only annual Trabant rally in the United States, surveillance workshops in the streets of DC, and the Museum’s robust virtual offerings. She has been a guest expert on “Mysteries at the Museum” several times, as well as being featured on shows and podcasts such as the recent History production “The Secret History of the Civil War.”

Ms. Ohlke is the former Executive Director of the Museum Trustee Association where she developed director and board leadership education programs in partnership with the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and the Getty Leadership Institute. Amanda, welcome to the podcast! We can’t have a better guest to talk about this! 

Amanda Ohlke:

Well, I am so delighted to chat with you about James Bond! This makes my day and my evening.

Alexa:

Likewise! So I suppose first off, you know there's no doubt that James Bond and the Bond universe as a whole is an international cultural phenomenon that has spanned decades now. Why is it you think that James Bond is so popular or even has been so popular for so long historically?

Amanda Ohlke

You know James Bond has been my constant companion throughout my life. I'm not going to divulge how old I am, but you could easily find out. And just the mirroring of what's happening in the Bond movies with what's happening in the world – it's always very timely. It's always the plots, even though outlandish, are very, very much informed about what is truly happening. What are the global concerns? Then, we have the incredibly beautiful settings – places that you may have heard of, you may not have heard of, but they're so beautiful and they're inspiring. And you just, you want to go and visit wherever he's been. You want to go to that casino. You want to stay on that island! And then just very attractive and interesting people and, although the Bond – we're all women here– the Bond girls. It...It is quite something but they are. They're diverse people with diverse backgrounds and even if a villain is a horrible, horrible person, they have a very unique and tragic backstory. So there's real–believe it or not–there's real emotion there. And then there's the tech and the gadgets and the vehicles.

Alexa:

The tech is always my favorite part. Emily and I were tagging up earlier and talking about favorite Bond experiences, and Q has a special place in my heart.

Amanda Ohlke

He's such a delight and always hating to hand over his amazing things to James Bond.  And we… we know from some of the wonderful people that we work with who’ve you know, really done missions in the field that. Yeah, then technical services people aren't always delighted to hand over their coolest newest thing for these folks to go out and just break in their opinion. 

Emily 

That's fair, given the track record I think of the James Bond movies, too. As we are a space and art podcast, we're specifically interested– speaking of tech, we were especially fascinated by Diamonds Are Forever, Moonraker, and Die Another Day as each of these has an element of space. They're not the only ones but they seem to be the ones the most space-centric. And as you pointed out how each Bond movie is always a product of its time, could you tell us what was going on specifically in these time periods that had to do with maybe national intelligence threats, or space, or how they were influenced by their culture?

Amanda Ohlke

Well, you know the... Maybe I'll go backwards because Die Another Day from 2002… You could almost think, if I just told you the plot, that this is happening now because it's the focus between North Korea and the Republic of Korea. We've got a villain who is determined to create this giant orbital satellite laser that he's going to use to slice the DMZ between, you know, North Korea and the Republic of Korea in half, so that North Korea can invade and reunify the country. And I mean, North Korea’s consistently in the news. Today, you know, listening to the news you'll hear what are the latest things that might be happening. So that one, it's amazing that that is a lasting concern from 2002 until right up to today. So a very, very direct concern. 

And then, I feel like with Moonraker (so working backwards in order from 1979), we've got Sir Hugo Drax, who wants to, you know, we've got the billionaire who, my goodness, is he really as ah, you know, what he seems?

Emily and Alexa: laughter

Amanda Ohlke: 

We can name the names of the other billionaires. We wonder what in the devil they're up to. But he's involved in space shuttle and technology working with NASA, and of course his plan is actually to wipe out the human race except for his selected specimens who are going to live on a space shuttle. So in some ways, even though he's planning to wipe out the world's population, I think we're all concerned about what's happening on our planet. How do we survive? What is it like to live off-world? And so I'm intrigued and inspired. You know, growing up in the 70’s, with the space shuttle very, very much in the news, people actually living in space. It still blows my mind that anybody can do that. 

And then the furthest back that we wanted to focus on: Diamonds Are Forever in 1971. So it's the satellites. Ah satellites are just big big big. They’re what's happening out there in space. What can people do with satellites? What are their intentions? And it was interesting that this one is supposed to be a diamond-based laser satellite and I'm wondering if the…I mean diamonds are attractive. That's great for smuggling. It's a sexy concept but then also I think there's a linkage with the Soviet satellite program, if I'm going to say it correctly: Almaz?

Emily: Almaz. Mm-hm!

Amanda Ohlke: 

Which, yeah, code name: Diamond. So I think there's a lot of fun and playfulness with the people who are creating the Bond world inspired by Ian Fleming, but then also what's happening today. And of course the breaking news in the last two days here is Russia's got some kind of spacecraft that possibly will have nuclear capabilities that possibly will wipe out communications. So satellites, this entire timeline, I bet we're going to see a satellite of that nature in the next Bond film.

Emily

Absolutely. What's really cool too about -and I love that you went backwards in time because- one of the things I was looking at when I was on a Bond marathon of all of these movies recently is that I didn't realize when it first came out or the previous times I've seen it that Die Another Day was made to celebrate the 40 years of James Bond, so there are so many easter eggs in it. 

There's also the Icarus - the very ominously titled Icarus death ray that we were talking about.

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke

I mean, who names their project Icarus? That means you're going to fail like you're going to soar high you know, but come on. It's not synonymous with success.

*laughter*

Emily

*laughing* No, it's not. Also in Die Another Day, you have Gustav Graves played by Toby Stevens who is also this private guy who ends up being the North Korea plant. But that's also a reference to the private space billionaires in the previous iterations of space. And then also what I found really interesting about that one is we've got Halle Berry as an NSA agent, and I think it's the first time the NSA is in the Bond movies? 

Amanda Ohlke

An “NSA agent”

Emily

Yeah

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke:

I mean, we love Halle Berry. She's amazing. She's fabulous. She is not, you know, she gives Bond a run for his money. She's no “oh help me, help me, James!”  But it is quite a chuckle to have an NSA agent. They are not usually out there in the field wearing their bikinis with their sharp daggers. You know, but good. Good. What they do on the weekend is their own. 

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke:

I love Die Another Day and I can give you, a peek ahead of this exhibition coming up at Spy which is “Bond in Motion ,”and we're going to have two cars that are related to Die Another Day. One is this amazing kind of poisonous green Jaguar that we did have on display previously at the Museum that is just wonderful. And it is driven by the villain Zao in this great slick-slidy ice battle. And then we also have the Aston Martin Vanquish that is this car that is supposed to be able to cloak itself with tiny cameras. And so we’ll have both of those cars reunited in this exhibition. And Q, we were saying how much we love Q, Q said “Well, they (Aston Martin) call it the Vanquish but we call it the Vanish because of this technology. And now that technology is how they really will cloak tanks and things in the desert – teeny tiny, hexagonal cameras you know so it's so fun that Bond is paralleling, being inspired by, and I do think sometimes perhaps inspiring reality.

Emily 

Having just recently watched Die Another Day, how many of those Jaguars do you think they used for the film?

Amanda Ohlke

Well, you know we have a car from Quantum of Solace that– a beautiful Aston Martin

Emily

Mhm.

Amanda Ohlke:

– that's used in this opening chase scene, and it has continuity paint.

So this is because there is so much wrecking they're going through. It is like a thrilling beginning to the movie, and I can't remember..7… if they went through 7 or 14. I'm so bad at numbers. 7 or 14 Aston Martins, and I feel like it's 7, is sticking in my mind.  And they had to paint them all so that it would keep looking like the same car as it went on. So I mean can you imagine how many they go through? Yeah.

Alexa:

Oh wow. 

Emily:

Yeah, man oh man.

Amanda Ohlke

But beautiful, beautiful stuff. And I have to say about Die Another Day that the actor who plays Gustav Graves is Toby Stevens and he did the narration of a film we had for Exquisitely Evil. I just love his voice and it's so wonderful. And when you see that video, which might be on our Youtube, I'm not sure, but it's just so wonderful. His voice is so great and he was a terrific villain.

Emily

Yes, he was fantastic. And then also going back to Moonraker, what is really interesting about that one is that Bond’s Bond girl, Lois Chile..Chiles? 

Amanda Ohlke

Yes.

Emily

Chiles, yeah, she is also NASA but then it turns out later that she's also CIA. 

Alexa

Yeah, which is an interesting double job to have.

Emily

Yeah, there is at least one astronaut though I think that was former CIA and then NASA.

Alexa

Oh, that's interesting.

Amanda Ohlke

Yeah, it doesn't seem at all impossible. And she's a fairly serious and believable person as opposed to a nuclear specialist that, we’ll just leave her alone, but from the World Is Not Enough. But yeah, Lois Chiles is very good. 

There's another woman in that film who's very bad at her job, so they kind of still have their not great, but you know like “I don't know what I'm doing.” I can't remember…I'm not gonna say her - I don’t even feel like saying her name, I know it. Holly is the first name. But she plays that mess of a Bond girl character and so I love that Lois Chiles is, you know, composed, has it together.  [Chiles] has to be rescued, you know, because that's what was still the, you know, the 1970s, but still got to have a career and be a professional and so that's great. And what a great - what a great villain.

Amanda Ohlke

Moonraker, you know, kind of feels a little bit like one of the Bond movies that jumps the shark. You have like the minions and their matching outfits, and it's, you know, in a sacred temple that they've taken over and a plot to kill everybody on earth. But this billionaire Hugo Drax has some of the best lines ever and I, you know, engraved in my brain is his quote where he says (and I'll probably mess it up a little bit but) “You return, Mr. Bond, with the tedious inevitability of a much unloved season.”

*laughter*

Alexa

Oof

Amanda Ohlke:

I mean it's just that fantastic. Hugo Drax, I love you. They're just.. it is so scathing and he is so sick of James Bond and so that really–that elevates this crazy, crazy premise. But I thought it was fun what you had learned about.

Emily:

Yes. Alexa, do you want, as the actual space systems engineer, do you want to give a breakdown of the 8 minute laser fight?

Alexa:

Oh goodness I was just rewatching this last night. if this is the one that I'm thinking of, it's where everybody's like EVA-ing around in space right? 

Emily:

Yes

Alexa:

With like laser Pew Pew noises, which is very fun to watch? 

Emily

Yes, with their turtlenecks.

Alexa

Completely not connected or tethered to anything? which is… already increases baseline levels of anxiety, and they're just out there floating. I mean, if you want to get into the scientific technical details of it, you know if you're going to shoot a laser in space, it's probably going to kick you back a little bit. But we can dispel it for the sake of just like enjoying a Bond film.

Alexa:

But yes, there's actually clips of it on Youtube. I'll put it in the show notes. But it is a fantastic, fantastic scene. And then there's also the docking of the space shuttlesque ship to the space station which is really interesting how that is done, too. And it makes you think about parallel with that and the dockings that we do pretty regularly now – which is amazing that we can do that regularly now with the ISS and Dragon capsules. So it's come a long way. But also I think there's something really fun and inspiring about these space scenes even though it might seem a little funny later on. There's a lot to draw from it in terms of creative or scientific inspiration, I think, and I'd be interested to hear what your read is on that,too, Amanda. That specific laser-gun fight.

Emily  

When we had watched this film, I went down a rabbit hole about why we had an 8 minute laser fight in Moonraker.

*laughter*

Emily

And what I found was that they had been inspired – the writers and the production team of Moonraker–had been inspired by Star Wars, which had just come out, and they were trying to capture that demographic, that market energy. And so they tried to make a James Bond version of Star Wars in this movie with the space marines (?) and they all have such adorable turtlenecks with their jet packs.

Amanda Ohlke

I still have trouble knowing we have Space Command. You know, I was watching someone from Space Command on the news talking about this potential Russian spacecraft threat. And I was like, “Is that real?” I mean I just…

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke

It just feels like something from one of these movies. And I'm a big sci-fi buff, and I love all this stuff. But it's so…I forget how old I am. I forget that, you know, my first Bond movie was Live and Let Die which I saw way too young. So of course, when I went to see Moonraker (because I saw all of these movies) I had seen Star Wars, you know, in the theater a million times. You know, we all had. So of course we knew why we were seeing it. It wasn't seen on the weekend or in a binge. You're like, “Oh, oh. Now they've got lasers, too, huh.” 

And the movie that immediately preceded this one, The Spy Who Loved Me, it's a sort of similar plot. We've got a villain who wants to wipe out humanity and live at the bottom of the sea. This is Stromberg. And, so space under the sea. But there's a henchman in that who's named Jaws. And he's this kind of iconic and and a wonderful man, Richard Kiel, who played him, this enormous guy with these titanium teeth. And Stromberg, the super villain, has this shark tank and then this villain with the teeth is called Jaws. And we all knew we were watching that because of the phenomenon that was Jaws. But we were traveling, you know, I was traveling through the Bond series in real time. So all of that..it's funny to me to realize like you're like “oh!” and I'm like “oh we didn't…we just knew that because everything that's everything the last couple years have been Jaws. You know: sharks, sharks, sharks, lasers, lasers, lasers.

*laughter*

Amanda

We had a party at the Spy Museum when Exquisitely Evil was on, and it was informally called “Sharks and lasers.” 

Emily

Incredible

Amanda Ohlke:

Yeah, because there's such iconic, you know, weapons, and things that the villains are going to use to do away with people. And I should say in this upcoming exhibition, we have a boat…I wish we had a plane or a satellite. We have a boat from Moonraker but it's pretty cool. Because James, if you've just seen it, you know he escapes hang gliding off a boat. So we have the boat with the hang glider. So that is really neat, and I got to help carry the hang gliding part of it around. When we were loading the cars in, it was kind of in the way. So, it's this very long hand glider. So okay, now I've carried James Bond's hand glider. That was fun.

Alexa

That's so cool.

Emily

That's incredible. I was so excited when we reached out to you, and then we learned that the James Bond in Motion exhibition was happening. I'm so excited to get to see it. I know it opens March 1st, so it will have opened by the time this episode drops. Because I also loved the Exquisitely Evil exhibition. 

Amanda Ohlke

That's why I have so many of these things… I had to work on so many of the videos for that. And we were just doing these villain montages and scene montages, so I had to just watch ‘em, and watch ‘em, and watch ‘em and clip scenes. Because people say “How do you know that?” And I’m just like, “oh it's just… it was scorched on my soul.” 

*laughter*

Alexa:

“Scorched onto my soul…”

Amanda Ohlke:

You know, with one of these or if, you know, if I'm just cleaning the house and I realize they've got a marathon going, I'm like “Oh fabulous!” you know? That's great.

There's so many favorite moments, and that's what you kind of like – the iconic moments. One of my colleagues, Shana, always says “I don't like watching them. But I love when you tell me about what happens.” You know, because they’re long, but then you hit the high points. You’re like “And then, the villain escapes this way,” or you know, “James Bond enters across the ski slopes.” So, you know, pretty, pretty great stuff.

Emily

Yeah.

Alexa

Yeah, we had a bit of a similar moment, too, because Emily watched the one with the diamonds and the satellite. And she sent me (I'm going to expose you a bit, Emily, if this is okay). She sent me a voice message.

Emily

Yeah, go for it.

Alexa

She was like: “So there's like cassette tapes involved? They just like pulled out a cassette tape [from the computer]. I don't know how this is feasible. You're the engineer here. Can you like… is this real?” And I went down a rabbit hole that day of just like “cassette storage, can you put command responses in a cassette storage tape?”  Because I know they did it for video games back in the day, but it was one of those things where this movie sounds so much more fascinating hearing somebody else explain all of these scenes to you. And sometimes I'd rather just hear you explain it because it sounds wild versus watching it first.

Amanda Ohlke

Well, what…and what did you find out, Alexa? Did it? I mean, I'm buying it as someone who grew up with, you know, cassettes. I'm imagining that it was real.

Alexa

Yeah I mean so if there's somebody who's like a computer science expert who's listening, feel free to correct me. But I do think, because they did do that for video games back in the day, like during the early development where you could actually have a programmable essentially  physical cassette tape that was much larger, I think. I think it was like Atari that was using it. So I think it seems feasible. My only concern would be… I don't think you'd necessarily be safe if you have like software code for your satellite on a cassette tape that you just yank out and switch with another one.There might be a continuity error there. But…

Amanda Ohlke

Yeah feel like they get…I mean you also can't, you know, constantly diffuse things just by sliding a cylinder out of something. But, you know, many kudos for getting these plots together and trying to tie it up. It’s Diamonds Are Forever. Our friend Blowfeld… Were you amused by his great wrecking ball scene where he's in a little sub?

Emily

Yes, yes when he's in the sub and then they just move. Yeah, they use the sub like a wrecking ball around. That was other thing I thought was really interesting, too, because as Alexa’s referenced: the fact that they have this oil rig set up to be essentially the center of command/ operations for the satellite, and then he's trying to escape in the sub and they're just using it as a wrecking ball as if that's also not going to jeopardize the satellite for anything else in space.

*laughter*

Alexa

Don't worry about it.

Amanda Ohlke

And that's a very pointed comment by me because we have the little bathysub as part of the Bond in Motion. This little tiny mini sub might be one of my favorite things that's in the show.

Emily

Is it suspended? In the gallery?

Amanda Ohlke

No. Well… we're still… but I don't think it's going to be suspended. It's in …we have a watery corner.

Emily:

Ooh

Amanda Ohlke

There's a watery corner we have a sub from For Your Eyes Only, a Neptune sub. There might be a shark surprise that you.. (No spoilers, Emily, but you might remember a very famous shark surprise from Exquisitely Evil might be coming back). 

Emily

I'm so excited.

Alexa

*laughs*

Amanda Ohlke:

And, yeah, and then the little bathysub so it's kind of fun. We have… so we have a little bit of water. We have air, but no, no satellites. We do have satellites in the Museum, as Emily knows, but not really anything in the Bond show. Although he's got more than his share of satellites in the films.

Emily

That's fair, well the other thing, too, going back to/jumping around a lot back to Die Another Day:  because it's that kind of easter egg time capsule of all the different James Bond films, there were a lot of parallels I saw drawn in my (again, just rabbit hole) research of how the Icarus satellite/death ray is inspired by the death ray that they've got going on in the Man with the Golden Gun. And how that was, in its time, inspired by the energy crisis. And so just the fact that these anxieties keep getting repackaged but also just deployed in different ways to speak to new anxieties, is just so interesting to me.

Amanda Ohlke

Off-topic (but not off the Bond topic)  but, you know, Live and Let Die, my favorite because the first one I saw in the theaters. But I mean this is a drug kingpin in that one. So it's all issues with drugs and a villain who is a soul food entrepreneur but also a dictator of a Caribbean island. There is voodoo, I mean it's just…It's so interesting what gets folded together. But that one is just… We struggled with that because it's such an amazing movie with amazing villains, and when we were putting Exquisitely Evil together all those years ago, because it's not intelligence, you know. James Bond really gets way out of the lane of just intelligence, and we're like “this is kind of drug enforcement here” or, you know, drug smuggling. It's kind of funny. You're like “wait wait. He's a spy? What is he again?”

So it's… it's interesting, but it's reflecting what the issues were. When you get into the Timothy Dalton, that's a really dark period of the Bond movies. And you've got violent, violent villains. I mean, they're all violent, but they're kind of more like “I'll kill all of humanity,” but not just this savage gangster kind of feeling. You're always more like “You're boring me, that's why I haven't killed you yet.”

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke 

So that's reflective, I think, of the times. Interesting, you know, even one of Timothy Dalton’s, The Living Daylights. They have the whole “working with the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.” It's quite impressive how many, you know, important moments of the last 50-60 years that they have managed to pull into a franchise that is a fantasy.

Emily

Well, that's the thing, too, with Diamonds Are Forever. We've got 1971. Alexa and I were talking recently about Apollo 17, and in Diamonds Are Forever, that other –I think it's an iconic scene– where he's using (as a getaway vehicle) a prototype of a moon buggy. And it's never referenced again. He just drives it off. But

Alexa

Beautiful. 

Amanda Ohlke

Nice.

Emily. 

 it's not conspicuous at all, but *laugher*

But Willard White, the billionaire who Blofeld is impersonating, technically, he crashes this secret base where they're doing all of this moon research and testing of prototypes for future moon missions. And they've got like the astronaut people dressed up in the spacesuits moving really slowly for no apparent reason because they are definitely still on earth. 

Alexa

In their minds…

Emily

and that's how he escapes. Yeah, that's how he escapes in the moon buggy.

Alexa

We touched on a little bit throughout, talking about different types of like favorite movies or villains. Do you happen to have a favorite Bond or a favorite Bond movie or like even a favorite Bond villain?

Amanda Ohlke

I I really do have a favorite Bond villain. I loved when I saw that question. And it's so funny: working on that exhibit, you know, we were just steeped in all the Bond. I definitely have a favorite Bond and a favorite Bond woman, but there's only one character I've ever had a dream about and it was Alec Trevelyan, who is the Goldeneye villain played by Sean Bean. And he is so great, and he just really… James thought they were besties and they were not, and so I..I don't know. The acting was so great and Trevelyan’s moving around in his special motorized armor-plated train in that movie which they actually did in Russia in the Russian revolution. You know that no idea is never too old or too new for the Bond franchise to include it. So I just..I don't know why but he really stuck in my head. I really, really loved him, and I've grown to love all the Bonds. I was not a Dalton fan at all. But a dear coworker – it's funny, he was her Bond. That was the Bond when she was growing up, and so she made me enjoy him more. So my Bond is Roger Moore because he's the one that I grew up with. 

Emily

That's incredible. It’s…I'm so happy that you mentioned Sean Bean/Alec Trevelyan because we were thinking about including Goldeneye in this because of the Arecibo location.

Amanda Ohlke

Yes, I was sort of shocked it wasn't on the list, yeah.

Emily

Yeah, well we were thinking we had so many to talk about originally, and then we tried to narrow it down. 

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke

Yeah, narrow it down. But it's very watchable. I think Goldeneye… There are ones that are not so watchable. But I think Golden Eyes is a watchable film.

Emily

Yeah, it's so fun. And I agree,I think that that whole sequence – that relationship between just the bestie relationship you don't get to see a lot, and it makes it more poignant when the betrayal happens. 

Alexa

Betrayal makes a good villain.

Emily 

Yeah

Amanda Ohlke

And I think one of my favorite women is Michelle Yeoh. This amazing, amazing –you know she's supposed to be a Chinese intelligence officer. She and Pierce Brosnan fighting over control of motorcycle, they're just..She is as tough or tougher than he is, and that was so great because you kind of see this as you watch all the movies. You'll see women, you know, a step forward where they're like…it’s parity. They’re as tough. They're as knowledgeable. They’re as everything. Then we'll revert to like… hot pants and you know “I don't know what I'm doing.” So, it's fun to watch that interplay, you know. Like “Oh that didn't test that well, maybe we'll go back to just a hot chick.” 

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke:

So I love, I love her. It's so great that she's just had this incredible ongoing career. People are like, “Wait. She was a Bond? She was a Bond girl?” like at work, “Really?” I'm like, “oh yeah.”

Emily

Well, that's the thing too. It's like my favorite is Casino Royale, I think because that was my first James Bond movie in theaters with Daniel Craig and then Mads Mikkelson is Le Chiffre, who I mean, I adore Mads Mikkelsen and I'll watch him in anything so I'm heavily biased there, but also Vesper Lind, Eva Green, I just love her so much. Casino Royale is mine.

Amanda Ohlke

That is a magnificent movie. I've seen that movie so many times. It’s so good. It is heartbreaking, I mean, I just love it. The parkour scene… Just sign me up, I'll watch that over and over again. We had… We used to have Le Chiffre’s inhaler on display– that always cracked me up. I'm like “all we have is his inhaler.” 

*Emily chuckles*

Amanda Ohlke:

But yeah Mikkelsen, he was a great villain with his bloody tears. I mean, just great stuff. Great stuff. I love Casino Royale. What about you Alexa? Do you have any favorites, or is this all just *shrugs*?

Alexa

Ah, yeah I really like that one too. Something about like… I'll watch Eva Green in almost anything. I love her, too. I really like Skyfall, I think, mostly for just the scenery

Amanda

Yeah

Alexa

and it just felt like…a little bit different. I'm not as much of a Bond connoisseur. But from the few that I have seen over the years as I was growing up, it had a bit of a different mood to it that I was like “Oh okay, I can kind of get behind this.” And yeah, just like the cinematography… Everything was so beautiful to me.

Amanda Ohlke

I always think… I'll say that I always have these quotes that are just to amuse myself. And I'll just say, you know, someone's trying something and then we do it the way we were doing it before, I'll just say, “Sometimes the old ways are the best,” which is.

*laughter*

Amanda Ohlke

A line from that movie where they're going to go get a gun or something to shoot somebody. And I know I'm quoting, I know I'm quoting a James Bond movie. And I have to shamelessly say we have a motorcycle from Skyfall that will be in the exhibition. So.

Emily

Yes, absolutely. The other one that I really, really love of the older movies is Dr. No, but…Because it's it's the original. But also the first time I watched all of the James Bond movies in their entirety was actually (this is a little bit off topic, but it is James Bond)

*laughter*

Dr No was really interesting to me when I was in an art crime program, because it's credited, in a way we were talking about earlier with the private space billionaires as the Bond villain. That archetype was kind of invented in these movies and similarly, even before that, Dr No was the very first James Bond movie obviously to hit any of the theaters, or just to be made in general. and Dr No established the archetype of the criminal collector of the Bond villain who steals or commissions the theft of paintings, because the Duke of Wellington portrait by Goya had been stolen from the National Gallery of Art two weeks before filming began. And the production team decided, “Wouldn't it be fun if this painting was in the lair?” The museum agreed to let them do this. So it's in Dr No, and that's why we get that fun shot zooming in on the painting. Which, similarly to your point earlier, Amanda,  if you're not aware of the context, it just seems like a weird thing for them to focus on– just the specific painting. 

*Alexa laughs*

Amanda Ohlke

I mean, that was such a thing of those movies of the sixties, that it was shorthand. Just that, you know, you'd see someone. You're like “Oh that's all like stolen masterpieces…” whether you recognize or not. That was just like, you're a villain, you have stolen masterpieces, you know, in your collection. And it's so, so interesting and it's such an iconic look for you to have your fake French Chateau but it's filled with these things that are..should be in a museum and probably were until you took them. In Die Another Day, Gustav Graves is into fencing and I think it's the blue boy 

Emily

I think so

Amanda Ohlke

that gets sliced in a sword fight. And we have that, we had that painting on display as part of Exquisitely Evil

Emily

You had the film set piece, not the painting.

Amanda Ohlke

But it is fun that they love to throw these like, if you're interested in art, you're like “that's a real master.” Yeah, I mean it's not real, it's a prop but it's so fun. They really throw, they throw a lot of bones. If you're a travel junkie, they go to these places. You're like, “Oh, Piz Gloria or “Oh, Sardinia,” or you know, wherever it is. Or if you know art, you're like “Oh that's a real painting.” But that's such a great and interesting connection that it had just recently been stolen.

Emily

Absolutely and then by the time Dr. No hit theaters, the painting had not actually been recovered yet so it reentered public consciousness specifically tied to James Bond (specifically, the villain). And then there is an easter egg. Well, the whole reason why my mind went down this path to begin with is there's an easter egg in Skyfall of the Modigliani painting that Severin is showing to a client. That painting is a reference to a real life Modigliani painting that was stolen. And unfortunately, I don't think that painting was ever recovered. I'll double check, but I think the authorities suspected that it had been destroyed. And then similarly in Spectre, there’s a reference to stolen art in Blofeld's volcano lair. The Picasso painting in one of the random hotelesque rooms that James Bond gets placed in –that’s a copy of a painting that was stolen in real life.

Amanda Ohlke

It's such an interesting thread that they have that they have carried through and so so fun if you're interested in art. And it’s kind of cool to keep it in the public consciousness, too.

Emily

Yeah, and that's what's so interesting, too, about James Bond: that these books and these movies are the product of all the cultural anxieties, space, art.

Alexa

lasers

*laughter*

Emily

 We've just..we've got it all. Yeah, sharks…

Amanda Ohlke

sharks!

*laughter*

Emily

With the public announcement of the James Bond exhibition, and that we've been talking about as kind of a throughline throughout this entire conversation, which has been so much fun, is there anything else you'd love to tell us, or that you can tell us about in this exhibition?

Amanda Ohlke

It is going to open on March 1st, and you can visit just that if you've already been through the Museum. You can just go directly to see these wonderful craft vehicles and boats and crafts. Or you can go in on a combo ticket together with the main Museum, and we will have some fun events. So if you watch our website, you might see a chance to come on a special evening and, you know, don't you really want to have a martini while you gaze at an Aston Martin? I know I do.

Alexa

Perfect night.

Emily

Yes, for sure. And then, you've mentioned the website. We’ll definitely include the website in our show notes. Where else can people go online to find you, to find SPY, especially if they can't make it to DC but we've mentioned your beautiful virtual programs and upcoming events. Where are the best places for people to find these?

Amanda Ohlke

Yeah, yeah, um, the SPY Museum has a Youtube channel and all sorts of serious and less serious programming there. We also have a terrific Spycast podcast series, and you can listen to those on our Youtube channel but also on Cyberwire. You can get the full catalog of our podcasts, and they have quite dazzling guests and content.

Emily

Amazing. Thank you so, so much Amanda for taking the time to talk to us this evening!

Alexa

Yeah, we really appreciate your time and your insight especially. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for your flexibility, too.

Amanda Ohlke

Oh, so fun to talk to both of you! Nice to meet you, Alexa, and Emily, you're not getting away from me this easily. 

*laughter*

Emily

I'll be coming to the exhibition. You'll see me in DC!

Amanda Ohlke

Good! Fair enough. 

Emily

That’s all we have for this episode. If you’d like to learn more about the International Spy Museum and all of their exhibitions, check out their website at www.spymuseum.org. They’re also on Instagram, Facebook, X, and Youtube. We’ll be sure to have links to their socials in our shownotes. As Amanda mentioned, the International Spy Museum also have their own podcast called Spycast, available wherever you get your podcasts. 

Alexa

If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to follow us on your podcast platform of choice and leave a review while you’re there. We’re also on socials at artastrapodcast. Shownotes and transcriptions for each episode are always available on our website at www.artastra.space. 

Emily & Alexa

Thanks for listening!

*podcast outro music*

Emily Olsen
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Episode 04: The Space Paintings of Alma Thomas (Part 1)
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Episode 02: Space Image Processing with Jason Major