20 Things You Didn’t Know About Moonraker (1979)
11. “Look After Mr Bond. See That Some Harm Comes To Him.”
The Drax Corporation’s Moonraker facility outside Los Angeles was a Rockwell International manufacturing plant in Palmdale, California; the Vehicle Assembly Building at the John F. Kennedy Space Centre on Merritt Island, Florida, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
The Rockwell International plant appeared during Bond’s flight over Derek Meddings’s miniature Moonraker plant; the Kennedy Space Centre appeared when Bond sees a space shuttle being prepared, and Holly Goodhead’s office was in the Centre Georges Pompidou.
Meddings suggested building the centrifuge that Drax’s vicious henchman, Chang (Toshirō Suga) almost kills Double-0 Seven in as a miniature, but Ken Adam insisted on building it as a full-sized set in Paris for authenticity reasons.
Although Moonraker is rarely commended for either its tone or its scientific accuracy, the sequence in which Roger Moore’s face is contorted by gravitational forces is often noted for being one of the British actor’s most convincing scenes as James Bond.
It was achieved by aiming nozzles at Moore and blasting air through them; despite the relatively harmless-sounding methods involved, it actually bruised his face!