20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Living Daylights (1987)
12. On A Magic Carpet Ride...
After General Pushkin’s apparent assassination at the North African Trade Summit in Tangier, James Bond escapes over the city’s rooftops and ends up on the streets.
A large section of the rooftop chase was removed from the film between Bond fleeing over the rooftops and encountering CIA agents, Ava (Dulice Liecier) and Liz (Catherine Rabett).
The filmmakers recycled the discarded “better red than dead” idea from earlier drafts of the script when the chief of security (Nadim Sawalha) pursued James Bond across the rooftops, only to accidentally be struck by a carpet beater. Sent tumbling into a vat of yarn dye far below, the chief of security emerged completely blue (originally red in the script).
Double-0 Seven then borrowed a carpet, strung it across some wires and rode it down to a lower rooftop, before leaping into the saddle of a street trader's (stunt driver, Eddie Kidd's) bicycle whilst the trader was riding it!
This extended sequence was cut for timing reasons and for its lighter-hearted tone.