Tosh's James Bond

Saturday, May 28, 2022

I have zero interest in James Bond, but my very being is bound up in the movie and literature series. I’m part of the generation that was easily affected by the presence of the films.  Mainly when they played in grand, beautiful theaters like Grauman's Chinese on Hollywood Boulevard.  The exoticness of the theater was a perfect match for Sean Connery’s Bond, in significant ways that only an eight or 9-year-old boy can emotionally understand, but never intellectually.   As a rule, my father would take me on the opening weekend to see the new Bond film.  I have no memory of him talking about the film or if even he liked the film series. He took me to Bond films, like a father taking his son to the park or a baseball game.  The opening sequence, which was usually action-packed, impressed me the most in the Bond films. Of course, the stunning animated series starts with an iris opening up to Bond walking in front of the gun and aiming toward the audience.  In that sense, the film hasn’t changed that much from the days of “The Great Train Robbery.”

For me, the whole package of James Bond was essential, not Bond or even Sean Connery.  Ever since I was a little boy, I have been fascinated by the clothing or style of the characters on the big screen.  For instance, I always loved the costume of Walt Disney’s “Zorro” costume, especially the combination of the mask and the wide-brim hat.  Also, the fact that Zorro and Bond, in certain aspects, mock their villains or enemies by silently laughing at them.   A sense of justice was very weighty, but the humor had to go along that journey.  The sexuality of Bond never entered my head, nor did the Bond women in the films.  I knew they were a big deal because, at the time, Playboy magazine would have a photoshoot of the girls, usually naked, which was… interesting.
Nevertheless, the Bond films became less attractive after the opening credits.   The other thing I remember is loving the music.  As heard through the master touch of John Barry, James Bond music was a world that was beautifully in technicolor.   Also, my first sense of travel, or the idea of it, is without any doubt voiced to me through the world of James Bond.

As a writer who struggles daily to put words on an empty page in front of me, I am usually influenced by other writers and how they come upon their creations.   James Bond’s creator, Ian Fleming, took his inspiration from real life, but in a cubist sense, he took parts that he liked and built his own Frankenstein monster, which is Bond.  Many of the Bond traits are his, but he also based them on people he met when he worked for the British government.  My favorite in this category is Wilfred (Biffy) Dunderdale, who played a vital role in cracking the Enigma code during World War II. It was reported that he drove an armor-plated Rolls-Royce, dressed in handmade suits with Cartier cufflinks, and dined at Maxim’s.  He was the head spy for the M16 in Paris.   Second-in-line favorite would be Conrad O’Brien-ffrench, a British agent and an accomplished artist, linguist, mountaineer, skier, and author. Another inspiration was Dušan Popov, a Serbian double agent for both MI5 and the Abwehr (German military intelligence).  Fleming witnessed Popov playing baccarat, where he placed a bet of $40,000 ($641,357 in 2022 dollars) to cause a rival to withdraw from the table.  With that, plus the thought of the masculine physical beauty of songwriter Hoagy Carmichael, he had his James Bond.  Another curious fact is that Fleming was a giant bird watcher, and he named his character after the author and ornithologist James Bond. He was a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive “field guide Birds of the West Indies.” Fleming’s favorite book.

The villain gold “Goldfinger” is based on an architect Erno Goldfinger.  Fleming loathed his work and honored him as one of Bond’s most notorious villains.  So even for such a commercial novelist like Fleming, what he took from real life, bit by bit, has a deep inspiration for my work.  The universe is out there, but I can reconstruct it in my fashion and vision.