The Other Fellow

There’s one big question which has always haunted the James Bond franchise: if he’s supposed to be a secret agent, why does he keep telling people his name?

Now it’s joined by another. What ought one to do if one’s name is James Bond and one is not a secret agent?

Exploring that question, this documentary might sound like a bit of fluff, but it delivers some surprisingly profound stories, from one man’s explanation of how he ended up serving 60 days in prison because of his name to a woman’s story of the unexpected way in which the Bond name helped her to escape from a violent partner. If you thought driving whilst Black was risky, wait until you hear about driving whilst James Bond (especially if Black as well). The film looks at the impact on one James Bond when another was wanted for murder, and sees the fugitive in that case ask why he, a Black man, was slammed in jail on very little evidence when the famous white James Bond kills people all the time and nobody does a damn thing about it.

The James Bonds come from all walks of life. There’s a theatre director – one of nine with that name in New York, that he knows of – who, long before Daniel Craig’s Bond flirted with Javier Bardem’s bad guy, caused a brief media sensation when a reporter discovered he was gay. There’s a soldier in the British Army who explains that half the people he meets in Iraq don’t have TV sets, but they know who Bond is. There’s James Lee Bond, a retired oilman in Austin who never liked the films; James Neal Bond, a preacher in the Assemblies of God church; and James Andrew Bond, a computer programmer who once found himself held at gunpoint because of his name, but who admits that, in the awkward days of his youth, it came in handy for impressing women. There’s a lawyer, a Guyanese politician, a doctor and a helicopter pilot. One James Bond has an eight-year-old son with the same name, who was quickly made number 7 in his school sports team; and there’s James Hart, who changed his name when he had children, but whose daughter explains that awareness of his original name is the reason why she gets to hang out with the cool kids at school.

Perhaps the most compelling story, and the one the film leads with, is the only one about somebody who acquired the name rather than being born with it. This is the Swedish James Bond, a legend in the small town of Nybro, where it’s whispered that his father was a real secret agent. Whatever the cause, his father disappeared when he was just a boy, and he found a new one in the fictional form of Ian Fleming’s hero. He has modelled his entire life on Bond (though how he has financed this remains a mystery), from his tailored wardrobe and Omega watch to the fact that he has never married, concluding that, in the circumstances, it might be unlucky. As a consequence, he’s treated as a celebrity, but it’s the sweetness behind the glamour which makes all this so endearing.

Madonna once said that being born with a famous name meant she had no choice but to become famous. A handful of the Bonds have embraced the celebrity aspect of their name and do bits of publicity-related work. Others, however, are sick of it – especially the fact that they have to hear the same jokes and quotes over and over again. Half the world’s population has seen a Bond film and almost all of them relish the chance to recite their favourite lines. How does one build up a business brand when everybody associates one’s name with somebody else? What is it like, in the modern age, to be unGooglable?

Ian Fleming wanted a plain name for his character, so he stole it from the author of one of his favourite natural history books, Birds Of The West Indies. That author, a quiet man, wasn’t exactly thrilled by the attention, but his wife seems to have taken it in her stride, and talks here about the time when she and her husband decided to pay Fleming a surprise visit. There’s some lovely archive material supporting this tale, including a picture of a slightly awestruck looking Fleming standing beside the original James Bond.

There are deep questions here about identity, individuality, and the desire to blend in or stand out. There are also some great stories wholly worthy of the famous name to which they are attached. One thing is for sure: being a James Bond is no trivial matter. It’s life-shaping, and this documentary may well leave you wondering if Johnny Cash, had he been in that situation, would have decided that Sue wasn’t so bad after all.