I’m a crazed, unrepentant, obsessive, incurable, doomed-beyond-all-hope-of-redemption movie junkie.
No, it doesn’t matter what type of movie it is. I’m usually not stuck in a specific genre, actor, or filmmaker.
It could be a superhero popcorn flick by Disney or a dour German soap opera filmed with an iPhone on the weekend, I don’t care. As long as the people who brought it to the screen are passionate about the story they’re telling and it’s done with artistry, I will find value in it.
And sometimes when I’m watching a movie, I think: Mom would’ve liked this.
No matter where I am, I can feel her next to me every time I watch a movie. And that’s appropriate because my mother gave me a precious gift a long time ago and I’ll carry it with me for the rest of my life.
My mother was my first movie buddy.
Loew’s Burland Theatre was once one of 14 theatres that the original Loew’s circuit operated concurrently in the Bronx.
Situated in the West Morrisania area, it first opened in 1896 as an open-air theatre that operated only in the summer months. In 1913, the site was excavated for a conventional movie theatre that opened as the Burland Theatre on November 1, 1913. Within a short time it was taken over by Loew’s Inc. and renamed Loew’s Burland Theatre.
In later years it was taken over by Cinema Circuit Corp. and the Burland Theatre closed in 1971. It presently houses a supermarket and a dry cleaners.
TV was my introduction to the movies.
Television was different when I was a kid; there was no streaming, no cable, no satellite dishes. People didn’t have to pay bloated subscription fees every month, so there were a lot of viewing options available. For free. When you don’t have a lot of money, that’s a big deal.
Besides the major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), there were the local NY stations (WPIX, WOR, WNEW) too. So there were game shows, reruns of “classic” dramas, westerns and sitcoms, soap operas, and lots and lots of movies.
But I never saw a movie in its “natural habitat.” I never saw a movie with an audience in a theater before.
The first time I saw a movie in an honest-to-God movie theater was at the Burland Theater in the South Bronx, which was only about a fifteen-minute walk from where I lived.
One afternoon my Mom and I went to see a triple feature of James Bond movies: Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Thunderball. I think I was eleven years old, and even though I didn’t realize it this was a big deal.
Before movie theaters were divided into little shoeboxes, they used to be the size of cathedrals. The screen was enormous, and the sound from the large speakers in the walls made the inside of the theater vibrate.
We got there late, but I got to see Dr. No fall into a nuclear reactor pool and die, so it was OK because I still believed that the good guys always won.
I enjoyed Thunderball, although I barely remember anything about it now. Oh sure, Bond using a jet pack was cool, but that’s it.
But it was Goldfinger that made a huge impact on me and changed the way I saw movies from that point on. It was a transformative experience.
First of all, it cemented in my head the conviction that only Sir Sean Connery was worthy of carrying his trustworthy .32 caliber Walther PPK.
Despite the heroic efforts of Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, and Craig, none of them said “Bond. James Bond”, with the same seductive resonance of menace and charm as Sean did.
(Mind you, my opinion is just a variation of the endless arguments about who’s the “best” Batman or Sherlock Holmes. I don’t care. You never forget your first Bond.)
Secondly, I think of Goldfinger as being the best of the Sean Connery era of James Bond movies.
Lovers of the superspy genre have cited Goldfinger as the film when the franchise found its identity (the gizmos, foreign locales, tongue-in-cheek humor) and it created the blueprint slavishly followed by espionage thrillers from Our Man Flint to The Kingsman. The bottom line is there’s no Jason Bourne without James Bond.
Auric Goldfinger, memorably portrayed by Gert Fröbe, was a superb adversary for Agent 007. The scene where Bond is strapped to a metal table as a laser beam is preparing to slice him in half has been permanently bookmarked in cinematic history:
“Do you want me to talk?”
“No, Mr. Bond, I want you to die!”
But I never expected a needle drop from Robert BrownJohn, the legendary American graphic designer:
“The title sequence for the James Bond film Goldfinger is BJ’s most famous and iconic work. The titles have been celebrated by both graphic designers and audiences universally. The sequence is a combination of conceptual brilliance and visual extravagance and is still the gold standard of film titles to this day.”
This wasn’t your grandma’s credit sequence, where the audience saw names on a placard. It felt like going from a horse and buggy to Warp Factor Five. It was a music video years before MTV.
More importantly, I think this was the first time (although I didn’t realize it until much, much later) that I began to process movies differently. I wasn’t just thinking about the characters and what the story was.
This was the first time I wanted to check underneath the hood in a movie and see what made it go.
The lens through which I experienced movies got bigger and things were never the same afterwards. That was the afternoon I became a film critic and it blew my eleven-year-old mind. I guess it was my Origin Story.
For whatever reason, that was the last time my Mom took me to a movie theater. But the damage was already done. As soon as I was old enough to go by myself, the Burland Theater was my crack house, my opium den, my shooting gallery. I was hooked for life.
This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Sometimes it’s painful to take that long walk down Memory Lane because it means saying goodbye to the people and places that we valued.
On the other hand, it’s the remembrance of the joy we experienced that illuminates the path ahead of us.
Psychiatrist Dr. Colin Murray Parkes said, “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”
I have left many bad habits behind me throughout the years, but the kick I get from movies still feels as good as the first time.
Whether at home or at the Cineplex, I can still feel the excitement blossom inside me whenever I sit in the dark and the opening credits appear on the screen.
Thanks, Mom.
raven
Have you seen:
When Scorcese was a kid there was an Italian language TV station in NYC and he’d watch films with his non-English (sp?) grandparents. I don’t know why it is so hard to locate but it is.
JanieM
Haven’t even finished reading the post yet, and don’t comment often, but I just want to chime in and say: the picture of you and your mom is priceless. Thank you.
Baud
Bitchin photo.
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: No, I haven’t. But thanks for the heads up, dude.
M31
lol this has nothing to do with movies, but when you mentioned Sean Connery’s Walther PPK, I have to mention that I just got a Walther WSR-160, lol not a gun, but a very very cool mechanical calculator (“pinwheel” type, if you are interested). Here’s an amusing video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3xM8YBx7bs
lol after the war, Walther as an armaments manufacturer was under restrictions and also their factory was bombed to shit, so they used their skill in fine machining to make these, pretty amazing contraptions and a very fine precision mechanism.
The Thin Black Duke
@M31: Nowadays, I’m sure Incels would trash Bond for using such a “tiny” gun.
Matt McIrvin
@M31: I knew who that was going to be before I clicked on it. Huge fan of Chris Staecker. (I was actually just watching one of his introductory lectures on real analysis.)
raven
@The Thin Black Duke:
Visions of Light is also a worthy watch.
NotMax
So old can remember when WNEW was WABD.
And here’s a fun homage to the Goldfinger title sequence, from ReBoot
Matt McIrvin
…I was just watching a bunch of videos on James Bond movies, including some reassessing the gloriously dopey “Moonraker” as the most quintessentially Roger Moore of the Roger Moore era (yeah, I imprinted on *him* as a kid).
Jeffg166
I got hooked early on. My local theater was small. We got films after the played everywhere else.
Then it became an art film house. In my teens I was watching Fellini, Bergman, Polanski. Lots of British comedies and dramas.
Moved to Philly and was going to a movie at least once a week. That went on for years.
Now I never go. Last theater I was in as in 2011. I was driven out by the audience who didn’t seem to realize they paid to see a movie not talk on their phones.
M31
@Matt McIrvin: Staeker is a great combination of informative and hilarious
Lyrebird
Thanks Sir Duke!
Me three on loving the photo of you and your mom.
I’m kinda the opposite of you in terms of me and movies, but I still get that same sense from the opening credits (that’s not the right word…*) of two movies:
Star Wars – the first one
Do the Right Thing
* Thanks @NotMax: “title sequence”
Baud
I used to be into movies but something happened along the way. Not sure what exactly.
CaseyL
I love that photo: your Mom looks like a real takes-no-crap kind of lady.
My favorite childhood movie memories are of going to drive-ins. We had a station wagon, and then a Barracuda, and we’d put pillows and blankets in the very back where my brother and I could fall asleep after the first feature. I remember going to the concession stand in my PJs. Don’t remember the movies themselves. But the point wasn’t the movies. The point was being able to watch one in the car and then sleep in the car.
Two movies I do remember seeing in theaters, and that was because both were traumatic for a little kid: Bambi, and Old Yeller. The latter was some kind of neighborhood group outing, with the parents as kid-wranglers. I remember my utter shock and horror at Old Yeller’s death; my Mom remembers trying to explain to a bunch of hysterically crying little kids that the dog was an actor, just like the people, that the dog was fine, he got up and walked away when the camera stopped rolling…. not sure how many of us believed her.
M31
@The Thin Black Duke: lol someone should remake a Connery Bond movie with him stuffing an AR-15 under his tuxedo jacket and looking like a dufus and immediately having his cover blown
or recasting some old ‘band of brothers’ tough guy movie with assorted Meal Team 6 misfit losers tripping over their own gear
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: That’s a great film. Even better, when I saw it in NY with a friend, we chatted briefly with David Byrne, who was standing in line for another film.
owlbrick
For me it was my uncle. He lived next door, and would bring foreign and art house films over to watch and share, and later lent me copies of Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Wenders, and such. He was a great conversationalist, and loved talking about movies for hours. I miss him. Thanks for your post, and for sharing your memories.
thruppence
@Jeffg166: If there’s an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema near you, check them out. They have a strict no talking, no texting, no phones policy, violators are thrown out. Only place I go to see movies now.
raven
@The Thin Black Duke: Awesome!!!
Leto
@The Thin Black Duke: There are times when I miss the less intricate choreographed fight scenes that early Bond films had. I do enjoy the intricate scenes that a Bourne, or Wick, film will bring, but there’s a different type of enjoyment watching just simple fisticuffs. Possibly more realistic? Just more identifiable?
The incels wouldn’t knock him for the size of the gun, just the fact he didn’t reload it correctly, or it’s a 5 shot magazine and he’s fired 6 shots… just… dumb shit. Which is bread-n-butter for any incel issue.
Scout211
Back in my youth, we had two theaters in the town I grew up in and one of those theaters had a Saturday morning line-up of mostly shorts, cartoons and old black and white movies. Parents would drop their kids off for a few hours and we all thought we were so cool without our parents along. Sometimes it was even hard to hear the movies because there was so much kid noise throughout the theater. But I remember how much I loved spending time there with my sisters and the neighbor kids just having a sweet time watching movies and eating popcorn without our parents along.
Thank you, The Thin Black Duke, for such a lovely remembrance of your mother and your introduction to your love of movies and movie theaters.
Omnes Omnibus
Cool pic.
Also, Goldfinger has the DB5 which, if you saw the movie at right age, affects your view of cars for the rest of your life. Driving a car like that in the Alps? Pure cool.
raven
@owlbrick: Have you seen “Dreams”? I have friends who wee just in France and went to Van Gogh’s grave. The sequence with Scorcese as Van Gogh and the Japanese painter running through the paintings is great!
raven
Speaking of Thin Black Dukes’s, South Sudan is making a game of it against Serbia!
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: In the book for Dr No, they took his Beretta ,25 with the skeleton grip away, because it had jammed on his last mission. The Armorer called it a lady’s gun.
laura
Your plaid bell bottoms are fire!
SiubhanDuinne
@M31:
OMG, that is maybe the coolest thing I’ve ever seen! I love it! I want one!
(I will hug it and squeeze it and take it home with me and name it George….)
raven
@Scout211: We had that in Whittier, Cal in the late 50’s. If you folded an empty popcorn box it made a great frisbee. The theatre air would be full of them before the cartoons!
Omnes Omnibus
@SiubhanDuinne: HBD.
Leto
@Omnes Omnibus: agreed; the base I was stationed at in Italy, about 20 mins north of it was where they filmed the opening car chase scene from Quantum of Solace. Riding through there on my motorcycle was just an amazing experience.
Salty Sam
Right there with you TBD. And yeah, as much as I loved Daniel Craig in the role, it will ALWAYS be Sean Connery.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
You too!
lowtechcyclist
I’ve always loved XKCD’s riff on that.
(Fixed the quote.)
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: HBD to you as well.
NotMax
Among the jobs I had as a kidlet, was a paperboy. It was a big deal every year when the newspaper treated us to an outing into Manhattan to see a movie.
Only one I can definitely remember seeing that way was Cheyenne Autumn, which turned out to be a 2½ hour clinker. MAD magazine was spot on with their parody, Cheyenne Awful.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: @schrodingers_cat: Thanks.
Splitting Image
I’ll go on record that I think Roger Moore is the best James Bond. I think that the Connery movies generally had better scripts, which makes them better movies overall, and I think people tend to let the silliness of the 1970s-era affect their opinion of Moore, which they shouldn’t.
That said, I think that the best moment in any Bond movie is the scene in Diamonds are Forever where Connery bluffs his way into the bad guys’ lair by saying good morning to a low-level drone and following him in when his keycard opens the door. That’s like 90% of real-life espionage right there.
Fans of Gert Frobe should also watch Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. He plays the stuffy German entrant in the airplane race and fights a duel with the Frenchman in a hot-air balloon.
SiubhanDuinne
@Omnes Omnibus:
And to you! Thanks.
Martin
Star Wars was my first movie in a big theater with an audience – a pretty full audience as it was opening weekend. I was 9, and it was my friends birthday. Overwhelming doesn’t quite capture it all.
lamh47
chile…I love my mom, but she’s horrible when we watch movies…LOL.
Half the time I watch with her because her commentary is always hilarious!
Butch
@Baud: Funny you would say that. I rarely make it more than a half hour into a movie any more. I don’t know why; there’s nothing philosophical about it. They just don’t hold my attention at all.
BeautifulPlumage
Wow
Wow
Your writing here is fantastic, the descriptions and the emotions they brought.
And the photo is great. Cheers to your mom. Cheers to you.
hueyplong
@Splitting Image: Been a while since I saw it, but I think Gert Frobe might be the first actor who appears onscreen in “The Longest Day.”
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
Have a happy yourself, OO.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: Thanks.
Layer8Problem
@lowtechcyclist: And then he puts the hover-over quote in for the extra whipped cream on top. Not a maraschino cherry; I hate maraschino cherries.
raven
@Martin: Ben Hur was mine, I was 10.
WereBear
In the middle of nowhere, it was the rabbit ears, the aluminium foil, and the cheap B&W movies they bought in bulk and showed to kids.
But I loved film noir and the saucy women of the thirties. Art Deco NYC, “women’s pictures” with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, anything with Cagney.
Married someone who is a Big Bug Movie fan.
raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Yea dude.
The Thin Black Duke
@Leto: Problem is, Hollywood supersizes everything these days: dialogue, plot and characterization is peeled away to make room for the explosions, fifteen-minute car chases, fake sex scenes, and an overabundance of CGI that attempts to distract the audience from the sameness of it all.
WereBear
@raven: Nothing better than a Ben Hur and Where Eagles Dare double feature.
Salty Sam
ha ha ha! I have watched ONE movie at home with my step-daughter. She chatted through the ENTIRE movie. I told her after it was over “I will NEVER watch a movie with you again!” ***
*** (at home. In the theater doesn’t count, because we pretty much only go to Alamo Drafthouse theaters, and they’ll throw your ass out in a heartbeat for disturbing other moviegoers, and she behaves there.)
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: Same here, and I don’t quite know why either. I can listen to stuff, while doing other things, but I lose interest very quickly watching pretty much anything.
I’d like to enjoy them, but, I just don’t.
raven
@WereBear: Except they came out 10 years apart!
hells littlest angel
I can’t look at a James Bond movie, especially the older ones, without seeing a glorification of sexism, racism, homophobia and imperialism. I know the franchise has cleaned up its act somewhat from its juvenile Ian Fleming origins, but still …
The Thin Black Duke
@Splitting Image: Here’s a James Bond factoid: Oliver Reed was thisclose to being on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but he turned it down because he thought the demands of the role would get in the way of his boozing.
rosalind
once my best friend and i were old enough to walk downtown by ourselves, we spent every saturday afternoon inside one of three single screen movie theaters in our small town (two 1920s movie houses, one modern box). we saw everything. Marx Brothers double features. M*A*S*H three times. and best of all – “Harold and Maude”, filmed all around our area. i don’t think our parents quite knew what movies we pre-teens were heading off to each saturday…
WereBear
@Splitting Image: Moore had a single flaw, but significant.
In the words of his first director of the series, “He runs like a chicken.”
Couldn’t have the physicality of Connery. And he was not really menacing. The scripts had to adapt to him.
Martin
Dr. No remains my favorite of the pre-Craig reboots. The way he casually shoots Dent establishes that he’s not a cop, but a spy. Such an important scene to film that way. Unfortunately the series was determined to be almost increasingly silly after that.
I recommend the ‘Kill James Bond’ podcast for fans:
I too, like the photo. Photos of that era – many of me as a kid – all have the same feel to them. The color palette, the effect of the film, the fashion. I always see photos like that and imagine that it was taken in the house up the street who we didn’t know, and we just missed each other in life.
M31
@hells littlest angel:
watched a 70s Bond movie (the one with the voodoo subplot, can’t remember the title) with some queer and trans friends recently (lol their choice of film) and it was so over the top with the sexism and racism that it was absurd enough to be amusing
rosalind
@rosalind:
p.s. my best friend is still my best friend. just got back from a visit where we spent our Saturday afternoon inside the local megaplex seeing a fun summer popcorn movie, “Twisters”.
Martin
@raven: Ah, that would have been a fun one. Anything where the audience gets involved is great.
hueyplong
@hells littlest angel: I had a Thin Black Duke-like early experience with a Connery Bond double (not triple) feature in a theater, but I don’t find those movies to be so watchable anymore. You don’t pick up on the negatives as easily when you’re a kid, which is, of course, part of the problem.
Layer8Problem
@hueyplong: He shows up as well in $ (Dollars) with Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. And once, during a bout of flu casting about for something to occupy my feverish brain, I saw him on a UHF channel in Orson Wells’ Mr. Arkadin in a small role. That was trippy. Actually, watching that with a 102 degree fever my whole afternoon was entirely too trippy.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for this wonderful essay. Glad to have a glimpse of your mom.
hueyplong
@Martin: “You’ve had your six.”
WereBear
@raven: my theme was, The Once a Year Movies. Shown in two nights. Big deals.
MagdaInBlack
I do recall many years ago my husband was working a farm trade show in Madison, WI. I drove up for the weekend and the cable channel in the hotel where he was staying was having a James Bond Marathon. That’s when I fell in love with both Bond movies and Madison.
Salty Sam
I want to echo this sentiment (I missed doing so in the edit window on my first comment).
After my boys’ Mom passed, one way we often dealt with our grief was to hide away in a movie theater for an afternoon. We have spoken many times of how that experience bonded us. Younger son is now a comedian/actor, and elder is passionate about film.
I loved the photo of you and your Mom…
UncleEbeneezer
Not the first film I saw in a theater, but the first that I remember seeing without my parents was Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Every Summer we visited Myrtle Beach and stayed at the South Wind Motel. It was our big vacation every year and was a completely different world than the Boston suburb where we lived. The motel had a kids program that would take us miniature golfing, to water parks and on one day to the movies. I had no idea what this movie was that we were about to see, I think we walked in a few minutes late because I remember trying to find our seats and I was kind of confused by the man on the screen wandering through the jungle. But for an 8-year old boy, holy shit this movie rocked my world. How could it not. Swinging on a whip, shooting at Nazis, chases through Cairo, not mention all the cool occult stuff. Still probably my favorite, all-time action films and it holds up well. Peak Spielberg, imo (along with Jaws). And probably the moment I realized that I loved movies.
The Thin Black Duke
@M31: Unfortunately, the Bond films weren’t an anomaly in that regard. That’s why there’s more than a few films which I loved that I won’t watch again because there’s going to be content that’s going to be monstrously and unforgivably repugnant. Purple Rain, for example.
NotMax
@rosalind
If it’s playing anywhere nearby, Coup! looks to be a lark.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: James Bond is like Godzilla in that when they reboot him, they often try to do it as a harder, more serious, more grounded Bond, but that can only really be the hook for one movie and it always gets sillier from there.
The Daniel Craig era was the most extreme example of this with Bond. The Craig “Casino Royale” was a really interesting departure: it’s the story of a brutal thug on a peculiar assignment who falls hard in love and gets his heart broken, and for one movie, that’s more interesting than the standard movie Bond formula. But in the subsequent movies (which were actually sequels since they had a story arc of sorts), what they basically did was gradually reintroduce the standard movie Bond formula, and it had to get sillier.
Mike E
@Jeffg166: Phila was great for moviegoing, the Theater of the Living Arts was my go-to cinema in the ’80s. Saw too many films there to count, I kept a stack of their seasonal programs.
First film I can remember was Omega Man with Charlton Heston; I saw Young Frankenstein and Jaws when they came out. Latest movies I went to see are The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One.
Another Scott
This is a great piece. Thanks Mr. Dude.
I saw the revival of Gone With The Wind at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta with my mom. It was quite the experience*, and people who think of a theatre as being a 50 seat multiplex with recliners and too-loud Dolby shake the floor and your heart speakers don’t know what they’ve missed.
* – I thought the ending was kinda lame, but I probably didn’t understand it enough at the time.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Layer8Problem
@The Thin Black Duke: First, excellent picture of you and your mom. Secondly, there was nothing like Goldfinger. Shirley Bassey, evil bad guys, cool pool table/bad guy plan reveal, a real atomic bomb, diabolical geopolitical/economic play totally beyond any ten year old’s ken. And getting sucked out of a plane!
Omnes Omnibus
The James Bond books taught me how to play baccarat and that scrambled eggs go with champagne as a late night snack.
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt McIrvin: I highly recommend Godzilla Minus One. Trust me, it’s a damned good movie that goes back to the era when The Big Scary Lizard was a terrifying allegory of the devastation of Japan after the war.
schrodingers_cat
Whatever happened to Balloon Juice commenter Roger Moore?
thalarctosMaritimus
@CaseyL: Did you ever watch Thomasina? My parents, who had no concept of “age-appropriate”, took me to that when I was 5, and I was thoroughly traumatized by that “children’s film”.
Some half a century later, Mr. thalarctos offered to watch it again with me to be supportive. He started out all like, it’s a Disney kids’ film, how scary could it be, and proceeded all the way through to, “Oh, God, what next?!?!?!”.
I felt seen.
hells littlest angel
@hueyplong: My mother quite approved of me taking the Bond novels out of the public library when I was like 10 years old (perhaps she thought it would toughen me up). And the novels are way worse than the movies, much more explicitly hateful. It embarrasses me to this day.
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, that’s my take as well. I think it’s also hard when you have an audience that seems to demand more and more which you need to deliver to, until everyone agrees it’s gotten stupid, you take a break, and you start again from the outset.
Says something about our predisposition to excess, and the economy’s predisposition to encouraging it.
NotMax
Strange theater experience was going with a friend to a newly opened multiplex to see Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?.
Arrived a bit late, bought tickets,walked into the theater.
Once our eyes adjusted to the darkness (coming attractions still showing) we realized the entire theater was empty except for the pair of us.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: He was replaced by Timothy Dalton.
Layer8Problem
@schrodingers_cat: Damned good question.
Matt McIrvin
As I mentioned in another thread not too long ago, one of my favorite moviegoing experiences was watching Aliens on or near opening weekend with an absolutely packed, hyped-up house in a grand old movie palace in Boulder. They jumped and screamed at all the scary stuff, they laughed at all the jokes, they went wild at the derring-do. When Ripley came out in the power loader to go mano a mano with the alien queen, everyone just went out of their minds. I think it was the first time I really realized the energy that the crowd can give to a performance, even if it’s just a movie.
Tony Jay
@The Thin Black Duke:
Thank you, TBD. From start to that great photo finish this was a post to be treasured. Lovely work.
On the topic of ‘best Bond’, Garth Ennis just finished his take with a ‘James Bond: 007’ comic book series for Dynamite, and from the first scene he absolutely nails the cold practicality at the heart of the character and subverts the expected story beat to show Bond being the well-oiled but unpredictable tool of murder he is.
Incels mocking the size of his weapon? Relevant only in that it may impact on the mission. If it started to, he’d just shoot them and walk away whistling.
UncleEbeneezer
@The Thin Black Duke: Godzilla Vs. Kong, not so much. We watched it a couple weeks ago and it was pretty bad.
JCNZ
@JanieM: Oh, 1000%!
Another Scott
@Another Scott:
DudeDukeI knew that, I blame autocorrect.
Sorry!
Cheers,
Scott.
hueyplong
@The Thin Black Duke: I really liked Godzilla Minus One and think it’s the best of the 70 or so year long series of movies. Recommended it to my 31-year old daughter, who has a tattoo of the original Godzilla. (We took her to the theatre to see the 50s original as a young child and, boy, did she pay us back. Wife and I regularly accuse each other of being to blame.)
WereBear
@thalarctosMaritimus: That was tough.
Never get over Old Yeller.
Not a Disney fan.
NotMax
@The Thin Black Duke
The decolorized version is currently on Netflix.
Mike E
@NotMax: I saw Frost Nixon as the only one in the audience; aside from my daughter and myself there was a mother and daughter watching the showing of Ponyo we went to.
Martin
@The Thin Black Duke: Agreed. I’m a big Godzilla fan, ever since I was a kid, and one of the things I like is how each reset of Godzilla changes a bit what it’s an allegory for. You can go back and glean a bit about what Japanese society was concerned about in the moment the film was made, which is a normal thing to do with media, but having this constant reboot pattern draws that forward a bit.
I really liked how much effort minus one made in homages to the original – the use of models, how those scenes were shot, all that. It was VERY nostalgic for me.
thalarctosMaritimus
@WereBear: agreed.
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt McIrvin: I remember feeling the collective gasp from the audience when the big twist was revealed at the end of The Sixth Sense.
Ishiyama
When I was in college I used to watch film society movies on campus in B-10 Commerce; Marx Brothers, Michael Curtiz, and such. And then there was the Brazilian film Antonio Das Mortes, which was a real eye-opener.
JCNZ
@Leto: The fight scene in The Bourne Supremacy between Matt Damon and Martin Csokas (a New Zealander!), which is conducted in absolute silence, is second to none, fight scene-wise. The whole film is as good as films get, in my humble opinion (“Does that scan for you, Pam?”)
Sure Lurkalot
Love this post, a lot because my uncle Gig took me to see a Bond double feature at about the same tender age of 11…Dr. No and From Russia With Love.
Not exactly age appropriate but I remember hoping I’d look like Ursula Andress in a bikini someday.
Loved going to movies until about 30 and abruptly stopped. I have a ridiculously short attention span. I’m better on a tablet with ear buds, but even then, it usually takes 2 or 3 sittings to finish a movie. I need to work on this!
Omnes Omnibus
@Matt McIrvin: One of mine was bit different. My dad really wanted me to see American Graffiti in the summer of 1974. One evening we walked to the one screen theater on State St. in Geneva. When we got there we saw that AG was gone and another movie was showing. We hadn’t heard of it, but we decided that since we had walked about four whole blocks, we should give it a chance. And so, with no warning, we saw Young Frankenstein. My dad was literlaly crying with laughter though much of it. I liked it but missed a lot of jokes since was still nine. But the bonding experience with my dad was great. It will always be my favorite Mel Brooks movie.
Matt McIrvin
@The Thin Black Duke: No need to recommend Godzilla Minus One–it was my favorite movie of last year, by a mile. A masterpiece, and a strangely life-affirming one.
Miki
@The Thin Black Duke: Totally get that.
Sean Connery, first, then Oliver Reed was another heartthrob for me, booze be damned. Women in Love is still one of my favorite films.
twbrandt
Late to this thread, but both your post and your pic are lovely!
The first movie I saw that made a huge impression was 2001 – A Space Odyssey. The title sequence with Also Sprach Zarathustra, the spacecraft, HAL 9000, just blew my 12 year old self away.
UncleEbeneezer
@hueyplong: Musical tangent but…There’s an old Soundgarden tee-shirt with Godzilla on it. One of my students was wearing one at our lesson and I got so excited. I’ve seen lots of Nirvana tees on kids, some Guns N’ Roses* and AC/DC too but never Soundgarden. Turns out he just liked the Godzilla image and had no idea who Soundgarden is. I was so disappointed, lol.
*Incidentally I was recently watching an old interview with Chris Cornell (RIP) and he said that going on tour with Guns N’ Roses was the thing that made the band realize it was time to call it quits. They loved the exposure of being on such a huge tour, but that whole stadium rock vibe and rockstar lifestyle was so the opposite of who they were and they knew that that was really the only direction left for the band to go so better to just call it quits. Cornell’s mental health struggles were also a big factor.
WereBear
@JCNZ: Bourne rocks and is searching for his heart. Upgrade.
I figure James Bond has lots of deep seated trauma from British boarding schools, distant parenting, and his trade. And is a symbol of the evolving view of what a man should be.
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: Godzilla sequels getting progressively worse is part of the charm, IMO. The whole Monsterverse effort is fascinating to me. Artistically it’s a terrible idea, but chasing this trend in franchises is unavoidable so I can approach it dispassionately. Like, how do you modernize the ‘beauty and the beast’ component from King Kong, and they did that. And Monarch kind of ties the whole kaiju phenomenon together a bit.
It’s not good. Some is okay, some is terrible, but it’s kind of interesting to me to see how they try and put that puzzle together.
M31
@Martin:
yes! and Shin Godzilla had very clear echos of the Fukashima tsunami, I think it upset some people at the time
Just saw Godzilla Minus One this week, and enjoyed it, though wasn’t quite sure of what to think of the way they portrayed ‘the war’ as some kind of huge terrible thing that just kind of happened (though for the vast majority of Japanese I assume that’s that’s true, it’s not like there was much choice going on)
lol like James Bond, why does the UK need spies going all over the world anyway?
UncleEbeneezer
The other movie experience that blew me away and made me love movies (especially scary ones) was seeing Poltergeist, another Spielberg classic,in the theater with my Mom. I was only 9 so it scared the AF out of me, but I loved it. Loved it even more than E.T.
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt McIrvin: I like watching YouTube videos where the hosts are responding to a movie, and a common theme I noticed when they were reacting to Godzilla Minus One was them saying “I forgot I was watching a Godzilla movie”. It hits hard because the human characters are the heartbeat of the story. There are moments that genuinely brought me close to tears and I wish Hollywood would remember how to make popcorn movies like that again.
M31
@The Thin Black Duke: omg Purple Rain, I saw that when it came out and in between ‘wow another great Prince song’ it was mostly ‘yikes, this is extremely problematic’
hueyplong
@M31: I have always assumed that the authors of Texas schoolbooks use Japanese historians as their model.
Splitting Image
@The Thin Black Duke:
Oliver Reed as Bond would have been great fun. I also wonder how Timothy Dalton would have done if he’d got it in the late sixties when it was originally offered.
UncleEbeneezer
@Martin: We probably only stuck with Legacy/Monarch because I wanted to crush on Ana Sawai and because we didn’t really have anything else we were that into, at the time.
The Thin Black Duke
@Omnes Omnibus: “Igor, take the bags ”
“Alright. I’ll take the brunnette, you can have the redhead.”
Martin
@The Thin Black Duke: I keep reading these pieces about how AI and this and that are going to replace workers and so on, and can’t help but come back to the power of these shared experiences and how that’s something we’re always going to demand back. It doesn’t objectively make sense to spend $1000 on Taylor Swift tickets when you can see her film for $10, and then you see a video of a crowd of 40,000 people all singing and moving in unison to her song, and it’s like, ‘oh shit, I get it – that’s a much better social feeling than what I’m getting out here. That would feel amazing.’
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: The Roger Moore era was a little unusual in that it actually did the “grounded Bond” reboot midway through without changing the lead actor, from Moonraker to For Your Eyes Only. But things got crazier again after that in short order.
Leto
@JCNZ: I can agree with that. At the same time, the fight scene between Connery and Robert Shaw, on the train, in From Russia with Love is just as good. Shaw is Connery’s equal, both physically and intellectually, and the entire piece is just riveting. When Shaw captures Connery in the sleeper compartment, and the game of cat and mouse ensues. I’m sure for the original audiences first seeing it, it wasn’t a sure thing that Bond would come out alive.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: That one I got. I missed “roll in the hay” though for example.
NotMax
Speaking of Godzilla, “I must succeed!”
:)
rosalind
@The Thin Black Duke:
Think I told this before, but: I was working as an assistant in the Disney Film division for the Creative Exec who got assigned “The 6th Sense” day read. The agency had submitted the script to all the studios at the same time, and everyone had to submit their bids by end of day. The complication is M. Night wanted to also direct, and most studios felt he was too inexperienced.
My Exec had to quickly read the script, then let the President know whether to make a bid. She closed her door then opened it about 15 minutes later saying the story was really interesting. She kept doing this until the last time the door opened and she went “OMG, we have to buy this project!” and ran down to the President’s office. Disney bought the project, I immediately made copies for all the assistants to take home and read, and that script was the exact movie that was released one year later. No changes. Nearly unheard of in H’wood.
Martin
@UncleEbeneezer: Ok, I won’t argue one bit there. LOL.
I’m a bit of a completionist on Godzilla, so I would have stuck it out without her – though she did help.
M31
I read that Graham Chapman had been a long-time alcoholic but actually quit booze for Life of Brian and remained clean after that.
CaseyL
@thalarctosMaritimus:
OMG, of course I did. To this day, the image of Thomasina outside in the rain, looking through the window, wanting to be let in, makes me puddle up.
I am a TOTAL sucker for that era’s movies where animals were the stars. Books, ditto. Thomasina, yes. Incredible Journey (book and movie): bawl like a baby every time I see or read the ending.
Villago Delenda Est
This, along with the happenstance/coincidence/enemy action line are my favorite things Bond.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I think Roger Moore dropped out October of last year. I remember some exchanges with him among others over Israel and the Gaza war; then he stopped commenting.
Moore felt very strongly about the war and that may be why he decided to stay away. I hope there’s nothing worse going on with him.
The Thin Black Duke
@Martin: The trick is seeing musicians before they hit it big and the tickets are still cheap. I saw Living Color at Toad’s Place in New Haven for five bucks.
Splitting Image
@schrodingers_cat:
I haven’t seen him comment here in awhile, but he is on Mastodon and is still posting there. His old posts here link to his Mastodon profile.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: It also gives you shit loads of cool points.
Leto
@UncleEbeneezer: his Casino Royale opener is still just so damned good. For me, right there with Shirley Bassey’s Goldfinger. Iconic, powerful, and soaring. Combined with that opening graphic sequence? So damned good.
Martin
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, but it never quite made it all the way home. It’s what I liked about the Craig reboot – it allowed them to cover ground that you couldn’t do in the middle of a series of sequels. Bond comes off as a much more broken person, less as an admirable figure and more as a tool of the state. You see Bond as a different thing, in addition to having the silliness removed. And I thought Craig did a really good job at resetting that even for the people that had seen every film.
Matt McIrvin
@M31: An fascinating one in that specific connection is Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack from 2001. While as a film it’s not a patch on Minus One, it’s unusual for one of the “Godzilla vs.” movies in that usually, in those, Godzilla becomes a kind of hero defending Japan from a worse monster–and if King Ghidorah shows up, he’s generally the scariest and baddest of them all–but here, they’re the team of “good guys” defending Japan from Godzilla.
But the other unusual thing about it is that the motivations of all these creatures are specifically mystical and supernatural, and Godzilla is described as under the control of the spirits of the World War II Pacific dead, wreaking vengeance on Japan for imperial wrongs. So he’s the menace, but there’s actually this element of war guilt in the backstory–an almost unique thing to see in a Japanese monster movie. I’ve heard that GMK is actually one of the Minus One director’s favorite films.
delphinium
@NotMax: That happened to my sister and I-it is a strange feeling indeed.
Thin Black Duke- thanks for the wonderful post and lovely photo of you and your mom!
The Thin Black Duke
@Leto: Here’s a brilliant credit sequence from the great Saul Bass for Seconds.
https://youtu.be/MaRdXHYVP04?si=KDbt7giee5NertR
Ohio Mom
My first movie was also in the Bronx although I know not where. I had just turned four years old, it was The Shaggy Dog and I was utterly confused. Probably sensory-overloaded.
I suspect the outing was for my sister’s benefit, not mine — she would have been eight.
When I was in elementary school, we moved and the new neighborhood had a movie theater within easy walking distance (no big streets to cross). Sometime around fifth or sixth grade, my best friend and I were allowed to go together by ourselves, without an older sibling or adult.
That is when I discovered you could do what is no longer possible: show up anytime and watch both of the movies one after the other, as many times as you liked.
The watchword for announcing you were ready to leave was, “This is where we came in.” I have found that a useful metaphor for lots of life experiences but alas, younger people have no idea what that could possibly mean or be referring to.
WereBear
@Martin: I found Craig had a chameleon quality that really resonated. He could look anywhere from someone easily overlooked to awesome in a tux.
Tony Jay
Sadly it’s too late to cast Connery and Moore, but you can take my money right now for a spy drama (movie or series) with Brosnan, Dalton and Craig playing retired 00 agents (who really don’t like each others’ contrasting styles and personalities) forced out of retirement to deal with a ghost from their pasts that the modern MI5 refuses to believe exists, even as its machinations tear modern Britain apart.
Working title: Unlicenced.
delphinium
@CaseyL: This was one of my favorite childhood things too. Making the popcorn or other snacks, getting in our pjs, and bringing our pillows and blankets to watch movies at the drive-in.
Martin
@The Thin Black Duke: But you can’t get that vibe there – because they aren’t part of the culture yet. You can see a clip of the audience from a Taylor Swift concert in China and one in Texas, and you can’t tell them apart. You can take Swifties from anywhere in the world, mash them together, and they are instantly a community. I think that’s amazing.
Ladyraxterinok
raven
@The Thin Black Duke:And that is every man – INCLUDING the old bag – for HIMSELF!!!”
Jonathan Winters is hysterical!
hueyplong
@The Thin Black Duke: Halfway into the credits for Casino, I realized that I was either looking at a Saul Bass creation or someone copying him, and it was just a rush.
The Thin Black Duke
@raven: What a cast! No way Hollywood would be able to afford that much star power in the same movie today.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin: I binged most of the Craig movies on trans-Pacific airplane flights recently (the one I haven’t seen is the last one, No Time to Die, which they didn’t have). There was a moment that struck me in one of the later ones when, I think, Moneypenny says “You’re a good man, Mr. Bond,” and my reaction was No! James Bond is not a good man; this whole series of films ought to have made that clear! But it felt like they were gradually trying to turn it into regular Bond stuff.
CaseyL
@The Thin Black Duke:
Now, that was a movie that freaked me right out. I was barely old enough to understand it at all, probably didn’t catch any of the subtext, but that last scene…!
@Miki I adored that man, though by all accounts he was a real piece of work in RL. I first saw him in the Assassination Bureau, and some silly trifle that co-starred Marianne Faithful (!). What a hottie when he was young! Interesting note: If you’re at all familiar with Lois McMaster Bujold’s Miles Vorkosigan novels, Aral Vorkosigan is said to have been modeled somewhat after Oliver Reed.
Rusty
I’m elementary school, for reasons that were never explained, my dad took us to see Apocalypse Now at the theater.. For a kid in rural upstate NY raised on Disney movies and Saturday Westerns, it was a an incredible experience. Up to then I didn’t understand what movies could truly be. The other that stands out was in high school seeing Raging Bull. Again, a movie as an experience. I don’t particularly now like violent movies, but both were artistic visions.
The Thin Black Duke
@Matt McIrvin: My favorite gritty nasty twisty espionage thriller lately is the Slow Horses series.
Matt McIrvin
@Leto: Springing the “gun barrel” sequence unexpectedly on you as the beginning of the title animation, which is also a depiction of the moment Bond became 007, was brilliant. One of the best moments in the whole series.
Craig
@thruppence: yeah, no bullshit there. Plus, you can get decent beer, or cocktail. The one by me is part First Run movies, and part Rep House. Great spot.
Miki
Boy O Boyski – this has tickled some memories.
First movie I remember is Lady and The Tramp on a birthday “date” with my dad circa 1961. Prior to that movies were usually short 3 Stooges shows on Saturdays at a really dingy movie house in North Minneapolis.
Second memory is Mary Poppins in 1964 at the State Theater in downtown Minneapolis – seated 2000+ and was crazy ornate.
Third big memory is my cool Uncle Pete (professional musician, jazz and studio musician), taking us to 2001 at the Cooper Theater in St Louis Park in 1968 – a real Cinerama theater, seated 1200.
Another 1968 memory is Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, at the Terrace Theater, a fabulous mid-century modern theater built in 1951, seated @800. There was a bar, a room to watch with crying kids, a smoking section ….
I hate the shoebox theaters (although I did see Don’t Look Now in one in the basement of the IDS center in 1974 – scared the shit out of me, as did The Silence of the Lambs, circa 1990, at another tiny theater).
I rarely watch movies anymore, not even streaming. That makes sad because watching a great movie from beginning to end is a unique experience, but one that requires a mental commitment I’m just not good at making lately (although I can get it up for books, go figure).
Anyway, thanks for this, TBD. It’s a great remembering.
raven
@The Thin Black Duke: Jimmy Durante wasn’t in it much b ut what a scene.
Layer8Problem
@Rusty: This lands in the same place, trust me. The first movie I remember was The Sound of Music with my family, at the drive in on Route 59 in Spring Valley. However the first movie I saw alone with a parent was Patton, during a family trip visiting a Navy friend of my dad’s in Charleston SC. He and Mom had a fight of some kind as far as I remember, so he and I went to see it. It was the first time I ever saw a dead body real or staged in my life, the aide who was killed in the Battle of El Guettar scene. I was like seven and horrified and impressed at the same time.
I returned the favor nine or ten years later taking him to see Apocalypse Now. He approved of it.
Craig
@Omnes Omnibus: The Spy Who Loved Me is one weird book. POV of a young woman out of finishing school on a Vespa riding from Maine(?) to Miami and runs into trouble. I don’t think Bond even shows up for like 120 pages. Friend gave me a collection of 6 or so of the books years ago
Martin
@Rusty: Fuck yeah! Right from The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again to “Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end.”
That’s the zoomer experience right there. Just skip over the middle ground of being aware of the structure of the world and believing it’s all good only to find the horror once you get to college. Nah, 4th grade, buddy. Happy fucking early bar mitzvah.
Matt McIrvin
I think the first movie I saw in a theater was some Disney cartoon, possibly The Aristocats or some re-release of 101 Dalmatians, but I remember very little about it and the memories get mixed up with seeing them on Wonderful World of Disney on TV.
More formative movie-theater experiences… Seeing Star Wars on the big screen in 1977 was obviously one of them, but so was seeing Local Hero several years later, which taught me what small art-house films could be. Then Brazil, Terry Gilliam’s bizarre retro-futuristic dystopian comedy, the result of a somewhat deranged auteur forcing his vision onto the screen come hell or high water.
Sister Golden Bear
@WereBear:
Moore was a far better fit in “The Saint” TV series. I can see why that role led to him being cast as Bond, but as you said Bond requires an undertone of lethality that Moore lacked.
Ladyraxterinok
@NotMax:
Miki
@Martin: I was an English major undergrad reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when Apocalypse Now came out. I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
tihotm
Great essay @The Thin Black Duke
Any letterboxd fans here?
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Yeah, like I didn’t have the VN war and Watergate hearings on TV when i was a kid. Charles Manson, the ’72 Olympics, Patty Hearst, and Son of Sam. The third plane I flew on (my bother’s first) had a bomb threat. Is it worse now? I don’t know, but kids weren’t growing up in Mayberry before this.
Edited to fix Olympic year.
Almost Retired
What a beautiful piece of writing (and awesome photograph).
My Mom lived in Santa Monica during and after WWII and would take the red cars with her older cousin to Westwood and Hollywood to see movies as often as she could.
And then my Grandparents moved back to the farm in the Midwest when she started High School .
She never lost the love of film, just the access. There was only one theater in our small town and she drug me along all the time as a child, even if movies like Klute weren’t necessarily particularly appropriate for a ten year old.
I moved to Los Angeles 15 minutes after graduation, and whenever she visits we seek out some unusual film at one of the pretentious art house theaters. Her enthusiasm has been dulled, however, by a complete lack of interest in explosions or spandex-clad superheroes. But 90 year old women aren’t really a targeted market for Hollywood.
Miki
@Omnes Omnibus: 72 Olympics.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miki: Fixed. Thanks.
TBone
Big blizzard in late 1970s or early 80s, my mom drove her little Chevette to take me for a mother daughter movie night in Philly proper. It wasn’t snowing when we left the house. The movie was black and white Ingmar Bergman, and I didn’t understand it but I was so proud that my mom thought I would like it, or that I’d behave myself for so long if I didn’t. It was such a special night, I remember being next to my mom being quiet and watching her rapt attention to the movie, and then our shock at all the deep snow when we finally came out of the theater. The quiet of the city at night in that much snow. Our trying to keep each other brave on that scary drive back to the suburbs – neither of us thought we’d make it home and that late at night there was no one to call (dad the cop working night shift)…
The entire memory is wrapped in the quiet darkness of the theater and of snow falling thickly at night…
Craig
Thanks so much for this post! It was my Dad for me. We went to see the rerelease of Fantasia at the big screen theater in town. I didn’t know who Leopold Stokowski was, I didn’t really get classical music, but by the end I understood that I’d seen something remarkable and unique, and was a little in awe of it. A month or so later…Star Wars when it had been out for a few weeks and was turning into a phenomenon. To this day when I hear the long form 20th Century Fox intro I have a visceral reaction. That short rest in the dark and then TheScore and the title crawl, then right into a space battle. Holy shit, 10 year old me was completely blown away by the power of movies. I left the theater in a daze. My Dad was kind enough to take us back the next day and do it again.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: I grew up in India and watched 2 Prime Ministers assassinated and the country going up in flames over BJP’s agitation to build a temple where a 300 year old mosque stood.
Watched my city (Mumbai) burn for months in 1992. Nightly curfews, people eyeing each other with suspicion. But we still went about our lives commuting to work/university. It was pretty damn scary. Nothing compares to that bleak period from the end of 1991-93
Its such BS that only kids growing up right now are going through difficult geopolitical events.
zhena gogolia
@raven: Winters is the best thing about that movie.
Miki
@Omnes Omnibus: My Episcopalian sister worked at the 72 Olympics, traveled around Europe for several months, then landed in Tel Aviv for a month before moving to a kibbutz. She left before the Yom Kippur War, but we all worried about her the entire time. She’s a hero to me, still.
Craig
Thanks so much for this post! It was my Dad for me. We went to see the rerelease of Fantasia at the big screen theater in town. I didn’t know who Leopold Stokowski was, I didn’t really get classical music, but by the end I understood that I’d seen something remarkable and unique, and was a little in awe of it. A month or so later…Star Wars when it had been out for a few weeks and was turning into a phenomenon. To this day when I hear the long form 20th Century Fox intro I have a visceral reaction. That short rest in the dark and then TheScore and the title crawl, then right into a space battle. Holy shit, 10 year old me was completely blown away by the power of movies. I left the theater in a daze. My Dad was kind enough to take us back the next day and do it again
Craig
Thanks so much for this post! It was my Dad for me. We went to see the rerelease of Fantasia at the big screen theater in town. I didn’t know who Leopold Stokowski was, I didn’t really get classical music, but by the end I understood that I’d seen something remarkable and unique, and was a little in awe of it. A month or so later…Star Wars when it had been out for a few weeks and was turning into a phenomenon. To this day when I hear the long form 20th Century Fox intro I have a visceral reaction. That short rest in the dark and then TheScore and the title crawl, then right into a space battle. Holy shit, 10 year old me was completely blown away by the power of movies. I left the theater in a daze. My Dad was kind enough to take us back the next day and do it again
zhena gogolia
Goldfinger was one of my first movies too. I was totally transfixed by the girl covered with gold paint, the guy being compacted into a little cube in the car, the laser threatening Bond’s crotch, and especially Gert Fröbe being sucked out of the plane! Sorry for the spoilers, but I assume everyone’s seen it by now!
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus:
And that’s just the white people shit.
The Thin Black Duke
@Almost Retired: How about Thelma?
VFX Lurker
Beautiful tribute to films and filmmaking. Thank you for writing this.
Heh. I was going to share what my peers recommend watching right now, but…
…you’ve seen it. Director Takahashi Yamazaki is a VFX artist who supervised that film’s VFX, and it shows. Nothing the 35 (!!!) VFX artists did went to waste. They had eight months and 35 (!!!!!!) artists to make the VFX for 610 shots (2/3rds of the film).
More trivia from my notes:
hueyplong
@zhena gogolia: Between college and law school I was a craps dealer at a casino in Nevada. One night on the shift we learned that Harold Sakata had died. On the stick, I asked the players to observe a moment of silence for Oddjob. They did. When I broke the silence by sending out the dice with the customary carnival barker talk, the customers at the table cheered.
It was kind of like everyone knew cultural references about Goldfinger.
Craig
@The Thin Black Duke: I’m going to watch that Tonight.
Almost Retired
@The Thin Black Duke: OMG that looks hilarious!
The Thin Black Duke
@VFX Lurker: Thank you. I’m the guy who always checks out the supplemental features on the DVDs. (Remember those?)
HinTN
@Omnes Omnibus: Favorite? Oh hell yes. It’s the best one, too. HBD
Omnes Omnibus
@HinTN: TY
TBone
@The Thin Black Duke: that looks like fun!
zhena gogolia
@hueyplong: That’s cool!
M31
@The Thin Black Duke: hahahah Thelma looks great!
oh, and the pic of you and your mom is great
oldgold
My childhood buddy and I went to Goldfinger. It was the first time I had ever gone to a movie without my parents.
In general, at that time I was as green as grass as to the ways of the world.
I will never forget this exchange in the movie.
James Bond: Who are you?
Pussy Galore: My name is Pussy Galore.
James Bond: I must be dreaming.
Me too, James! It hit me like a thunderbolt. I damn near passed out. The next day was the first day my voice cracked.
Baud
I should get a pommel horse.
hueyplong
@zhena gogolia: The box man* took me to the side afterward and said that it worked that time, but I shouldn’t improvise like that. I told him that the venn diagram of craps players and Goldfinger fans was a circle within a circle. He had no idea what I was talking about and I’m pretty sure he told the other pit boss types I was a geek.
*guy who sits in between the two inside dealers and watches us for mistakes. Not as high up as other pit bosses. Scorsese’s scene laying it all out in Casino (x watches y watches z, etc) is so dead on that I practically yelled at the screen in the theater.
Chris
1) To me Sean Connery is the only actor who was ever completely convincing in both the “world’s greatest assassin” part of the role and the “classy British gentleman” part of the role. Dalton and Craig perfectly nailed the former, less so the latter. Moore and Brosnan perfectly nailed the latter, less so the former. Connery nailed both. That, more than just “he was the original,” is what makes him the best Bond.
2) I like most of the Bond movies; there are very few that I actually consider too bad to watch. But for my money, the series has never had as strong a run again as it had with Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. (You may argue whether Doctor No and From Russia With Love belong in there too; to me those two movies are still experimental, the franchise figuring itself out. Goldfinger is the point from which the franchise really knows what it is).
Captain C
@M31:
Or having no one notice it at all.
Or perhaps have everyone around him pretend it’s not there. The explanations to the new folks might go like:
“Why does that guy-”
“Shhhh!!! That’s (pause) “James.” He thinks he’s a secret agent, but he’s harmless. We all pretend that we can’t see his rifle because it keeps him happy. I’ve never seen him shoot anyone with it; I’m not even sure it’s loaded or for that matter a real rifle.”
schrodingers_cat
I miss Mnem, she was a movie critic too!
Sure Lurkalot
@Omnes Omnibus:
I too saw this movie with my dad, he laughed so hard, I thought he was going to have a heart attack. It is one of my fondest memories of him!
And I was 19, not 9.
Happy birthday, youngster!
HinTN
@Craig: Yep, that one fried my preteen brain.
Chris
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, For Your Eyes Only was intended to be Timothy Dalton’s first. Don’t remember why his debut ended up delayed a few years.
And in fact, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, and Licence To Kill make a nice little unofficial trilogy, whose feel is much closer to each other than to the two movies that came between the former and the other two.
Raven
@Sure Lurkalot: My dad had a cervical laminectomy and I was in Phoenix post/surgery. We rented Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman and the laughing was killing him but he wouldn’t let us turn it off!
schrodingers_cat
First movie I saw in the theaters was a Hindi version of Christie’s Then there were none. I was far too young to go that movie. I was totally freaked out. My parents took me with them because they couldn’t find a baby sitter. I ruined the movie for them by crying non-stop and they took turns to amuse me by taking me out to the concession stand etc.
When TV in India was new there used to be a Hindi movie every Sunday on Doordarshan (Public broadcaster) and a Marathi movie on every Saturday. I grew up in South Mumbai which has many old art deco theaters so we used to go watch movies there especially during summer holidays. I would go with my parents, my aunt, my next door neighbors and with my friends when I was a teen. Going to movies and then going out to dinner. There were some theaters that would show Hollywood movies.
Also going to matinees was fun, because they were usually cheaper and not as crowded.
These beautiful art deco theaters had names like Regal, Eros, Empire, Sterling. And many had great snacks not just popcorn.
Sure Lurkalot
One issue I have with action movies is that they’re almost all special effects with a story written around them. And fighting in every way possible…swords, lasers, guns, cars, spaceships….
Spouse turned on some space sci-fi episode set in the way ahead times and the first scene was a 10 minute hand to hand melee. Got a small handheld device that will incinerate your foe and still fist fighting, I see. Sure.
Another Scott
@Chris:
With the caveat that I haven’t read the books (my mom loved them) and have seen only a few of the movies, but wasn’t Bond (basically) a hick playing a classy gentleman? The “shaken not stirred” drink instructions being the tip-off (since it “bruises the gin” or whatever?)? I wouldn’t be surprised if the movies (the later ones especially) morphed his background, but I’ve assumed that part of his appeal was the “everyman” aspect of his background.
Cheers,
Scott.
Craig
@Chris: Nailed it on Connery. Ruthless murderer. Put a Tux on him in a Casino on The Riviera and he’s an Oxbridge gentleman. That said, my favorite of the old movies is probably On Her Majesties Secret Service. The locations, the insane chases in the snow. Bond falls in love for real with Tracy, and I’ve always had a fanboi crush on Diane Riggs. Bond’s subplot with Tracy’s gangster dad. Telly Savalas! And then Crushing Tragedy. Right now I think No Time To Die is the best Bond movie. Lots of echoes to OHMSS, lots. Barbara Broccoli let Daniel Craig, Cary Fukunaga, and Phoebe Waller Bridge take a wrecking ball to the whole damn. Amazing. Bond doesn’t even show up for over 20min., and it’s 30min. till we even get to the big Billie Eilish title sequence. Yet the movie never drags. With a Bang not a whimper.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Kids pass around actual beheading videos at recess in elementary school.
And all of those news stories were still filtered through the political lens of the day. My Lai was covered up, what was shown on TV was filtered. Criticism of the war was controlled. Sure, bad things were happening in the world, but we weren’t the bad guys. We weren’t bombing Cambodia and Laos. None of these things came at you without being contextualized in a specific way, usually with a specific agenda. Walter Cronkite wasn’t going to radically challenge your world view.
But Apocalypse Now is trying to do that. What’s not captured in the quote I put up is that “Someday this war’s gonna end” is delivered wistfully. That makes him sad. Killing people – and he particularly care who they are – gives his life purpose. I don’t think you got that on NBC Nightly News. But you do get that on social media. You do see the Israeli officials dehumanizing everyone from Gaza, effectively calling for them to be exterminated – including the children. That too doesn’t show up on NBC News, but it shows up on Instagram. And 12 year olds usually don’t watch the evening news, but a lot of them have Instagram.
The single reason why young people are so much more friendly to the trans community than older generations is because they didn’t have to wait for transgender people to be allowed to be seen on TV. The hosts of the podcast I linked above are all transgender. Through social media entirely populations of people became visible and gained a voice, and sometimes that voice is hard to receive, or delivers a message that runs counter to the media narrative. I have witnessed too many people in my own social media spaces throw up their last post, explaining that they can’t go on in a world that won’t accept them for who they are, who are uncaring that they are broke and can’t afford medication, and so on, and who then go silent, followed up by a confirmation by someone else in the community, that yeah, they’re gone. Nobody puts that on the news – certainly not if the kids was gay, or trans, or black, or Muslim. Maybe if she was a pretty white girl from an upper-middle class family, it’ll get a piece. We’re still running north of one mass shooting a day in this country and the media has effectively stopped covering it at all. You’d only know through social. And kids get that experience in elementary school as well – not just a mention on the news, but phone video from someone being shot at, if not the shooter themselves streaming it to Twitch live.
And what’s with the competition here? It’s not bad enough that we’ve had Covid and gun violence and climate change that adults have done basically fuck-all about, you feel the need to win the childhood trauma game too? You want me to mail you a sticker?
Sure Lurkalot
@Raven: Unbeknownst to me and my dad, he only had 8 more years before the big C arrived and 4 years later he passed on. I’m happy to have that memory of him laughing so hard.
lowtechcyclist
@Leto:
If I’ve seen From Russia With Love, I don’t remember it – I’ve forgotten a lot of movies I saw forty or fifty years ago. But I’m a big fan of Robert Shaw, so him and Connery facing off is something I’ve got to see. I’m sure our library system has it on DVD.
Speaking of Robert Shaw, Jaws wins my personal prize of ‘best movie I expected to hate.’
We were out in Kansas in the summer of 1975, visiting my uncle and cousins. Uncle Dan absolutely insisted on taking us to see Jaws. I really expected it to be just another disaster movie along the lines of (very recent at the time) flicks like Earthquake and Towering Inferno. (What do you get when you put the two together? Shake N’ Bake. ;-) So we went, but with great reluctance. And of course, it’s a great movie – so great that it basically invented the summer blockbuster.
The kicker for me was this scene:
Brody: You live here?
Cassidy (the guy too drunk/stoned to save the girl): No, Hartford, I go to Trinity.
Which wouldn’t mean much, except I was a year from graduating from Trinity at the time, and here I am in the middle of Kansas where nobody’s ever heard of the place. So it was almost like “hi, we see you!”
The Thin Black Duke
@hueyplong: Whoa. Boss move, dude.
CaseyL
IIRC, the Bond films invented the over-the-top action sequence, and each one had to open with one. It got to be a thing, whether the newest Bond could possibly outdo the previous one in its opening scene.
What I don’t remember – and am not enough of a fan to just know – is whether that tradition started during the Connery era or the Moore era. I tend to think it was during the Moore era, because the Bond movies generally became more “comic book” when Moore was Bond.
kalakal
I remember about 20 years getting an auction catalogue for a sale at Sothebys of James Bond memorabilia. Amongst all the posters etc there was some pretty far out stuff – the body shell for the underwater Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me, fake diamonds from Diamonds are forever but for me the star item was Oddjob’s hat. I’d have loved to have afforded that.
Chris
@Craig:
OHMSS is one of the very best Bond movies, but it suffers from starring the very worst Bond actor.
For my money, it would have been nice to have Connery in the role, precisely because having seen him go through so many women in five movies, it would be that much more meaningful to see the same guy actually fall in love.
Craig
@Chris: agreed.
Captain C
I think one of the Benji movies was the first I saw in a theater (it took place in Paris, maybe? There was a plot about a treasure map which IIRC was tattooed to Benji’s paw or something.), but the first in-theater movie that really blew my head apart was the original Star Wars back on its first run. Everyone in my kindergarten class had seen it and my mom thought it was too violent, until my best friend Rich’s mom told my mom it was OK for kids, and then my dad took me. A few months later, my mom took 6-year-old me to a cousin’s wedding in Montreal and I insisted on bringing my Darth Vader and R2-D2 action figures along with my just-gotten landspeeder toy. As an interesting aside, I think the cousin’s new husband wound up becoming a politician in the Bloc Québécois.
TBone
@tihotm: me
Chris
@Another Scott:
I don’t remember the books enough, though I believe it took a while for the background to be developed – he wasn’t even Scottish until Fleming liked Connery enough to make him that.
As far as the movies go? Don’t think they ever established old Bond’s social class – except that he was an Oxbridge graduate, a former officer (not enlisted), and a guy who spends his free time in golf courses and gentlemen’s clubs, all of which suggests upper class, but not necessarily that he started out there. The Craig movies specify that he comes from Scottish gentry of some sort, but they died when he was young.
JWR
When I was 9, and my older sister had just turned 12, we walked down to The Highland Theater, a beautiful old movie house in Highland Park, CA. once frequented by the big stars back in the 1930’s, now turned into a 3-plex, and she, acting as my guardian, got us in to see 1967’s R-rated Bonnie & Clyde. Most of my early movie adventures were either there with my sister, and eventually with friends, or at a few of the drive-ins around town for the big Disney movies.
And no, seeing Bonnie & Clyde at such a young age did not turn me into a bloodthirsty monster. It did, however, mark the beginning of a lifelong crush on Faye Dunaway. ;)
different-church-lady
Lovely essay, Duke. You might be wasting your talent on us!
Chris Johnson
This is my favorite Bond podcast: LoadingReadyRun, Canadian youtubers and comedians. It’s delightful, I’m off to watch an episode while my town celebrates Not July 4th (we do a different month, complete with fireworks).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV_qemO0oathZWE6xVp94GSevMTcrurPt
Ceci7
Delurking to say thank you for this post. It’s been a difficult day caring for ailing parents – biological mom and stepmom – and this lovely bit of writing (with bonus amazing photo) was a real treat. And a prompt to raise a glass to my movie-buddy dad, who introduced me to: the General, with live organ accompaniment; the Seven Samurai; the first run of Spinal Tap.
raven
@Sure Lurkalot: Yea, my dad’s been gone for 20 years so I get it.
Liminal Owl
@WereBear: I’ll take A Man for All Seasons and The Lion in Winter. Alternatively: Ivanhoe and Robin Hood (Errol Flynn).
Matt McIrvin
@CaseyL: The Connery ones generally had pre-credits sequences, but they were usually more directly related to the plot. More than one had a fakeout in which Bond seemed to have been killed, but it was some kind of trick.
In the Moore era they started turning into these spectacular mini-movies in themselves with complete stories, often better than the rest of the film.
Ruckus
I wonder if part of the difference of going to the movies 50-60 years ago was to see the big screen and to see detail you couldn’t see on TV back then. Or that today one can purchase a 75 inch flat screen TV for under $600. I have a 65 inch flat screen and while it isn’t quite the same as a commercial movie screen it is pretty decent at living room distance.
Matt McIrvin
@M31: Live And Let Die, Moore’s first. Oddly, that one’s often touted as a fan favorite, but I find it really hard to watch. Killer theme song, though.
Matt McIrvin
@hells littlest angel: James Bond is inherently a really gross character. The more recent reboots made gestures in the direction of acknowledging that fact, and the Daniel Craig movies started out making it almost central. But I get the impression it wore on Daniel Craig himself and he really didn’t like playing the character. He’d much rather be Benoit Blanc.
prostratedragon
Thanks for the lovely memoir!
Chacal Charles Calthrop
I come late to the thread but this is a cool post.
my mother was nothing in comparison, but she did once tell me, “if you ever need a break, just go to a movie. You’ll have two solid hours thinking about something else.”
now back to trashing J.D.Vance …..
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Matt McIrvin: I think the genius of the Craig Bond films is that they accept all the clichés of the character….and use them to show exactly what is wrong with the guy.
rikyrah
A fellow Bond junkie🤗🤗
I fell in love with movies..I don’t even know how. But, sitting in the theater..dark…and then the movie comes on…😢😢
Sigh…one of the simplest joys in life
Cathie from Canada
Thanks for this post and I am also enjoying all the great comments.
My memorable theatre was the Capital Theatre in Saskatoon. We always sat in the balcony (called The Loge, I don’t know why) because my parents smoked and that’s where the smoking section was located
The Capital was built in 1929 as a live theatre, so it still had a stage and gigantic red velvet curtains, and even when it was mainly used for movies, it was also used occasionally for live performances. It was gigantic, with beautiful “Spanish hacienda” decor on the side walls, and a ceiling painted with stars – at one time the ceiling had giant rollers so it could move. It was an experience to see a movie there.
The building was torn down in 1979, and people were so outraged that the city set up an historic heritage buildings committee so developers wouldn’t be able to destroy historic buildings so quickly again. At least some of the fixtures and embellishments were saved and used later in other building projects and displays. https://www.historictheatrephotos.com/Atmospheric/Capitol-Saskatoon.aspx
eclare
What a beautiful essay and tribute to your mom. The first movie my parents took me to was one of the Pink Panthers. I was six or seven and don’t remember the movie at all, but I remember the song. Then my parents took me to see the original Star Wars, and we all left the theater thinking “meh.” The first film I remember seeing without my parents was Grease, and I finally understood how fun going to the movies could be. I still love the soundtrack, especially “Hopelessly Devoted To You.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin:
It’s not a competition. I was pointing out that every generation has its traumas. I had a pretty happy childhood, so I would probably lose a competition within my own generation. But do carry on.