Pinewood, Where Dreams are Made
Celebrating Casino Royale at Pinewood with Bond authors galore
Dear Reader,
How many hours did I spend as a teenager watching the special features on my James Bond DVDs, devouring details about Pinewood Studios? Beyond measure. So how excited was I to pull up to Pinewood Studios on Sunday morning? Beyond measure. For evidence of said excitement, check out Licence to Queer’s Instagram, where you’ll see me grinning in the back of the car as we make our way to the door for Casino Royale 70, celebrating seventy years of James Bond in print.
Sweeping past Goldfinger Alleyway and The Sean Connery Stage, we pulled up to a grand Victorian mansion perfect for period dramas/SPECTRE’s back garden, where a lovely surprise was waiting: the new Alpine A110 S adorned with the Union Jack, which debuted on the paperback cover of Double or Nothing. I felt such a rush of fond familiarity, I actually thanked the Alpine ambassador for bringing my car along.
Stepping inside Heatherden Hall, I was struck by another feeling of familiarity, though I’ve never been to Pinewood – but somehow, I felt like I was walking in my grandfather’s footsteps, who made many films here, Bond amongst them. I think George would have been delighted to know I was there.
It was a daylong programme stuffed with Bond delights, curated by Gareth Owen of the Roger Moore Foundation. We kicked off with the first ever UK screening of the 1954 Casino Royale, which Gareth has stitched together from disparate surviving scraps of film. I was expecting to enjoy it in a chuckling sort of fashion, but then just genuinely enjoyed it. It’s the only chance to see Casino Royale realised in the period it was written: the costumes belong on Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, the dialogue in a Humphrey Bogart film. It’s a British spy thriller strained through American noir sensibilities, the hero now Jimmy Bond, played by the extremely American Barry Nelson and ably assisted by British agent Clarence Leiter. Vesper and Mathis have confusingly become one person, and the villain is played by hardboiled legend Peter Lorre, who eats up every scene with a simple smack of his pouting lips. My favourite moment of dialogue was a classic bit of noir back-and-forth.
- Aren’t you the fellow who was shot?
- No, I’m the fellow who was missed.
Following the film, we had a fascinating talk about Richard Chopping’s evolution as an artist and his journey to cementing many lasting elements of Bond’s visual language. There was so much here I didn’t know, from a tumultuous threesome with Denis Wirth-Miller and Francis Bacon, to his absolute obsession with flies, even writing a novel from the perspective of one!
And then it was time for us authors to take to the stage. What do you call a gathering of Bond authors, anyway? Unruly, probably, but luckily we had the inimitable David Lowbridge-Ellis of Licence to Queer to steer the ship.
In a seriously impressive feat, David interviewed Andrew Lycett, Raymond Benson, myself, Charlie Higson, Steve Cole and Nicholas Shakespeare in an hour and forty five minutes, down to the second, and managed to make us all seem eloquent and erudite!
This was my first time being interviewed by David in-person – check out our podcasts here – and it was so much fun, I spent pretty much my whole segment beaming at him. Though it was a short chat, we got onto a fascinating train of thought about whether Bond has a cold heart or simply a wounded one, and the source of his courage and endurance. I loved every minute and I’m already looking forward to when we can do it again.
The most surreal and special part of the day though wasn’t the interviews, or later chatting with so many brilliant Bond fans and Ian Fleming Foundation folks over book signing, although all of that was sublime. It was a particular thing, a feeling really, as us Bond authors walked out into the gardens and the rain broke for dazzling sun over the manicured hedges. It was that sentiment: us Bond authors.
Posing for photographs with Raymond, Steve and Charlie outside of Roger Moore’s office, where Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan filmed scenes, it really hit me. I’m part of this gang. I’m a Bond author. This might sound silly; you might be thinking, surely you’ve twigged you’re a Bond author by this point, Kim. Well, yes and no. Because it’s such a dream. Because I’m standing in the Pinewood gardens with authors I grew up admiring in a place I grew up worshipping for a character I grew up loving and whose world I am now expanding. I love being in a gang with these guys.
The day was made all the more special by sharing it with Nick, who is also a lifelong Bond fan, and suggested that we recreate my favourite photo from all of Bond. I think I make a pretty good Moneypenny, and Nick the perfect 007! (As do Antony and David, check out the Licence to Queer Instagram!)
It was great to see familiar faces from events in Paris and Leipzig, and folk who’d flown all the way from America for the gathering! We signed books, took pictures and talked all things 007 in the picture gallery, where Pierce Brosnan, Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise smiled down on us, and a cheeky door tucked into a corner led to a galaxy far, far away…
Surreal and sublime
.From Pinewood, With Love!
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