The resilient 007 fan

Part of Gatherall 4 in Fairfield, New Jersey (Photo by The Spy Command)

FAIRFIELD, New Jersey — As the cliche goes, nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of actual James Bond news, fans pick up the slack.

An example was Gatherall 4, held this weekend in Fairfield, New Jersey, about 25 miles from New York City.

The event was very much a “come one, come all” model. Previous editions of the fan event had to cap the number of attendees. So for the August 2023 edition, a new venue in New Jersey (The Clubhouse) was selected to accommodate the number of Bond fans interested.

By comparison, there are other regular Bond gatherings that are by invitation only.

Gatherall 4 was organized by David Zaritsky of The Bond Experience YouTube Channel, and Joseph Darlington of Being James Bond. Many of those attending were from the eastern U.S., but there were people attending from other U.S. regions, and some came from outside the U.S.

(Disclosure: I know both organizers and have appeared on their social media outlets. I also participated in a Gatherall 4 panel.)

James Bond is not the most fan-friendly. The last time Eon Productions blessed a 007 fan convention occurred in October 1994 in Los Angeles and November 1995 in New York. Both official conventions were part of efforts to revive the Bond film series, which went into an extended hiatus following legal fights with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

As a result, the Bond fan community is making efforts to keep the 007 flame alive. There are more Bond events in the U.K., the character’s home, which is perfectly understandable.

For American Bond fans, things are dicey. The two Americans who did the most to promote Bond were Hugh Hefner (1926-2017), publisher of Playboy magazine, whose publication serialized Bond short stories and novels, and President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), whose list of his 10 favorite books included the 1957 Ian Fleming novel From Russia With Love.

There aren’t many prominent Americans these days speaking the praises of Fleming’s gentleman spy.

Nevertheless, Bond fans, including the Yanks, are doing their best to keep things going. They, indeed, are resilient.