Author discusses James Bond Movie Encyclopedia

Cover to the new edition of The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia

Steven Jay Rubin has written about the James Bond films since the early 1980s. A new edition of the author’s The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia is out.

The encyclopedia first debuted in the 1990s and the most recent edition was published in 2003. Since that edition, the entire Daniel Craig era has unfolded.

The blog sent Rubin questions by email. Disclosure: I fielded some questions as the author was conducting research to update the encyclopedia and he referenced me in the acknowledgments.

What follows is the interview.

THE SPY COMMAND: What prompted you to update the James Bond Movie Encyclopedia?

STEVEN JAY RUBIN: The last edition had come out in 2003, so I had not covered the Daniel Craig era. Also, the publisher that brought out the 2003 edition was too cheap to re-alphabetize the book, so the latest Pierce Brosnan films were stuffed in the back.

TSC: The last edition of the book was in 2003. What are the challenges involved updating something after that long of a hiatus?

RUBIN: My biggest challenge was re-illustrating. I felt strongly that if anyone was going to buy another edition, it would have to be an almost completely new book.

Over the years, I had met a number of collectors around the world who had amassed huge still collections. I reached out to people like Anders Frejdh in Sweden, Dave Reinhardt in Canada, Michael Van Blaricum in Santa Barbara, Luc Le Clech in France and special effects maestro Brian Smithies in England.

The result was a huge trove of new pictures so that the book is 95 percent new images.

Chicago Review Press also budgeted for color images — my first in a James Bond book. This not only allowed me to use some spectacular color photos, but I had the opportunity to reach out to artists Jeff Marshall and Brian May to use their extraordinary interpretations of the films. They’re just wonderful. 

TSC: It has been almost 40 years since your first Bond book, The James Bond Films. Have your views toward Bond evolved? If so, how?

RUBIN: I must say that Daniel Craig’s era has revitalized my interest in the series.

I grew up with Connery, so, for me at least, the movies that followed never had that level of entertainment. I liked Roger Moore and his films were spectacular – but they were just too funny to be taken seriously.

Timothy Dalton is a fine actor, but The Living Daylights was just fair, and Licence to Kill played like a two-hour episode of Miami Vice. 

I was a big fan of Pierce Brosnan, but, once again, I thought his movies were just fair – my favorite being The World is Not Enough. 

So I came into the Daniel Craig era not expecting much. Casino Royale just blew me away. And although the quality of the scripts has gone up and down, Craig is always good.  Love his Bond. The grittiness, the avoidance of stupid humor, the realism.

Obviously, the series has had to compete with the Bourne films, Mission: Impossible, even the stunts of The Fast and the Furious films, and they’ve been competitive.

TSC: The new edition of The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia is your first analysis of the Daniel Craig era of Bond films. What makes it different from earlier eras?

RUBIN: Realism. We’ve actually come full circle. The very first two James Bond movies – Dr. No and From Russia with Love – were real spy adventures with a story that could have happened in the real world. 

The Craig era Bonds have that quality.  No one is trying to take over the world – many of the stories are about international terrorism and blackmail –- stories that could be in the news right now.

As screenwriter Richard Maibaum once said to me when discussing the motivation for the more realistic For Your Eyes Only, it was decided to pull in the balloon and get away from the big fantastic plots – to do a realistic spy adventure.  It worked back then.  And it continues to work today.

To view the book’s page on Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.

1980s: When 007 fandom grew up

Original cover to The James Bond Films by Steven Jay Rubin

Almost 20 years after Sean Connery’s debut as James Bond in Dr. No, 007 fandom began to grow up.

One of the breakthroughs was The James Bond Films by Steven Jay Rubin, first published in 1981. It was one of the first times that the Bond phenomenon got a more dispassionate examination.

Previously, there had been books that examined the films. John Brosnan’s James Bond in the Cinema amounted to a detailed review of the first seven Bond films (a later edition added to that). Kingsley Amis (who would soon write a 007 continuation novel) examined the Ian Fleming novels in The James Bond Dossier.

The Rubin book, though, included details of the behind-the-scenes conflict. In my own case, it was the first time I read how producers Abert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman ended up alternating as the lead force behind each film. It also spelled out details of the conflict between the duo.

“Live And Let Die was Harry Saltzman’s swan song as a full time James Bond film producer,” Rubin wrote at the start of his chapter about The Man With the Golden Gun. “Since that first meeting in Broccoli’s office in the early 1960’s, their partnership had been a stormy one.”

Not the stuff of what the publicity department had turned out for years.

Rubin didn’t get cooperation from Eon Productions, which began making the Bond movies in 1962. With a lack of film stills, Rubin had to turn to other sources to illustrate his book, including photos from news services.

In a way, at least for me, I had a greater appreciation of what the series had accomplished. The reader got an idea of alternate ideas and concepts that had been considered for different films.

Another key 1980s publication was Raymond Benson’s James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984. It examined both the Fleming novels and the films.

Benson first became a fan in the mid-1960s when Goldfinger came out and Bond had become a phenomenon.

He was not (and still isn’t) a fan of the Roger Moore films that came later for the most part. In a video posted Feb. 20 by The Bond Experience, Benson said: “The movies became something else. They became comedies,” he said. “Once got The Man With the Golden Gun, I was just kind of going, ‘This is not the Bond I know.’…They weren’t my cup of tea.”

Nevertheless, Benson’s interest revived in the early 1980s when both the John Gardner 007 novels began and For Your Eyes Only reached theaters. In the interview, Benson said that’s when he got the idea of doing The James Bond Bedside Companion. “I was really back interested again.”

The book analyzed both the Fleming originals and the films up to that time (a later edition updated the films). In the 1990s, Benson was hired to succeed Gardner as the Bond continuation author. He did both original novels and movie novelizations until 2002.

You can see the Benson interview below.

Price of access to 007?

James Bond fandom is different than others. How so? Well, one can make a living off being a fan because of 007’s longevity. But there’s a price.

The other day we wrote a post about how Eon Productions co-founder Albert R. Broccoli came down hard on commentary tracks produced for early 1990s laser discs for the first three James Bond movies, Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger. We got a lot of reponses. The consensus was it was understandable why Eon would crack down but those commentaries provided some honest statements from some of the most important creators of the early 007 films.

That got us to thinking. If you’re going to create videos, or books or articles about the cinema world of James Bond, you have to make a choice: do you seek access to Eon Productions, the makers of 007 films? Or do you go it alone, a possibly risky path?

Some of the featurettes on DVDs of the 007 films are made in cooperation with Eon (hence credits such as, “Very Special Thanks to Dana Broccoli, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson”). These featurettes are entertaining and well done. But they also are sanitized. For Licence to Kill, we’re told the 1989 film failed “to find a breakout American audience.” Translation: the film bombed in the U.S. (an $8.77 million opening weekend in the U.S. and a total $34.7 million U.S. million box office) while doing better in other markets.

Another part of the 007 film mythology is how actors are put up at five-star hotels during filming. That’s true as far as it goes. But we’re also reminded of how Maud Adams, at a fan outing in the early 2000s said that was great because “they don’t really pay you that much.” That’s not part of officially approved narrative.

Others soldiered on despite the lack of cooperation from Eon: John Brosnan wrote “James Bond In the Cinema,” published in 1972 and later updated. Steven Jay Rubin wrote “The James Bond Films,” first published in 1981, with an update in 1983 (we have both). Rubin, in particular, was one of the first to disclose details of the sometimes-rocky relationship with Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, the other co-founder of Eon. Both Brosnan and Rubin wrote with affection about 007 but neither was an extnesion of Eon’s public relations machine. Both Brosnan and Rubin commented on what they viewed as weaker entries in the film series.

Meanwhile, over the years, other “professional fans” have developed business relationships with Eon. You do what you have to do what you have to do. At the same time, there is a price to be paid. You lose part of your independence. For some, that’s an easy decision. For others, well, you have to think about it.