The Seven Ages of 007: How Daniel Craig Became the Bookend Bond

No Time to Die is a Bond flick like no other for several reasons, one of them being that it’s the only one I’ve ever gone to see immediately after interviewing Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, who’ve been producing these films since 1995’s Goldeneye. The Bond movies are their family business, having been started by their father, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, with his partner Harry Saltzman six decades ago. Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson were very generous with their time, which gave me the platinum-level problem of having lots more good material than I could Tetris into my four-minute radio piece for Friday’s All Things Considered, which you can listen to below.

Here’s the prose version, which became a related-but-separate piece that wouldn’t have worked on the radio for several reasons, including the fact I wrote it before I landed the interviews.

I have all the thanks in the world for the wonderful and ultra-capable NPR Books editor Petra Mayer, who edited both the prose piece and the radio piece, which meant adding two labor-intensive tasks to what was already a packed week for her. (She hosted a panel at New York Comic Con this week, along with all her usual duties.) Nobody does it better.

Everybody Does It Bitter: A History of 007s Kvetching About Their Jobs

At the end of Casino Royale, the 1953 Ian Fleming novel that begat the James Bond legend, “the bitch [was] dead”… but the bitching had not yet begun!

Here, for The Ringer, is my deeply-sourced account of how no man who has ever worn the most famous tuxedo in movies has ever been happy about it for very long. Except Pierce Brosnan.

The 58-Year Mission: "Nobody Does It Better," reviewed for The Washington Post

Daniel Craig in 2006’s sublime Casino Royale, chronicling a formative mission for a wet-behind-the-ears 007.

I was a big fan of Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross’s two-volume Star Trek oral history The Fifty-Year Mission, so I fairly leapt at the chance to review Nobody Does It Better, their new oral history of the James Bond movies, for the Paper of Record. It’s not as illuminating or contradictory as their Trek books, though I was delighted to find some comments from my pal Matt Gourley within its (seven! hundred!) pages.

Ex-Agent Provocateur: The Foreigner, reviewed.

"Let's just watch this movie on my phone." It's Chan v Brosnan in The Foreigner. (STX)

Here's my  NPR review of Martin Campbell's The Foreigner, which I enjoyed for its Northern Irish political skullduggery and for Pierce Brosnan's sleazy performance but found far less successful as a vehicle for producer-star Jackie Chan. In addition to a bunch of decent-but-not great movies (and the giant flop Green Lantern, which I never saw) Campbell made the best-in-class 007 adventure, Casino Royale, so a mediocre espionage film from him counts as a disappointment.

The Lion in Winter: The November Man, reviewed.

Ex-Bond Pierce Brosnan and ex-Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko in The November Man.

Did you happen to notice that the 12-year interval between The November Man, which I review for NPR today, and Brosnan's final appearance as James Bond, 2002's (lousy) Die Another Day, matches the span of time that elapsed between Sean Connery's final "official" Bond performance, in 1971's (lousy) Diamonds  Are Forever, and his return in 1983's out-of-canon Never Say Never Again?

Well, I did. I also note that it was during the Brosnan era (1995-2002) that the Bond flicks ceased to be early summer releases and started coming out in November. That's got nothing at all to do why this thing is called The November Man, but it's a better rationale than the one character actor Bill Smitrovich, whom I recall so fondly from Michael Mann's 1960s-set 1980s cop show Crime Story, gets to articulate in the movie.

Just Like Starting Over: The Love Punch, reviewed.

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Timothy Spall, Celia Imrie, Emma Thompson, & Pierce Brosnan walk in slow motion in The Love Punch. (Etienne George)

My review of The Love Punch, a disappointing romantic caper featuring the appealing pairing of Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan, is up now at The Dissolve. Somebody give these two a better movie to costar in, stat.