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The story behind your first Bond movie viewing
I thought it might be interesting to learn how people first got hooked on Bond movies. I'll start. Please list your first film at the top of your story for easy reference and then tell the story. Please identify the film that you first saw all the way through ( whether it be cinema, TV or home video) and were able to reasonably appreciate (as opposed to watching MR or something while being bounced on your mother's lap).
Maybe, also indicate somewhere in the body of the story, what Bond film you first saw in first-release cinema. For me that would be LALD.
Diamonds Are Forever ( first ever Bond film viewed).
I caught DAF in cinema, on a double bill with Sidney Poitier in The Organization - a violent urban crime story.
This was my first exposure to the Bond films. I was only 12 at the time.
The rest is history.
By the time LALD was released, I was a full fledged 13 year-old Bond fanatic, having managed by that time, to have seen all the other Bonds, in cinema re-release double or triple bills, but for DN, which I eventually saw for the first time when it came on TV.
Maybe, also indicate somewhere in the body of the story, what Bond film you first saw in first-release cinema. For me that would be LALD.
Diamonds Are Forever ( first ever Bond film viewed).
I caught DAF in cinema, on a double bill with Sidney Poitier in The Organization - a violent urban crime story.
This was my first exposure to the Bond films. I was only 12 at the time.
The rest is history.
By the time LALD was released, I was a full fledged 13 year-old Bond fanatic, having managed by that time, to have seen all the other Bonds, in cinema re-release double or triple bills, but for DN, which I eventually saw for the first time when it came on TV.
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I happened to watch Dr. No first, on ITV as part of a Bondathon in 1998 and thereafter watched the rest of the films - up to Tomorrow Never Dies as part of ITV's "00-Heaven" season, which was sponsored by Martini. This only strengthened my interest in Bond.
I was on holiday and forgot to record GoldenEye but rented it on VHS about a year later. The N64 game was also a big factor of enjoyment from my childhood. It was also strange having not seen the film but playing the game and of course my entire family young and old loved it, that also gave me confidence that the James Bond films were something special.
A new Bond film every week was such an exciting time of my life as a child. I saw The World Is Not Enough the weekend it was released on VHS and the same for Die Another Day on DVD, although I was old enough to see it in the cinema at the time of it's release, I chose not too. I knew it would be a bad film and not proper Bond.
I then bought The World Is Not Enough on VHS upon release, rented Die Another Day on DVD, and have watched the rest in the cinema. Between Die Another Day and Casino Royale I read all of Fleming's novels.
As for why I got hooked. As a child I'd seen nothing like it. The stories I was just really into and loved how I could see the series change over time. Also watching the films over time, in order, instead of being introduced through the new film I think helped not skew my view on Bond and have any preference to a particular era. Watching, say, only Craig's films from 2006 to when Quantum came out, then going back in those two years to watch the rest, really can't help matters may well result in a bias in some way.
It was back in late 2008, i wasn't at all bothered about bond, since i hadn't really seen any of the films, but after watching my friend play: Quantum of Solace the video game on his xbox 360, and absolutely been amazed by it, i decided to go out and buy myself a copy of the game, but for wii, and ofcourse - absolutely loved it, decided that i should watch the films, so the next morning, popped into my local 'Charity shop', and found four bond films on VHS for 10p each! (GoldenEye, The Living Daylights, Tomorrow never dies and Moonraker)...
Then when i got home, popped GoldenEye into my VHS player (yep, i still had one back then!), and was simply gob-smacked by it's 'Amazingly-brilliantly-awesomness-of-a-film-ness' and from then-on, i was a HUUUUUGGGEE fan, and decided to buy every one of them from that point.
So yeh, QoS - the game and GoldenEye - the film got me hooked! :D
TND was the first Bond film I saw in the cinema 2 years later.
Blimey, I remember that ITV 00-Heaven marathon in 1998 (I think) with the network premiere of TND. Every Wednesday night right? ;)
Dr. No to The Man With The Golden Gun I saw in theaters in Roma and Milano, Italia but not when they were released; I wasn't born til 1965 so I was too young to go to the movies on my own, then.
Dad took us to see those Bond films in Italian 2nd run theaters.
I still remember Dad taking us to the movie theater 4 days in a row to see Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger and Thunderball - they had a Bond marathon and it was one film a day.
That was my introduction to the Bond films!!
My Dad was a diplomat in the Italian Embassy; he didn't make much money but for him to take us to the movies like that, it was a big treat for us.
We didn't go to the movies much back then.
My brother and I would play with an old briefcase Dad had and we pretend it was the Bond briefcase.
By the time The Spy Who Loved Me was released, I was old enough to go to the movies by myself and I saw that Bond film and every Bond film since then, the exact week it was released.
The Spy Who Loved Me was the last Bond film I watched in an Italian theater; we emigrated to the United States two weeks after the movie was released in Italia.
My Dad is still alive and well and ever since A View To A Kill, I've been taking him to see a Bond film the same week it's released.
When Bond 23 comes out end of next year, I will have to go to San Diego to take Dad to see it.
He and Mamma moved there from Texas 2 years ago because the weather there is cooler.
When I was 11 or 12 (back around 1980) a local TV station played a double feature of Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever one Sunday afternoon. To give this some context, if the weather wasn't very good kids would stay inside and watch TV, which meant 12 channels if you had cable, and 3 if you didn't (a fair number of kids didn't). No internet and video game systems and VCRs were very rare, so it was common that the vast majority of kids my age were all watching the same thing at the same time. And it was a lot easier to sit still and watch a film on TV then because they played about 8 minutes of commercials an hour, compared to almost 20 now.
The next morning, all the guys at school excitedly ran up to each other exclaiming "Oh my God - did you see those movies yesterday!" I can't recall any other event that caused so much excited talk. Which I suppose is a testament to how the Bond films hit something primal in the make-up of a young guy's mind. No one really knew anything about the Bond films - in fact, most of us didn't know that there were more than those two until someone pointed out at there were at least two more because of the "James Bond will return..." at the end of the credits. We didn't even know about the different actors who had played Bond (only three at the time) although myself and some of the other guys didn't realize that Sean Connery was in both the films we watched! His appearance had changed so much that we thought they had hired a somewhat-similar looking actor for DAF, and we all agreed that the "first guy" was way better!
Later, we learned from our Dads that there were a lot of Bond films and over the next two years we managed to see all of the old ones on TV (they seemed to play one about once every month or two). As much as I loved the gadgets, the action, and the exotic locations that I could never dream of visiting, I had been utterly transfixed by Connery - to me he was exactly the type of man I wanted to be when I grew up. That put me at odds with almost everyone else - once they had shown some more modern films the older ones seemed less exciting to a lot of the guys. They also preferred Moore as Bond. The common opinion was that Connery was a "loser" because he wore stupid clothes (they were out of style at the time we watched the films) and he wore brylcreme in his hair! But to me it was all about presence (it didn't help that even at 13 years old I found Moore's films too immature for my tastes). As I got older I was able to verbalize it a little better, and once I said to a friend "Look, if I ran into Connery in a dark alley I'd be scared. But if I ran into Moore in a dark alley then he would be the one who would be scared of me".
Which reminds me of my favourite line about Craig and Casino Royale. A reviewer who was a bit older than me said "For the first time since I watched Connery as a kid, I watched a Bond film and thought I want to be that guy".
About 2 yrs after each new Bond Film is released at the theater, we would see it premiere on ABC at night.
Then ABC lost the broadcasting rights to the Bond series!!
from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ABC_Sunday_Night_Movie
James Bond franchise
See also: James Bond films on television
In 1972, ABC bought the broadcasting rights to the James Bond franchise (also by United Artists). The first film broadcast was Goldfinger. Unlike the British broadcasts of the James Bond films, the franchise was not presented in production order.
ABC made edits to the Bond films for violence, sexual content, and so that the films would fit in the time allotted, but perhaps the most controversial of these was the re-edit of the 1969 film On Her Majesty's Secret Service broadcast on the ABC Monday Night Movie.
ABC held the rights to the James Bond films until 1990, when The Living Daylights was the final film aired prior to Turner Broadcasting buying the TV rights to the franchise. The Bond films have also aired on several cable channels not owned by Turner. ABC broadcast the films again as a promotional tie-in when Die Another Day was in theaters in 2002, dubbed as The Bond Picture Show on Saturday nights.
I remember OHMSS on TV; it was all butchered!
My brother and I complained about what they did to the film since we did see it in the movie theater!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Her_Majesty's_Secret_Service_(film)#Broadcast_television_version
He often took me and his son to the openings and press screenings of new movies, so it wasn't unusual to be asked to dress smart and be whisked off to London in his flash Jaguar to watch a movie.
This one was a little different..... Octopussy!!!
Of all the films I'd seen, I just remember being totally transfixed by it.
Moore's Bond just seemed so cool!
One of my clearest memories of the actual screening was leaving through the lobby, bursting with excitement, doing rapid fire quotes with my cousin, and acting out various bits....
In the car on the way home, we were still in full flow- when my Uncle interupted and asked me if I realised there were MORE Bond films... and not only that books too (which he said were 'even better' than the movies) We couldn't believe this revelation! The possibility of more Bond was too much for our tiny brains.
My cousin and I lived only ten houses apart, so I called round to play the next day. My Uncle told me he had something for me- a couple of Bond Pan paperbacks (still have and treasure them to this day (see the pics in the 'Bond Collection Thread). I remember sitting on my cousin's bedroom floor reading him bits of 'For Your Eyes Only'.
Later that week, when my Uncle visited my house he asked 'how was I getting on with the books?'. I said I really enjoyed FYEO and had already read it twice- he said that was great and 'How would I like to go see the film of it at the weekend?'
That Saturday we went to see a double bill showing of FYEO and MR..... Again, we were blown away by it..... when leaving the cinema, my Uncle told us to stand still in the lobby while he said goodbye to the cinema manager- when he returned he had two rolled up sheets of paper, one for each of us. As he handed them two us, he said 'So you don't forget what a great day we had!' It was the double bill poster for the screening!
I've treasured that poster to this day, and if you've got a mo you can check it out in the 'My Bond Collection' thread (not the best of shots I know....)
That week made me the Bond fan I am today, and gave me my appreciation of both the films and the novels (as well as an addiction to collecting....)
It actually took about a decade for me to realize that the TV was in black and white, not the movie itself. Now, I have half a mind to drain that film of its color and watch it as I first was introduced to the James Bond franchise. The "bug" bit hard that day, and has not left since.
Yep I remember when ABC first put Bond on TV. It was quite exciting except for the fact, black and white tv's were still the norm in many households. I do remember watching that initial showing of GF in b&w with commercials, but having already seen it in theatre, I wasn't that impressed, but it was quite exciting seeing Bond on TV.
I'd always thought that Bond wouldn't come to tv because the producers could keep releasing the films over and over again on cinema double bills and people would happily pay.
The ABC showing of DN was my first viewing of that film, so that was quite fun but it wasn't until about 10 years later when I finally saw DR NO at a Bondfest on a cineplex quarter-size screen that I felt I'd actually properly seen the film.
These stories are great but you don't have to be able to go back a bit. The more recent experiences of being bitten by the bug, are just as interesting, eg "I saw QoS for the first time after playing the video games and was hooked for life." Each year it seems new generations of Bond fanatics have been bitten by the bug and are hooked for life, which is why I think this franchise will go on forever and outlive us all. The character and the excitement of the films appeal on a very visceral level, especially to the adolescent male it seems.
What distinguishes all of us, of any age, is that initial viewing, (which seems to have been in adolescence for must of us), locked us in as Bond fans for life.
he said he had never seen anything like it - it was an exciting movie during an exciting time of his life :
Dad = New College Graduate, Single Bachelor + Dr. No Film = Dad, I don't want to know what you did then!
Come to think of it, Dad did marry Mamma 1 year later in 1962 - I wonder if he used any of that "James Bond" charm on her!
LOL!
My cousin had 007 Nightfire for the Playstation 2, and I used to play it with him every time I went over to his house. After a while, I bought the game myself, having never seen a Bond movie. As I played Nightfire, I realized just how epic the Bond series was, and I bought more of the games. After a little while, I started renting the movies from Blockbuster video store, and the rest is history! My first Bond movie to see was From Russia with Love.
After that, I just picked movies based on the box cover, so I watched the whole series entirely out of order. I think the next movies I saw were TMWTGG, MR, LALD, and Dr. No.
For Christmas that year, I got two boxsets of SE DVDs. I mainly stuck to watching all the Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan movies and I watched OHMSS somehwere in between them. I had written off all of the Connery movies at the time and hadn't watched any of them up until a couple of years ago because at the time being little I thought, "these movies are really old so they can't be as good as the newer ones."
Now my favorite movies are the Connery movies. Out of all of all of them, I have seen DAF, YOLT, and GF quite a lot (probably at least 10 times each), whereas I have only watched Dr. No, FRWL, and TB twice or three times all the way through.
Also, the only Bond I ever knew for a while was Brosnan and I thought of him as what Bond should look like because of the video games and his films, so when Craig came along and took his place, I didn't like it at first. I thought Casino Royale was weird because it just didn't feel like a Bond film to me and I don't even remember Quantum of Solace at all. I only watched these movies once, but I'm hoping to give them another chance soon.
After Craig's first Bond in 2006, I lost interest in the series and didn't watch any Bond movies until Quantum of Solace in 2008. After that, I didn't start watching the movies again until a year or so ago and now I'm completely hooked back on the series, more than I ever have been because of the Connery and Dalton movies.
As for Timothy Dalton, I hadn't seen any of his movies until this year. I completely wrote him off when I was younger because I figured, "this guy only did two movies so he couldn't have been that good." I remember watching the James Bond marathons that Spike TV used to have during Thanksgiving and Christmas and when I flipped it on when they were playing TLD, the only scenes I saw were of Bond at an orchestra watching Kara play the chello and so I thought it was going to be a boring movie and never gave it a chance. I had TLD on DVD, but didn't watch it until this year. I absolutely loved it and probably watched it around five times just this year. As for LTK, that was the last Bond movie that I ever saw and I caught it on TV this year. I really like that movie as well.
Out of all of the movies, the most controversial one for me is OHMSS. I've seen that around 10 times now. My opinion on this movie changes all the time, I guess based on the mood I'm in. Sometimes when I watch it I think, "wow, this is by far the greatest Bond movie ever" and other times I think, "this movie is very slow and completely boring." For some reason this movie feels like it was filmed before Connery's movies and has a really strange look to me compared to Connery's movies. Maybe it just has to do with the director. I think it would have been a lot better if Terrance Young was able to do it.
Did you ever in you wildest dreams believe that the same things you watched as a child would still be continuing 49 years later?
How do you look back on the time of Bond through the years? Please tell us more Mark, I'm so interested in what you have to say.
For me it was 1997- EVERYONE in the world was playing GoldenEye for the N64 that summer- I was only 14 and I of course played it as well; I just didn't know a damn thing, like 'who's this guy Q and M at the beginning of all the levels- and MoneyPenny? Whatevs." I even remember going to a movie and seeing the trailer for Tomorrow Never Dies and thinking 'Meh'. (:|
Well I had a neighbor friend who's parents had like every movie ever made so one day I asked to borrow GoldenEye, the movie. I LOVED it. I didn't even realize at the time that Bond had been around that long, or that Sean Connery had ever played him- I always thought he was the just cool guy from Last Crusade and The Rock, lol
(* Now of course I know EVERYTHING, lol ;) )
So began my quest to see all the old Bond movies. Not everyone had internet back then so I relied on my dads 'amateur' knowledge of the series when we went to rent a movie. An example of what I mean by 'amateur':
Me: 'Dad, how many Bond actors have there been?'
Dad: 'Oh let's see, I can think of three.... then there was even one guy-- Roger Moore I think-- who only played him once!'
Me: 'Oh wow, why was that-- was he horrible?'
lol bless him for trying though! He just never got into the Bond movies growing up!
Coincidentally enough, the first Bond Movie I saw after GoldenEye was MOONRAKER :O
Now-- I'm the first to admit that I've grown to love Moonraker, but you have to imagine the DRASTIC difference between that and GoldenEye... at the time I hated it-- I was like 'What the hell-- are they ALL like this?!?'
Suffice to say, eventually I did see them all (in probably the most whacked out order possible) and even my dad watched a few-- and the rest is history!
how times have changed!!
I feel so old!
I'm one of the more (relatively) recent followers of Bond, as it happens, and my exposure sort of came in small bits. If I recall, I was maybe in first grade when I spotted a Dr. No poster in our family's basement and asked my dad what it was about. He told me (though I can't remember to what degree exactly I was informed), and that was basically how I first learned of James Bond. There were enough Bond/super spy references in general media (e.g., television commercials) that I suppose I eventually caught on to the concept of the character, even if I don't remember the exact process by which it did. (I do, however, remember informing a classmate about James Bond after elementary school once, so one figures it was early enough.)
At any rate, TMWTGG was picked up from a bookstore, and though the prose was a bit heavy for me at the time, I thoroughly enjoyed it; not long after, I saw my older brother playing NightFire (which he had borrowed from his friend), and I remember seeing an ad on the back of the instruction guide for the first volume of the Special Editions. I hadn't been aware of the presence of so many as seven Bond films before, but I was interested that these seven all had the same actor (which they didn't, but little did I know). (This may be insignificant, but I figure I'll include anyway that amongst these little exposures was seeing a picture of Pierce Brosnan in GE in a book on spies, which only intrigued me further.)
One Christmas, there came DAD, which ended up being my first Bond film experience. I totally loved it then, and all the gadgets, jokes, and action blew me away. I ended up seeing TSWLM on TV some time later, then presumably more films the same way, and eventually all of them. I probably would've used to be able to tell you more-or-less what order I had seen them in, and there's still some sort of loose skeleton of that order in my head, but I swear I couldn't tell you now. Regardless, the rest of the novels and the video games entered into my perception, and in a matter of time, I was a devoted Bond fan.
My first Bond film experience in the cinema was CR at a local theater with some family, followed two years later by QOS with family (and a subsequent viewing with a classmate). Long and drawn-out as it is, that's the story of my exposure to Bond, and though I'm still young enough as to be anticipating my junior year in high school, I'm expecting that the bug's bite will accompany me for years to come. My fandom has cooled somewhat (not in a negative way), but at the moment I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of Bond 23.
My first Bond film was a Roger Moore one. I'm pretty sure it was either Moonraker or FYEO. I remember watching Mooonraker with a mate of mine at the time and my sister. I was around 8 or 9 years old. Immediately after viewing MR we watched LALD. I recall my sister and friend saying that they preferred LALD over Moonraker but I liked the latter better. As much as I enjoy the other Moore Bond films, to this day, MR is still my favourite. Aside for the comedy and Moore and the over the top action it is quite Flemingsque.
For some reason afterwards, Brosnan became my favorite Bond as he was the first Bond I saw and the Bond of my generation.. With that, I started to become a Bond fanatic, bought all the VCD's of Bond (dvd's were expensive at the time..lol), from Dr No to Tomorrow Never Dies... Thats when I understood the Bond formula and how different it felt with other movies.. I've since sold the vcd's and replaced them with the Ultimate Collectors dvd set...hahaha.. The rest is of coz history as I'm still living my life as a Bond freak...!!!!
Saw the original (Connery) films many times during the 60s and 70s with various re-runs, went in as early as I could and left as late as possible (you can't do that these days). The cinema manager was great, I probably saw my first X film at about 14 - one of the Chris Lee Dracula films.
I was aware that a new actor in the guise of George Lazenby was to take over the role but that didn't put me off - I'd seen his Big Fry adverts so felt he was OK. I had also had a paper round since about 11 and became aware of the Daily Express strip, so here was another way I got my Bond fix. I started collecting from around the time of Goldfinger/Thunderball but when Sir Roger took over the role I was livid - how could The Saint become 007 - and although I went to see the films, (to me) they were never as good as Sir Seans. Unfortunately my collecting floundered at this time, I just couldn't bring myself to buy much with Roger's face on the packaging. Then Sean made his comeback and things looked up again. The subsequent Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan I enjoyed, but Daniel Craig, still not sure - the fact that Eon decided to "reboot" didn't go down well with me either, and I still hate them for that.
I still watch 007 on the small screen, until I notice a cut, then I also cut, to another channel, which doesn't usually take long these days.
I've just noticed that I've gone on a little, so will call a halt here, and look forward to others accounts of their Bond lives.