007’s Last Picture Show?

What might the delay of No Time To Die mean for the future of film-going in general, and individuals like me who depend on the cinema to shine a light into our lives when things go dark? I take a look back at my own experiences of seeing Bond on the big screen, how a re-release of From Russia With Love helped me realise my boyfriend (now husband) was ‘a keeper’ and why I’m both angry and relieved about the delay.

The delayed release of No Time To Die has been met with dismay, a lack of surprise or, most commonly, a mixture of both. Your own mileage may vary, but for me it’s an uncomortable combination of deep disappointment and relief. Although I’m as gutted as anyone that I will have to wait considerably longer to see the film, I am, on the whole (after having had chance to reflect in several calming Martinis) glad that it’s been pushed back, but not for the reasons you might expect.

I spend every day at work in close proximity to around 1500 high school pupils. This has not exactly made me immune to the fear of Covid-19, but it has helped me to make automatic much of the mental processing required to be continually calculating risk. Whenever we leave our houses, we take a calculated risk. And compared with some activities we are still permitted to do, I see going to the cinema at the less risky end of the spectrum.

Not everyone agrees and, although we’re far from out of the woods here in the UK, I know some countries have it even worse than we do. So I understand why the producers have pushed back the release, even while I question why they left it so late (and seemingly didn’t let brand partners in on their plans, including DHL who released their new advert just hours before the announcement). 

To echo the opening line of a Fleming short story, in the film business there is much ‘risico’. And the producers just cannot risk financial failure for such a big film as Bond, the quintessence of a tentpole release. But we have to seriously question how much consideration they gave to the tents of others: not just the brand partners who are mostly big multinationals and can weather the storm (although nothing is certain right now). I'm thinking more broadly, about the entire movie industry that increasingly (over)relies on big event movies. And they don’t get much bigger than Bond.

For my part, I’m most worried about the impact No Time To Die’s delayed release will have on cinemas. Bond was definitely the pole they were hoping would keep their tents upright through the winter. Without it, they resemble the tent from the beginning of Moonraker.

I’m biased: I am friends with several people who work in cinemas, both multiplexes and independents. Some of these people are queer and they feel a real sense of belonging going into work each day with people who share their interests and accept them for who they are. 

Before you thinking I’m a bleeding heart (although there’s nothing wrong with that in my book), I’d like to make it clear that I am resolutely NOT blasé about the risk of Covid: I wear a mask for at least seven hours a day. I’m using so much hand sanitiser I’ve stopped wearing my wedding ring for fear it will eat through the veneer and dissolve the wood and tarnish the silver. I don’t know if that’s even scientifically possible but I’m not taking any unnecessary chances. 

Conversely, I’m not going to let fear of Covid stop me doing everything I enjoy. It’s not concern over my own personal safety that would threaten my enjoyment of seeing No Time To Die in the cinema. I have been back to the cinema twice recently (to see Tenet and The New Mutants) and both times I was made to feel safe by the measures the management had put in place. 

What is preventing me from feeling too upset about No Time To Die’s release is the reality that, were it to be released at the moment, I would not be seeing it with the rest of my Bond-loving family. Even if the rules here in the UK permitted a large enough group of people to sit together, I would be concerned that I was putting my family at risk. Both my husband’s mom and my own have underlying health conditions. Both of these mentally strong women are also incredibly stubborn and telling them that they cannot come to see the new Bond film with us would make even 007’s most challenging missions seem like a walk in the park. I am not exaggerating when I say they would quite merrily risk their own well-being in order to see a new Bond film. As a result, I would be sitting there for the whole film just worrying this might be their last Bond film. Worrying about other people is the exact opposite of what I go to the cinema for.

For me, cinema is the ultimate mindfulness. For the length of a film, you are cut off from the rest of the world. Well, certainly anyone who might need to get hold of you on a mobile phone. It’s just you, maybe a few close friends or family, and a wall of light, shining brightly in the darkness.

There’s only the odd occasion where I have wished I’d stayed at home and watched a film on TV instead and these were entirely down to badly behaved audiences. Only once has an audience been so atrocious that my husband and me walked out twenty minutes into the film. In hindsight, going to see a horror movie on a Friday night around Hallowe’en was not the smartest move on our part. The auditorium for Paranormal Activity 3 was packed with couples trying to out scare each other. Believe it or not, there’s some scientific reasoning why horror films make audiences horny. Although, to my knowledge, science has thus far failed to explain why they are more likely to make some people behave like morons.

This chattersome Paranormal Activity 3 screening was even worse than the time we had to endure a man and woman in the row behind us having full blown intercourse throughout the entire running time of The Shape Of Water. At least, unlike the patrons of Paranormal Activity 3, they were considerate and kept the noise to a minimum.

When we’re not living through a pandemic, I go to the cinema a lot: sometimes every other day during a school holiday. I usually catch the first showing of the morning. Sometimes I’m the only person in the screen. It’s bliss. Sometimes I prefer going to the cinema on my own, especially if it’s a film I know my husband will probably not enjoy. Horror films are generally a no-no for him. Not because of the Paranormal Activity 3 or The Shape of Water episodes described above. He just doesn’t like scary movies in general, so I go to see them on my own. I’d much rather just experience a film by myself than have to worry about the reaction of the person sitting next to me.

I don’t understand why some people think it’s weird to go to the cinema on your own. A lot of the time, it’s just as good - if not better. The one notable exception is seeing a Bond film.

The first Bond film I saw at the cinema was 1995’s GoldenEye at the age of thirteen. None of my family were never avid cinema goers but even they would catch the huge releases, albeit when the initial fuss had died down. I remember being frustrated that a friend at school had seen GoldenEye on its opening weekend. He lorded it over everyone, telling us how great it was. I had to wait another fortnight until my dad thought it was unlikely that we would have to queue to enter a screening at the nearest UCI cinema. My parents were social distancing experts before it was cool.

Immediately after seeing GoldenEye, we traipsed around the nearby shops for a couple of hours. I was in a daze: I had just seen a brand new Bond film! I had an insatiable need to somehow own it. It wasn’t the first time I had felt the impulse, familiar to all collectors. After seeing Jurassic Park two years before I needed everything branded with that logo: books, toys, t-shirts, the works. The only thing that I could find in the whole shopping complex branded with GoldenEye though was the soundtrack CD. My dad warned me that ‘it only had one song on it; the rest is background music’ but that wasn’t going to stop me: it had the poster art for GoldenEye on the cover! And although Eric Serra’s music is a big bone of contention among the Bond community, that CD (“Limited edition gold disc”) began my obsession with soundtracks.

The first Bond film I saw at the cinema with my friends was Tomorrow Never Dies. We made the journey to a multiplex housed inside a local out-of-town shopping complex, Merry Hill. It was nicknamed ‘Merry Hell’ by my family because of its fearsome maze-like intensity, density of customers and lack of natural light. (When I recently popped into Merry Hill for something I found it to be surprisingly pleasant, even quaint, as shopping complexes go, although my parents were right about the lack of natural light, which gives it a faintly Dawn Of The Dead vibe).

Back in 1997, getting to Merry Hill was practically an odyssey for me and my friends. We were particularly shy fifteen year olds (and I was by far the shyest of us) so going anywhere that required two buses (yes! TWO buses!) required a determined effort. For me at least, the expedition was utterly worth it: Tomorrow Never Dies was by far the best film I had ever seen at the cinema. That afternoon (and for weeks thereafter) I couldn’t shut up about it. My friends were more hesitant in their praise, perhaps because they were trying to effect a teenage nonchalance. When you’re fifteen, it’s cooler to say you like films which are rated 18, containing copious swearing, voluminous gore and, perhaps most crucially, voluptuous breasts. This despite the fact that half of us turned out to be gay. But just as we were reticent to be completely truthful about the films, TV shows and music artists we really loved, the fact that we were attracted to men would be something we weren’t ready to admit to anyone for years to come.

While my sexuality was being painfully pushed back into the recesses of my mind, I had no compunctions about coming out and vocally expressing my undying love for Pierce Brosnan’s second outing. My family bore the biggest brunt of my adoration and I pestered them to go to see the film as a family. Yes, I wanted to see the film again myself (and the pocket money only stretched so far), but most importantly I wanted to see it with them.

Having finally worn them down, my dad decided that we’d go to see it at the new Cineworld that had opened not far from where both he and my mom grew up. Unfortunately, when we got there, my dad’s worst nightmare was realised: there was a humongous queue of traffic. Hard as it is to believe now (especially right now), Cineworld Wolverhampton was like Leicester Square during a premiere: it was chock-a-block with customers. Even if we could have parked up in time, the screening was almost certainly sold out. When we returned later on that same week (after having assiduously booked tickets over the phone to make sure I wouldn’t be disappointed a second time), I had a repeat experience of seeing the film with my friends. Like my friends, my mom, dad and sister enjoyed themselves, but they weren't as enamoured as me. Something about that film really got under my skin.

Looking at Tomorrow Never Dies objectively, it’s not innovative in any substantial way, even for a Bond film. It doesn’t bring anything new to the medium of cinema. It’s not Citizen Kane, Vertigo, Battleship Potemkin, A Bout de Souffle, Seven Samurai or any of the other ‘best movies of all time’ which I have enjoyed and appreciated. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love it more than many of these esteemed classics of the medium. A lot of that has, I’m sure, to do with the circumstances in which I watched it those first times. You might not think that seeing a franchise action picture in a couple of out-of-town multiplexes in the heart of the West Midlands is on a par with the cinema-going nostalgia depicted in films like Cinema Paradiso, but for me it’s even more powerful.

I saw the next five Bond films for the first time at Cineworld Wolverhampton: The first four of these - The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day and Casino Royale - I first saw with friends. The latter was especially memorable as the screening was packed. And even though some of the patrons on my row were less than impeccably behaved, I was so swept up in the film that it hardly seemed to matter. Even they shut up when Bond trying to resuscitate Vesper. And minutes later, when Bond emerged from the shadows, holding an oversized rifle, and uttering the immortal line, they whooped. I usually despise this kind of behaviour but, for once, it seemed justified. I may even have whooped along myself (at a sociable volume).

Quantum of Solace was the first Bond film I saw with my husband (then boyfriend) Antony. He knew I loved Bond and he had a soft spot for the Brosnan-era films, largely due to the influence of his dad. I had already seen Quantum once with friends and found it to be mostly underwhelming. So why did I feel compelled to see it a second time with the person I had recently starting dating? At the time, I was very actively (and exhaustingly) compartmentalising my life: family and friends were kept completely separate from my relationship with Antony. Perhaps going to see a Bond film with both sets of people, even separately, might start the process of uniting the two. I am what I am - and what I am is a Bond fan. I didn’t realise this at the time, but looking back I think I saw Bond as a way of uniting the different parts of myself. The gulf between straight-acting David and gay David could be bridged by 007. Watching a Bond film was one of the few times I could relax and not worry about having to act a part.

I’ll confess that in the early days, there were times where I felt compelled to play up to convention and get ‘romantic’ in a cinema auditorium with my first ever boyfriend. Nothing on the scale of our The Shape of Water experience of course. And Antony very quickly learned that when we went to the cinema we were there to be sucked into the film rather than be sucking on each others’ faces. The film came first. The rest could wait until after the credits.

It was Antony who suggested we go to see From Russia With Love at the cinema when it was re-released in 2009. I was surprised because he had never expressed any interest in the older films. I definitely took it as a sign that he was fine with Bond being an important part of our lives. We caught the film at another local cinema: The Lighthouse, an independent venue which has been under threat numerous times, never more so than it is now. I will always have fond memories of seeing Batman Forever there for my birthday in 1995 (and staring longingly - but hopefully not too obviously - up at Chris O’Donnell’s Robin).

Skyfall was the first Bond film I saw as an out gay man. Although we weren’t married, Antony and I were living together by this point (yes I know, how scandalous!). For our second viewing, we invited my parents along. When it came to Spectre, we took not just my parents but Antony’s as well, and took them along to a screening at the Everyman cinema in Birmingham City Centre. Even though the film is generally considered to be one of the weaker installments, our parents royally enjoyed themselves.

Like mine, Antony’s parents are not regular cinemagoers. But after seeing Spectre with us in the cinema they insisted that we had to take them to see the next Bond film. We already had our tickets booked for No Time To Die when it was cancelled a few weeks before its April 2020 release.

Would it be the same if we had to watch it for the first time in our home, on demand, cramming the six of us into our living room and whacking up the surround sound high enough to get us branded nuisance neighbours? Definitely not.

It’s an impossibility anyway for us. We live in an area where local restrictions mean it's against the law to mix households in our own homes - and yet not in cinemas, restaurants, pubs, etc. The only chance we would have to see No Time To Die with our family without breaking the law would be to choose to see it with them in the cinema.

Now that the choice has been taken away from us, it’s something of a relief. It certainly makes it easier to explain to our fearless mothers. 

But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned. Most of all, I’m concerned with the future of cinema-going in general - and the patrons who, like me, find it a form of therapy. Cinema is a vital part of the cultural landscape. And if all that sounds very artsy fartsy, then consider the 45,000 people who are set to lose their jobs due to Cineworld closing all of its sites across the UK and the USA. Antony and I became Cineworld members only months after we met. Being members means we can watch as many films as we like - at any time. One of our favourite pastimes is to sequence a cinebinge, watching up to five films a day consecutively. We usually do it quarterly, to soak up the new releases we haven’t hitherto managed to catch due to being too busy with work. Even if cinemas were to re-open, this won’t be a possibility for a long time to come: there aren’t enough new releases!

Cineworld isn’t the only chain on its knees. And lord knows how the independents are going to fare. 

Cinema is effectively paused for the foreseeable future. I can’t help thinking of the 1971 masterpiece The Last Picture Show, which follows the inhabitants of a small Texas town, their hopes seemingly intertwined with the fate of their cinema, the only spot on their cultural landscape. When the cinema shuts down after its final screening, it’s effectively the death of the town and the end of the characters’ ambitions and dreams.

Will cinema return? Hopefully.

Will it ever be the same again? Almost certainly not.

I don’t know what the answer is to this, and I’m not blaming anybody. I’m just quite sad and angry about it, no matter how much I try to put it in perspective.

Until I came out in my mid-20s, I was more often than not depressed. Sometimes suicidal. It’s not overstating anything to say that Bond sometimes provided a life-saving distraction from hating myself, my gayness seeming like an utterly intractable problem that I would just have to live with - or not. Placing one’s fate in the hands of a blockbuster film franchise might seem pretty pathetic and selfish but there it is - the truth. Looking forward to the next Bond film would sometimes be a reason to keep going.

Since I came out as gay, there has been a grand total of three (count them!) Bond films released. I consider myself fortunate that, in the last twelve years, I wasn’t going through what I went through in my teens and twenties. The wait between films might have been too long. And while I consider myself to be fairly well adjusted nowadays, without the need to constantly distract myself, I can’t help think of the Bond fans right now who are going through something like I did.

If anyone reading this is in that place right now, remember that James Bond WILL return - eventually. But it’s probably not healthy to keep focusing on the future, one which is still very uncertain. It might be unhealthy to dwell on the past too, depending on what we’ve been through. So that leaves the present. Let’s all support each other through this. Whether it’s bickering over whether Dalton is underrated (for me: 100% yes); if Diamonds Are Forever is the worst Connery film (100% no); whether George Lazenby could act (I’m on the fence…) or sharing our creative endeavours inspired by our favourite film series. The sheer volume of hilarious, insightful, heart-breaking art, music, video, audio and words out there is astonishing - and all made by fans. We may not have the new Bond film around the corner but we have something even better: each other.

For more on mental health and organisations that may help, read my queer re-view of You Only Live Twice. Or get in touch - I’m no expert but I’m always happy to chat.