The Search for Bond by Robert Sellers - exclusive advance review
The Search for Bond couldn't be arriving at a better time - or a worse one, if you're hoping it won't be long until we find out who the next Bond will be.
The Search for Bond will be released on 17th October, from The History Press
I went into the Sellers's latest feeling like I might emerge by the end with a much clearer sense of what might be going through the Eon producers' minds right now. Perhaps it might even give us some hope that choosing a new Bond wasn't as tricky a process as we might think it to be and an announcement would be soon around the corner...
Because here we are again, in another one of those interregnum periods, without an incumbent Bond. Behind the scenes, we assume that Eon are eyeing up contenders. And while poring over pictures of attractive men all day does - for some of us at least - hold a certain appeal, I actually don't envy them. Because The Search for Bond makes it abundantly clear that the search itself is more like a pitfall-strewn quest than a pleasant stroll through the countryside.
Bond fans abhor a vacuum. And the press are only too eager to fill it.
Well before Connery was on anyone's radar, journalists were remarking that the search for a screen Bond “makes good copy”. Sellers tracks this back to 1959, only six years after 007 came into being. Fast forward to 2024 and there's copy about the casting of Bond practically every day. Plus ça change!
That this was far from a modern phenomenon wasn't the only thing I found surprising during my read through of The Search for Bond. There are so many insights - even hardcore Bond fans will be surprised.
The core of the book is a series of interviews with people involved in casting Bond and actors who were themselves considered for the role. We are so fortunate that Sellers has at last declassified these interviews, which he conducted over decades, many with people who are no longer here. Where subjects had predeceased Sellers's mission, he tracked down the people who knew them best. Priceless.
The story of muscleman Steve Reeves turning down the role drew me in particularly - for entirely non-prurient reasons, I assure you. Had he gone for it and been Bond, it would have certainly given a song lyric in The Rocky Horror Picture Show a new resonance. In the song 'Sweet Transvestite', pansexual basque and fishnet-clad Frank-N-Furter suggests they all snuggle up (nowadays we'd say 'Netflix and chill') to watch a "Steve Reeves movie" - most likely one of his historical adventures designed to show off Steve's rippling assets. Had Reeves said yes to Bond we'd have perhaps had a different connotation to the phrase 'Steve Reeves movie' - and Bond movies may have been very different beasts! (Although, as Sellers observes, both Reeves and Connery were bodybuilders and entrants in the Mr Universe contest, so maybe not so different after all.)
I found reading this book a truly multiversal experience. As I read, my brain fizzed with alternate timelines in which people other than Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig strapped on the Walther PPK - and changed the franchise irrevocably.
Hardly a stranger to the travails of showbusiness, there's no one better suited than Robert Sellers to take us through the adventure of casting Bond. He's already made significant contributions to Bond studies: as well as The Battle for Bond (relating the behind the scenes trouble with Thunderball) he's written or collaborated on biographical works about the people who worked on Bond, or were Bond adjacent. I'm a particular fan of his book Hellraisers, charting the inebriated existences of four British actors, one of who crops up again here as a Bond contender.
Sellers adroitly sifts facts from rumours and suppositions, while also not being afraid to share some of his own feelings. For instance, he describes a co-star of one of Connery's early films as having the "sex appeal of a haddock". Say what you really think Robert!
In his closing chapter, Sellers himself invokes the analogy of alternate Bond universes, the possibilities firing off in different directions. We're in that same space now, post-Craig. And while the waiting might be a test of our willpower, it's still an exciting place to be.
