James Bond, two ways. From the movie The Other Fellow. Photo / Supplied
James Bond, two ways. From the movie The Other Fellow. Photo / Supplied
Greg Bruce watches a documentary about people called James Bond and asks what's in a name?
We've all been there: you log on to the internet intending to spend a couple of quiet hours googling yourself and all of a sudden it's the next morning and you're deep down arabbit hole reading about your namesake who was a medical centre vice-president until he went to prison for fraud, and you find yourself wondering about the potential impacts of a lifetime spent explaining to people that Bruce is not your first name.
After our genes, our names are the first burden imposed on us. Names are containers for our identities and email addresses and, as such, they carry much power to shape the way we are perceived by ourselves and others. Our parents invariably think they've thought through all the pros and cons of the words we'll be called forever but, of course, they haven't and can't. Kids in the playground are too smart to be outwitted by starry-eyed new mums and dads who have never considered how hurtful "egg" and "peg" can be when applied to us in chant form.
But the ability of your name to shape your life is greatly enlarged when you share it with a famous person. As someone who works in the media lifestyle space, I know this because I have read copious articles about it. A brief sampler:
What's in a name? From Theresa May to Simon Cowell and Emma Watson – normal people reveal how sharing a name with a famous person changed their lives - The Sun.
It's not so bad having a famous name, says Professor Snape who refuses to read Harry Potter - The Telegraph
And so on, for many, many internet search pages.
Is this the real Bond or is this just fantasy. Photo / Supplied
The sharing of one's name with somebody more famous than you is the basic premise of the movie The Other Fellow, which opens this year's DocEdge Festival on Wednesday. The movie focuses specifically on people with the name James Bond, arguably the most famous fictional name on the planet for several decades now.
The movie starts with interviews in which the various Bonds talk about the impacts on their lives of their famous name. It finds that the subjects mostly hate, or are at least sick of, the endless jokes and at least one of them is particularly hot under the collar about the fact he has to scroll through pages of search results for his own name before he reaches anything relating to himself.
The movie also spends a lot of time with an eccentric character who developed such a concerningly strong connection to the movies and character that he changed his name to James Bond, opened a museum and spent enormous amounts of money accumulating memorabilia to fill it. There are a range of other stories too, including one about a James Bond who went to prison after he was accused of shooting and killing someone.
Most of the movie's subjects were named at a time before the Bond franchise had blossomed into the all-consuming cultural landmark it is now, when the enormity of the name's impact on the culture could not have been anticipated. But the movie also features an 8-year-old Bond, whose dad and grandfather are also called James Bond. He seems okay with it. The most notable outcome so far is that his football team has given him the nickname 007.
A James Bond in a car. Photo / Supplied
The movie also features an old television interview with Bond author Ian Fleming at his home in Jamaica. When asked how he came up with the name for his fictional hero, Fleming says he was looking for "a really flat, quiet name" and found it in the author of a book he owned, called Birds of the West Indies.
The irony of course is that Fleming is the one most responsible for turning that quiet name into an endless scream in the face of the people who share it, some of whom have spent many painful years having to pretend to laugh at Moneypenny jokes at cocktail parties.
Towards the end of the movie, the film-maker brings together many of his interview subjects in a series of meetings, some in person and some over video chat. We don't hear much of what they're talking about but we see a lot of nodding and laughing. These people don't appear to share much in common beyond the shared burden of their famous name but the point, I think, is that the things that connect us are less important than the fact of our connection.
The Other Fellow has its world premiere at The Civic on Wednesday.
