James Bond Nostalgified: Timothy Dalton's GOLDENEYE
Two of our regular columns collide and things gets weird
This may come as a shock to most of you reading this, but I have a problem finishing things.
I’m terrific at starting projects. And the problem is never my interest in things. It’s just that there are so many things to be interested in, and I suffer from Mr. Toad syndrome. I’m all in on whatever shiny new thing comes along. I can’t help it. Did you see the new thing? Did you see how shiny it is? Some people still ask me about The ‘90s Lists on Ain’t It Cool and I hope they’re kidding because I think it’s safe to say that ship has sailed.
This year, however, I would like to finish James Bond Declassified, or at least write more of them for you. The last one I published was a look at the second Timothy Dalton film. I have a soft spot for License To Kill, and I think if he’d been given room to keep at it, Dalton would have turned out a few of stone-cold classics he could call his own. Instead, the producers hit pause on the series, one of the longest hiccups in the entire franchise, before they returned with Pierce Brosnan’s debut as 007. I’ve never been a huge fan of Brosnan’s movies as Bond, so I’ve dragged ass on writing this section of the series. Over the holidays, I found myself doing a lot of running around doing all kinds of errands, and as I normally do when I’m running errands, I spent a lot of my mental energy on other tasks. If I’m trying to crack an issue with a script, there’s no better way to make it happen than to go grocery shopping or drive to Northridge to pick up the boys. It’s always when I’m out from in front of the keyboard.
One particular afternoon in early December, I had a full day’s to-do list. I walked the dog just before 10 and then hit the road, zig-zagging from task to task around Culver City and then West Hollywood. The entire time, I was thinking about James Bond in general and Timothy Dalton in particular. He and George Lazenby both offer tantalizing glimpses at different directions the long-running series might have taken. It’s strange, though. It feels like Lazenby had a more fully realized shot at the character than Dalton did, even though Dalton got to make two movies. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is such a terrific film that it feels like Lazenby was given the best possible shot at getting it right. Maybe it’s because the James Bonds who spent the most time in the role were defined largely by their third time at bat. Phil Nobile Jr. wrote about the idea, and I think he’s right. For Connery, that was Goldfinger, for Moore, that’s The Spy Who Loved Me, and for Craig, it was Skyfall. You could make a case for those as the three best representations of what those Bonds did well, and maybe it takes a few times playing the character before you grow into the part.
As I took one particular side street in Hollywood, a street I use at least in part because I lived at one end of it for a while and those were pivotal years for me as a person, I spotted a familiar theater marquee and I felt my pulse race. When I published my first piece about finding a strange revival house in Los Angeles called The Nostalgia, most of you treated it like a charming joke about an unmade movie, and that’s fine. I said in that first piece that I don’t expect anyone to believe me about this theater. I still feel like I must have suffered some kind of head injury at some point because none of it makes sense. Obviously, a theater cannot appear and disappear, and it can’t play movies that don’t exist. I know that. But I also know how instantly excited I felt even before I could read what the marquee said, just knowing that it was there again.
In the last few years, the landscape for film fans in Los Angeles has changed quite a bit, and many great venues are gone now. I love that Quentin Tarantino just brought the Vista back, and I hope it stays open for years and years. I started this year with a trip to Tarantino’s other movie palace here in Los Angeles, the New Beverly, where I saw a double-feature of Fury Road and Speed Racer with both of my sons and a whole fistful of movie nerd friends, and it felt like a great reset button to start my viewing year. I wish the Nostalgia was something I could share with people. I’ve tried a couple of times, but if I go looking for it, it never works. I’ve even tried sneaking up on it with friends in the car, and it’s no good. It only happens when I’m not thinking about it, and if I don’t pull over and see the film immediately, it’s gone and who knows how long it’ll take to return.
In this case, the marquee read TIMOTHY DAL ON IS 007! on one side and I’d been thinking about Bond for so much of the day that I almost didn’t register what it said. The other side read DALTON IN GOLDENEYE! 1 WEEK ONLY! and it took me a minute to really do the math and realize what they were advertising.
I pulled over to the curb and quickly fed the meter. I was giddy, and I could barely keep from running when I crossed the street. The posters outside were intriguing. One poster for David Lynch’s Dune Messiah was a striking Drew Struzan poster, and it looked like he also painted the poster for Steven Spielberg’s The Talisman. I’m not sure I’d ever imagined a 1987 Corey Haim as Jack or Patrick Swayze as Wolf, but the poster, which looked like one of a series of teaser images, made a pretty persuasive case. I walked around the marquee to the other side, where there was a very cool Richard Amsel poster for Timothy Dalton in GoldenEye, but before I could even glance at it, my eyes went straight to yet another Struzan, for what appeared to be a 1985 version of Batman starring Bill Murray. I wanted to just take the posters out of the case and put them in the car so I’d have something to show people, some proof, but I figured at least a few quick cell phone pictures might help.
I’ll leave it to you to explain why every one of the pictures I took looks like this:
Next time, I’m stealing a poster. After all, there’s never anyone actually working at the theater. The ticket kiosk was empty, and inside, the lobby was just as empty as last time. I once again found a large drink, freshly poured and still cold, right next to a large tub of popcorn covered in what had to be real butter. Another note telling me to enjoy. I didn’t even bother to call out. I knew no one would respond. I picked up my treats and headed into the auditorium. I had just barely settled into my seat in the dead center of the theater before the lights went down as if everything was waiting on me.
One thing that was different this time: there were trailers.
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