To those who’ve just read those sentences and thought “So?” I forgive you. Obviously, you are either too young or were too distracted in the early 1960s to appreciate the gravity. Would you replace Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes with finger paint? The Eiffel Tower with a Dairy Freeze? Give Disney’s lead mouse a new girlfriend?
Bond driving a BMW is just as unsettling. When I say Bond, by the way, I do not mean Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton or any other pretenders. For aficionados, there will always be only one Bond–Scan Connery. I wish the newest, Pierce Brosnan, only the best. But the moment he appears on screen in a Beemer, he will be unable to avoid the status of heretic. That moment will be as debasing as the colorizing of “Casablanca,” as much a degradation as the designated hitter is to the game of baseball.
In the likely event the new movie’s producers have forgotten, Bond works not for Berlin but for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. To those who think I’m showing anti-Teutonic prejudice, ever since my VW Rabbit started each morning during the winter of 1978, I’ve had only respect for German engineering. But it’s inconceivable that Q would have stood for importing a driving machine from across the channel.
Q–his code name–was the humorless equipment officer whose job was to ann Bond with the highest high-tech devices inventable. In “From Russia With Love,” there was the briefcase that sprayed tear gas at any foe who opened it improperly, as did S.P.E.C.T.R.E. assassin Red Grant trying to finish off Bond on the Orient Express. The unfriendly Mr. Grant did have a hidden strangulation wire on his watch, and his boss, the less-than-pleas-ant Rosa Klebb, had a poisoned blade in the toe of her shoe, but neither device was adequate. That was one of the satisfying subplots of Bond films: a multinational gadget race always won by British ingenuity.
Which brings up Q’s finest moment, in “Goldfinger,” when he introduced Connery to some noteworthy changes in his Aston Martin DB5: rear oil-slick sprayers, front machine guns and a hidden bulletproof shield that elevated through a trunk slot. It went Ben Hur’s chariot one better–tire shredders that emerged from the hub caps. And of course, there was the contrivance that will forever belong to cinema gadgetry’s Hall of Fame: the ejector seat.
“You’re joking,” said Connery when Q finished explaining how a button on the stick would drive back the sun roof, then expel any unwelcome adversary occupying the passenger seat.
Reports say the “Goldeneye” producers have put an ejector seat in the new two-passenger BMW Roadster. Sorry, it won’t work. Bond purists will see that for what it is: Marie Antoinette offering cake to the peasants. A cheap ploy to curry our favor. We won’t buy it. It’s a shame Scan Connery did not keep his wits–and hair–and remain Bond. In my heart, I know he’d never have stood for this. Thank goodness Bernard Lee has gone to his reward. Lee was the majesterial British actor who played M, Bond’s boss and head of the Secret Service. He was a stickler for all things English. Watching his confidence in his man, his department and his queen, you would believe, as I did in 1965, that Britannia still ruled. What child will believe this in 1995 when they see Bond’s own country can’t even build him a car?
Childhood is enriched by fantasy, and I can’t recall fantasizing about anything as much as James Bond. I had every intention of growing up to be 007, winning at baccarat for supplemental income, then dispatching agents of evil without rumpling my tuxedo. I rigged a toy gun belt into a bulging shoulder bolster and walked around with a Roy Rogers revolver ready to draw. Not exactly a Beretta or Walther PPK, but you work with what you have.
Then there was the ultimate fantasy. While sitting in my father’s Oldsmobile, I would imagine it an Aston Martin, being tailed by Goldfinger’s goons, whom I would foil with oil slicks–or failing that, eject. Several times, I raised the rear bullet shield with seconds to spare, saving both my parents from gunfire. The fantasy worked because an Aston Martin was like Bond himself: understated. It did not need to be showy, to brag that it was a status symbol. It was happy to be appreciated only by the few who understood what it was–the one true secret agent’s automobile.
But now we have a Beemer, a brand name some associated with showiness. I like BMWs, sometimes covet them, but a secret agent’s car? It’s more positioned as a Yuppie’s car, the machine you drive when you want everyone to think you have status. This is not Bond-like.
Confession: some of us weaned on Scan Connery still now, in our 40s, have brief fantasies that our Cherokees, Taurus station wagons and Minivans are really Aston Martins. Driving back from school pickup, I’ve been known to eject S.P.E.C.T.R.E. thugs with the flick of my thumb. I recently ejected Odd Job, Gold-finger’s substantial Korean bodyguard, after shopping at Wal-Mart, and Ernst Blofeld himself while waiting in a McDonald’s drive-thru. I’m afraid the BMW means those reveries may end. I want to know who I see about it.
Of course, maybe the switch is meant by the producers as a subtle geoeconomic message–a symbol of the decline of the British empire. Dubious. It’s more likely just what the articles say it’s about: a deal BMW’s advertising people cut with MGM/United Artists to hype their product.
Read and weep: Pierce Brosnan, the current Bond, is even going to be featured in Beemer commercials timed for release with the movie. Oh sacrilege. Oh heresy. Oh Connery–where have you gone?
