Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
Documentary Everything or Nothing, which you can rent on Amazon Prime or Apple TV,
tells the untold story of James Bond,
of how Ian Fleming’s superspy came to our screens and on to become a unique franchise in film history.
It has great interviewees,
‘I knew Ian, he was a distant cousin.’
Fantastic quotes,
‘It was the autobiography of a dream.’
And behind the scenes snippets.
‘I broke my rib.’
It has the ups...
‘Cubby and Harry could do no wrong.’
and the downs.
‘Kite surfing on a Tsunami.’
This goes into real detail about the origins of some of the character’s most famous moments,
‘The awful thing was poor Muriel Wright was killed.’
Telling the whole story.
‘I thought it was a terrible idea, I don't think he is Bond, it will be a mistake.’
and yet it manages to do this in impressively economical fashion.
This only 90 minutes long, yet never feels rushed and seldom jumps over stuff.
'I didn't know I had that much of a reputation.'
Part of the reason it is able to achieve this is what I like most about this film;
although it is a behind the scenes film documentary, it’s mainly a love story.
‘Cubby and Harry form a company called Eon – everything or nothing.’
Believe it or not, I had no idea where that came from.
This is not really Bond’s story, the films are a backdrop to the story of the two men who made them, Cubby Broccoli,
‘Everyone would call him Cubby.’
and Harry Saltzman.
‘Everything with Harry had to be larger than life.’
It’s a story of boy meets Bond,
‘As soon as he read them he immediately knew he wanted to make them as films.’
Boy loses Bond,
‘Once Harry sold to United Artists, the fate of Bond was tied to the fate of the studio.’
Boy gets Bond back again.
‘You’ve got to go back to the beginning.’
'The name is Bond, James Bond.'
And even as some of the players in that love story drift out of it,
the focus remains on their legacy,
and the message is that why Bond has had this extraordinary longevity is not just its popularity,
it’s because these men weren’t just in it for the money, they did it for love.
‘There is something very personal about Bond – it was made by two producers.’
And perhaps the question it tacitly poses is; could the franchise survive as just another blockbuster,
without the family connection, with no one having a tie to it beyond the box office.
‘What am I going to do if they don’t like it.’
Cos it certainly wouldn’t have lasted this long without that.
‘I believed I could do anything.’
This is a tremendously well-made documentary,
partly because it has all the information and all the access you could want,
‘And therein you can lay all of the problems that came later.’
Partly because, it’s a great dramatic story to start with,
‘How did we save the series.’
But mostly because it knows what its story is.
‘I know Harry missed Cubby a lot’.
This is not which actor appeared the most, check out this in-joke, trivia overload –
that’s fine, it’s got it’s place but it’s not what this is, and that fidelity to its premise makes this a really satisfying watch.
‘I am Bond. I am James bloody Bond, at last.’
And manages to turn a multi-million dollar film franchise about a ruthless, womanising killer into a genuinely emotional story.
‘They started to depart from each other there was a lot of friction.’
The best film documentaries are the ones that touch the heart,
that tug at our own love of film and what you get here is a sense of a series born out of that love.
‘The story is everything.’
Thanks for watching. Where next for the Bond franchise? Your thoughts in the comments below.