What’s in a name? With James Bond, it’s the iconic character from both page and the silver screen. Then there’s the person Ian Fleming stole it off of to create him. But there are also dozens (hundreds? thousands?!) of men named James Bond around the world. Australian documentarian Matthew Bauer went in search of them and, in The Other Fellow, tells several of their stories. In preparation for the film’s participation in this year’s Austin Film Festival, he spoke with the Chronicle about his work.
Austin Chronicle: How did this film come about?
Matthew Bauer: I typed James Bond into the Facebook search bar, and I couldn’t find any James Bonds, and as I found out, you actually can’t join Facebook with James Bond because it says you’re using a false name. Once I’d figured that out, and I managed to find the real James Bonds on there, the first person who wrote back to me was the last James Bond who gets revealed at the end of the film. Through hearing his story, which was far more unexpected and traumatic than I ever expected, that convinced me to do the film.
AC: Could an interesting documentary almost be made out of any random collection of people around the globe?
MB: I would say absolutely not. I think the James Bond name is a very specific name. I don’t think you could make this film about men called Luke Skywalker or men called Indiana Jones, because they aren’t one of the world’s No. 1 lifestyle brands. They aren’t considered to be the epitome of male masculinity in the way that James Bond is.
AC: The film is broken into a few parts. Tell me about the first of those.
MB: With the opening of the film, what I wanted to do was to get out everything you as the audience were probably expecting to get from this film. Then there’s quite a large opening montage that goes all the way around the world and meets all these men called James Bond. You hear about the jokes they have to deal with. You hear about them using the name to pick up women; everything you’re probably expecting this film to do actually gets out of the way in the first 10 minutes.
AC: Then we get to meet a James Bond in Indiana, a Black American in prison. Now the film explores James Bond as a racial figure, as well as the justice system. There’s an amazing montage of various James Bonds and their interactions with law enforcement. Tell me about the decision to focus on him.
MB: I’m glad you bring up the sequence where they all talk about being arrested, because it’s one of my favorite scenes in the film. I heard from all these different men around the world this exact same story, which is that the one thing you have to be careful of is encounters with the police if you don’t have ID, because if you go five chess moves ahead, you end up in prison from leaving the house without ID if your name is James Bond. Then of course, it is the Black guy who actually ends up doing 60 days in prison for it. We deliberately contrasted him with the white guy who goes, “Oh, they just had a laugh and let me off.”
What happens is we also follow a white guy in the same town during the murder investigation. For me it was really more about the interplay between the Black guy and the white guy in the same town, when one of them has been arrested for murder as a James Bond. It’s James’ true story.
AC: But it turns out he’s also just quite a character.
MB: Oh, he’s great. This guy’s just great on camera, and very engaging and very funny, but also, when he needs to be, quite serious and direct. Honestly, we are quite good friends. We get along really well, and he may have killed somebody!
AC: You’re bringing this film to the Austin Film Festival here later this month, and you actually have a couple of characters from these environs.
MB: In our initial search, we found a James Bond, who’s the third one of that family. For them, you know what? They’ve said, “Screw 007, we’re going to keep our family tradition going, and we don’t care about these movies.”
My biggest thrill is that the oldest James, Jimmy, is now 97 years old, and I wanted to make sure he got to see this film. The fact that it’s premiering now at the Austin Film Festival and that he is going to get to be there with his son, James Bond, his grandson, James Bond, and his great-grandson, James Bond, all in the same room to see the film, that’s what I’m the happiest about here. His bedtime is about 8:00 these days apparently, so we are starting at 5:30 so that he can be there for Q&A afterwards. Then we have a nice hotel room next door for him to get to bed.
The Other Fellow
Fri., Oct. 28, 5:30pm, Galaxy Highland, 6700 Middle Fiskville
Wed., Nov. 2, 4:30pm, Galaxy Highland, 6700 Middle Fiskville
This article appears in October 21 • 2022.