James Bond and the Jaws of Age

Imagine a man in his thirties, who discovered James Bond in the form of Daniel Craig, 38 at the time of his tenure--and now pushing 50 as he prepares to drop out.



Craig has done four Bonds, with 2-4 years between. And many fans feel that the first was the best, quality sinking thereafter. Our imaginary fan agrees and yearns for the same sense of freshness he'd found in Casino Royale, when he was a senior in college.

Now, after Spectre, he may have to wait a few years for the next film in the franchise--by which time he'll be in his mid-thirties. More alarming, he now learns that Craig might just possibly come back to a fifth film when he's free. Why is this alarming? Because even if the film is great, we'd now have a Bond in his fifties. If Craig went on to do a sixth, by then he'd be in his mid-fifties, too old--as Roger Moore and Sean Connery had become at the end of their own Bond stints.

Equally alarming: if Craig didn't return for a sixth, new casting would begin...and the entire usual time span would pass: two to three years, at least, once again. And now imagine this: if our fan cannot stand the Bond chosen, the math will devour the last of his youth. More than likely, the new Bond will do 3-5 films, with two to three years between them. And our once young fan will find himself a disgruntled older man who's spent, by that time, decades waiting for the real Bond to return.

The Bond epochs come at us in huge blocks of time. And almost all of those great blocks have only a few shining moments. One or two great films at best.

Connery's fans grew older, then old, as they waited for a worthy heir to bring back the glory of From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Lazenby gave us one great film, then split. Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig...The math goes grimly on and on as we wait and we pray for real magic again.

Will we get it? Fingers crossed. Even if we do, though, we need to learn to wait less
intensely while we live. Or we'll end up thinking of the past in terms of which Bond ruled: e.g., I did that when Con was king...and that when Rog wore Spandex...

After all, we can add to the list of life's sure things: the films in any Bond epoch decline in quality till the Bond either quits or is put to pasture. We'd damned well better do our living before we're put to pasture too.

How Our Lives Between Books Can Become a Lot More

'One hates an author that's all author...' 
--Lord  Byron


Some actors we admire most pick their projects carefully, taking time between them to recharge, brood at leisure and prepare for their next  role. Two names that quickly come to mind:

Daniel Day-Lewis: just fourteen films since The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1986.
Daniel Craig: A three-year break between Skyfall in 2012 and Bond 24 in 2015.

And, possibly not strangely, when each of these men is on screen we sense the hidden magic of a life apart from celluloid or any particular role. They live for their art, we are certain of that--but they also seem fully committed to working the art of their lives. Compare almost any film by either of these men with the desperate earnestness of some leading actors who churn out many more films...as if they'll die the instant the camera isn't on them. Dustin Hoffman, anyone? About 4 dozen films since 1969.

There are telling parallels, I'm sure, with musicians who crank out an album a year and those who prefer to let their next album grow. (Paul McCartney vs. Leonard Cohen?) Let's segue for today, though, to writers--in particular to a remark one critic made about Byron: how the most compelling about him is our powerful sense of real life off the page. That's sometimes revealed in off-handed remarks about his love and sporting life. But more often this truth is something that we sense. And when we learn more about Byron we know: no man who hadn't 'wasted' time swimming the Hellespont...boxing...fencing...traveling...seducing the gladly seduced by the scores...could have written a line of Don Juan. The work's cut from the very same cloth of his life.

My own output on Amazon is somewhat sizable only because I had the 'advantage' of 25 years in The Desert, in which time I finished a dozen-odd books. By revising these, using the skills I've learned since, and by adding two new books I've written, I'll have managed to put out eight ebooks since the summer of 2012.

The eighth book, called Red Champagne, was originally written in 1998-1999. So it had a long gestation before the big rewrite this year. And when it's finished--by December-I plan to take a few months before starting work on the next Boss MacTavin mystery. I expect that to take from 9 months to a year. Luckily, as I've said, I still have a backlog to draw from, including three more horror novels penned as Kelley Wilde.

But the fact remains: I'm a slow writer by most standards. I have good friends and colleagues who can finish books in the time it takes me to do a second draft. One best-selling ebook writer has written more books in a couple of years than I could begin to catch up with. I've never written--and I won't--for eighteen hours a day. Why?

I need to live between the lines to write the lines I do write...the sort of lines I like to read. And to my way of thinking I don't waste my time when I work on one of my three blogs...work out in Gold's Gym...network on Twitter and Facebook...brood while I'm working my new city's streets...study Latin...keeping my studio clean...

And how do your own lives fit into your plans? Are you working when, to others, you seem to do nothing at all? Are your life and work cut from the same lovely cloth?

 Recommended Reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Living-Robert-Grudin-English-Professor/dp/0395898315

and

http://www.amazon.com/Writers-Creative-Process-Through-Revision/dp/B000QSAM6I/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414682411&sr=1-12&keywords=ke