With production underway this
month on the latest James Bond film, I’m taking a look at
the very human people behind the legend.
For our purposes here, that’s
the relationship between the late Albert R. Broccoli
(“Cubby”), producer of the 007 films from Dr. No through
GoldenEye, and his beloved step-son, Michael G. Wilson. Mr.
Wilson is in his sixties now, as “Bond 22” is being made.
But the vignette that most touches me is the shared anecdote where
he asks his mom if he can accompany his stepfather on a
trip from London to the United States for location work on
Goldfinger ─ over four decades ago.
This story is told first-person, from the heart, in
When the Snow Melts: The
Autobiography of Cubby Broccoli (London: Boxtree, 1998).
The James Bond franchise meant
the world to Cubby Broccoli. Michael Wilson became a
brilliant attorney in his own right, and the interests of
these two men came to overlap in their collaborative fight
to protect the 007 production company around the time of The Spy Who Loved Me.
Today, Mr. Wilson now co-produces the Bond films with his
stepsister, Barbara Broccoli.
Thus we have a context through
which to truly
understand how the love and maturation of such ideal
relationships can come about.
—posted by Dell Deaton @1:11 PM EST 1/22/2008
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