An interview with director Jack Cocker.
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without James Bond being on the telly, and Peterborough has several links with the film franchise with various movie sequences having been shot in the city.
This year along with some of the classic and newer films being shown on ITV, there is something else for 007 fans to watch in the shape of a new documentary.
On Christmas Day on BBC2 at 9pm there’s ‘From Roger Moore, with Love’ a 80 minute documentary about the life and times of the much missed actor, charting his early career in film and TV in such shows as The Saint and The Persuaders before starring as James Bond in seven films from 1973-1985.
Director Jack Cocker from Glasgow who spent some of his early years growing up on the other side of the Nene Valley in Northampton, kindly spoke to our ESP(ionage) reporter to explain more…
ESP: First of all Jack, congratulations on directing such an entertaining documentary. How do you think this compares to some of you other work?
Jack Cocker: “Well, this was a real thrill for me to do, because most of what I've done before in the industry over the last 20 years is mainly artsy stuff that few people will have heard of. Whenever a taxi driver asks me what I do for a living, and if I've done anything they might have seen, I always have to say 'Not really', but now because of this I finally can.”
There are several key moments in the documentary that I think make it stand out from a lot of others charting the life and career of a film star that's no longer with us. Can you tell us what happened when you went to interview Roger's eldest son Geoffrey?
“We flew out to Switzerland to interview Geoffrey where he lives, and during the course of our conversation he showed me some photos of his dad with a video camera. It transpired Roger had made some home movies of the family in the 1970s, and they still had the tapes – a variety of VHS and Betamax tapes which meant Roger would have had at least two different types of video cameras. I was allowed to borrow the tapes and brought them back, so that really felt like we'd struck gold because all that footage has never been seen before, and I don't think many people knew it even existed. When Roger's youngest son Christian saw it he was quite taken aback as he was too young to remember any of it.”
You've assembled a stellar cast of interviewees who all worked with or knew Roger, but as a fellow Bond fan it was great to see Pierce Brosnan in the documentary.
“That was filmed at a hotel near Ascot this summer where he was staying. With these things I like to get everything set up in the room so it's all ready to go, so we had two cameras set up, I looked at my watch and thought, ‘Ok, I've got time to go out for a quick smoke while I wait for the great man to arrive’, but shortly after I can see him walking up the path towards the patio where I am, so I'm hastily wafting the fag smoke away and stubbing it out. He was there with his publicist, but my first thought was that he looked a million dollars, the way he was dressed and how he had his hair, so I just said ‘Pierce you look amazing’ and he replied ‘I am amazing’.
“And you do you know what, he was just the most charming person and we got some great stuff with him. Things I never knew, like how when Roger was 'The Saint', Pierce had queued up in Battersea Park to get his autograph, but one of my goals of the interview was to ask him to imagine what it must've felt for Roger as he prepared to say the line 'The name's Bond, James Bond', for the first time and I could see in the monitor Pierce was thinking about it, and then in my ear piece I heard him do the line, and look he must get asked to say that all the time, so I was trying to think of a different way to ask him, you know and I think it worked.
“But by the end of the interview I was slightly obsessed with his hair because he looked so good, and I said to his publicist that Pierce must have a really good stylist, and she told me that Pierce did his own hair, so before he left I had to ask him what his secret was, and he just said he used a little bit of product, nothing particularly special and that was that. I started packing away the equipment and about 10 minutes later he came back and said ‘Here you go Jack’ and he gave me a tub of the pomade gel that he uses! He'd gone back up to his room and brought some back down for me.”
From talking to you, it really comes across that you're clearly a Bond fan as well as a film maker, but I'm wondering what are your earliest memories of watching the Bond films?
“Well, yeah, Roger was my Bond, and I know that might sound strange being from Scotland with Sean Connery being so closely associated to it, but I was born in 1975 so I didn't see my first Bond film until 'For Your Eyes Only' in 1981 which I don't really remember but my brother told me I was definitely there, and then 'Octopussy' which I saw at the cinema in Northampton as we were living there at the time as my Dad was an art teacher at a Northampton school, then shortly after we moved back to a small village in Aberdeenshire and I saw 'A View to a Kill' when that came out, so Roger Moore was the Bond I grew up with.”
Talking of Octopussy, the train scenes were filmed at the Nene Valley Railway in Peterborough; did you interview anyone who worked with him there on that?
“Yes, Steven Berkoff. You'll know he had a scene with Roger in the train which he talked about to me, but he was an extraordinary person to interview because we had him for an hour, but for the first 20mins he spoke about him and Roger both being evacuees during the war, and that they'd also worked together prior to Bond on and episode of ‘The Saint’.”
The other nice thing is that the documentary gets its first showing on TV on Christmas Day, and it’s then available on iPlayer. Was that something that had been planned?
“Not really, no, but the BBC have given it a great timeslot haven't they so I'm very pleased about that. I think for Bond aficionados, Roger's never really gone away, but for the general public, his visibility may not be as prominent to them as it was when he was alive.”
I think that's a really good observation you've made, and I think for anyone watching whether they're a big Bond fan or not, it'll remind people how good he was both as Bond, but also as Roger Moore. So lastly, how will you be spending Christmas Day – watching it or at a later date?
“Yeah, I'll be watching at home. I've got Christmas day at home with my family, and my parents are coming around to us for lunch and my sister and her family as well, so there'll be 12 of us and yes at 9 o'clock we'll be sitting down, turkey sandwich no doubt in one hand, a drink in the other and watching, hopefully like a lot of other people.”
You can see the trailer for 'From Roger Moore, with Love' here:
And hear a wonderful interview with Jack that he did for the podcast 'There will be Bond' hosted by Huntingdon's very own Pete Brooker:
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