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That’s why, one afternoon
in 1988, when I first discovered a copy of 007 MAGAZINE in the Forest Hill
branch of W.H. Smith in South London, it was a truly magical moment. While
my mum was putting the finishing touches to the weekly family food shop in
Sainsbury’s across the road, I spotted 007 MAGAZINE hidden among the
detritus of that month’s film and music magazines. I had to have it, even
though its £2.50 cover price wiped out my pocket money for the week in one
fell swoop.
I’ve remained a loyal
reader of 007 MAGAZINE ever since, and
have lost count of the number of times an issue has taken my breath away with
a stunning pictorial of never-before-seen stills, or a thought-provokingly
original article, interview or retrospective. Since 1982, the man at the
helm of the magazine has been Graham Rye, a multi-talented Southall-born
designer, photographer and writer. In the 30 years since Rye assumed the
editorial reins of 007 MAGAZINE, he has self-published 55 issues,
including 16 editions of its new ‘sister’ publication,
007 MAGAZINE ARCHIVE FILES.
In the face of changing trends in publishing and distribution that have
made it virtually impossible for an independently produced magazine to get
on the shelves of W.H. Smith, like 007 MAGAZINE did back in the 1980s,
there is something incredibly inspiring about Rye’s dogged perseverance to
continue producing a high-quality magazine that 007 fans worldwide can
enjoy.
Although 007 MAGAZINE
retails in specialist film memorabilia stores internationally, its main
point of sale is now online, via its website
www.007magazine.com.
Nevertheless, unlike many other ‘fan’ magazines, the high standards and
professionalism of his publication have never been compromised, as Rye
himself explains as we sit over a cup of tea (it was too early for a vodka
martini!) one afternoon recently at his home in Kent to discuss his
career. “007 MAGAZINE has always been about showing people things they
haven’t seen before and won’t see anywhere else – that’s the abiding ethos
that has always remained,” he tells me with pride. “I like to use
exclusive articles and exclusive interviews that I know are going to be
accompanied by exclusive photographs – nine tenths of the time the images
I use are exclusive because nobody else has them.”
Certainly, Rye’s
photographic archive of Bond material, the 007 MAGAZINE ARCHIVE,
which he generously spent several hours showing me, is unmatched anywhere
in the world in its breadth, depth and sheer volume of rare images,
particularly from the earlier Bond films. When famed photographer Terry
O’Neill was recently working on his book, All About Bond - a compilation of his
best work on a variety of Bond films - Rye found material in his archives
that O’Neill had thought lost for years, and no other picture agency had
been able to source. EON Productions, the producers of the Bond films, are
the one organisation you would expect to be able to match Rye’s
photographic resources – but as Rye points out, their archive was for
years in a state of disarray.“ “Unfortunately they didn’t look after their
gold-mine of images. It seems unbelievable now but in the 1960s original
transparencies would be sent out to publications and they didn’t duplicate
them. In fact, I don’t think they started duplicating them until probably
as late as 1977, going by what I hold in my archive, because most of the
images I have from those first films are originals, not duplicates. When I
wrote a book on the James Bond girls [in 1989 in co-operation with EON] I
went into EON’s archive, which at that time was in a small room at
Pinewood Studios where all their stills and transparencies were kept in
old cardboard biscuit boxes. They were all over the place, everything was
misfiled and as I went through these pictures, refiling them in the
process, that’s when I realised how few images EON actually had left at
that time from any of the films from
Dr. No (1962) all the
way through to For Your Eyes
Only (1981). There was hardly anything at all. God knows where
they all went! It’s crazy really!”
Despite periodic spells
of cooperation, Rye once likened his relationship with EON as a marriage
in which “irreconcilable differences” had caused a breakdown in the
relationship leading to divorce. Rye fiercely guards 007 MAGAZINE’s
editorial independence, refusing to tow any ‘party line’ when it comes to
analysis of EON’s output, past or present. Nevertheless, despite his
reputation as something of a loose cannon, Rye retains a childlike
enthusiasm for the world of James Bond, despite 2012 being the 50th
anniversary of his first encounter with
Ian Fleming’s ‘gentleman
spy’.
Born in 1951, Rye’s
interest in Bond was first ignited when his father took him to a showing
of Dr. No at the local cinema in 1962 when he was 11. “My Dad
turned to me one day and said: ‘we’re going to the cinema tomorrow evening
to see a film I think you’re going to enjoy.’”, Rye recalls. “I hadn’t a
clue what Dr. No was before I saw it. I didn’t know anything about
it! Anyway, we went… and I sat there in the cinema and was completely
blown away. I’d never seen anything like it in the cinema or on television
or anywhere else before. It was a bit scary in that dark cinema as an
eleven-year-old… the curtains opened and suddenly those white dots came
across the screen; then there were these weird high-pitched electronic
sounds and I thought: what on earth is this all about? And then, the
screen opened out and I was looking down a gun barrel… incredible! I was
totally mesmerised by the whole thing.”
One of Rye’s central
theses, which he returns to repeatedly throughout our conversation, is
that Dr. No changed the fabric and vocabulary of modern cinema.
“There’s so much interwoven into that first film,” he points out,
passionately and with conviction. “It was a seminal experience and it has
had a resonance with me for the rest of my life. Connery was such an
incredible presence on screen, there had been nobody like him before.
That’s why I always divide cinema into two eras - BC and AC - Before
Connery and After Connery! The film world was so different before him,
with all those ‘anyone for tennis’ ‘jolly hockey sticks’ sort of English
actors, who disappeared off the scene after Connery came along. Certainly
by the time of Goldfinger
in 1964, a lot of those ‘old school’ English actors you wouldn’t see in
lead roles any longer.”
Warming to this theme,
Rye adds: “In fact, I think the Bond movies changed cinema totally. Before
Dr. No there wasn’t anything so hard-hitting. There wasn’t anything
like that sort of level of violence in a movie before Dr. No was
released. I can remember the sharp intake of breath in the audience when
Bond shot Professor Dent – the idea that the hero would cold bloodedly
shoot somebody was unheard of. Peter Hunt’s editing was also vital; action
films and thrillers would not have progressed the way they did had it not
been for his work on Dr. No. The Bond movies created the whole
1960s ‘spy craze’, with films like Our Man Flint and Matt Helm
among them, but in a wider technical sense the Bond movies influenced
people to make films in a different way. Quick-cut editing improved films
and made them more dynamic. Unfortunately, some editors now, who will
remain nameless, have gone too far. They think that you can delete some of
the building blocks of telling a story and it will still make sense, but
it doesn’t! A good learning curve for anyone who is going to edit a film
and make the story easily understandable is to look at a Bond film made
back in the 1960s and analyse why they still work so well today.”
Rye also pinpoints other
key creative forces that laid the foundations for the 50-year long Bond
series. “It’s essential to credit
John Barry’s music,
Ken Adam’s sets and
Maurice Binder’s fantastic
graphic titles that established the series initial impact, and Robert
Brownjohn’s iconic credit title creations for
From Russia With Love
and Goldfinger… all these elements melded together into a fantastic
cocktail that was totally seductive to the subconscious. Once you’ve taken
those images on board they stay in your mind and rattle around in there
forever. The Bond films from 1962 to 1969 weren’t just huge, successful
pieces of popular entertainment – they were works of art. They had an
aesthetic quality about them that the later films, certainly in the Roger
Moore era, never had. And none of the films that followed later on, with
the possible exception of parts of 2006’s
Casino Royale, measured up
to those Sixties Bonds.”
Rye also mounts a
passionate defence of Bond’s superiority to other major film franchises.
“As great and wonderful as people think the Star Wars series are
and Harry Potter films are and so on, I don’t think there are any
set-pieces in any of those films that have that ability, that resonance to
burn themselves into your mind like the Bond films did. Again, that’s a
consequence of the wonderful cocktail of talent that was pumped into the
visual imagery – the light that burnt through the celluloid onto the
screen seared itself directly into your brain; Ken Adam’s sets, Barry’s
music, Connery’s ability to move as well as he did in the action scenes…
everything just comes together as a perfect fit; a perfect dovetail
joint.”
Pausing, Rye, no great
admirer of most of EON’s post-1960s output, adds with a rueful chuckle: “I
don’t understand, if you have a blueprint that you can look back on and
study in detail, why it has been so difficult ever since to replicate that
blueprint to a better and finer degree. The makers of the recent Bond
films have not been taking enough notice of that original blueprint!”
On a personal level, Rye
also credits the Bond movies with expanding his mind and world-view. “As a
schoolboy I was never very academic but when I read Ian Fleming’s books
they stretched my mind; there were things in those books I didn’t
understand on first reading but I wanted to understand them so I read them
again and again, I looked things up… When I read about various products
that Fleming introduced in his books, whether it was a French-named soap,
or a fancy foodstuff or handmade cigarettes or whatever, I wanted to find
them all! My ability to understand the world was enlarged by Bond. The
Bond films and books helped me realise there was so much more out there in
the world one could reach for than anyone had ever shown me or led me to
believe when I was at school.”
Certainly, Rye possesses
the maverick spirit and determination that characterise many self-taught
and independent spirits, having left school at 16 with a sole ‘O’ Level in
Art (and “the headmaster’s boot print still fresh on my backside”).
However, undaunted by a lack of academic qualifications, Rye managed to
carve out a highly successful career for himself in advertising,
progressing from messenger boy to studio manager of a London advertising
art studio, before also diversifying into freelance graphic design and
photography.
Rye’s mania for all
things Bond led him to become involved with The James Bond British Fan
Club, established in 1979 by a Bond fan and QPR supporter who, in 1983,
offered Rye the opportunity to take over the club, its publication ‘007’
and its zero balance bank account. Rye brought a new ethos of
professionalism to the design and editorial quality and re-christened the
publication 007 MAGAZINE – a truly incredible achievement given the
limited budgets he has worked with over the years. Similarly impressive,
is the number of Bond celebrities who have been interviewed in the pages
of 007 MAGAZINE – from 007 actors
George Lazenby,
Roger Moore,
Timothy Dalton,
Pierce Brosnan and
Daniel Craig to directors
Lewis Gilbert, John Glen and Michael Apted, as well as writers
Kingsley Amis,
John Pearson and
John Gardner and
many more besides.
When asked to assess
Rye’s qualities, his former personal assistant Jamie Beerman spoke
glowingly of his former boss’s commitment to the world of 007, citing his
“dedication, long hours, very long hours and obscenely late nights!”
Beerman also adds, tongue only slightly in cheek, that Rye “has a
second-to-none knowledge of his subject matter. Who was the milkman at
Pinewood when Sean Connery
was filming the volcano sequence on
You Only Live Twice?
Graham can tell you! Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but you get
the picture. There isn’t much, if anything, he doesn’t know about Bond!”
Rye's independent spirit
is also a key ingredient in what makes 007 MAGAZINE so unique, as John
Cork, the respected Bond scholar and documentary filmmaker who produced
the acclaimed documentaries for MGM's DVD release of the Bond series, is
keen to emphasise. “Graham has a unique position in the world of Bond
fandom,” Cork points out. “Most fan-driven publications work hard to curry
favour with their subject. It's the nature of the beast. Graham has no
patience for that. He's totally independent, and that makes 007 MAGAZINE
different. Each issue is a love-letter to the world of Bond. Each issue is
created out of passion – and I don't believe Graham does anything about
which he's not passionate. But most importantly, each issue makes no
apologies. If he does not love something, he will let the reader know.”
As well as overseeing the
transformation of ‘007’ from a resolutely amateur fan rag to the Rolls-Royce-quality 007 MAGAZINE, with production and design values that put
many mainstream publications to shame, Rye, during his tenure as President
of The James Bond 007 International Fan Club & Archive, also transformed
007 ‘fan’ culture with a series of ground-breaking events which
resurrected and revitalised the public face of several 007 series’
luminaries, as well as rescuing many props from the Bond series from
oblivion. In 1990 the 007 convention he organised at Pinewood Studios
featured the largest collection of props from the Bond films that had ever
been displayed, most of which had not been seen in public before and
probably wouldn’t have ever been seen afterwards at several ‘official’
exhibits had Rye not retrieved them from EON’s then chaotic, dusty and
pigeon-soiled ‘archive’.
“Oh my God, it nearly
killed me,” he recalls with a deliberately exaggerated groan when
describing the lead-up to the convention. “In the three days before the
weekend event, I had three hours sleep in those three days! By the time I
arrived at the studios on the Saturday morning, I was a walking zombie.
But the fact I’d been able to persuade Pinewood Studios to agree, for the
first time ever, to let somebody outside the film industry organise an
event there for members of the public and also hire a soundstage was
something special in itself I think.” “Thankfully, I also persuaded EON
Productions to say: “Yes, you can use anything you can find in any of the
storage areas we have at Pinewood.” They had little idea of what they had
in there… It was as if somebody had given me the key to Fort Knox! I hired
a couple of labourers to help me move all the stuff and I had to get a
forklift truck and pay for all that. Therefore, at my expense, we moved
all those props, cleaned them and put them on display on Pinewood’s ‘B’
Stage. So suddenly for the first time, EON Productions had a complete
inventory of everything they had at Pinewood and it had all been cleaned
and filed away correctly at my expense – wasn’t that good of me!”, he says
with a Cheshire Cat smile!
Andrew Pilkington, who
has been involved in 007 MAGAZINE in a variety of important roles since
its inception in the late 1970s, and was Rye’s trusted right-hand man for
20 years, recalls hunting through the props store with him. “My favourite
memory of Graham is when we rummaged around all the prop stores and rooms
all over Pinewood in preparation for that first big convention. We found
all these great props - the SFX attaché case used in From Russia With
Love, ninja throwing stars from You Only Live Twice, gin rummy
score sheets from Goldfinger. Graham was like a kid in a
sweetshop!”
Rye pinpoints the first
day of the convention, when club members viewed the props exhibit for the
first time, as perhaps the defining moment of his career in ‘Bondage’.
“When the electric door on the soundstage moved up and opened, very
slowly, and the 250 fan club members on the other side saw this Aladdin’s
cave of material, it was incredible. Everyone gasped! The awe and
wonderment on those people’s faces - kids, adults, everyone – you couldn’t
put a value on it quite frankly. That was quite something. The fact that
we got various people who were connected with the films to come along as
well was great… but
that display on ‘B’ stage
was something really special… but Christ, the work that was involved, it
was exhausting. Some of the items I found in those storerooms was
unbelievable, out of this world, and after sorting through it I was black
with dirt, literally, from head to toe, like a coalminer!”
Pilkington also recalls
the props exhibit with enthusiastic affection. “We had allotted two hours
for everyone to look around, but we had to practically drag people away to
move them on to the next part of the event, even though most had a weekend
ticket and could come back and view it all again the next day!”
Over the years, Rye has
also been responsible for preserving and rescuing several iconic props
from the Bond series.
Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler
hat from Goldfinger, which was part of Rye's archive for
over 10 years, was eventually sold at auction at CHRISTIE'S for £62,000 in
1998 to EON Productions (the highest price ever reached for a Bond series
prop). Meanwhile the
Moon Buggy vehicle, which
featured in Diamonds Are Forever, was discovered in an
abject state by Rye, who then painstakingly supervised its restoration,
prior to its 10-year display in Planet Hollywood, Las Vegas.
Another iconic event
organised by Rye was a special
On Her Majesty’s
Secret Service themed Christmas lunch, which reunited cast
members George Lazenby, Lois Maxwell and Desmond Llewelyn for the first
time since the film’s release in 1969, and gave Bond fans their first
chance to meet Lazenby at an internationally attended event. The audience
reception afforded the second cinematic 007 was rapturous.
“I was standing behind
the screen with George, as the finale of the film played out,” Andrew
Pilkington recalls. “George was going to walk around the side of the
screen as Graham introduced him, and I told George that the audience was
going to go mental once he was announced, so to be prepared. At that
stage, George had not attended any fan events of this kind and he shrugged
it off a little, but when Graham announced him the audience went wild, and
he couldn’t get a word in until their five-minute standing ovation abated. He was gobsmacked and genuinely moved by the warm reception he received.”
It is worth noting that
Rye’s championing of Lazenby and
OHMSS over the years, including
devoting several issues of 007 MAGAZINE to the film, has been one of the
key forces in rehabilitating what was once seen as the ‘black sheep’ of
the Bond series to its rightful reputation as one of the artistic
highlights of the series.
It is also hard to
dispute Pilkington’s assertion that Graham Rye was a, “trailblazer as far
as Bond conventions were concerned; the first to organise conventions at
Pinewood Studios and those events have earned a place in Bond history.”
Rye expands on this theme, when asked to consider how the ‘Bond fan
industry’ has changed over the last couple of decades. “I think it’s fair
to say that I started the ball rolling with Bond events and autograph
signings. These things had never been done before in a professionally
organised fashion. In those days guests appeared at my events for expenses
only because they knew they were going to be treated with respect and were
going to be well looked after. Quite naturally, they also enjoyed the
attention. Some of those people we brought out of the shadows … I mean
some of them hadn’t been heard of or seen for years, and in a small way it
resurrected their careers on the public circuit.”
However, the culture of
autograph shows and conventions has been changed forever in recent years,
as Rye explains: “I did just about all that could be done with that format
and retired from producing events in 1999. From about the early 2000s it
started to become more of a commercial business for others who moved into
the Bond event vacuum left by my withdrawal, and who used and adapted my
original ideas. People signed autographs but they signed them for a fee,
which was fair enough. I’ve certainly never had a problem with people
earning money from their signatures, but at that time, between 1990 and
1999, everyone was happy to take part on the basis they’d be treated to a
great day out - and they were, and were very well looked after.”
As he pauses to reflect
on a professional career in Bondage that is now into its fourth decade,
Rye admits that it hasn’t always been easy carrying the burden of an
independent magazine: “It’s given me a huge amount of pleasure, as well as
a huge amount of frustration and disappointment. I’ve met some wonderful,
wonderful people, some very pleasant and interesting people. I’ve met some
people I wish I hadn’t met, but I won’t dwell on them. My involvement with
James Bond has expanded my horizons. I’ve travelled and been to many
places I wouldn’t otherwise have visited.”
The change in Fan and
Internet culture has also necessitated a change in Rye's approach, a
challenge that, John Cork argues, the magazine has met: “It used to be
that magazines like ‘007’ had to spend much of their time just chasing
down the news and presenting it to the readers. That world is gone. We get Facebook
posts and Tweets with seemingly every minor update from the world of Bond.
007 MAGAZINE has had to change to survive, and it has risen to that
challenge. I always look forward to what will be in the next issue,
because I know it will be filled with great images and challenging
content.”
Amen to that; Graham Rye
and 007 MAGAZINE have certainly expanded the horizons of Bond fans
worldwide over the past 30-odd years – giving them insights, information,
and experiences centred on their cinematic hero that otherwise would have
been denied them – that is Graham Rye’s legacy… and long may it continue!
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