Gay Bond!

I haven't yet seen the new Casino Royale; I plan to see it, but I've been mildly dubious about it. And I'm still holding a grudge against the filmmakers for dumping Pierce Brosnan. (Also, I confess that I enjoyed the original Casino Royale movie when I saw it as a kid, though it was obviously a mess.)

But I'm suddenly a little more interested, thanks to Naomi's telling me that Daniel Craig wants a gay scene in the next movie.

I don't know which I'm more pleased by: Craig making the suggestion at all, or his justification for it: "look at Doctor Who--that has had gay scenes in it and no one blinks an eye."

But wait, there's more! Turns out that Craig was also in another recent movie, Infamous, one of the movies about Truman Capote writing In Cold Blood. According to a gay.com article from September, there's a kiss in the movie between Craig and Toby Jones, the guy who plays Capote. Jones commented: "I never dreamed I'd kiss James Bond. Now that I've done it, I say I hope I'm just the first of many."

And he may be! According to an extremely implausible FemaleFirst article from around the same time:

Daniel Craig will have a male love interest in the next Bond movie.

...

Bond 22--the [next Bond movie after Royale]--will now see a homoerotic relationship develop between the suave spy and secret agent Felix Leiter, played by Jeffrey Wright.

I don't buy it for a minute. Or rather, I'm willing to believe that they'll put in some homoerotic subtext--which is to say, slash moments; that sounds very plausible. But I can't imagine that they'll go as far as (say) a kiss.

But I'm still tickled by the idea.

3 Responses to “Gay Bond!”

  1. Benjamin

    That’s really interesting actually, and even more grounds for thinking that Daniel Craig is the best thing to happen to the Bond franchise since, well, Connery. (A year ago I’d never have guessed that I’d actually care about James Bond.)

    It’s really not out of character for (a heterosexual) Bond, either; if you look at the 1960s suspense classic Day of the Jackal, about an attempt to assassinate Charles DeGaul, you’ll see that the assassin seduces another man as part of his cover, as an attempt to get into Paris despite police pursuit in order to accomplish his mission. Certainly someone like Bond would regard it as an option, at least.

  2. Steve Nagy

    I believe Craig could pull it off, based on how well he performed in Casino Royale. I don’t have any reservations saying its the best James Bond film ever. The filmmakers did an excellent job resetting the franchise.

  3. Jed

    I hope to post more about the new movie eventually, having seen it a few days ago. For now I just wanted to agree that Craig could probably pull it off, especially as a means to an end, but I can’t see the powers-that-be agreeing to it.

    The article I linked to quotes a “film insider” as saying: “Daniel has a massive gay fan base and that can’t be ignored.” On the contrary, I’m sure that if the producers have to choose between ignoring Craig’s gay fan base (however massive) and ignoring the presumptively straight core Bond audience (most of whom would probably be very distressed by a gay Bond scene), I have no doubts whatsoever about which they’d pick. I’d be delighted to be wrong about this, of course.

Comments are closed.