''Becoming Bond'' is an 2017 American
documentary drama
Docudrama (or documentary drama) is a genre of television and film, which features dramatized re-enactments of actual events. It is described as a hybrid of documentary and drama and "a fact-based representation of real event".
Docudramas typica ...
film that explores the early life and casting of Australian actor
George Lazenby
George Robert Lazenby (; born 5 September 1939) is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in '' On Her Majesty's Secret Service ...
as
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
in the film ''
On Her Majesty's Secret Service'', his eventual decision to leave the role, and the effect it all had on his career and the rest of his life. The film employs the use of re-enacted dramatizations of Lazenby's life interspersed with actual interview footage of him. The film was written, produced, and directed by
Josh Greenbaum
Josh Greenbaum is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He has won an MTV Movie Award, CINE Golden Eagle and Emmy Award. He directed the feature documentary '' The Short Game'', winner of the SXSW Audience Award, which was acqui ...
, and premiered on
Hulu
Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
on May 20, 2017.
Plot
The story itself is told through an interview with Lazenby, with cutscenes to
reenactments where actors lip-synch to or voiceover Lazenby's dialogue. Lazenby describes his birth as an at-risk infant and how his humiliation at being the only student to fail in his school grade and attend graduation without receiving his certificate made an impact on him to never fail at anything again.
After getting a job as a car mechanic, he noticed that the car salesmen seemed to have a much more glamorous life, so he convinced the dealership manager to let him try his hand at sales. After failing to sell any cars, he attended a course from the popular "
How to Win Friends and Influence People
''How to Win Friends and Influence People'' is a 1936 self-help book written by Dale Carnegie. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.
Carnegie had been conducting business educat ...
" symposium, where the only lesson he recalls learning is "Listen first and let the other person do the talking." Pretty soon he was successful at the job and was the key contact for embassy staff vehicle transactions, which brought him in contact with the daughter of an Australian politician. When she moved to London, he followed as a
steerage
Steerage is a term for the lowest category of passenger accommodation in a ship. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century considerable numbers of persons travelled from their homeland to seek a new life elsewhere, in many cases North America ...
passenger, hoping to win her heart. Upon his arrival, he discovered she had abandoned him in pursuit of a player on the
Oxford University
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...
team. Fearing he had once again failed in life, his attempts to charm her set him on a path that would land him the role as one of the smoothest leading male characters in film history:
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
, who always gets the girl in the end.
The Bond film entitled ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service'' is released in December 1969 to steady acclaim, box-office record sales and sends Lazenby into the path of one of Hollywood's next stars. Unfortunately, being James Bond meant surrendering his own sense of self, and he walked away from the fame and fortune that would have come with the role, after his one and only film in the franchise. Following a dwindling in his film career, Lazenby settled back in Australia, where he became a realtor, married, raised a family and led a happy and normal life.
In retrospect, Lazenby in the present day has found his peace in everything he did before and after Bond. Additionally, Lazenby was given much acclaim in modern times for his role as James Bond with ''On Her Majesty's Secret Service'' held in high regard and considered as one of the finest films in the franchise and the best by some.
Cast
*
George Lazenby
George Robert Lazenby (; born 5 September 1939) is an Australian actor. He was the second actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond in the Eon Productions film series, playing the character in '' On Her Majesty's Secret Service ...
as Himself
Reenactment cast
*
Josh Lawson
Joshua Lawson (born 22 July 1981) is an Australian actor and filmmaker best known for his role as Doug Gugghenheim in ''House of Lies'', Tate in '' Superstore'' and as Kano in the 2021 film ''Mortal Kombat''.
Early life
Lawson was born and rais ...
as George
*
Kassandra Clementi
Kassandra Carolyn Clementi (born 10 October 1990) is an Australian actress. She is known for her role as Maddy Osborne on the Seven Network soap opera '' Home and Away'', a role she played for over three years before leaving in May 2016.
Earl ...
as Belinda
*
Teressa Liane
Teressa Liane is an Australian actress. She is known for her roles as Rhiannon Bates in ''Neighbours'', as Mary Louise on ''The Vampire Diaries'', Angelica on '' Into the Badlands'' and as Agrippina in the Netflix documentary drama ''Roman Em ...
as June Green
*
Landon Ashworth
Landon Ashworth is an American actor, producer, television, movie and musical writer, film and commercial director, pilot, and golfer who is a notable celebrity in the autism spectrum disorder community. Landon is a graduate of Embry Riddle Aeron ...
as Ken Gherety
*
Nathan Lovejoy
Nathan Lovejoy (born 2 December 1981) is an Australian actor, known for his roles as Principal Swift on the Disney Channel sci-fi teen sitcom '' Gabby Duran & the Unsittables'', for which he was nominated for a Daytime Creative Arts Emmy Award ...
as Chook Warner
*
Jane Seymour
Jane Seymour (c. 150824 October 1537) was List of English consorts, Queen of England as the third wife of King Henry VIII of England from their Wives of Henry VIII, marriage on 30 May 1536 until her death the next year. She became queen followi ...
as Maggie
*
Jeff Garlin
Jeffrey Garlin (born June 5, 1962) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He is best known for playing Murray Goldberg, patriarch of the eponymous family in the ABC sitcom '' The Goldbergs'', and Jeff Greene on the HBO sitcom '' Curb You ...
as
Harry Saltzman
Herschel Saltzman (; – ), known as Harry Saltzman, was a Canadian theatre and film producer. He is best remembered for co-producing the first nine of the ''James Bond'' film series with Albert R. Broccoli. He lived most of his life in Denh ...
*
Jake Johnson
Mark Jake Johnson Weinberger (born May 28, 1978) is an American actor, comedian, film producer and screenwriter best known for his role as Nick Miller in the Fox sitcom ''New Girl'' (2011–2018), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Ch ...
as Peregrine Carruthers
*
Dana Carvey
Dana Thomas Carvey (born June 2, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, impressionist, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his seven seasons as a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1986 to 1993, which earned him fiv ...
as
Johnny Carson
John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He is best known as the host of ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (1962–1992). Carson received six Pr ...
Reception
''Becoming Bond'' has received positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, it holds an 78% approval rating with an average rating of 6.51/10 based on 18 reviews; the critical consensus reads "''Becoming Bond'' is an uproarious recreation of George Lazenby's colorful stint as Britain's greatest spy, evidencing that the gregarious Australian may be a greater raconteur than he was a 00". On
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which uses a weighted average, assigned the season a score of 65 out of 100 based on 4 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
See also
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List of original programs distributed by Hulu
References
External links
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{{Josh Greenbaum
American documentary films
Films directed by Josh Greenbaum
Hulu original films
James Bond in film
2017 films
2017 documentary films
2010s English-language films
2010s American films