Letter from the Founder

I say this with the greatest respect: I’ve always thought the Broccoli family, in particular the producer Barbara Dana Broccoli O.B.E., has missed a trick regarding the potential of the franchise. They could have taken a page from the Marvel Comics empire and extrapolated their characters into infinite films and Netflix series to the point that there would not be a living soul whose consciousness was not intertwined with multiple, simultaneous James Bond narratives — and loving it. For example,, is mired in the purgatory of inaction, desperate for the purification of a new target. And if he was silver haired and wrinkled, if he was well into his sixties and maybe knocking on the door of his seventies, so much the better. Because the world has changed in the last couple of decades, and some of our most bankable action stars — Liam Neeson, chief invigorator of the series; Samuel L. Jackson, most recently seen running through the jungle beside Tarzan when not depicting agent Nick Fury; or Denzel Washington, who stars in the rebooted and damnably fantastic — are 66, 69 and 63 years old respectively. Rather than something to run from, age in the 21st century has become something we’ve embraced, along with the concept that men grow more potent and appealing and, as Tom Ford once put it in the pages of this magazine, transform “into their more essential selves” as they grow older. As a guy about to turn 50 years old, and representative of any audience that numbers in the 300 million (aged 55-64), I would put down a good deal of my hard-earned cash to see an old James Bond kicking much ass. More than that, as a marketing coup in terms of clothing, cars, alcohol, dining, hotels, what have you, it is a veritable potential bonanza. (God, I really want to see Bond bust someone in the head with that new tantalum Omega Seamaster!) Because speaking from experience, there are no 30-year-olds in the world who know more about how to dress, drive, drink, eat and repose than us guys 50 years and older. Sorry, but that’s just a truth born out of hard-won experience. And to be honest we’re also a lot better at talking to women, because we’ve learned over the years the one essential truth about being a human being, which is, Just don’t be a dick. You would think everyone would understand this. But they do not. They really don’t.