The Other Fellow
Directed by Matthew Bauer
Unrated
Runtime: 80 minutes
Streaming on ITVX on January 4, Currently streaming on Amazon Prime

by Alex Rudolph, Staff Writer

I can think of three levels of trouble you can experience with a name, based on how specific and common it is. There are the issues that come with a rare name that somebody else somehow has, which Harvey Pekar wrote about in one of his best comics, about other people named Harvey Pekar. There are the issues that come with a name like mine-- other kids in kindergarten sing "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" around you, but that goes away after a couple years and isn't really a big deal. And then there's the most specific name, which brings problems Errol Morris explored in a Taco Bell commercial, of all things, where he rounded up men named Ronald McDonald. I spent the summer after college rooming with a person named Russ Crowe, full name Russell Crowe, and he didn't carry the weight that the average Ronald McDonald did, but he was definitely forcing out a few laughs when the other people in this house said "Wait, your real name is Russell Crowe?!" Your name can create funny coincidences but it can also beat you mercilessly.

We get a look at that third level in Matthew Bauer's The Other Fellow, about men around the world named James Bond. It's a great premise, the perfect name to focus on, as far as the popularity of the James Bond character and the specificity of the image it evokes. If you don't look like Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig and you don't move through the world in suits and cars that cost more than some houses, you're almost definitely going to be the schlubbiest, worst put-together James Bond that the people you meet have ever encountered.

Ian Fleming, the character's creator and original author, took the name from the author of Birds of the West Indies, a reference book he had on hand in Jamaica. Bauer focuses, at times, on that author, the first person to have to deal with an iconic character having his name. That James Bond had it stolen, of course, and was already established in his field by the time the Sean Connery movies had started to come out, the franchise's popularity exploded and the associations started. He was trapped. A few of the other men Bauer introduces were born before the first Fleming novel was written in 1953, but most were named in a world where this was always a famous name. One or two were born when the movies had just started coming out and nobody could have predicted this would be a series that would span, as of right now, 25 movies starring 6 different leading men. One of them, James Hart, is identified by a lower-third as a "former James Bond." His life since the name change, he says, has been characterized by "a lightness of being."

Other people tough it out. James Alexander Bond, a theatre director, has to beg everybody to keep the dumb jokes to themselves every time a new Bond film comes out. "I find I make horrible, horrible first impressions," he says, "because when I meet somebody, I know the stupid joke is coming." He says there are nine James Bonds in New York that he knows of, and every time a movie comes out, somebody has a hacky idea to do something with 'the real James Bond.' James Alexander Bond showed up on Letterman, in a segment he and I both seem to think is equally unfunny. As much as James Alexander Bond hates the name, he has a David Herman in Office Space attitude about the whole thing-- Why should I change my name? He's the one who sucks. Bauer points out that, despite his complaining, this James Bond is also willing to drive to Atlantic City to film ads for an online casino as 'the real James Bond.' Nobody forced him to show up in that hacky Letterman sketch. His name, I think, is an excuse. You always have a reason to be pissed off if you can pretend to be indignant about strangers' jokes.

Another subject chose the name for himself. A Swede born Gunnar Schäfer, he leans into the name's presumed glamor, springing for the watches, alcohol and cologne that movie Bond has worn. He takes vacations to the movies' shooting locations. He gets off on it to a strange degree, but goes on to explain that he adopted the name after his dad ran out on him and his mother, which triggered an emotional spiral that ended when he found Fleming's books and treated their title character as a model for, as he says, "how to dress, how to act, everything my father would have taught me." He runs a James Bond museum in what looks like a strip mall in the middle of nowhere. We see this James Bond dancing with a woman in the most awkward way I have ever seen a person move, and when he pushes his face into the woman's breasts, it seems like he's just two seconds earlier been introduced to the concepts of dancing, women, music and his own knees. His legal name, after the change, is later revealed to be "Bond James Bond," and he says he uses the name and the fame he gets from showing up on talk shows to try to find his missing father, a plan that sounds impossible (especially from the angle that if a guy was enough of an asshole to walk out on his family, he'd probably try to continue avoiding his son after finding out he's now a truly weird dude). Swedish James Bond visits Ian Fleming's grave and says, out loud, "I see you as a second father. You are the person who has given me hope in life."

A handful of James Bonds have had run-ins with the cops, a fun irony no policeman has ever believed. One, from South Bend, Indiana was sentenced to 60 days in jail after a policeman thought this guy who identified himself as "James Bond" was trying to mess with him. That James Bond was once wanted for murder, which led to another James Bond in South Bend having to scramble to let people know he wasn't the one up for killing a person. The first Bond is Black, which lends the whole thing a strange racial element that's brought up briefly. 

The Black Indiana Bond who was in jail for a murder (but got out because the jury was hung) meets with the white Indiana James Bond. White James Bond points out that Black James Bond got all over the news because TV shows wanted to say "Look everybody, James Bond is wanted for murder!" but when there wasn't any real evidence he was guilty, they didn't want to put out the much less entertaining follow-up that James Bond was wrongfully accused of killing a person. The name burned him when he went to jail but didn't help him at all on his way out.

Toward the end of the film, we meet an anonymous woman, the first who's been interviewed head-on, because there aren't any women named James Bond. She's British, married and had a child with a man she had just met. When he became abusive, she took her son and went into hiding, but she stalked her and, after five years, she decided to change both her and her son's names. She couldn't use her maiden name, because he knew that, so she went with something that would be nearly impossible to Google. Her son became James Bond.

Of the James Bonds we meet who grew up with the name, one seems to like it. He gets free tickets to every Bond movie, which seems to be enough for him. His son, also James Bond, is on an elementary school football team and carries the number 7. He glows as he tells the camera that all his friends call him "007." Besides these two, nobody can really explain why they haven't changed their names, why they didn't take the exit James Hart did and escape the constant jokes forever.

It's an interesting look at identity. A few people run headfirst into the associations, a few get red in the face explaining how much they hate those same associations. Some use it as armor, some wear it as a hairshirt. I related to them all, in different ways. And they, like all real people, have more dimension than a fictional spy-- I couldn't fully explain them here the way I could the version of James Bond who had sex with women with names like "Pussy Galore." As silly as James Alexander Bond is for making online casino ads capitalizing on a coincidence with his name, I obviously understand why anybody would bristle at having to share part of their identity with a self-insert fantasy character. Did you see No Time To Die? A lot of these stories are awful. Everybody deserves their own life.

When I went to bed the night after watching The Other Fellow, I was so grateful to my parents for not treating my name as a joke and for having enough knowledge of international pop culture to not stumble backward into making my life a series of annoying misunderstandings. If every bit of nuance about identity flies over your head, you can at least use The Other Fellow as a reminder that your life could be much more frustrating than it already is.