Roger Moore documentary reveals much-loved family man behind James Bond star

The answer is easy. "Roger was my Bond" gleams director Jack Cocker when asked why he picked cinema’s third James Bond for his new documentary feature, From Roger Moore with Love — which releases in selected UK cinemas this month and broadcasts on the BBC at Christmas.

A dynamic, insightful and often wholly personal portrait of one of Hollywood’s most famous British sons, Cocker’s new film tracks Sir Roger Moore’s childhood and unlikely career as a knitwear poster boy via a 1970s jet set world, breaking Hollywood more than once, the Home Counties studio belt, being knighted, his TV work, working with UNICEF, his role as a husband, father and friend, and of course seven 007 movies.

Yahoo spoke to Cocker about being the man with the golden gig, his favourite Bond and how this work renovates the myths, stories, and adoration of a legend.

"Would I be interested in making a documentary about Roger Moore? To say I jumped at the chance is an understatement", Cocker proudly begins.

"It was Karen Steyn the producer who originated this film. She contacted Roger’s family and got them on board. And then she took the project to WhyNow which is a London based production company where one of my BBC colleagues Janet Lee works and..." Cocker then adopts the Moore voice which is near impossible to not do when discussing the great man, "I don’t know what it was about me, but she thought I would be a good match for Roger."

Born in 1975, Cocker recalls the first moment he encountered Moore. "I was a little young for the first few, but I do remember going to the cinema to see A View to a Kill — and I think maybe Octopussy as well I saw with my brother." Cocker’s journey is one familiar to many movie fans citing Sir Roger as their favourite knight of Bond. "I’ve got a mix of nostalgia and fandom – and that’s how I began this journey."

Like a Roger Moore ski chase itself, tackling a screen legend such as this is not without its hazards. An early trip to visit Moore’s oldest son Geoffrey in Switzerland with his producer Steyn was nearly nerve-wracking. This work needed Roger’s three children on board, so Cocker takes a small camera with him just in case.

"And I’m really glad I did," he says, "because Geoffrey said Roger was a big fan of gadgets and an early adopter of the video camera. He just started digging around and bringing these bags downstairs. And he managed to dig out thirty or forty tapes I thought ‘Oh my god, we’ve struck gold’. And they are all sitting there and you don’t know what’s on these VHS and Betamax tapes."

With plaudits to editors Noel Nelis and David Hill, it is these cassettes that form the exquisite spine of From Roger Moore with Love. It is an ornate portrait of a man stitched together most eloquently by home movies and videotape memories — apt considering Moore was the first VHS era Bond.

However, old VHS tapes need restoration. "We had to take them back to the UK and very carefully have them baked first of all. Literally baked." recounts Cocker about salvaging analogue memories for a digital world. "There is an expert in this stuff, and he puts them in an egg incubator on a low temperature for about four hours. This dries out any kind of gumminess left on the tape. And then he began digitizing these tapes and feeding files back to us."

Cocker soon realised there was an embarrassment of VHS riches in Moore’s personal archive. "We didn’t have time to show everything, but there was so much stuff where it would just be Roger walking around the outside of the chalet in Switzerland after a fresh fall of snow with Christian his son whose sledging down the road. And the two of them head off for a yomp in the snow.

"Similarly, there were times in the south of France where they’d just take a boat out and just be bobbing around for hours. Roger obviously worked hard at becoming a movie star and maintaining that status, but I always felt like he was doing the work so that he could have a lovely time with his family and his friends. He enjoyed being Bond and being famous, but he certainly enjoyed his life."

And various dinners, lunches and kitchens see a rich cast of Moore’s A-list pals relaxing and playing up to his lens as they too enjoyed the seven time 007’s life. It is easy to forget Moore was himself a director too and understood the camera and capturing moments as the grinning likes of Kirk Douglas, Christopher Walken, Maud Adams, Michael and Shakira Caine and many more all goofing around at their most relaxed.

Birthday cakes are cut, cigars are lit, helicopters land and champagne glasses clink as a warm cast of familiar faces add rich, homespun detail.

Many film and Bond fans have a version of Roger Moore they remember. But it was important for Cocker to convey what sort of a man and father he was to his three children: Geoffrey, Deborah and Christian. "One thing that is maybe quite telling is that all three of them clearly deeply loved and idolised their father. And that is not always the case.

"Quite often with celebrity children there is an element of them forgiving their parents for something. And I don’t think that was the case here at all. They all had a great childhood. They all still loved their father very dearly. In the later stages of his life when he became ill, they — as many families do — shared taking turns at his bedside. I think that is borne out in the home-video clips."

"A lot of celebrity children are pretty mucked up, but I have to say that Roger did a brilliant job raising his three." And Cocker does not hold back from presenting Moore’s children watching these moments for the first time in a long time. These beats become poignant, yesteryear glimpses of a man, moments and a movie era long gone.

Because videotape was a format Moore embraced so profusely, it enables Cocker and audiences to really observe the man. "The surprising thing for me was just how much he resembled any father. And what a normal family they were. Roger basically had these wartime, working class values that were installed in him as a kid. I don’t think he ever forgot where he came from, as if that was even an option in his case.

"Those values that were installed by his parents never left him. And the kids spoke to that as well. They weren’t spoiled as children. But there was this other dichotomy I loved which was that he was a bon-vivant absolutely. He loved nothing more than drinking Domaines Ott and wearing his Chevalier of Arts medallion. But he was also absolutely a beans-on-toast kind of guy."

One of the fresh charms of From Roger Moore with Love is the ensemble of new interviews Cocker has assembled. Pierce Brosnan, Joan Collins, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, Live and Let Die’s Jane Seymour and Gloria Hendry, five-time Bond director John Glen, friend David Walliams, talk show host Dick Cavett and actor Steven Berkoff gladly offer their respects and stories.

Walken especially rarely talks about his villain duties in 1985’s A View to a Kill. But via a love for Moore, he shares Christmas 1984 tales as Cocker presents movie foes Max Zorin and James Bond hanging out in a wintry Gstaad.

One testament to the cultural grip Moore still has on British movie culture is that everyone slips into a Moore impression when quoting him. As standard documentaries are making way for new artistic takes on our pop-cultural idols (such as the recent The Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee, Elizabeth Taylor – Rebel Superstar), Cocker has given From Roger Moore with Love a distinct narrator motif.

"It was the first idea that I had," regarding a trick the individual concerned "wants to be kept a surprise". Cocker continues, "I always wanted it to be a first-person narration because I just think that’s what Roger would have wanted."

Naturally, a story that involves four wives, Hollywood, and cinema’s most iconic spy will not be able to include everything. "For me the regret about what we didn’t manage to squeeze in was stuff like Bullseye (1989) and his non-Bond films," Cocker laments.

"I watched all of these, but there is just only so much you can squeeze into eighty minutes. And there was another section about style which also had to hit the cutting room floor just for time. I’ve seen Roger in some amazing outfits, but the world needs to see it!"

Cocker barely pauses when asked what is his favourite Moore moment. "I would definitely say The Spy Who Loved Me — because that is where the stars aligned Roger Moore the person and Roger Moore the movie star. The Venn diagram then became a total eclipse.

"That’s where he realised that he didn’t have to try and ape Connery in any way. He could, as the film suggests, stop trying to turn Roger Moore into James Bond. Turn James Bond into Roger Moore.

"That’s when the whole thing just took off and a new male role model was born with that film. Obviously, all the clues were there with the bits he was putting together with Simon Templar (The Saint) and Brett Sinclair (The Persuaders), and it was building towards it. But that for me is the moment where it just goes kaboom."

Perhaps the final word belongs to one of Cocker’s best pieces of feedback. When the Moore kids watched the final cut, Geoffrey fed a reaction back to the director.

"He absolutely loved it," Cocker proudly recalls, "and he said the old man would have loved it."

From Roger Moore with Love screens exclusively in the UK across Everyman and Picturehouse cinemas on 15 and 18 December.