Rest in peace, Sir Roger Moore. Of all the men who played James Bond, I think Roger Moore embraced the role and the character the most. He portrayed James Bond the most times and held that role for the longest stretch. His movies were seen as campy or silly to some, but I think that era was a strange time for cinema anyway... and now that I think about it, I think he really thought of himself as James Bond.

Though it wasn't the greatest of his movies nor my favorite Bond movie, A View to a Kill stands out to me. It was the last time Moore portrayed my favorite character and the first Bond movie to be released in my lifetime. Roger Moore was 58 at the time but played the role as eager and wholeheartedly as his first go at Bond in Live and Let Die.

With my future wife's blessing, I started designing researching Bond posters as inspiration for a signing board for our wedding. I bought a book that contained a collection Bond posters for the past 50 years, and came across the poster for A View to a Kill. It showed James Bond and his Bond girl Stacy Sutton atop the Golden Gate Bridge, with villain Max Zorin chasing after them in his blimp. I thought it would be the perfect scene, though I would need to redo everything as we were getting married near New York City, and A View to a Kill depicted San Francisco. So I changed the Golden Gate to the Verrazano, and I replaced the San Francisco skyline with Manhattan. Then I made my wife my Bond girl in her wedding dress and I made myself James Bond holding my camera instead of a gun. I left as much as I could white so people could sign it, and we proudly display it in our dining room.

http://i.imgur.com/5T8K1pe.jpg

With Roger Moore and Chris Cornell, who sang the theme to Casino Royale, this is a sad week for Bond fans. Roger Moore lived a good life and saw himself as James Bond to the very end. Nobody did it better.