{"id":10628,"date":"2022-12-21T17:10:49","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T17:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10628"},"modified":"2022-12-29T17:41:45","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T17:41:45","slug":"mike-hodges-a-brilliant-filmmaker-and-great-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10628","title":{"rendered":"Mike Hodges: a brilliant filmmaker and great company"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Mike Hodges, who has died aged 90, was one of the greatest British filmmakers but producers often didn\u2019t know what to do with him. He made only nine feature films but they include four splendid crime pictures \u2013 \u2018Get Carter\u2019, \u2018Pulp\u2019, \u2018Croupier\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019ll Sleep When I\u2019m Dead\u2019 \u2013 and a rollicking space fantasy, \u2018Flash Gordon\u2019.<\/p>\n

I first met Hodges in 2003 when American film producer Mike Kaplan, whom I\u2019d gotten to know in Los Angeles, invited me to dinner at the Edinburgh International Film Festival with the director and principal cast of \u2018I\u2019ll Sleep When I\u2019m Dead\u2019 including Clive Owen, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Jamie Foreman.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Hodges and I hit it off and stayed in touch afterwards. He invited me to lunch at his son Jake\u2019s splendid Spanish restaurant Cigala (now closed sadly) on Lamb\u2019s Conduit Street and to the London launch of the picture. My daughter Shannon, who was working in England at MTV, accompanied me to the screening and the after-party at the King\u2019s Head pub in Islington.<\/p>\n

Shannon was delighted to spend time chatting with Clive Owen while I took similar delight in talking to another of the film\u2019s co-stars, Charlotte Rampling. Another bonus was that music for the after-party was provided by the great English R&B and jazz musician Georgie Fame who joined me for a pint.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In 2010, Hodges served on the Edinburgh festival jury for the Michael Powell Award for best British feature film. He took me to lunch with fellow juror, Iranian director Rafi Pitts, who spoke eloquently about the problems filmmakers had in his homeland. Hodges also invited me to have lunch with other jurors including New York art curator Laurence Kardish, Patrick Stewart and Britt Ekland (pictured with Hodges above).<\/p>\n

Stewart was impressively abashed and wry when I told him how much I\u2019d enjoyed his team-work with Ian McKellan in a West End production of Becket\u2019s \u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019. Sitting next to me, Ekland remained unfussily glamorous at almost 70 and pleasingly had no airs. Hodges wrote to me afterwards to say, \u2018They were\u00a0a terrific group.\u00a0 Great\u00a0being reunited with Britt.\u00a0\u2018<\/p>\n

Emails from Hodges were always interesting. In 2005, when I asked if he would be at the BAFTA film awards, he wrote, \u2018Ray,\u00a0 never go near ANY award ceremonies!!\u2019<\/p>\n

In a 2017 missive, he told me he enjoyed reading The Cliff Edge with a review of \u2018Dunkirk\u2019, Christopher Nolan\u2019s war picture. \u2018Good stuff!\u2019 he wrote but continued, \u2018I know I’d simply hate \u201cDunkirk\u201d.\u00a0Us oldies still have painful memories of \u201cA Bridge Too Far\u201d. Stuffed with stars wondering what the fuck they’re doing apart from collecting the pay check.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In retirement in Dorset with his wife Carol, he turned to writing noir fiction with a novel,\u00a0 <\/span>\u2018Watching The Wheels Come Off\u2019, in 2010 and a collection of novellas titled \u2018Bait, Grist and Security\u2019 in 2018. For the second book, he turned to crowd funding to get it published and hated doing it. \u2018What a weird business – selling yourself?\u00a0I sit here going red in the face with embarrassment. Mike.\u2019<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work at first. ‘All I wanted to do, he wrote, was touch\u00e9 some friends for a few bob.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 To crowd-fund the publication of my three racy novellas, \u2018Bait, Grist & Security.\u2019 Each as sharp as \u2018Get Carter\u2019, as witty as \u2018Pulp\u2019, as cool as \u2018Croupier\u2019, as lurid as \u2018Flash Gordon\u2019.\u00a0 No problem thought I.<\/p>\n

AND LOOK WHAT HAPPENED<\/p>\n

Off to a quick start (offering various inducements to pledge including the clapper board used on \u2018Croupier\u2019) I then got stuck at a miserable 33% of the total sum needed. Old friends, new friends, ex-lovers, acquaintances, enemies, bums, fellow whisky drinkers, long-lost poker players, the naked and even the dead, save an old man\u2019s blushes and pledge to buy my book for heavens sake!!!!\u00a0Otherwise my only literary legacy will be on my tombstone.\u2019<\/p>\n

Of course, the funding came through, the book was published and Hodges was suitably grateful.<\/p>\n

He told me he wanted to read my own novel, \u2018Blake\u2019s Progress\u2019, but needed it in manuscript form \u2013 ‘I hate reading from screens!’ \u00a0I was to get a copy for him when we next met in London for lunch. Sadly, that never happened. His last email to me came after I sent best wishes for his 90th birthday. \u2018Thanks for that, Ray. We had a dreamy sort of day and grateful for that. m.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Mike Hodges, who has died aged 90, was one of the greatest British filmmakers but producers often didn\u2019t know what to do with him. He made only nine feature films but they include four splendid … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263],"tags":[5291,5292,107,5293,5290,4036,460,541,5294,880,881,953,5295],"class_list":["post-10628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-memory-lane","tag-croupier","tag-get-carter","tag-ill-sleep-when-im-dead","tag-pulp","tag-britt-eklund","tag-charlotte-rampling","tag-clive-owen","tag-edinburgh-international-film-festival","tag-georgie-fame","tag-mike-hodges","tag-mike-kaplan","tag-patrick-stewart","tag-the-kings-head-islington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10628"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10637,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10628\/revisions\/10637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}