Speaker 1: Welcome to episode one hundred and forty two of the
Speaker 1: film you mentioned his podcast. This is Jamie Benning, your host,
Speaker 1: as usual. I'm here in my house knocking out another episode.
Speaker 1: I said it was the last episode of the year,
Speaker 1: but friend of the podcast, John Spira got in touch,
Speaker 1: saying that he has a kickstarter at the moment for
Speaker 1: a book that he's written about Mike Hodges, legendary British director. Now,
Speaker 1: as it's Chris, I'm not going to waffle on because
Speaker 1: I've got a load of stuff to do. And what
Speaker 1: this will be is this will count for the first
Speaker 1: episode of January, because I just needed a little bit
Speaker 1: of downtime. Doing two of these a month can get
Speaker 1: a bit much, and I figured if I got this
Speaker 1: out now, it serves John. It also means you've got
Speaker 1: something else to listen to over the festive period, and thirdly,
Speaker 1: it gives me a little break until the second episode
Speaker 1: of January twenty twenty six. Isn't it Crazy twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: So here's my conversation with John Spira, and I'll be
Speaker 1: back at the end briefly for a bit more jabbering on.
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 1: Great to have you back on the podcast this time
Speaker 1: about a book. Tell me about this book, tell me
Speaker 1: about his genesis.
Speaker 3: Well, so the book is called I'll Settle for Nothingness
Speaker 3: Conversations with Mike Codges, and it's basically a collection of
Speaker 3: conversations extended kind of email conversations that I have with
Speaker 3: Mike Hodges, who is a legendary Brita filmmaker who's most
Speaker 3: famous obviously for Get Carter and Flashcourt Notes for his
Speaker 3: two kind of really kind of big films, but generally
Speaker 3: an output of very kind of respected work. And Mike
Speaker 3: died three years ago actually I think this week, at
Speaker 3: the age of ninety and in the last kind of
Speaker 3: I guess four or five years of his life, we
Speaker 3: made friends kind of like it. It was a very
Speaker 3: big surprise to me to find out that. But Mike
Speaker 3: was a friend. But I had written a book about
Speaker 3: his film More On from Outer Space, which is one
Speaker 3: of my People use the word guilty pleasures, but I'm
Speaker 3: against that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just a pleasure. Just enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you love a film, you love a film
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, you connect with it. And more of
Speaker 3: the film that I connected with. I saw it on
Speaker 3: opening weekend in nineteen eighty six was in an empty
Speaker 3: cinema with me and my parents and nobody else. Huge,
Speaker 3: and the film absolutely died on its art. It was
Speaker 3: a critical flop. It was supposed to be mel Smith
Speaker 3: than Grifferies Jones, their launch into cinema and so they
Speaker 3: were very famous British comedians. It was going to be
Speaker 3: this huge film and it was a comedy and it
Speaker 3: was kind of a satire and it's wonderful And if
Speaker 3: you love science fiction, which I know your viewers love
Speaker 3: science fiction, you should watch it because it's up there.
Speaker 3: It's like space Balls, you know, it's got an equivalent space.
Speaker 3: Whereas space Balls is mocking, Star Wars is mocking Spielberg's
Speaker 3: films is mocking Close Encounters and et. And the premise
Speaker 3: of the film is what if we make contact with
Speaker 3: aliens and instead of being superior beings, they were like us.
Speaker 3: They were just everyday idiots. And it's actually turned into
Speaker 3: it's been kind of fulfilled in society because we're in
Speaker 3: a society right now where, without being too rude, the
Speaker 3: stupidest people have the highest technology. Is it so crazy
Speaker 3: an idea that some civilization has created space travel and
Speaker 3: four idiots have gotten into a spaceship, hired a spaceship
Speaker 3: for the weekend, and gone where they shouldn't go, so
Speaker 3: make contact with aliens, and they're just like they're human being.
Speaker 3: They look like human beings, they act like stupid human beings,
Speaker 3: and parodies all of the spill work kind of things.
Speaker 3: Very sharp film, but it's very broad as well. People
Speaker 3: weren't ready for it. People didn't really see what was
Speaker 3: going on with it. I loved it even as a kid,
Speaker 3: and so it stayed as one of my favorite films.
Speaker 3: Still not of able on Blu ray.
Speaker 2: What was that about? Eighty four? Eighty five was it?
Speaker 3: I think it might have been eighty six. I've came
Speaker 3: out in eighty six. I think it's around then. Still
Speaker 3: not on Blue ray criminally, it's on Amazon Prime right now,
Speaker 3: but I think it's it's a standard Definitionly I tried
Speaker 3: to get a Blue ray made of it, and there
Speaker 3: was no HD master for the fight, so it's been
Speaker 3: very overlooked. I love the film. I wrote a book
Speaker 3: about it. Mike. I had interviewed Mike when I worked
Speaker 3: at the BFI, and I'd used part of the interview
Speaker 3: in the book, But when I was doing the interview.
Speaker 3: I felt like I'd pushed too hard. He really didn't
Speaker 3: like More on Some out Space. He hadn't seen it
Speaker 3: since the day he had finished it. I don't think
Speaker 3: he watched it at the premiere. He had Less Square premiere,
Speaker 3: but it was dead three days later, you know. And
Speaker 3: although he was I was inter thinking about his science
Speaker 3: fiction films in general, which he made a few, and
Speaker 3: when we got to more on smaut Space, he was
Speaker 3: kind of game for about five minutes, and then I
Speaker 3: asked him another question and he literally said, I think
Speaker 3: we've talked enough about this. And I felt horrible, very
Speaker 3: shut down, and kind of like, oh god, I've really
Speaker 3: offended an upset him. So when I wrote the book,
Speaker 3: I didn't actually contact him. I just used part of
Speaker 3: the interview that i'd done with him. And then one
Speaker 3: day on my website, I got an order for twenty
Speaker 3: copies of the book from my codges. So I emailed
Speaker 3: him and said, look, you don't have to buy this.
Speaker 3: I'll send you any copies as you want. I'm kind
Speaker 3: of sorry I didn't contact you. I kind of felt
Speaker 3: like you had an issue with morons, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: I kind of did, but you know, I'd still like
Speaker 3: to read the book. And after reading the book, he
Speaker 3: got back in touch with me and he said, you've
Speaker 3: made me want to watch the film again. Wow, And
Speaker 3: it was kind of like, okay, great. I was like, well,
Speaker 3: you should watch the film. You know, I'll send you
Speaker 3: a copy. You didn't have a copy of the film.
Speaker 3: And then this weird thing happened where we just started
Speaker 3: emailing all the time because he loved films so much
Speaker 3: and inevitably with getting these conversations about films. And then
Speaker 3: I just said to him, because when I've been writing
Speaker 3: the book, I went and interview Grifferies Jones. I spent
Speaker 3: hours with Griff and it was really good. And Griff
Speaker 3: then got in touch with Mike and they hadn't spoken
Speaker 3: since the day they finished the film because they argued
Speaker 3: they didn't They had a very bad relationship. And they
Speaker 3: started going out as friends and at each other. And
Speaker 3: then I kind of said to the pair of them, well,
Speaker 3: why don't we do it. Screening has never been screened
Speaker 3: anywhere in the world since it came out in cinemas.
Speaker 3: There aren't many films you can say that of. I said,
Speaker 3: let's do a screening. And they were both up for it,
Speaker 3: and we did. We did a night at the U
Speaker 3: people as Chars Cinema and we got moved into the
Speaker 3: bigger cinema because it sold out completely as a sold
Speaker 3: out screening and everyone, the audience loved it. This is funny,
Speaker 3: and when you watch a funny film with an audience,
Speaker 3: it gets crazy. So with and Mike, they were practically
Speaker 3: crying by the end of it because they were like,
Speaker 3: this is a good film. And they had both Griff
Speaker 3: had blamed it for ruining his life, Like Griff wanted
Speaker 3: to be a filmmaker and after that he wasn't. Or weirdly,
Speaker 3: Melsmith went on and became very successful directly. Yeah, Griff
Speaker 3: blamed morons for you know, they both saw this film
Speaker 3: as a terrible film. They watched it with an audience.
Speaker 3: The audience loved it. We did a cracking Q and
Speaker 3: A afterwards on stage and people it was fun and
Speaker 3: it was funny, and afterwards they were both just kind
Speaker 3: of so happy, and me and Mike just stayed in touch.
Speaker 3: We were just after that. We just friends and we
Speaker 3: were emailing constantly and I at one point I just
Speaker 3: said to him, I just love these emails and like,
Speaker 3: I just think we could do a really interesting book
Speaker 3: in this format. Just not standard interviews, you know, I've
Speaker 3: done a lot of those, but the way he converse
Speaker 3: on email is interesting. Maybe we could do something with it.
Speaker 3: And he was up for it. He was doubtful. He
Speaker 3: was in a place mentally where he just felt very
Speaker 3: left behind by people he felt particularly appreciated. But he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's do it, and we did it, and then for
Speaker 3: years we you know, we just had this extended email
Speaker 3: going backwards and forwards, talking about everything, talking about his career,
Speaker 3: my career, life, politics, arts, everything, and sadly we did
Speaker 3: finish it. A couple of months before he died. There
Speaker 3: was a definite we have now finished that, yeah, end
Speaker 3: to this, But yeah, he then died, and then I
Speaker 3: got busy with other projects. And it's taken me kind
Speaker 3: of three years to get to the point where I've
Speaker 3: had some space to actually edit it, because I thought
Speaker 3: at the time, I thought it would be very charming
Speaker 3: to just print the kind of emails, but you know
Speaker 3: how long emails get. Twelve emails back pages and pages.
Speaker 3: It's taken a lot of editing to not edit out
Speaker 3: what anyone said. But editor into actually a kind of straightforward,
Speaker 3: forward and backwards. So we have to kind of almost
Speaker 3: lose the email format, which was kind of the point
Speaker 3: of it, but the conversation is still there. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I think anyone who just loves cinema. But I mean, firstly,
Speaker 3: you know, me and he both love cinema. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of talk about the industry and about films in general,
Speaker 3: but if you're interested in him and his films, there's
Speaker 3: a whole story there. It's really interesting, fascinating career he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, he was never sort sort of tied down
Speaker 1: by genre. I mean, he leapt across so many different things.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got sci fi, comedy, psychological thriller, political thriller.
Speaker 2: Angster movies, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's pretty amazing really because so many
Speaker 1: directors do get pigeonhole, but he seemed to avoid that totally.
Speaker 3: He was I mean, he was an incredibly versatile I mean,
Speaker 3: he came from that generation. You know, he was born
Speaker 3: in I guess the thirties, and I think before if
Speaker 3: you were kind of working before the kind of late seventies,
Speaker 3: maybe at that point, if you were a director, directing
Speaker 3: was kind of a job. It wasn't this kind of
Speaker 3: o tur thing was it was in the ether and stuff.
Speaker 3: But I think until kind of Spielberg and scorsesean stuff,
Speaker 3: there wasn't that thing where you were kind of defined
Speaker 3: by your work and you were the person who made
Speaker 3: these kind of films. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 3: like the Ealing films, those directors were just signed randomly,
Speaker 3: you know, to whatever was being made in the studios
Speaker 3: at the time. Yeah, even old Hollywood films. You know,
Speaker 3: someone like Stanley Donan, you know, you just go wha,
Speaker 3: Actually musicals, you did Star Trek the motion picture, you know,
Speaker 3: it's completely kind of It was more about the leadership
Speaker 3: of directing. Mike had had had a by the time
Speaker 3: he moved into cinema. He had made a lot of TV,
Speaker 3: a lot of kind of early TV documentaries, and he'd
Speaker 3: done some drama as well. So he was very well
Speaker 3: kind of positioned to do anything. And it was really
Speaker 3: his intelligence that was the key to everything. Is if
Speaker 3: he was interested in something, then he would make something
Speaker 3: really good. And yeah, very versatile, but also very kind
Speaker 3: of I mean he was very self effacing. Yeah, to
Speaker 3: an annoying degree. I would say you would never if
Speaker 3: you met him in the street and had a chat
Speaker 3: with him, you would not think he was who he was.
Speaker 3: He did not wear his prestige or legend at all.
Speaker 3: He had no time for that. He loved to talk
Speaker 3: about films and how he made his films. He had
Speaker 3: no ego whatsoever, absolutely nothing, you know. And actually his
Speaker 3: kind of his view of his career was that it
Speaker 3: was messy and disorganized. It would surprise me hugely.
Speaker 2: Which I'm sure is the case for a lot of directors.
Speaker 3: As soon as you start talking to people honestly and
Speaker 3: you start peeling back the kind of layers. You know.
Speaker 3: We talked and I did the Chrystph Lee film the
Speaker 3: last time. Last time we talked, I was telling you that,
Speaker 3: like what interested me was making a film about how
Speaker 3: even someone as strong as Christopher Lee is someone who actually,
Speaker 3: when you look at it, he was very insecure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's quite a fragile guy in many ways. And
Speaker 1: many people in that industry are, aren't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's that's one thing that interest me. It's
Speaker 3: just finding this kind of human le layer. He would
Speaker 3: wear that on his sleeve. Like when you talk to him,
Speaker 3: he would he would say quite openly that he didn't
Speaker 3: think he'd had the career that he'd hoped for. And
Speaker 3: one of the most interesting sections in the book, which
Speaker 3: I really like, is that I pressed him a lot
Speaker 3: to talk about the projects that didn't make it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask about that, because for every
Speaker 1: film a director may, particularly from that period, there's another
Speaker 1: ten that never got anywhere near. I mean, speaking to
Speaker 1: Joe Alves, you know, he's got drawings from twenty movies
Speaker 1: that he never.
Speaker 2: Got paid for, you know, exactly, they just didn't get
Speaker 2: out of development.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's a book in that. You know,
Speaker 3: someone should write a book about unproduced films, you know,
Speaker 3: and Mike had loads of them, and because he was respected,
Speaker 3: these projects were at a point where, you know, they
Speaker 3: had people attached to them. It came incredibly close to
Speaker 3: kind of making these films. There was a really interesting
Speaker 3: story where he was going to make a film about
Speaker 3: awesome Wells doing the kind of you know that the
Speaker 3: Mercury Theater kind of period of his career, the radio,
Speaker 3: the War of the World's kind of radio broadcast. I'm
Speaker 3: trying to try to remember I'm getting this exactly right,
Speaker 3: But basically they decided that Tim Robbins would be a
Speaker 3: good guy to play or some wells, and he was
Speaker 3: doing very well at that point in his career on
Speaker 3: those guys, at that point where you could you could
Speaker 3: make a film. And then Tim Robbins basically just said
Speaker 3: I love it, but I want to direct it, and
Speaker 3: Mike kind of, I guess I have to step aside.
Speaker 3: And they made it and it was a terrible film.
Speaker 3: But you know, it's really interesting to find out these things,
Speaker 3: to find out what's kind of kind of going on
Speaker 3: that we didn't find out about, and Mike had a
Speaker 3: lot of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And actually.
Speaker 3: What I found was it's more interesting to look at
Speaker 3: it in a kind of holistic career, in a holistic sense,
Speaker 3: not just looking at the films that actually got made,
Speaker 3: but working between and saying, well, that film actually got
Speaker 3: made because this film didn't get made, Yeah, this film
Speaker 3: could have been stunning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you really become you come to appreciate those
Speaker 1: films that are really successful, what a fluke they are
Speaker 1: in some ways, like this confluence of all these things
Speaker 1: that have to come together to make it that good,
Speaker 1: like everybody doing their job to you know, such a
Speaker 1: degree that when it does has come out that it
Speaker 1: just all slots together. It is very rare for that
Speaker 1: to happen, which is why we're still talking about films
Speaker 1: like you know, Behind You Out, Jaws, RoboCop and movies
Speaker 1: like that. Did he do you find that difficult to
Speaker 1: talk about that, stuff about the films not being made?
Speaker 3: He liked talking about that. When once I got him open,
Speaker 3: he really enjoyed it. Mike actually was I mean, like
Speaker 3: all of us were a kind of contradiction and stuff.
Speaker 3: Mike was deliciously grumpy. He's a lovely man, really genuinely kind, generous, funny,
Speaker 3: a lovely company. So I'm not saying he's grumpy, like
Speaker 3: he was a grumpy person, but if you got him
Speaker 3: on a rat it was a wonderful thing. And he
Speaker 3: especially you know, at the time. A lot of time
Speaker 3: we're talking was when that period where the Tory prime
Speaker 3: ministers were like psyched and Trump was coming. He would
Speaker 3: just you know, I would get an email just started,
Speaker 3: have you seen the news today?
Speaker 2: And does the book include stuff like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I only took out like them,
Speaker 3: either stuff that would be incredibly boring about our personal lives,
Speaker 3: you know, or stuff which which it wouldn't have been
Speaker 3: fair to other people to put in, although I've kept
Speaker 3: in a lot of both of our bitchiness, which I
Speaker 3: think is interesting. And he didn't mind this at all.
Speaker 3: But like they you you very much find out who
Speaker 3: he didn't like and who I don't like, and some
Speaker 3: of that surprised me. He went on a rant about
Speaker 3: Richard Attenborough really, which is amazed, like I kind of
Speaker 3: like Richard.
Speaker 2: Did he had he worked with him when he was
Speaker 2: in TV.
Speaker 3: I work with him at all. The initial cause of
Speaker 3: his Richard alber Ratt. We were talking about all star films.
Speaker 3: We're talking about those kind of films that you don't
Speaker 3: really get anymore, where they packed the cast with kind
Speaker 3: of very famous people. I think we were talking about
Speaker 3: that time in the nineties where Mirror Max was really
Speaker 3: doing that, where films were coming out on like DVD
Speaker 3: and the rental when I had the video shops. There
Speaker 3: were films like I'm trying to remember the name of that.
Speaker 3: There was a Bottle Shock, which was a film about
Speaker 3: why It's got Alan Rickman and it's got few people
Speaker 3: in the film, right. Yeah. They would come out and
Speaker 3: you'd go, how is a cast this big.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought you just meant generally films that are
Speaker 1: populated with big, old movies.
Speaker 3: The thing that set these ones aside was more that
Speaker 3: you would rent it, going wow, there was a film
Speaker 3: about CBGB's have like loads of famous people, and you go,
Speaker 3: this looks like the most amazing film, And then you'd
Speaker 3: watch it and you'd realize that what it actually was
Speaker 3: was all these people had done favors for Harvey Weinstein
Speaker 3: or whoever was producing it, and they would be in
Speaker 3: It was obvious that they'd been on set one day. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and maybe it was filmed where they hadn't been with
Speaker 3: the other actors and it was kind of cut in
Speaker 3: and they would have one scene and that was it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so I was talking about those for some reason,
Speaker 3: and then he went on a round about a Bridge
Speaker 3: too Far and he was just like and oh, what
Speaker 3: a lovely war as well, and just going and going, well,
Speaker 3: you know, ridgel Attenborough killed these things by taking things
Speaker 3: which have had great actors in them and just replacing
Speaker 3: the tiny roles with very famous people, which means that
Speaker 3: when you're watching it, you're not actually in the film,
Speaker 3: you're just going Oh, it's him, Oh, it's him, it's him,
Speaker 3: and a bridge too far. He found actually offensive to
Speaker 3: people who have been in the war because I think
Speaker 3: he described them as like honey wagon gits or something else.
Speaker 3: It was like the idea of these very multi million
Speaker 3: millionaire stars coming in for one day, ending to be
Speaker 3: a war hero and then disappearing.
Speaker 1: Kind of on a glossary of Mike Codge's terms of phrase.
Speaker 1: Then in the back I.
Speaker 3: Might be overelly put in with that. But he was
Speaker 3: always always kind of funny, and his grumpiness was always
Speaker 3: kind of very funny. We had a good talk about
Speaker 3: Robert Altman at one point and how with actors, and
Speaker 3: I think I said, you know, Oltman was brilliant and
Speaker 3: the actors loved him. He's development was brilliant, but unfortunately
Speaker 3: he paved the way for Julian Fellows.
Speaker 2: Wow, so he's not holding back.
Speaker 1: Was he kind of self aware of the reputation he had,
Speaker 1: you know, with Get Carter and Flash Gordon, particularly because
Speaker 1: I think people sort of know those films but they
Speaker 1: couldn't necessarily name the director of find like your general
Speaker 1: movie fan.
Speaker 2: He was he aware that he had that kind of as.
Speaker 3: Well that he had made those two films. He was aware,
Speaker 3: like he so towards the end of his life, both
Speaker 3: Get Carter and Flash Gordon kind of were retrospectively kind
Speaker 3: of hailed, and they kind of had re releases and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and they become kind of cult films.
Speaker 1: Ended up in lists in those sort of nineties movies magazines.
Speaker 1: Didn't they top ten, top one hundred.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think he spent a lot of his
Speaker 3: last years talking about Get Carter and Flashboard. You know,
Speaker 3: that was you know, which he was happy to do
Speaker 3: because he really loved both of those films and he
Speaker 3: had made a huge he was responsible for those films.
Speaker 3: Those films are the way they are. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: it's I mean, he wrote the script for Get Carter,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't in the original book. He adapted that book,
Speaker 3: and Flash Gordon was not. You know, he's the one
Speaker 3: who put all of the kind of like crazy sexiness
Speaker 3: in it and the kind of the weird colors. And
Speaker 3: for him, you know, he always, you know, like the
Speaker 3: great directors do, he was always aware of what he
Speaker 3: was saying to the audience and what he was exploring.
Speaker 3: And Flash Gordon for him was about American foreign interest.
Speaker 3: It was an allegory. And although Flash is a good character,
Speaker 3: Flashes is the prototypical American going into a situation and saying,
Speaker 3: I can sort this out.
Speaker 2: This is how it should be done by myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how he saw it. He is
Speaker 3: an allegory for American foreign foreign kind of policy and stuff.
Speaker 3: So to ask you a question, he was He was
Speaker 3: very He was aware of the respect that those films
Speaker 3: had and he and he loved those films, so he
Speaker 3: was always happy to talk about them, and he was
Speaker 3: happy that they were kind of the in the spotlight
Speaker 3: and also with certainly with Flashbord and he got a
Speaker 3: chunk of money every time and happened with it. So
Speaker 3: very happy to come ahead with that. But his frustration
Speaker 3: lay in the fact that his other films were were
Speaker 3: not just kind of overlooked but unavailable. Yeah, and the
Speaker 3: big one for him was The Terminal Man, which is
Speaker 3: kind of Hollywood movie, which only in March, Arrow finally
Speaker 3: put out an amazing specialistion blu ray event and it's
Speaker 3: the first time where you go, Okay, this is a
Speaker 3: significant piece of people hadn't seen it. Warner brothers had
Speaker 3: completely they had no faith in it at all. They
Speaker 3: marketed it horribly, and it was sci fi before Star Wars,
Speaker 3: so that was.
Speaker 2: Always was like seventy seventy four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So it was a tricky kind of time
Speaker 3: to a degree anyway, but you know, it was the
Speaker 3: film was a very stark, cold film about what was
Speaker 3: happening with really with medicine and the idea that that
Speaker 3: they were kind of that there were kind of electronic
Speaker 3: digital things coming through medicine and it's questioning kind of
Speaker 3: humanity and what happens when you kind of intersect to
Speaker 3: that degree. And they didn't know how to market it
Speaker 3: at all, and they marked it. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: he says in the book, he says the poster had
Speaker 3: George Seagull ooating in the air with lightning bolts coming
Speaker 3: out of his ass.
Speaker 2: He did, actually didn't.
Speaker 3: And that's the point of which George Seagull floats or
Speaker 3: lightning bolts come out of his Stanley Kubrick loved it,
Speaker 3: really remained it as one of his favorite films.
Speaker 2: Wasn't it? Michael Crichton as swell, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: But he didn't really, he wasn't very involved, and Mike
Speaker 3: adapted it a lot. It doesn't I don't think it
Speaker 3: bears much resemblance to the book.
Speaker 2: But Kubrick loved it.
Speaker 3: Kubrick adored it, and in fact, Kubrick petitioned Warner Brothers
Speaker 3: on Mike's behalf. He said, this is a really good film,
Speaker 3: should give it a proper release. But they just didn't.
Speaker 3: It just and it was unavailable for years in decade
Speaker 3: since it came out. That was There's a been a
Speaker 3: in a book where he says, I hope it I
Speaker 3: hope it gets released before I die, And it did,
Speaker 3: and that really upsets me. Also, I mean, the other
Speaker 3: thing that kind of upsets me is that when it
Speaker 3: did come out, in much it came out with I mean,
Speaker 3: this is not impugning Arrow at all.
Speaker 2: It was do some great stuff. Yeah, beautiful, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I love I love them and in fact, you know,
Speaker 3: they're one of the few people who are rescuing films
Speaker 3: like yes. But when it came out, it was not
Speaker 3: embraced by the film community. Really upset me. I really thought,
Speaker 3: this is the moment.
Speaker 2: I didn't know it had come out, honestly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's a real it's a real shame. And
Speaker 3: and and I'm you know, I think the book is
Speaker 3: the book has a niche appeal. That's why I'm self
Speaker 3: publishing and stuff. But I just I would love I
Speaker 3: think Mike's last wish and what if there is I mean,
Speaker 3: he didn't believe in anything after death, but if there
Speaker 3: is anything after death, and he looked down. I know
Speaker 3: that that his big wish is that the terminal Man
Speaker 3: would would have been reevaluated on his own terms and
Speaker 3: take what it is. And I think it's an important
Speaker 3: piece of filmmaking. I think it's wonderful. And there's no
Speaker 3: film like it, you know.
Speaker 1: And do you think that's one of the films that
Speaker 1: he's sort of had the best time making or something?
Speaker 2: Is there something about the experience itself?
Speaker 3: Do you think he had the worst time? You see,
Speaker 3: he hated he hated it. It was a horrible experience.
Speaker 3: He had gone to La so he'd done Get Carter
Speaker 3: and he had done Pulp, which is to Get Car
Speaker 3: with Michael Kine as well. But it was like a comedy.
Speaker 3: And this was his first Hollywood film. It was his
Speaker 3: first big dance. But he had a young family at home.
Speaker 3: We had to leave at home, and he hated La culturally.
Speaker 3: It wasn't you know that, it was very He found
Speaker 3: it very isolating, and I think he struggled to kind
Speaker 3: of make friends, and I think that actually comes through
Speaker 3: in the film. I think I think the film conveys it.
Speaker 3: And he got very into Hopper, into Edward Hopper, who
Speaker 3: he discovered when he went to LA at that time,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of that in it as well,
Speaker 3: which is also you know, isolated, big places, people singing
Speaker 3: by themselves and stuff. So no, he didn't actually enjoy
Speaker 3: the making of it, but he of all of his films,
Speaker 3: I think it was the one that he was most
Speaker 3: proud of. He had letters from Kubrick and from Terry Mallick,
Speaker 3: from Terrence Malick. Alex sent him a letter which Mike
Speaker 3: emailed me three separate times. Yeah, I mean you knew
Speaker 3: that that was he most kind of proud of. And
Speaker 3: Malick had written him just to say, this is one
Speaker 3: of the best films I've ever seen. And when you've
Speaker 3: got Kubrick and now one of the best films ever made,
Speaker 3: the idea that it's obscure even to Sineas is really upsetting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We've had this conversation too late for me to
Speaker 1: add it to my Christmas list. John, that's the most
Speaker 1: depressing thing. Have to buy it myself. So during your
Speaker 1: conversations with him over the years that you were chatting
Speaker 1: via email, as you said, he donates his sort of
Speaker 1: archive to the BFI. Right, did that happen during the
Speaker 1: time that you were chatting it?
Speaker 3: It was his office archive. So the BFA is brilliant
Speaker 3: that they do this, but they do it a lot.
Speaker 3: I think there's someone who works there whose job it
Speaker 3: is to reach out to aging filmmakers and essentially say,
Speaker 3: have you thought about where this is all going to go?
Speaker 3: Mike knew that it was important, but it also was
Speaker 3: it was stressful for him. Mike. The first thing when
Speaker 3: you read the book, The first thing, the first question
Speaker 3: I asked him, when we're like we're going to write
Speaker 3: this book, here we go. Here's the first email of
Speaker 3: us writing this book. The first question I asked him
Speaker 3: is would you make another film? Are you done? And
Speaker 3: the first thing he says is no, Like I would
Speaker 3: want to make another film. I am a filmmaker. I
Speaker 3: have all my marbles. He talks about watching a documentary
Speaker 3: when he was younger of John Houston directing his last
Speaker 3: film on an oxygen tech, you know, and he's just like,
Speaker 3: I could still do this. The industry don't want me.
Speaker 3: He goes into a long talk about why he basically
Speaker 3: stopped making films, what the industry started doing to him
Speaker 3: to stop making films. Mike also he never you know,
Speaker 3: at ninety he was I don't sound patronizing me with
Speaker 3: sharp as attack. Nothing had changed in his mind at all,
Speaker 3: and his body was starting to fail. His mind hadn't
Speaker 3: changed his soul, so to him, he was very frustrating.
Speaker 3: He was still an artist, he was still having these thoughts,
Speaker 3: he was still writing, he was still making a film
Speaker 3: up until the day he died. In the book, and
Speaker 3: in fact, if you buy the special edition of the book,
Speaker 3: you get a reproduction of the script of what he
Speaker 3: was working on when he died, which is an amazing
Speaker 3: autobiographical video essay about everything in life, about his philosophy,
Speaker 3: you know, called All at Sea, and it's amazing. And
Speaker 3: he actually made a I mean, I guess you'd call
Speaker 3: it a work in progress where he had he had
Speaker 3: recorded his voice over for it, and he's using very
Speaker 3: rough bits of library footage that he had found in
Speaker 3: different places. And I've seen that and it's very moving
Speaker 3: and it's amazing, and I'm actually I'm still talking to
Speaker 3: the production company who were behind it. You know, they've
Speaker 3: had they just couldn't get funding for it. You know,
Speaker 3: he couldn't get funding. And you look at it, you
Speaker 3: just go, this is the last film of a cinematic legend.
Speaker 3: Why is the BFI not throwing money at this? Especially
Speaker 3: since they took his archive and they did a retrospective
Speaker 3: season for him, Why are they not funding this? To them,
Speaker 3: it's a drop in the ocean, especially when they thought
Speaker 3: all that library footage that could be kind of used
Speaker 3: to do it. My dream is, and I you know,
Speaker 3: I've not spoken to anyone about this properly, but like
Speaker 3: you know, my dream is I would like to finish
Speaker 3: that film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that was going to be my next question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I would very much like to do that,
Speaker 3: because I know how much he wanted it out there,
Speaker 3: and we talked a lot about that, so yeah, he
Speaker 3: he was ambivalent. He knew that he should give the
Speaker 3: archives to the BFI, and he gave it to them,
Speaker 3: but also, you know, to him, it was just like,
Speaker 3: I'm not done. I'm not dead yet. And the other
Speaker 3: thing that was very frustrating to him was that the
Speaker 3: BFI had planned a retrospective season, which was supposed to
Speaker 3: happen when COVID happened, and a lot of our conversation
Speaker 3: was kind of happening through COVID, and he was aware
Speaker 3: that the clock was ticking, health was declining, and you know,
Speaker 3: he actually says in the book, there's a bit where
Speaker 3: he just goes, you're gonna put They're gonna They keep
Speaker 3: telling me that they're going to do it, and it's
Speaker 3: going to be rescheduled. But he's like, I don't know
Speaker 3: if I'll even be able to go. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going to happen. And at the end of it,
Speaker 3: he made it to he was so ill, but he
Speaker 3: he They did an on stage with him, Samira Ahmed
Speaker 3: interviewed stage, and he was well enough to go to that.
Speaker 3: He wasn't most of the films, although I think he did.
Speaker 3: I think he actually did more of Us from Space.
Speaker 3: I think he made that one, but it was kind
Speaker 3: of perhapschy health in that time. And he wrote to
Speaker 3: me after, like we spoke the day after and he
Speaker 3: was just like, that felt like a good end to
Speaker 3: my career. Nice, that was a good interview, and that
Speaker 3: felt like a good end to my career. And that
Speaker 3: was too long before the end.
Speaker 1: Really, there comes a point where you do have to
Speaker 1: flick that switch and go right, what is my legacy?
Speaker 1: And did did did the material that you got from
Speaker 1: in the conversations you had with him? Did they change
Speaker 1: for you emotionally or editorially once he had passed away?
Speaker 3: No, because it was finished then and I didn't want to,
Speaker 3: you know, I didn't want to edit him. He would
Speaker 3: have hated to have been edited. Yeah, So I mean
Speaker 3: to go back to what you were just saying. One
Speaker 3: thing is in the book is halfway through the book,
Speaker 3: he literally says to me, John, I'm bored of myself.
Speaker 3: I don't want to do this anymore. He sounds so sorry,
Speaker 3: but I don't want to do this. I'm bored of myself.
Speaker 3: I'm bored of talking about myself. And I said that's fine,
Speaker 3: and we stopped, and we obviously carried on being in touch,
Speaker 3: and then a few months later we'd had I can't
Speaker 3: remember what the actually email was. It's in the book
Speaker 3: where he basically then just goes, you know what, You've
Speaker 3: just lit a fire under me. Let's start the book again,
Speaker 3: I want to say, and it starts up again, which
Speaker 3: is really kind of lovely. Yeah, you're right. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, what we both do and what we have
Speaker 3: in common is that we both have a passion for cinema,
Speaker 3: for cinema history, and we understand that these people have
Speaker 3: not been well served in their interviews, that there's more
Speaker 3: to someone's work in their life as well. And I
Speaker 3: think I think it's a great service that you're doing
Speaker 3: to Joe. And it's something that I've been passionate about
Speaker 3: in my career as well, is talking to older people,
Speaker 3: but facilitating them not just to trot out the anecdotes
Speaker 3: that they've trotted out for fifty years, to actually go
Speaker 3: behind those and kind of go, actually, I'm more interested
Speaker 3: in you as a person. You don't have to be
Speaker 3: an autopilot. Yeah. Oh, let's let's do something that you'll
Speaker 3: be proud of. Yeah, it's an interesting term, say a portrait,
Speaker 3: but you know, yeah, let's do yeah.
Speaker 1: And it takes a while to get to that, doesn't
Speaker 1: it To break through those anecdotes that people have been
Speaker 1: reeling out for decades, and it means spending lot of
Speaker 1: time with them. It means creating a strong relationship with them,
Speaker 1: and always kind of reminding yourself and them that it's
Speaker 1: a two way street, isn't it. Yes, you are making
Speaker 1: a book out of this with your name on it,
Speaker 1: but it's also about celebrating them, and that's the That's
Speaker 1: the key part here, isn't it. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I mostly make myself invisible with the stuff I do,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of important to me because I want
Speaker 1: the people to speak. But doing it is a conversational book,
Speaker 1: you have to bring yourself into that as well.
Speaker 2: But what's great about that is that you've got this.
Speaker 1: Legacy of your own as well, making those films about
Speaker 1: people that have worked in the industry, so that carries
Speaker 1: away as well for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the first time that I've done that.
Speaker 3: I mean in my films. You know, I hate documentaries
Speaker 3: where you see the filmmaker in the doc That's something
Speaker 3: I've always hated. So I'm not present in what you
Speaker 3: don't hear. I mean maybe I think in Elstreet Final Question,
Speaker 3: you actually hear me ask the question because there was
Speaker 3: no way of editing it.
Speaker 2: Without that happens sometimes yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: Like I'm not, I don't like to be kind of
Speaker 3: present in that kind of way. But with this one
Speaker 3: it was different. But I also there was a book
Speaker 3: that my mum got me when I was I think
Speaker 3: I was a teenager. If not, it would have been
Speaker 3: like just when I was going to film school. It
Speaker 3: was the kind of nineties early nineties. There's a great book.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's even still available anymore. I
Speaker 3: love it. I read it often. It's called Conversations with
Speaker 3: Billy Wilder like Carmon Crow. And it was so great book. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it down, it's so great. It was particularly interesting is
Speaker 3: Billy Wada was not really working at that point, was
Speaker 3: his career was done, but he was still going into
Speaker 3: the office every day, and Camn Crowe was a working filmmaker,
Speaker 3: and it was a genuine conversation. And with Mike I
Speaker 3: felt the confidence to add myself to it because firstly
Speaker 3: it had come out of our genuine conversations of half
Speaker 3: but secondly, there's a really interesting thing where you go, Okay,
Speaker 3: at that point when we started, I was forty four
Speaker 3: and he was eighty eight. That's interesting. And then His
Speaker 3: last feature film, which was Our Sleek When I'm Dead,
Speaker 3: was I think two thousand and three. I think that
Speaker 3: was kind of the same year that my first screen
Speaker 3: credit on IMDb kind of comes in, like screenwriting on
Speaker 3: lex you know, but his career was ending while mine
Speaker 3: was beginning, and I'm half his age. But we have
Speaker 3: these very much on the level conversations, and I think
Speaker 3: that's an interesting part of the book, is where we
Speaker 3: start comparing, you know, experiences and things that made him
Speaker 3: leave the industry were things which which were expected as
Speaker 3: I entered the industry. You know, it was it was
Speaker 3: the culture, and I wouldn't ever have questioned it, but
Speaker 3: to him it was, you know, it was shocking that
Speaker 3: these things were happening. So I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of interesting stuff there where we're kind of comparing experiences
Speaker 3: about kind of how things are, and also it's nice
Speaker 3: to see like, you know you I think there were
Speaker 3: probably two I think during the conversation. I was making
Speaker 3: Hollywood Bulldogs, I was making Real Britannia, and I published
Speaker 3: the Melliez book, so you also get his reactions to
Speaker 3: those things. You know, I was talking to him while
Speaker 3: we were making them, and stuff, and there was a
Speaker 3: whole conversation kind of going on with that, and you
Speaker 3: get to see kind of how supportive he was as well,
Speaker 3: just you know, how kind of lovely he was. And
Speaker 3: in fact, you know, one of our mutual services was
Speaker 3: that he wasn't well enough to be in real Britannia.
Speaker 3: We had all these incredible legendary British filmmakers and Mike
Speaker 3: was my friend, but we couldn't get him in because
Speaker 3: he was just too ill to come to London do
Speaker 3: the interviews. And then there wasn't time to go out.
Speaker 3: He lived out in the country and it just wasn't
Speaker 3: time to get out to him, or he wasn't well
Speaker 3: enough when there was time, and that I've always been
Speaker 3: upset about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then he's kind of very funny that Mike Lee
Speaker 3: was in it, because he knows how much I disliked
Speaker 3: Mike Lee he was. He kind of needled me about that.
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to reading this, I really am. So
Speaker 1: where can people find this? You said yourself publishing.
Speaker 3: It's on Kickstar to write now if you if you
Speaker 3: google Kickstar to Mike Codges, you'll find it. It's called
Speaker 3: I'll Settle for nothingness, and yeah, it's all done. We're
Speaker 3: a week into the campaign and we're almost at sixty
Speaker 3: percent funded, so I think it is pretty definitely going
Speaker 3: to happen. The book is written and finished and kind
Speaker 3: of ready to go, so that's not an issue. How
Speaker 3: We've got Simon Minta, who is the designer on the
Speaker 3: Meliaz book. He's going to come in and do all
Speaker 3: the all the inlayd design for it. And Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just going to be really good, going to make a
Speaker 3: really beautiful book, and it's just gonna commemorate Mike in
Speaker 3: a way that I think he deserve to be commemorated,
Speaker 3: which is in his own words. And also it's just
Speaker 3: I think I think it's a really kind of cracking read,
Speaker 3: just for anyone who loves films and interviews and conversations,
Speaker 3: and like I said, it goes off into all different
Speaker 3: places about kind of life and art, politics and philosophy,
Speaker 3: and you actually see how it's kind of holistic thing,
Speaker 3: how actually that's the stuff that actually informs filmmaking as well,
Speaker 3: and you see how it all fits together with you know,
Speaker 3: the actual the people who make films, how they fit
Speaker 3: together with the films they make how they bring in
Speaker 3: the outside influences kind of into it. So like I
Speaker 3: just I just think it's going to be a really
Speaker 3: kind of lovely book. I'm really happy with it, nice
Speaker 3: and people. There's different tiers presumably that people can there's
Speaker 3: just two years, like a really simple campaign. So it's
Speaker 3: just two tiers where you can just get the book
Speaker 3: or you can get the special edition, and the special
Speaker 3: edition is basically signed copy of the book. You get
Speaker 3: these film cards which are I source these amazing nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies thirty five milimeter film reels of Flash Gordon and
Speaker 3: Get Carter. They were the original trailer reels from an
Speaker 3: old cinema. They've just been sat in an old cinema,
Speaker 3: so we've cut those kind of up, and you get
Speaker 3: cards with the original thirty five milimeter kind of things
Speaker 3: in and quotes from Mike about the films on the cards.
Speaker 3: And then as I said, you get the full seventy
Speaker 3: eight I think page reproduction of his script for All
Speaker 3: at Sea, which he's also illustrated, so there's kind of
Speaker 3: photos the whole way through, so you really get a
Speaker 3: feeling of what that project was. And like I said,
Speaker 3: because it's autobiographical, you know, you get the whole, the
Speaker 3: whole kind of spiritual story of him, because his life
Speaker 3: before filmmaking was amazing as well. You know, he came
Speaker 3: from like the Navy and stuff, and it was really
Speaker 3: his experiences in the navy of saying poverty all around
Speaker 3: the British Isles that led him to kind of get
Speaker 3: Carter especial first place. So that's a beautiful your project
Speaker 3: in itself. And just even just getting the script out
Speaker 3: that I've been working with the production company who were
Speaker 3: making it, and it's they're given us kind of for
Speaker 3: permission to reprint the script so people will at least
Speaker 3: get to see that. And Mike's sons have given the
Speaker 3: film the blessing. They've been great so given the book
Speaker 3: the blessing. So yeah, it's it's a nice package. And
Speaker 3: if you've ever enjoyed any of his films, which I
Speaker 3: think people have.
Speaker 1: And even if you haven't, done like, this is a
Speaker 1: way to discover them, right, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: way to discover a new layer. I mean, there's nothing
Speaker 1: I love more than like when I was a kid
Speaker 1: in the like eighties and nineties when Channel four would
Speaker 1: show the season of a director, and I'd just be
Speaker 1: like tape in you know who's this Curasawa guy, Who's
Speaker 1: this Scorsese guy, you know who's this Finchy guy.
Speaker 4: Whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think this book is a good sort of
Speaker 1: route into that for people to kind of work through
Speaker 1: his filmography of what is available at least and maybe
Speaker 1: get some pressure on getting those things that aren't available
Speaker 1: to actually get a released finally hopefully.
Speaker 3: And like I mean most of that, he only really
Speaker 3: made nine big feature films, and most of them have
Speaker 3: they're still I mean, like a Preyer for a Dance
Speaker 3: for the Dying I think is not on blue ray,
Speaker 3: which is crazy, so that's quite big film. But it's yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's about kind of kind of getting his filmography
Speaker 3: and find discovering all these films. I mean, like I said,
Speaker 3: if nothing else, if this brings people to morons from
Speaker 3: out of space, I'll be happy. Everyone who watches more
Speaker 3: and from out of Space, it's a vindication for me.
Speaker 2: You're part of a special group if you see that
Speaker 2: and love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, there's a great bit in the book where you know,
Speaker 3: you know, you've dealt with prop store with Stephen Lai.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I knew.
Speaker 3: Stephen a while back and I'd said to him, mourns
Speaker 3: from out of Space, and he goes, We've never had anything.
Speaker 3: He's like, it's just not a film, that's you know,
Speaker 3: nothing's come through. And then one day he sent me
Speaker 3: an email and he's like, John, you're going to be
Speaker 3: very happy, and and he did me a day he
Speaker 3: was lovely. But I sent my a photo of me
Speaker 3: and my house with mel Smith's Space suit hanging home.
Speaker 3: I bought the original Space from face and Mike's response was,
Speaker 3: if it's still had his snot in it, would.
Speaker 4: You have bought it?
Speaker 3: If the hell it was available and it still had
Speaker 3: his snot in it? Would My response was, I think
Speaker 3: we both know.
Speaker 1: Well, for everybody listening and watching, get over to Kickstarter.
Speaker 1: I'll settle for nothing. This conversations with Mike Hodges by
Speaker 1: John and yeah, get get your money in there and
Speaker 1: get it. When when you're expecting the book to be
Speaker 1: actually delivered to people.
Speaker 3: I think it's going to be kind of April May
Speaker 3: kind of time that will be actually fit.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so yeah, so go and buy it now,
Speaker 1: guys and girls, and you know you'll get a little
Speaker 1: future present from your past else so you know.
Speaker 4: There you go a basic. Thanks Jamie, well.
Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John. Always great
Speaker 2: to talk, great to see that he's.
Speaker 1: Got another project out. He's always a very considered creative person.
Speaker 1: If you do love the podcast, please consider supporting it
Speaker 1: on Patreon. It's patreon dot com. Forward slash Jamie Benning
Speaker 1: and I'll see you in twenty twenty six.