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Not
only do you get to hear about the filmmaker's own personal journey
through the industry and amusing stories about the movies along
the way but quite often you get some insight into the difficulties
of working in the cinema business and this was certainly true of
this year's featured director, Mike Hodges.
In
a career that spans more than thirty years Hodges has not made that
many films but three of his films made him fairly hot property as
a director and two of those films, Get Carter and The Croupier,
have even achieved cult status. His new film I'll Sleep When I'm
Dead (shown immediately after the Screentalk) should meet with as
much success as The Croupier if it gets the distribution it deserves.
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| Clive
Owen is The Croupier and also stars in I'll Sleep When I'm Dead |
"In
conversation" with Festival Director Tony Earnshaw, Hodges
came across as both witty and self-effacing, observing, "To
be a cult director at 71 is bloody laughable." He apologised
to the audience for moaning about his experiences with distributors
and studios but he need not have worried these proved how
difficult it often is to get films that are worth making out into
the cinemas.
Hodges
had trained as a Chartered Accountant, mainly to please his parents,
but when he was called up to do National Service he opted for the
navy's lower deck. In ports like Hull and Newcastle he says: "I
saw a different world to the one I'd been brought up in." He
came out of the navy with much more radical views and a determination
never to return to accounting.
Hodges
says: "I'm just like a bit of wood in that I float about and
I bang it to something and it happens." However, his break
into feature film directing after some years working in TV was not
quite as random as that. Get Carter, starring Michael Caine in one
of his best roles, was his project from the start. He both wrote
and directed this bleak and violent film about a London gunman who
returns to Newcastle to find out who killed his brother. The film
reached new audiences in the 1980s when Loaded magazine gave it
laddish culture status.
A couple
of films (Pulp, The Terminal Man) followed which Hodges found satisfactory
to make but they didn't do very well at the box office and then
along came Damien: Omen II but after only three weeks he was off
the project.
Hodges
had many amusing stories to tell about the making of Flash Gordon,
based on the 1930s comic strip. This film is one on its own which
might be explained by the improvisation that he says took place
along the way. This also led to a couple of pop videos with Queen
who did the soundtrack. The somewhat risqué Body Language
was shown at the Screentalk, still in its censored version with
arrows covering the parts considered to be offensive back in 1982.
The
different demands of the director and the studio were well demonstrated
in two clips from A Prayer For the Dying, starring Mickey Rourke
as an IRA gunman who is trying to renounce violence and acquire
a new identity. Hodges says he wanted to take his name of the film
when he saw what the studio had done to it. We were shown both the
studio cut and the original director's cut of the same sequence
and invited to make our own minds up. Hodges says: "I trust
audiences," believing they are intelligent people, easily capable
of engaging with film.
Hodges
was even brave enough to tell us that one of his films received
what could be the worst review ever, "Die before you see this
film." You can catch it at the Festival and decide if a reassessment
of the film is overdue.
It
was The Croupier, starring Clive Owen as a would-be writer and loner,
made in 1999 that brought Hodges new acclaim. This nearly didn't
happen - only two prints were originally made for distribution in
the UK and these were paid for by the British Film Institute who
wanted to show it alongside Get Carter. However, the film proved
itself popular with US audiences and got good reviews so it was
eventually relaunched here.
Hodges
latest film, a gangland thriller again starring Clive Owen, I'll
Sleep When I'm Dead, has a plot which to some extent recalls Get
Carter. It is gripping and it does demand something of its audience
and I left the cinema feeling very satisfied.
Mike
Hodges is now working on another project but now he "only wants
to make things that are happy to make and are about something."
He has no plans to return to television where today's executives
he feels are frightened by people with experience. He says: "If
experience counts for nothing then life itself counts for nothing."
Mike
Hodges was "in conversation with Bradford Film Festival Director
Tony Earnshaw at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television
on Sunday March 14th. All of his feature films and some of his TV
work can be seen at the 2004 Festival. There will be more
Screentalks and Masterclasses from filmmakers throughout
the Festival.
Christine
Verguson
| Rik
Kendell from Bradford University also went along to the Screentalk
with director Mike Hodges. Read his review of I'll
Sleep When I'm Dead |
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