PART ONE

As the BFI release a stunning new 4K restoration of the Michael Caine gangster movie classic, Get Carter (1971), Robert Fairclough chats with the film’s director, Mike Hodges…

Mike Hodges on the set of Get Carter

“You can safely say my career is ‘chequered’,’’ laughs Mike Hodges, grey-haired and twinkling, after another cautionary tale about international film making. At almost 90 years of age his intelligence, good humour and passion for his craft is undimmed. Modestly, he talks at length about working with cinema greats like Jean Luc Goddard, Michael Caine and Mickey Rooney, and counts Nicolas Roeg and Malcolm McDowell among his life-long friends.

Hodges is the maverick talent behind the Caine-starring Get Carter (1971) – his first feature film, widely acknowledged as the best British gangster film ever made – the self-aware, ahead of its time Pulp (1972, again with Caine), The Terminal Man (1974), a chilling exploration of violence and mind control, enduring camp classic Flash Gordon (1980, recently restored on Blu-ray), tantalising, complex psychological thriller Croupier (1998)… It’s an enviable list. There have been misfires too – Morons from Outer Space (1985), A Prayer Before Dying (1987), Black Rainbow (1989) – but their perceived ‘failure’ says more about the pitfalls of working in the film industry than anything about the vision or integrity of their director.

In fact, the biggest compliment you can pay Mike Hodges is that he’s never made the same film twice. True, they haven’t always been huge box office, but they’ve always been interesting and unusual, and that’s what counts. Infinity met up with him for a fascinating, career-spanning interview, from his days working a tele-prompter for ITV up to his last film, the controversial I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead (2003).

STARTING OUT

Born in 1932 in Bristol, Hodges grew up in an era when the UK’s young men still did two years’ National Service in the armed forces. “I’d just finished doing my two in the navy,” he recalls, casting his mind back. “I’d qualified as a chartered accountant, so my National Service was delayed while I did that, but I never really wanted to be an accountant. I felt obliged to my parents because they went to great efforts to have me educated, so I said, ‘I’ll get a profession and then do what I want.’ That was the deal.

“After I left the navy, I went to London and managed to get a job working a tele-prompter [a machine that news readers and programme presenters could read their lines from] – in 1956, I think. I did that for a couple of years and it was very useful, because it gave me access to all the TV studios owned by the BBC, Granada, ABC, everybody, and I was able to learn how television production worked. It was mostly live television in those days. I was also able to start writing, so I wrote a play called ‘Some Will Cry Murder’ for Armchair Theatre [1956-1974], which was run by Sydney Newman.”

The larger-than-life Newman had been brought in to ABC from Canadian television, and he revolutionised their drama programming, principally by giving new, young writers like Hodges a chance to write for Armchair Theatre. “My play was never performed, but a lot of people read it and it did get around,” he reveals. “A person who played a very big part in my life was Lloyd Shirley – he was another Canadian who come in when the ITV networks started.” The volatile Shirley was as progressive as Newman, and during his career as a producer would be responsible for some of ITV’s most celebrated drama series, including Public Eye [1965-1975], Callan [1967-1972] Van Der Valk [1972-77] and The Sweeney [1975-78].

“Lloyd read my play, and he started using me to write various scripts and children’s stories. Many of them were for a religious programme called Sunday Break [1958-1962] for teenagers, which was, as the title suggests, on Sunday afternoons. While I was working on that, I was sharing a flat in Hampstead with two cameramen from ATV and an advertising executive.