January 6, 2026 • 43 mins
Jon's Kickstarter Link
Summary
In this conversation, Jon Spira discusses his new book 'I'll Settle for Nothingness: Conversations with Mike Hodges', detailing the genesis of the book, his friendship with the legendary filmmaker, and the exploration of Hodges' versatile career. The discussion covers many things including the making of 'Morons from Outer Space', the challenges of unproduced films, and the emotional journey of writing the book. Spira also shares insights into Hodges' legacy, his experiences with the BFI, and the Kickstarter campaign for the book's publication.
Takeaways
The book is a collection of conversations with Mike Hodges.
Jon Spira's friendship with Hodges developed through their shared love of cinema.
'Morons from Outer Space' is a film that has gained a cult following despite its initial failure.
Hodges was a versatile filmmaker, working across various genres.
The Terminal Man is a significant film that was poorly marketed and overlooked.
Hodges had many unproduced films that reflect his creative vision.
The BFI is preserving Hodges' legacy through his film archive.
Spira aims to honor Hodges' memory through this book.
The emotional journey of writing the book was profound for Spira.
The Kickstarter campaign is a way to celebrate Hodges' work and legacy.
This podcast is completely independent and made possible by listener support. If you’d like to help me keep making these episodes, you can join my Patreon community here: https://patreon.com/jamiebenning
Watch more on YouTube:
Check out the Filmumentaries YouTube channel for behind-the-scenes clips and extra content: https://youtube.com/filmumentaries
All my links
Summary
In this conversation, Jon Spira discusses his new book 'I'll Settle for Nothingness: Conversations with Mike Hodges', detailing the genesis of the book, his friendship with the legendary filmmaker, and the exploration of Hodges' versatile career. The discussion covers many things including the making of 'Morons from Outer Space', the challenges of unproduced films, and the emotional journey of writing the book. Spira also shares insights into Hodges' legacy, his experiences with the BFI, and the Kickstarter campaign for the book's publication.
Takeaways
The book is a collection of conversations with Mike Hodges.
Jon Spira's friendship with Hodges developed through their shared love of cinema.
'Morons from Outer Space' is a film that has gained a cult following despite its initial failure.
Hodges was a versatile filmmaker, working across various genres.
The Terminal Man is a significant film that was poorly marketed and overlooked.
Hodges had many unproduced films that reflect his creative vision.
The BFI is preserving Hodges' legacy through his film archive.
Spira aims to honor Hodges' memory through this book.
The emotional journey of writing the book was profound for Spira.
The Kickstarter campaign is a way to celebrate Hodges' work and legacy.
This podcast is completely independent and made possible by listener support. If you’d like to help me keep making these episodes, you can join my Patreon community here: https://patreon.com/jamiebenning
Watch more on YouTube:
Check out the Filmumentaries YouTube channel for behind-the-scenes clips and extra content: https://youtube.com/filmumentaries
All my links
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Welcome to episode one hundred and forty two of the
film you mentioned his podcast. This is Jamie Benning, your host,
as usual. I'm here in my house knocking out another episode.
I said it was the last episode of the year,
but friend of the podcast, John Spira got in touch,
saying that he has a kickstarter at the moment for
a book that he's written about Mike Hodges, legendary British director. Now,
(00:59):
as it's Chris, I'm not going to waffle on because
I've got a load of stuff to do. And what
this will be is this will count for the first
episode of January, because I just needed a little bit
of downtime. Doing two of these a month can get
a bit much, and I figured if I got this
out now, it serves John. It also means you've got
something else to listen to over the festive period, and thirdly,
(01:21):
it gives me a little break until the second episode
of January twenty twenty six. Isn't it Crazy twenty twenty six.
So here's my conversation with John Spira, and I'll be
back at the end briefly for a bit more jabbering on.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
John.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Great to have you back on the podcast this time
about a book. Tell me about this book, tell me
about his genesis.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well, so the book is called I'll Settle for Nothingness
Conversations with Mike Codges, and it's basically a collection of
conversations extended kind of email conversations that I have with
Mike Hodges, who is a legendary Brita filmmaker who's most
famous obviously for Get Carter and Flashcourt Notes for his
(02:04):
two kind of really kind of big films, but generally
an output of very kind of respected work. And Mike
died three years ago actually I think this week, at
the age of ninety and in the last kind of
I guess four or five years of his life, we
made friends kind of like it. It was a very
big surprise to me to find out that. But Mike
(02:25):
was a friend. But I had written a book about
his film More On from Outer Space, which is one
of my People use the word guilty pleasures, but I'm
against that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, it's just a pleasure. Just enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, if you love a film, you love a film
for whatever reason, you connect with it. And more of
the film that I connected with. I saw it on
opening weekend in nineteen eighty six was in an empty
cinema with me and my parents and nobody else. Huge,
and the film absolutely died on its art. It was
a critical flop. It was supposed to be mel Smith
(03:00):
than Grifferies Jones, their launch into cinema and so they
were very famous British comedians. It was going to be
this huge film and it was a comedy and it
was kind of a satire and it's wonderful And if
you love science fiction, which I know your viewers love
science fiction, you should watch it because it's up there.
(03:22):
It's like space Balls, you know, it's got an equivalent space.
Whereas space Balls is mocking, Star Wars is mocking Spielberg's
films is mocking Close Encounters and et. And the premise
of the film is what if we make contact with
aliens and instead of being superior beings, they were like us.
(03:43):
They were just everyday idiots. And it's actually turned into
it's been kind of fulfilled in society because we're in
a society right now where, without being too rude, the
stupidest people have the highest technology. Is it so crazy
an idea that some civilization has created space travel and
(04:04):
four idiots have gotten into a spaceship, hired a spaceship
for the weekend, and gone where they shouldn't go, so
make contact with aliens, and they're just like they're human being.
They look like human beings, they act like stupid human beings,
and parodies all of the spill work kind of things.
Very sharp film, but it's very broad as well. People
weren't ready for it. People didn't really see what was
(04:26):
going on with it. I loved it even as a kid,
and so it stayed as one of my favorite films.
Still not of able on Blu ray.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
What was that about? Eighty four? Eighty five was it?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think it might have been eighty six. I've came
out in eighty six. I think it's around then. Still
not on Blue ray criminally, it's on Amazon Prime right now,
but I think it's it's a standard Definitionly I tried
to get a Blue ray made of it, and there
was no HD master for the fight, so it's been
(04:56):
very overlooked. I love the film. I wrote a book
about it. Mike. I had interviewed Mike when I worked
at the BFI, and I'd used part of the interview
in the book, But when I was doing the interview.
I felt like I'd pushed too hard. He really didn't
like More on Some out Space. He hadn't seen it
since the day he had finished it. I don't think
he watched it at the premiere. He had Less Square premiere,
(05:18):
but it was dead three days later, you know. And
although he was I was inter thinking about his science
fiction films in general, which he made a few, and
when we got to more on smaut Space, he was
kind of game for about five minutes, and then I
asked him another question and he literally said, I think
we've talked enough about this. And I felt horrible, very
(05:41):
shut down, and kind of like, oh god, I've really
offended an upset him. So when I wrote the book,
I didn't actually contact him. I just used part of
the interview that i'd done with him. And then one
day on my website, I got an order for twenty
copies of the book from my codges. So I emailed
him and said, look, you don't have to buy this.
I'll send you any copies as you want. I'm kind
(06:01):
of sorry I didn't contact you. I kind of felt
like you had an issue with morons, and he said, well,
I kind of did, but you know, I'd still like
to read the book. And after reading the book, he
got back in touch with me and he said, you've
made me want to watch the film again. Wow, And
it was kind of like, okay, great. I was like, well,
you should watch the film. You know, I'll send you
a copy. You didn't have a copy of the film.
(06:23):
And then this weird thing happened where we just started
emailing all the time because he loved films so much
and inevitably with getting these conversations about films. And then
I just said to him, because when I've been writing
the book, I went and interview Grifferies Jones. I spent
hours with Griff and it was really good. And Griff
(06:44):
then got in touch with Mike and they hadn't spoken
since the day they finished the film because they argued
they didn't They had a very bad relationship. And they
started going out as friends and at each other. And
then I kind of said to the pair of them, well,
why don't we do it. Screening has never been screened
anywhere in the world since it came out in cinemas.
(07:05):
There aren't many films you can say that of. I said,
let's do a screening. And they were both up for it,
and we did. We did a night at the U
people as Chars Cinema and we got moved into the
bigger cinema because it sold out completely as a sold
out screening and everyone, the audience loved it. This is funny,
and when you watch a funny film with an audience,
(07:26):
it gets crazy. So with and Mike, they were practically
crying by the end of it because they were like,
this is a good film. And they had both Griff
had blamed it for ruining his life, Like Griff wanted
to be a filmmaker and after that he wasn't. Or weirdly,
Melsmith went on and became very successful directly. Yeah, Griff
(07:48):
blamed morons for you know, they both saw this film
as a terrible film. They watched it with an audience.
The audience loved it. We did a cracking Q and
A afterwards on stage and people it was fun and
it was funny, and afterwards they were both just kind
of so happy, and me and Mike just stayed in touch.
We were just after that. We just friends and we
were emailing constantly and I at one point I just
(08:11):
said to him, I just love these emails and like,
I just think we could do a really interesting book
in this format. Just not standard interviews, you know, I've
done a lot of those, but the way he converse
on email is interesting. Maybe we could do something with it.
And he was up for it. He was doubtful. He
was in a place mentally where he just felt very
(08:32):
left behind by people he felt particularly appreciated. But he said, yeah,
let's do it, and we did it, and then for
years we you know, we just had this extended email
going backwards and forwards, talking about everything, talking about his career,
my career, life, politics, arts, everything, and sadly we did
(08:53):
finish it. A couple of months before he died. There
was a definite we have now finished that, yeah, end
to this, But yeah, he then died, and then I
got busy with other projects. And it's taken me kind
of three years to get to the point where I've
had some space to actually edit it, because I thought
at the time, I thought it would be very charming
to just print the kind of emails, but you know
(09:16):
how long emails get. Twelve emails back pages and pages.
It's taken a lot of editing to not edit out
what anyone said. But editor into actually a kind of straightforward,
forward and backwards. So we have to kind of almost
lose the email format, which was kind of the point
of it, but the conversation is still there. Yeah, and
(09:37):
I think anyone who just loves cinema. But I mean, firstly,
you know, me and he both love cinema. There's a
lot of talk about the industry and about films in general,
but if you're interested in him and his films, there's
a whole story there. It's really interesting, fascinating career he did.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I mean, he was never sort sort of tied down
by genre. I mean, he leapt across so many different things.
I mean, you've got sci fi, comedy, psychological thriller, political thriller.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Angster movies, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I mean it's it's pretty amazing really because so many
directors do get pigeonhole, but he seemed to avoid that totally.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
He was I mean, he was an incredibly versatile I mean,
he came from that generation. You know, he was born
in I guess the thirties, and I think before if
you were kind of working before the kind of late seventies,
maybe at that point, if you were a director, directing
was kind of a job. It wasn't this kind of
(10:34):
o tur thing was it was in the ether and stuff.
But I think until kind of Spielberg and scorsesean stuff,
there wasn't that thing where you were kind of defined
by your work and you were the person who made
these kind of films. I mean, if you look at
like the Ealing films, those directors were just signed randomly,
you know, to whatever was being made in the studios
(10:54):
at the time. Yeah, even old Hollywood films. You know,
someone like Stanley Donan, you know, you just go wha,
Actually musicals, you did Star Trek the motion picture, you know,
it's completely kind of It was more about the leadership
of directing. Mike had had had a by the time
he moved into cinema. He had made a lot of TV,
a lot of kind of early TV documentaries, and he'd
(11:16):
done some drama as well. So he was very well
kind of positioned to do anything. And it was really
his intelligence that was the key to everything. Is if
he was interested in something, then he would make something
really good. And yeah, very versatile, but also very kind
of I mean he was very self effacing. Yeah, to
an annoying degree. I would say you would never if
(11:41):
you met him in the street and had a chat
with him, you would not think he was who he was.
He did not wear his prestige or legend at all.
He had no time for that. He loved to talk
about films and how he made his films. He had
no ego whatsoever, absolutely nothing, you know. And actually his
(12:01):
kind of his view of his career was that it
was messy and disorganized. It would surprise me hugely.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Which I'm sure is the case for a lot of directors.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
As soon as you start talking to people honestly and
you start peeling back the kind of layers. You know.
We talked and I did the Chrystph Lee film the
last time. Last time we talked, I was telling you that,
like what interested me was making a film about how
even someone as strong as Christopher Lee is someone who actually,
when you look at it, he was very insecure.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, he's quite a fragile guy in many ways. And
many people in that industry are, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah, And that's that's one thing that interest me. It's
just finding this kind of human le layer. He would
wear that on his sleeve. Like when you talk to him,
he would he would say quite openly that he didn't
think he'd had the career that he'd hoped for. And
one of the most interesting sections in the book, which
I really like, is that I pressed him a lot
to talk about the projects that didn't make it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I was going to ask about that, because for every
film a director may, particularly from that period, there's another
ten that never got anywhere near. I mean, speaking to
Joe Alves, you know, he's got drawings from twenty movies
that he never.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Got paid for, you know, exactly, they just didn't get
out of development.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, I mean, there's a book in that. You know,
someone should write a book about unproduced films, you know,
and Mike had loads of them, and because he was respected,
these projects were at a point where, you know, they
had people attached to them. It came incredibly close to
kind of making these films. There was a really interesting
(13:34):
story where he was going to make a film about
awesome Wells doing the kind of you know that the
Mercury Theater kind of period of his career, the radio,
the War of the World's kind of radio broadcast. I'm
trying to try to remember I'm getting this exactly right,
But basically they decided that Tim Robbins would be a
(13:58):
good guy to play or some wells, and he was
doing very well at that point in his career on
those guys, at that point where you could you could
make a film. And then Tim Robbins basically just said
I love it, but I want to direct it, and
Mike kind of, I guess I have to step aside.
And they made it and it was a terrible film.
(14:19):
But you know, it's really interesting to find out these things,
to find out what's kind of kind of going on
that we didn't find out about, and Mike had a
lot of that.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah, And actually.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
What I found was it's more interesting to look at
it in a kind of holistic career, in a holistic sense,
not just looking at the films that actually got made,
but working between and saying, well, that film actually got
made because this film didn't get made, Yeah, this film
could have been stunning.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, And you really become you come to appreciate those
films that are really successful, what a fluke they are
in some ways, like this confluence of all these things
that have to come together to make it that good,
like everybody doing their job to you know, such a
degree that when it does has come out that it
just all slots together. It is very rare for that
to happen, which is why we're still talking about films
(15:05):
like you know, Behind You Out, Jaws, RoboCop and movies
like that. Did he do you find that difficult to
talk about that, stuff about the films not being made?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
He liked talking about that. When once I got him open,
he really enjoyed it. Mike actually was I mean, like
all of us were a kind of contradiction and stuff.
Mike was deliciously grumpy. He's a lovely man, really genuinely kind, generous, funny,
a lovely company. So I'm not saying he's grumpy, like
he was a grumpy person, but if you got him
(15:36):
on a rat it was a wonderful thing. And he
especially you know, at the time. A lot of time
we're talking was when that period where the Tory prime
ministers were like psyched and Trump was coming. He would
just you know, I would get an email just started,
have you seen the news today?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And does the book include stuff like that?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I only took out like them,
either stuff that would be incredibly boring about our personal lives,
you know, or stuff which which it wouldn't have been
fair to other people to put in, although I've kept
in a lot of both of our bitchiness, which I
think is interesting. And he didn't mind this at all.
But like they you you very much find out who
(16:20):
he didn't like and who I don't like, and some
of that surprised me. He went on a rant about
Richard Attenborough really, which is amazed, like I kind of
like Richard.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Did he had he worked with him when he was
in TV.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I work with him at all. The initial cause of
his Richard alber Ratt. We were talking about all star films.
We're talking about those kind of films that you don't
really get anymore, where they packed the cast with kind
of very famous people. I think we were talking about
that time in the nineties where Mirror Max was really
doing that, where films were coming out on like DVD
(16:57):
and the rental when I had the video shops. There
were films like I'm trying to remember the name of that.
There was a Bottle Shock, which was a film about
why It's got Alan Rickman and it's got few people
in the film, right. Yeah. They would come out and
you'd go, how is a cast this big.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Right, Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, I thought you just meant generally films that are
populated with big, old movies.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
The thing that set these ones aside was more that
you would rent it, going wow, there was a film
about CBGB's have like loads of famous people, and you go,
this looks like the most amazing film, And then you'd
watch it and you'd realize that what it actually was
was all these people had done favors for Harvey Weinstein
or whoever was producing it, and they would be in
It was obvious that they'd been on set one day. Yeah,
(17:43):
and maybe it was filmed where they hadn't been with
the other actors and it was kind of cut in
and they would have one scene and that was it. Yeah.
And so I was talking about those for some reason,
and then he went on a round about a Bridge
too Far and he was just like and oh, what
a lovely war as well, and just going and going, well,
you know, ridgel Attenborough killed these things by taking things
(18:06):
which have had great actors in them and just replacing
the tiny roles with very famous people, which means that
when you're watching it, you're not actually in the film,
you're just going Oh, it's him, Oh, it's him, it's him,
and a bridge too far. He found actually offensive to
people who have been in the war because I think
he described them as like honey wagon gits or something else.
(18:29):
It was like the idea of these very multi million
millionaire stars coming in for one day, ending to be
a war hero and then disappearing.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Kind of on a glossary of Mike Codge's terms of phrase.
Then in the back I.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Might be overelly put in with that. But he was
always always kind of funny, and his grumpiness was always
kind of very funny. We had a good talk about
Robert Altman at one point and how with actors, and
I think I said, you know, Oltman was brilliant and
the actors loved him. He's development was brilliant, but unfortunately
(19:02):
he paved the way for Julian Fellows.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Wow, so he's not holding back.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Was he kind of self aware of the reputation he had,
you know, with Get Carter and Flash Gordon, particularly because
I think people sort of know those films but they
couldn't necessarily name the director of find like your general
movie fan.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
He was he aware that he had that kind of as.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well that he had made those two films. He was aware,
like he so towards the end of his life, both
Get Carter and Flash Gordon kind of were retrospectively kind
of hailed, and they kind of had re releases and yeah, yeah,
and they become kind of cult films.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Ended up in lists in those sort of nineties movies magazines.
Didn't they top ten, top one hundred.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, And I think he spent a lot of his
last years talking about Get Carter and Flashboard. You know,
that was you know, which he was happy to do
because he really loved both of those films and he
had made a huge he was responsible for those films.
Those films are the way they are. It wasn't you know,
it's I mean, he wrote the script for Get Carter,
but it wasn't in the original book. He adapted that book,
(20:09):
and Flash Gordon was not. You know, he's the one
who put all of the kind of like crazy sexiness
in it and the kind of the weird colors. And
for him, you know, he always, you know, like the
great directors do, he was always aware of what he
was saying to the audience and what he was exploring.
And Flash Gordon for him was about American foreign interest.
(20:33):
It was an allegory. And although Flash is a good character,
Flashes is the prototypical American going into a situation and saying,
I can sort this out.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
This is how it should be done by myself.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how he saw it. He is
an allegory for American foreign foreign kind of policy and stuff.
So to ask you a question, he was He was
very He was aware of the respect that those films
had and he and he loved those films, so he
was always happy to talk about them, and he was
happy that they were kind of the in the spotlight
and also with certainly with Flashbord and he got a
(21:08):
chunk of money every time and happened with it. So
very happy to come ahead with that. But his frustration
lay in the fact that his other films were were
not just kind of overlooked but unavailable. Yeah, and the
big one for him was The Terminal Man, which is
kind of Hollywood movie, which only in March, Arrow finally
(21:31):
put out an amazing specialistion blu ray event and it's
the first time where you go, Okay, this is a
significant piece of people hadn't seen it. Warner brothers had
completely they had no faith in it at all. They
marketed it horribly, and it was sci fi before Star Wars,
so that was.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Always was like seventy seventy four.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, yeah, So it was a tricky kind of time
to a degree anyway, but you know, it was the
film was a very stark, cold film about what was
happening with really with medicine and the idea that that
they were kind of that there were kind of electronic
digital things coming through medicine and it's questioning kind of
(22:17):
humanity and what happens when you kind of intersect to
that degree. And they didn't know how to market it
at all, and they marked it. I mean, I think
he says in the book, he says the poster had
George Seagull ooating in the air with lightning bolts coming
out of his ass.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
He did, actually didn't.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And that's the point of which George Seagull floats or
lightning bolts come out of his Stanley Kubrick loved it,
really remained it as one of his favorite films.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Wasn't it? Michael Crichton as swell, wasn't it?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
But he didn't really, he wasn't very involved, and Mike
adapted it a lot. It doesn't I don't think it
bears much resemblance to the book.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But Kubrick loved it.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Kubrick adored it, and in fact, Kubrick petitioned Warner Brothers
on Mike's behalf. He said, this is a really good film,
should give it a proper release. But they just didn't.
It just and it was unavailable for years in decade
since it came out. That was There's a been a
in a book where he says, I hope it I
(23:26):
hope it gets released before I die, And it did,
and that really upsets me. Also, I mean, the other
thing that kind of upsets me is that when it
did come out, in much it came out with I mean,
this is not impugning Arrow at all.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was do some great stuff. Yeah, beautiful, I.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Mean, I love I love them and in fact, you know,
they're one of the few people who are rescuing films
like yes. But when it came out, it was not
embraced by the film community. Really upset me. I really thought,
this is the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I didn't know it had come out, honestly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, it's it's a real it's a real shame. And
and and I'm you know, I think the book is
the book has a niche appeal. That's why I'm self
publishing and stuff. But I just I would love I
think Mike's last wish and what if there is I mean,
he didn't believe in anything after death, but if there
is anything after death, and he looked down. I know
(24:18):
that that his big wish is that the terminal Man
would would have been reevaluated on his own terms and
take what it is. And I think it's an important
piece of filmmaking. I think it's wonderful. And there's no
film like it, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And do you think that's one of the films that
he's sort of had the best time making or something?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Is there something about the experience itself?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Do you think he had the worst time? You see,
he hated he hated it. It was a horrible experience.
He had gone to La so he'd done Get Carter
and he had done Pulp, which is to Get Car
with Michael Kine as well. But it was like a comedy.
And this was his first Hollywood film. It was his
first big dance. But he had a young family at home.
(25:00):
We had to leave at home, and he hated La culturally.
It wasn't you know that, it was very He found
it very isolating, and I think he struggled to kind
of make friends, and I think that actually comes through
in the film. I think I think the film conveys it.
And he got very into Hopper, into Edward Hopper, who
he discovered when he went to LA at that time,
and there's a lot of that in it as well,
(25:22):
which is also you know, isolated, big places, people singing
by themselves and stuff. So no, he didn't actually enjoy
the making of it, but he of all of his films,
I think it was the one that he was most
proud of. He had letters from Kubrick and from Terry Mallick,
from Terrence Malick. Alex sent him a letter which Mike
(25:42):
emailed me three separate times. Yeah, I mean you knew
that that was he most kind of proud of. And
Malick had written him just to say, this is one
of the best films I've ever seen. And when you've
got Kubrick and now one of the best films ever made,
the idea that it's obscure even to Sineas is really upsetting.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, We've had this conversation too late for me to
add it to my Christmas list. John, that's the most
depressing thing. Have to buy it myself. So during your
conversations with him over the years that you were chatting
via email, as you said, he donates his sort of
archive to the BFI. Right, did that happen during the
time that you were chatting it?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
It was his office archive. So the BFA is brilliant
that they do this, but they do it a lot.
I think there's someone who works there whose job it
is to reach out to aging filmmakers and essentially say,
have you thought about where this is all going to go?
Mike knew that it was important, but it also was
it was stressful for him. Mike. The first thing when
(26:43):
you read the book, The first thing, the first question
I asked him, when we're like we're going to write
this book, here we go. Here's the first email of
us writing this book. The first question I asked him
is would you make another film? Are you done? And
the first thing he says is no, Like I would
want to make another film. I am a filmmaker. I
(27:04):
have all my marbles. He talks about watching a documentary
when he was younger of John Houston directing his last
film on an oxygen tech, you know, and he's just like,
I could still do this. The industry don't want me.
He goes into a long talk about why he basically
stopped making films, what the industry started doing to him
to stop making films. Mike also he never you know,
(27:27):
at ninety he was I don't sound patronizing me with
sharp as attack. Nothing had changed in his mind at all,
and his body was starting to fail. His mind hadn't
changed his soul, so to him, he was very frustrating.
He was still an artist, he was still having these thoughts,
he was still writing, he was still making a film
up until the day he died. In the book, and
(27:49):
in fact, if you buy the special edition of the book,
you get a reproduction of the script of what he
was working on when he died, which is an amazing
autobiographical video essay about everything in life, about his philosophy,
you know, called All at Sea, and it's amazing. And
he actually made a I mean, I guess you'd call
(28:13):
it a work in progress where he had he had
recorded his voice over for it, and he's using very
rough bits of library footage that he had found in
different places. And I've seen that and it's very moving
and it's amazing, and I'm actually I'm still talking to
the production company who were behind it. You know, they've
(28:34):
had they just couldn't get funding for it. You know,
he couldn't get funding. And you look at it, you
just go, this is the last film of a cinematic legend.
Why is the BFI not throwing money at this? Especially
since they took his archive and they did a retrospective
season for him, Why are they not funding this? To them,
it's a drop in the ocean, especially when they thought
(28:55):
all that library footage that could be kind of used
to do it. My dream is, and I you know,
I've not spoken to anyone about this properly, but like
you know, my dream is I would like to finish
that film.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, well that was going to be my next question.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, yeah, I would very much like to do that,
because I know how much he wanted it out there,
and we talked a lot about that, so yeah, he
he was ambivalent. He knew that he should give the
archives to the BFI, and he gave it to them,
but also, you know, to him, it was just like,
I'm not done. I'm not dead yet. And the other
(29:31):
thing that was very frustrating to him was that the
BFI had planned a retrospective season, which was supposed to
happen when COVID happened, and a lot of our conversation
was kind of happening through COVID, and he was aware
that the clock was ticking, health was declining, and you know,
he actually says in the book, there's a bit where
he just goes, you're gonna put They're gonna They keep
(29:52):
telling me that they're going to do it, and it's
going to be rescheduled. But he's like, I don't know
if I'll even be able to go. Yeah, I don't
know what's going to happen. And at the end of it,
he made it to he was so ill, but he
he They did an on stage with him, Samira Ahmed
interviewed stage, and he was well enough to go to that.
He wasn't most of the films, although I think he did.
(30:13):
I think he actually did more of Us from Space.
I think he made that one, but it was kind
of perhapschy health in that time. And he wrote to
me after, like we spoke the day after and he
was just like, that felt like a good end to
my career. Nice, that was a good interview, and that
felt like a good end to my career. And that
(30:33):
was too long before the end.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Really, there comes a point where you do have to
flick that switch and go right, what is my legacy?
And did did did the material that you got from
in the conversations you had with him? Did they change
for you emotionally or editorially once he had passed away?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
No, because it was finished then and I didn't want to,
you know, I didn't want to edit him. He would
have hated to have been edited. Yeah, So I mean
to go back to what you were just saying. One
thing is in the book is halfway through the book,
he literally says to me, John, I'm bored of myself.
I don't want to do this anymore. He sounds so sorry,
but I don't want to do this. I'm bored of myself.
(31:11):
I'm bored of talking about myself. And I said that's fine,
and we stopped, and we obviously carried on being in touch,
and then a few months later we'd had I can't
remember what the actually email was. It's in the book
where he basically then just goes, you know what, You've
just lit a fire under me. Let's start the book again,
I want to say, and it starts up again, which
is really kind of lovely. Yeah, you're right. I mean,
(31:33):
you know, what we both do and what we have
in common is that we both have a passion for cinema,
for cinema history, and we understand that these people have
not been well served in their interviews, that there's more
to someone's work in their life as well. And I
think I think it's a great service that you're doing
to Joe. And it's something that I've been passionate about
(31:55):
in my career as well, is talking to older people,
but facilitating them not just to trot out the anecdotes
that they've trotted out for fifty years, to actually go
behind those and kind of go, actually, I'm more interested
in you as a person. You don't have to be
an autopilot. Yeah. Oh, let's let's do something that you'll
be proud of. Yeah, it's an interesting term, say a portrait,
(32:18):
but you know, yeah, let's do yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And it takes a while to get to that, doesn't
it To break through those anecdotes that people have been
reeling out for decades, and it means spending lot of
time with them. It means creating a strong relationship with them,
and always kind of reminding yourself and them that it's
a two way street, isn't it. Yes, you are making
a book out of this with your name on it,
but it's also about celebrating them, and that's the That's
(32:41):
the key part here, isn't it. I mean, you know,
I mostly make myself invisible with the stuff I do,
and that's sort of important to me because I want
the people to speak. But doing it is a conversational book,
you have to bring yourself into that as well.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
But what's great about that is that you've got this.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Legacy of your own as well, making those films about
people that have worked in the industry, so that carries
away as well for sure.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I mean, that's the first time that I've done that.
I mean in my films. You know, I hate documentaries
where you see the filmmaker in the doc That's something
I've always hated. So I'm not present in what you
don't hear. I mean maybe I think in Elstreet Final Question,
you actually hear me ask the question because there was
no way of editing it.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Without that happens sometimes yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Like I'm not, I don't like to be kind of
present in that kind of way. But with this one
it was different. But I also there was a book
that my mum got me when I was I think
I was a teenager. If not, it would have been
like just when I was going to film school. It
was the kind of nineties early nineties. There's a great book.
I don't know if it's even still available anymore. I
love it. I read it often. It's called Conversations with
(33:49):
Billy Wilder like Carmon Crow. And it was so great book. Yeah, yeah,
it down, it's so great. It was particularly interesting is
Billy Wada was not really working at that point, was
his career was done, but he was still going into
the office every day, and Camn Crowe was a working filmmaker,
(34:10):
and it was a genuine conversation. And with Mike I
felt the confidence to add myself to it because firstly
it had come out of our genuine conversations of half
but secondly, there's a really interesting thing where you go, Okay,
at that point when we started, I was forty four
and he was eighty eight. That's interesting. And then His
(34:34):
last feature film, which was Our Sleek When I'm Dead,
was I think two thousand and three. I think that
was kind of the same year that my first screen
credit on IMDb kind of comes in, like screenwriting on
lex you know, but his career was ending while mine
(34:55):
was beginning, and I'm half his age. But we have
these very much on the level conversations, and I think
that's an interesting part of the book, is where we
start comparing, you know, experiences and things that made him
leave the industry were things which which were expected as
I entered the industry. You know, it was it was
(35:15):
the culture, and I wouldn't ever have questioned it, but
to him it was, you know, it was shocking that
these things were happening. So I think there's a lot
of interesting stuff there where we're kind of comparing experiences
about kind of how things are, and also it's nice
to see like, you know you I think there were
probably two I think during the conversation. I was making
(35:38):
Hollywood Bulldogs, I was making Real Britannia, and I published
the Melliez book, so you also get his reactions to
those things. You know, I was talking to him while
we were making them, and stuff, and there was a
whole conversation kind of going on with that, and you
get to see kind of how supportive he was as well,
just you know, how kind of lovely he was. And
(35:58):
in fact, you know, one of our mutual services was
that he wasn't well enough to be in real Britannia.
We had all these incredible legendary British filmmakers and Mike
was my friend, but we couldn't get him in because
he was just too ill to come to London do
the interviews. And then there wasn't time to go out.
He lived out in the country and it just wasn't
time to get out to him, or he wasn't well
(36:18):
enough when there was time, and that I've always been
upset about that.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
And then he's kind of very funny that Mike Lee
was in it, because he knows how much I disliked
Mike Lee he was. He kind of needled me about that.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I'm looking forward to reading this, I really am. So
where can people find this? You said yourself publishing.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
It's on Kickstar to write now if you if you
google Kickstar to Mike Codges, you'll find it. It's called
I'll Settle for nothingness, and yeah, it's all done. We're
a week into the campaign and we're almost at sixty
percent funded, so I think it is pretty definitely going
to happen. The book is written and finished and kind
of ready to go, so that's not an issue. How
(37:00):
We've got Simon Minta, who is the designer on the
Meliaz book. He's going to come in and do all
the all the inlayd design for it. And Yeah, it's
just going to be really good, going to make a
really beautiful book, and it's just gonna commemorate Mike in
a way that I think he deserve to be commemorated,
which is in his own words. And also it's just
(37:22):
I think I think it's a really kind of cracking read,
just for anyone who loves films and interviews and conversations,
and like I said, it goes off into all different
places about kind of life and art, politics and philosophy,
and you actually see how it's kind of holistic thing,
how actually that's the stuff that actually informs filmmaking as well,
and you see how it all fits together with you know,
(37:44):
the actual the people who make films, how they fit
together with the films they make how they bring in
the outside influences kind of into it. So like I
just I just think it's going to be a really
kind of lovely book. I'm really happy with it, nice
and people. There's different tiers presumably that people can there's
just two years, like a really simple campaign. So it's
just two tiers where you can just get the book
(38:07):
or you can get the special edition, and the special
edition is basically signed copy of the book. You get
these film cards which are I source these amazing nineteen
seventies thirty five milimeter film reels of Flash Gordon and
Get Carter. They were the original trailer reels from an
old cinema. They've just been sat in an old cinema,
(38:29):
so we've cut those kind of up, and you get
cards with the original thirty five milimeter kind of things
in and quotes from Mike about the films on the cards.
And then as I said, you get the full seventy
eight I think page reproduction of his script for All
at Sea, which he's also illustrated, so there's kind of
photos the whole way through, so you really get a
(38:50):
feeling of what that project was. And like I said,
because it's autobiographical, you know, you get the whole, the
whole kind of spiritual story of him, because his life
before filmmaking was amazing as well. You know, he came
from like the Navy and stuff, and it was really
his experiences in the navy of saying poverty all around
the British Isles that led him to kind of get
(39:12):
Carter especial first place. So that's a beautiful your project
in itself. And just even just getting the script out
that I've been working with the production company who were
making it, and it's they're given us kind of for
permission to reprint the script so people will at least
get to see that. And Mike's sons have given the
film the blessing. They've been great so given the book
the blessing. So yeah, it's it's a nice package. And
(39:34):
if you've ever enjoyed any of his films, which I
think people have.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
And even if you haven't, done like, this is a
way to discover them, right, I mean, this is a
way to discover a new layer. I mean, there's nothing
I love more than like when I was a kid
in the like eighties and nineties when Channel four would
show the season of a director, and I'd just be
like tape in you know who's this Curasawa guy, Who's
this Scorsese guy, you know who's this Finchy guy.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
And I think this book is a good sort of
route into that for people to kind of work through
his filmography of what is available at least and maybe
get some pressure on getting those things that aren't available
to actually get a released finally hopefully.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
And like I mean most of that, he only really
made nine big feature films, and most of them have
they're still I mean, like a Preyer for a Dance
for the Dying I think is not on blue ray,
which is crazy, so that's quite big film. But it's yeah,
it's it's about kind of kind of getting his filmography
and find discovering all these films. I mean, like I said,
(40:34):
if nothing else, if this brings people to morons from
out of space, I'll be happy. Everyone who watches more
and from out of Space, it's a vindication for me.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
You're part of a special group if you see that
and love it.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Actually, there's a great bit in the book where you know,
you know, you've dealt with prop store with Stephen Lai.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I knew.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Stephen a while back and I'd said to him, mourns
from out of Space, and he goes, We've never had anything.
He's like, it's just not a film, that's you know,
nothing's come through. And then one day he sent me
an email and he's like, John, you're going to be
very happy, and and he did me a day he
was lovely. But I sent my a photo of me
and my house with mel Smith's Space suit hanging home.
(41:17):
I bought the original Space from face and Mike's response was,
if it's still had his snot in it, would.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
You have bought it?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
If the hell it was available and it still had
his snot in it? Would My response was, I think
we both know.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, for everybody listening and watching, get over to Kickstarter.
I'll settle for nothing. This conversations with Mike Hodges by
John and yeah, get get your money in there and
get it. When when you're expecting the book to be
actually delivered to people.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
I think it's going to be kind of April May
kind of time that will be actually fit.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So yeah, so yeah, so go and buy it now,
guys and girls, and you know you'll get a little
future present from your past else so you know.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
There you go a basic. Thanks Jamie, well.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John. Always great
to talk, great to see that he's.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Got another project out. He's always a very considered creative person.
If you do love the podcast, please consider supporting it
on Patreon. It's patreon dot com. Forward slash Jamie Benning
and I'll see you in twenty twenty six.
Welcome to episode one hundred and forty two of the
film you mentioned his podcast. This is Jamie Benning, your host,
as usual. I'm here in my house knocking out another episode.
I said it was the last episode of the year,
but friend of the podcast, John Spira got in touch,
saying that he has a kickstarter at the moment for
a book that he's written about Mike Hodges, legendary British director. Now,
(00:59):
as it's Chris, I'm not going to waffle on because
I've got a load of stuff to do. And what
this will be is this will count for the first
episode of January, because I just needed a little bit
of downtime. Doing two of these a month can get
a bit much, and I figured if I got this
out now, it serves John. It also means you've got
something else to listen to over the festive period, and thirdly,
(01:21):
it gives me a little break until the second episode
of January twenty twenty six. Isn't it Crazy twenty twenty six.
So here's my conversation with John Spira, and I'll be
back at the end briefly for a bit more jabbering on.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
John.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Great to have you back on the podcast this time
about a book. Tell me about this book, tell me
about his genesis.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Well, so the book is called I'll Settle for Nothingness
Conversations with Mike Codges, and it's basically a collection of
conversations extended kind of email conversations that I have with
Mike Hodges, who is a legendary Brita filmmaker who's most
famous obviously for Get Carter and Flashcourt Notes for his
(02:04):
two kind of really kind of big films, but generally
an output of very kind of respected work. And Mike
died three years ago actually I think this week, at
the age of ninety and in the last kind of
I guess four or five years of his life, we
made friends kind of like it. It was a very
big surprise to me to find out that. But Mike
(02:25):
was a friend. But I had written a book about
his film More On from Outer Space, which is one
of my People use the word guilty pleasures, but I'm
against that.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, it's just a pleasure. Just enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Yeah, if you love a film, you love a film
for whatever reason, you connect with it. And more of
the film that I connected with. I saw it on
opening weekend in nineteen eighty six was in an empty
cinema with me and my parents and nobody else. Huge,
and the film absolutely died on its art. It was
a critical flop. It was supposed to be mel Smith
(03:00):
than Grifferies Jones, their launch into cinema and so they
were very famous British comedians. It was going to be
this huge film and it was a comedy and it
was kind of a satire and it's wonderful And if
you love science fiction, which I know your viewers love
science fiction, you should watch it because it's up there.
(03:22):
It's like space Balls, you know, it's got an equivalent space.
Whereas space Balls is mocking, Star Wars is mocking Spielberg's
films is mocking Close Encounters and et. And the premise
of the film is what if we make contact with
aliens and instead of being superior beings, they were like us.
(03:43):
They were just everyday idiots. And it's actually turned into
it's been kind of fulfilled in society because we're in
a society right now where, without being too rude, the
stupidest people have the highest technology. Is it so crazy
an idea that some civilization has created space travel and
(04:04):
four idiots have gotten into a spaceship, hired a spaceship
for the weekend, and gone where they shouldn't go, so
make contact with aliens, and they're just like they're human being.
They look like human beings, they act like stupid human beings,
and parodies all of the spill work kind of things.
Very sharp film, but it's very broad as well. People
weren't ready for it. People didn't really see what was
(04:26):
going on with it. I loved it even as a kid,
and so it stayed as one of my favorite films.
Still not of able on Blu ray.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
What was that about? Eighty four? Eighty five was it?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I think it might have been eighty six. I've came
out in eighty six. I think it's around then. Still
not on Blue ray criminally, it's on Amazon Prime right now,
but I think it's it's a standard Definitionly I tried
to get a Blue ray made of it, and there
was no HD master for the fight, so it's been
(04:56):
very overlooked. I love the film. I wrote a book
about it. Mike. I had interviewed Mike when I worked
at the BFI, and I'd used part of the interview
in the book, But when I was doing the interview.
I felt like I'd pushed too hard. He really didn't
like More on Some out Space. He hadn't seen it
since the day he had finished it. I don't think
he watched it at the premiere. He had Less Square premiere,
(05:18):
but it was dead three days later, you know. And
although he was I was inter thinking about his science
fiction films in general, which he made a few, and
when we got to more on smaut Space, he was
kind of game for about five minutes, and then I
asked him another question and he literally said, I think
we've talked enough about this. And I felt horrible, very
(05:41):
shut down, and kind of like, oh god, I've really
offended an upset him. So when I wrote the book,
I didn't actually contact him. I just used part of
the interview that i'd done with him. And then one
day on my website, I got an order for twenty
copies of the book from my codges. So I emailed
him and said, look, you don't have to buy this.
I'll send you any copies as you want. I'm kind
(06:01):
of sorry I didn't contact you. I kind of felt
like you had an issue with morons, and he said, well,
I kind of did, but you know, I'd still like
to read the book. And after reading the book, he
got back in touch with me and he said, you've
made me want to watch the film again. Wow, And
it was kind of like, okay, great. I was like, well,
you should watch the film. You know, I'll send you
a copy. You didn't have a copy of the film.
(06:23):
And then this weird thing happened where we just started
emailing all the time because he loved films so much
and inevitably with getting these conversations about films. And then
I just said to him, because when I've been writing
the book, I went and interview Grifferies Jones. I spent
hours with Griff and it was really good. And Griff
(06:44):
then got in touch with Mike and they hadn't spoken
since the day they finished the film because they argued
they didn't They had a very bad relationship. And they
started going out as friends and at each other. And
then I kind of said to the pair of them, well,
why don't we do it. Screening has never been screened
anywhere in the world since it came out in cinemas.
(07:05):
There aren't many films you can say that of. I said,
let's do a screening. And they were both up for it,
and we did. We did a night at the U
people as Chars Cinema and we got moved into the
bigger cinema because it sold out completely as a sold
out screening and everyone, the audience loved it. This is funny,
and when you watch a funny film with an audience,
(07:26):
it gets crazy. So with and Mike, they were practically
crying by the end of it because they were like,
this is a good film. And they had both Griff
had blamed it for ruining his life, Like Griff wanted
to be a filmmaker and after that he wasn't. Or weirdly,
Melsmith went on and became very successful directly. Yeah, Griff
(07:48):
blamed morons for you know, they both saw this film
as a terrible film. They watched it with an audience.
The audience loved it. We did a cracking Q and
A afterwards on stage and people it was fun and
it was funny, and afterwards they were both just kind
of so happy, and me and Mike just stayed in touch.
We were just after that. We just friends and we
were emailing constantly and I at one point I just
(08:11):
said to him, I just love these emails and like,
I just think we could do a really interesting book
in this format. Just not standard interviews, you know, I've
done a lot of those, but the way he converse
on email is interesting. Maybe we could do something with it.
And he was up for it. He was doubtful. He
was in a place mentally where he just felt very
(08:32):
left behind by people he felt particularly appreciated. But he said, yeah,
let's do it, and we did it, and then for
years we you know, we just had this extended email
going backwards and forwards, talking about everything, talking about his career,
my career, life, politics, arts, everything, and sadly we did
(08:53):
finish it. A couple of months before he died. There
was a definite we have now finished that, yeah, end
to this, But yeah, he then died, and then I
got busy with other projects. And it's taken me kind
of three years to get to the point where I've
had some space to actually edit it, because I thought
at the time, I thought it would be very charming
to just print the kind of emails, but you know
(09:16):
how long emails get. Twelve emails back pages and pages.
It's taken a lot of editing to not edit out
what anyone said. But editor into actually a kind of straightforward,
forward and backwards. So we have to kind of almost
lose the email format, which was kind of the point
of it, but the conversation is still there. Yeah, and
(09:37):
I think anyone who just loves cinema. But I mean, firstly,
you know, me and he both love cinema. There's a
lot of talk about the industry and about films in general,
but if you're interested in him and his films, there's
a whole story there. It's really interesting, fascinating career he did.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
I mean, he was never sort sort of tied down
by genre. I mean, he leapt across so many different things.
I mean, you've got sci fi, comedy, psychological thriller, political thriller.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Angster movies, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
I mean it's it's pretty amazing really because so many
directors do get pigeonhole, but he seemed to avoid that totally.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
He was I mean, he was an incredibly versatile I mean,
he came from that generation. You know, he was born
in I guess the thirties, and I think before if
you were kind of working before the kind of late seventies,
maybe at that point, if you were a director, directing
was kind of a job. It wasn't this kind of
(10:34):
o tur thing was it was in the ether and stuff.
But I think until kind of Spielberg and scorsesean stuff,
there wasn't that thing where you were kind of defined
by your work and you were the person who made
these kind of films. I mean, if you look at
like the Ealing films, those directors were just signed randomly,
you know, to whatever was being made in the studios
(10:54):
at the time. Yeah, even old Hollywood films. You know,
someone like Stanley Donan, you know, you just go wha,
Actually musicals, you did Star Trek the motion picture, you know,
it's completely kind of It was more about the leadership
of directing. Mike had had had a by the time
he moved into cinema. He had made a lot of TV,
a lot of kind of early TV documentaries, and he'd
(11:16):
done some drama as well. So he was very well
kind of positioned to do anything. And it was really
his intelligence that was the key to everything. Is if
he was interested in something, then he would make something
really good. And yeah, very versatile, but also very kind
of I mean he was very self effacing. Yeah, to
an annoying degree. I would say you would never if
(11:41):
you met him in the street and had a chat
with him, you would not think he was who he was.
He did not wear his prestige or legend at all.
He had no time for that. He loved to talk
about films and how he made his films. He had
no ego whatsoever, absolutely nothing, you know. And actually his
(12:01):
kind of his view of his career was that it
was messy and disorganized. It would surprise me hugely.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Which I'm sure is the case for a lot of directors.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
As soon as you start talking to people honestly and
you start peeling back the kind of layers. You know.
We talked and I did the Chrystph Lee film the
last time. Last time we talked, I was telling you that,
like what interested me was making a film about how
even someone as strong as Christopher Lee is someone who actually,
when you look at it, he was very insecure.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, he's quite a fragile guy in many ways. And
many people in that industry are, aren't they.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Yeah, And that's that's one thing that interest me. It's
just finding this kind of human le layer. He would
wear that on his sleeve. Like when you talk to him,
he would he would say quite openly that he didn't
think he'd had the career that he'd hoped for. And
one of the most interesting sections in the book, which
I really like, is that I pressed him a lot
to talk about the projects that didn't make it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I was going to ask about that, because for every
film a director may, particularly from that period, there's another
ten that never got anywhere near. I mean, speaking to
Joe Alves, you know, he's got drawings from twenty movies
that he never.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Got paid for, you know, exactly, they just didn't get
out of development.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Yeah, I mean, there's a book in that. You know,
someone should write a book about unproduced films, you know,
and Mike had loads of them, and because he was respected,
these projects were at a point where, you know, they
had people attached to them. It came incredibly close to
kind of making these films. There was a really interesting
(13:34):
story where he was going to make a film about
awesome Wells doing the kind of you know that the
Mercury Theater kind of period of his career, the radio,
the War of the World's kind of radio broadcast. I'm
trying to try to remember I'm getting this exactly right,
But basically they decided that Tim Robbins would be a
(13:58):
good guy to play or some wells, and he was
doing very well at that point in his career on
those guys, at that point where you could you could
make a film. And then Tim Robbins basically just said
I love it, but I want to direct it, and
Mike kind of, I guess I have to step aside.
And they made it and it was a terrible film.
(14:19):
But you know, it's really interesting to find out these things,
to find out what's kind of kind of going on
that we didn't find out about, and Mike had a
lot of that.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
Yeah, And actually.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
What I found was it's more interesting to look at
it in a kind of holistic career, in a holistic sense,
not just looking at the films that actually got made,
but working between and saying, well, that film actually got
made because this film didn't get made, Yeah, this film
could have been stunning.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah, And you really become you come to appreciate those
films that are really successful, what a fluke they are
in some ways, like this confluence of all these things
that have to come together to make it that good,
like everybody doing their job to you know, such a
degree that when it does has come out that it
just all slots together. It is very rare for that
to happen, which is why we're still talking about films
(15:05):
like you know, Behind You Out, Jaws, RoboCop and movies
like that. Did he do you find that difficult to
talk about that, stuff about the films not being made?
Speaker 3 (15:14):
He liked talking about that. When once I got him open,
he really enjoyed it. Mike actually was I mean, like
all of us were a kind of contradiction and stuff.
Mike was deliciously grumpy. He's a lovely man, really genuinely kind, generous, funny,
a lovely company. So I'm not saying he's grumpy, like
he was a grumpy person, but if you got him
(15:36):
on a rat it was a wonderful thing. And he
especially you know, at the time. A lot of time
we're talking was when that period where the Tory prime
ministers were like psyched and Trump was coming. He would
just you know, I would get an email just started,
have you seen the news today?
Speaker 2 (15:55):
And does the book include stuff like that?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I only took out like them,
either stuff that would be incredibly boring about our personal lives,
you know, or stuff which which it wouldn't have been
fair to other people to put in, although I've kept
in a lot of both of our bitchiness, which I
think is interesting. And he didn't mind this at all.
But like they you you very much find out who
(16:20):
he didn't like and who I don't like, and some
of that surprised me. He went on a rant about
Richard Attenborough really, which is amazed, like I kind of
like Richard.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Did he had he worked with him when he was
in TV.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
I work with him at all. The initial cause of
his Richard alber Ratt. We were talking about all star films.
We're talking about those kind of films that you don't
really get anymore, where they packed the cast with kind
of very famous people. I think we were talking about
that time in the nineties where Mirror Max was really
doing that, where films were coming out on like DVD
(16:57):
and the rental when I had the video shops. There
were films like I'm trying to remember the name of that.
There was a Bottle Shock, which was a film about
why It's got Alan Rickman and it's got few people
in the film, right. Yeah. They would come out and
you'd go, how is a cast this big.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Right, Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, I thought you just meant generally films that are
populated with big, old movies.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
The thing that set these ones aside was more that
you would rent it, going wow, there was a film
about CBGB's have like loads of famous people, and you go,
this looks like the most amazing film, And then you'd
watch it and you'd realize that what it actually was
was all these people had done favors for Harvey Weinstein
or whoever was producing it, and they would be in
It was obvious that they'd been on set one day. Yeah,
(17:43):
and maybe it was filmed where they hadn't been with
the other actors and it was kind of cut in
and they would have one scene and that was it. Yeah.
And so I was talking about those for some reason,
and then he went on a round about a Bridge
too Far and he was just like and oh, what
a lovely war as well, and just going and going, well,
you know, ridgel Attenborough killed these things by taking things
(18:06):
which have had great actors in them and just replacing
the tiny roles with very famous people, which means that
when you're watching it, you're not actually in the film,
you're just going Oh, it's him, Oh, it's him, it's him,
and a bridge too far. He found actually offensive to
people who have been in the war because I think
he described them as like honey wagon gits or something else.
(18:29):
It was like the idea of these very multi million
millionaire stars coming in for one day, ending to be
a war hero and then disappearing.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Kind of on a glossary of Mike Codge's terms of phrase.
Then in the back I.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Might be overelly put in with that. But he was
always always kind of funny, and his grumpiness was always
kind of very funny. We had a good talk about
Robert Altman at one point and how with actors, and
I think I said, you know, Oltman was brilliant and
the actors loved him. He's development was brilliant, but unfortunately
(19:02):
he paved the way for Julian Fellows.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Wow, so he's not holding back.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Was he kind of self aware of the reputation he had,
you know, with Get Carter and Flash Gordon, particularly because
I think people sort of know those films but they
couldn't necessarily name the director of find like your general
movie fan.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
He was he aware that he had that kind of as.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Well that he had made those two films. He was aware,
like he so towards the end of his life, both
Get Carter and Flash Gordon kind of were retrospectively kind
of hailed, and they kind of had re releases and yeah, yeah,
and they become kind of cult films.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Ended up in lists in those sort of nineties movies magazines.
Didn't they top ten, top one hundred.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
Yeah, And I think he spent a lot of his
last years talking about Get Carter and Flashboard. You know,
that was you know, which he was happy to do
because he really loved both of those films and he
had made a huge he was responsible for those films.
Those films are the way they are. It wasn't you know,
it's I mean, he wrote the script for Get Carter,
but it wasn't in the original book. He adapted that book,
(20:09):
and Flash Gordon was not. You know, he's the one
who put all of the kind of like crazy sexiness
in it and the kind of the weird colors. And
for him, you know, he always, you know, like the
great directors do, he was always aware of what he
was saying to the audience and what he was exploring.
And Flash Gordon for him was about American foreign interest.
(20:33):
It was an allegory. And although Flash is a good character,
Flashes is the prototypical American going into a situation and saying,
I can sort this out.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
This is how it should be done by myself.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how he saw it. He is
an allegory for American foreign foreign kind of policy and stuff.
So to ask you a question, he was He was
very He was aware of the respect that those films
had and he and he loved those films, so he
was always happy to talk about them, and he was
happy that they were kind of the in the spotlight
and also with certainly with Flashbord and he got a
(21:08):
chunk of money every time and happened with it. So
very happy to come ahead with that. But his frustration
lay in the fact that his other films were were
not just kind of overlooked but unavailable. Yeah, and the
big one for him was The Terminal Man, which is
kind of Hollywood movie, which only in March, Arrow finally
(21:31):
put out an amazing specialistion blu ray event and it's
the first time where you go, Okay, this is a
significant piece of people hadn't seen it. Warner brothers had
completely they had no faith in it at all. They
marketed it horribly, and it was sci fi before Star Wars,
so that was.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Always was like seventy seventy four.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
Yeah, yeah, So it was a tricky kind of time
to a degree anyway, but you know, it was the
film was a very stark, cold film about what was
happening with really with medicine and the idea that that
they were kind of that there were kind of electronic
digital things coming through medicine and it's questioning kind of
(22:17):
humanity and what happens when you kind of intersect to
that degree. And they didn't know how to market it
at all, and they marked it. I mean, I think
he says in the book, he says the poster had
George Seagull ooating in the air with lightning bolts coming
out of his ass.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
He did, actually didn't.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
And that's the point of which George Seagull floats or
lightning bolts come out of his Stanley Kubrick loved it,
really remained it as one of his favorite films.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Wasn't it? Michael Crichton as swell, wasn't it?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
But he didn't really, he wasn't very involved, and Mike
adapted it a lot. It doesn't I don't think it
bears much resemblance to the book.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
But Kubrick loved it.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Kubrick adored it, and in fact, Kubrick petitioned Warner Brothers
on Mike's behalf. He said, this is a really good film,
should give it a proper release. But they just didn't.
It just and it was unavailable for years in decade
since it came out. That was There's a been a
in a book where he says, I hope it I
(23:26):
hope it gets released before I die, And it did,
and that really upsets me. Also, I mean, the other
thing that kind of upsets me is that when it
did come out, in much it came out with I mean,
this is not impugning Arrow at all.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It was do some great stuff. Yeah, beautiful, I.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Mean, I love I love them and in fact, you know,
they're one of the few people who are rescuing films
like yes. But when it came out, it was not
embraced by the film community. Really upset me. I really thought,
this is the moment.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I didn't know it had come out, honestly, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, it's it's a real it's a real shame. And
and and I'm you know, I think the book is
the book has a niche appeal. That's why I'm self
publishing and stuff. But I just I would love I
think Mike's last wish and what if there is I mean,
he didn't believe in anything after death, but if there
is anything after death, and he looked down. I know
(24:18):
that that his big wish is that the terminal Man
would would have been reevaluated on his own terms and
take what it is. And I think it's an important
piece of filmmaking. I think it's wonderful. And there's no
film like it, you know.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And do you think that's one of the films that
he's sort of had the best time making or something?
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Is there something about the experience itself?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Do you think he had the worst time? You see,
he hated he hated it. It was a horrible experience.
He had gone to La so he'd done Get Carter
and he had done Pulp, which is to Get Car
with Michael Kine as well. But it was like a comedy.
And this was his first Hollywood film. It was his
first big dance. But he had a young family at home.
(25:00):
We had to leave at home, and he hated La culturally.
It wasn't you know that, it was very He found
it very isolating, and I think he struggled to kind
of make friends, and I think that actually comes through
in the film. I think I think the film conveys it.
And he got very into Hopper, into Edward Hopper, who
he discovered when he went to LA at that time,
and there's a lot of that in it as well,
(25:22):
which is also you know, isolated, big places, people singing
by themselves and stuff. So no, he didn't actually enjoy
the making of it, but he of all of his films,
I think it was the one that he was most
proud of. He had letters from Kubrick and from Terry Mallick,
from Terrence Malick. Alex sent him a letter which Mike
(25:42):
emailed me three separate times. Yeah, I mean you knew
that that was he most kind of proud of. And
Malick had written him just to say, this is one
of the best films I've ever seen. And when you've
got Kubrick and now one of the best films ever made,
the idea that it's obscure even to Sineas is really upsetting.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, We've had this conversation too late for me to
add it to my Christmas list. John, that's the most
depressing thing. Have to buy it myself. So during your
conversations with him over the years that you were chatting
via email, as you said, he donates his sort of
archive to the BFI. Right, did that happen during the
time that you were chatting it?
Speaker 3 (26:19):
It was his office archive. So the BFA is brilliant
that they do this, but they do it a lot.
I think there's someone who works there whose job it
is to reach out to aging filmmakers and essentially say,
have you thought about where this is all going to go?
Mike knew that it was important, but it also was
it was stressful for him. Mike. The first thing when
(26:43):
you read the book, The first thing, the first question
I asked him, when we're like we're going to write
this book, here we go. Here's the first email of
us writing this book. The first question I asked him
is would you make another film? Are you done? And
the first thing he says is no, Like I would
want to make another film. I am a filmmaker. I
(27:04):
have all my marbles. He talks about watching a documentary
when he was younger of John Houston directing his last
film on an oxygen tech, you know, and he's just like,
I could still do this. The industry don't want me.
He goes into a long talk about why he basically
stopped making films, what the industry started doing to him
to stop making films. Mike also he never you know,
(27:27):
at ninety he was I don't sound patronizing me with
sharp as attack. Nothing had changed in his mind at all,
and his body was starting to fail. His mind hadn't
changed his soul, so to him, he was very frustrating.
He was still an artist, he was still having these thoughts,
he was still writing, he was still making a film
up until the day he died. In the book, and
(27:49):
in fact, if you buy the special edition of the book,
you get a reproduction of the script of what he
was working on when he died, which is an amazing
autobiographical video essay about everything in life, about his philosophy,
you know, called All at Sea, and it's amazing. And
he actually made a I mean, I guess you'd call
(28:13):
it a work in progress where he had he had
recorded his voice over for it, and he's using very
rough bits of library footage that he had found in
different places. And I've seen that and it's very moving
and it's amazing, and I'm actually I'm still talking to
the production company who were behind it. You know, they've
(28:34):
had they just couldn't get funding for it. You know,
he couldn't get funding. And you look at it, you
just go, this is the last film of a cinematic legend.
Why is the BFI not throwing money at this? Especially
since they took his archive and they did a retrospective
season for him, Why are they not funding this? To them,
it's a drop in the ocean, especially when they thought
(28:55):
all that library footage that could be kind of used
to do it. My dream is, and I you know,
I've not spoken to anyone about this properly, but like
you know, my dream is I would like to finish
that film.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, well that was going to be my next question.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, yeah, I would very much like to do that,
because I know how much he wanted it out there,
and we talked a lot about that, so yeah, he
he was ambivalent. He knew that he should give the
archives to the BFI, and he gave it to them,
but also, you know, to him, it was just like,
I'm not done. I'm not dead yet. And the other
(29:31):
thing that was very frustrating to him was that the
BFI had planned a retrospective season, which was supposed to
happen when COVID happened, and a lot of our conversation
was kind of happening through COVID, and he was aware
that the clock was ticking, health was declining, and you know,
he actually says in the book, there's a bit where
he just goes, you're gonna put They're gonna They keep
(29:52):
telling me that they're going to do it, and it's
going to be rescheduled. But he's like, I don't know
if I'll even be able to go. Yeah, I don't
know what's going to happen. And at the end of it,
he made it to he was so ill, but he
he They did an on stage with him, Samira Ahmed
interviewed stage, and he was well enough to go to that.
He wasn't most of the films, although I think he did.
(30:13):
I think he actually did more of Us from Space.
I think he made that one, but it was kind
of perhapschy health in that time. And he wrote to
me after, like we spoke the day after and he
was just like, that felt like a good end to
my career. Nice, that was a good interview, and that
felt like a good end to my career. And that
(30:33):
was too long before the end.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Really, there comes a point where you do have to
flick that switch and go right, what is my legacy?
And did did did the material that you got from
in the conversations you had with him? Did they change
for you emotionally or editorially once he had passed away?
Speaker 3 (30:50):
No, because it was finished then and I didn't want to,
you know, I didn't want to edit him. He would
have hated to have been edited. Yeah, So I mean
to go back to what you were just saying. One
thing is in the book is halfway through the book,
he literally says to me, John, I'm bored of myself.
I don't want to do this anymore. He sounds so sorry,
but I don't want to do this. I'm bored of myself.
(31:11):
I'm bored of talking about myself. And I said that's fine,
and we stopped, and we obviously carried on being in touch,
and then a few months later we'd had I can't
remember what the actually email was. It's in the book
where he basically then just goes, you know what, You've
just lit a fire under me. Let's start the book again,
I want to say, and it starts up again, which
is really kind of lovely. Yeah, you're right. I mean,
(31:33):
you know, what we both do and what we have
in common is that we both have a passion for cinema,
for cinema history, and we understand that these people have
not been well served in their interviews, that there's more
to someone's work in their life as well. And I
think I think it's a great service that you're doing
to Joe. And it's something that I've been passionate about
(31:55):
in my career as well, is talking to older people,
but facilitating them not just to trot out the anecdotes
that they've trotted out for fifty years, to actually go
behind those and kind of go, actually, I'm more interested
in you as a person. You don't have to be
an autopilot. Yeah. Oh, let's let's do something that you'll
be proud of. Yeah, it's an interesting term, say a portrait,
(32:18):
but you know, yeah, let's do yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
And it takes a while to get to that, doesn't
it To break through those anecdotes that people have been
reeling out for decades, and it means spending lot of
time with them. It means creating a strong relationship with them,
and always kind of reminding yourself and them that it's
a two way street, isn't it. Yes, you are making
a book out of this with your name on it,
but it's also about celebrating them, and that's the That's
(32:41):
the key part here, isn't it. I mean, you know,
I mostly make myself invisible with the stuff I do,
and that's sort of important to me because I want
the people to speak. But doing it is a conversational book,
you have to bring yourself into that as well.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
But what's great about that is that you've got this.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
Legacy of your own as well, making those films about
people that have worked in the industry, so that carries
away as well for sure.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I mean, that's the first time that I've done that.
I mean in my films. You know, I hate documentaries
where you see the filmmaker in the doc That's something
I've always hated. So I'm not present in what you
don't hear. I mean maybe I think in Elstreet Final Question,
you actually hear me ask the question because there was
no way of editing it.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Without that happens sometimes yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Like I'm not, I don't like to be kind of
present in that kind of way. But with this one
it was different. But I also there was a book
that my mum got me when I was I think
I was a teenager. If not, it would have been
like just when I was going to film school. It
was the kind of nineties early nineties. There's a great book.
I don't know if it's even still available anymore. I
love it. I read it often. It's called Conversations with
(33:49):
Billy Wilder like Carmon Crow. And it was so great book. Yeah, yeah,
it down, it's so great. It was particularly interesting is
Billy Wada was not really working at that point, was
his career was done, but he was still going into
the office every day, and Camn Crowe was a working filmmaker,
(34:10):
and it was a genuine conversation. And with Mike I
felt the confidence to add myself to it because firstly
it had come out of our genuine conversations of half
but secondly, there's a really interesting thing where you go, Okay,
at that point when we started, I was forty four
and he was eighty eight. That's interesting. And then His
(34:34):
last feature film, which was Our Sleek When I'm Dead,
was I think two thousand and three. I think that
was kind of the same year that my first screen
credit on IMDb kind of comes in, like screenwriting on
lex you know, but his career was ending while mine
(34:55):
was beginning, and I'm half his age. But we have
these very much on the level conversations, and I think
that's an interesting part of the book, is where we
start comparing, you know, experiences and things that made him
leave the industry were things which which were expected as
I entered the industry. You know, it was it was
(35:15):
the culture, and I wouldn't ever have questioned it, but
to him it was, you know, it was shocking that
these things were happening. So I think there's a lot
of interesting stuff there where we're kind of comparing experiences
about kind of how things are, and also it's nice
to see like, you know you I think there were
probably two I think during the conversation. I was making
(35:38):
Hollywood Bulldogs, I was making Real Britannia, and I published
the Melliez book, so you also get his reactions to
those things. You know, I was talking to him while
we were making them, and stuff, and there was a
whole conversation kind of going on with that, and you
get to see kind of how supportive he was as well,
just you know, how kind of lovely he was. And
(35:58):
in fact, you know, one of our mutual services was
that he wasn't well enough to be in real Britannia.
We had all these incredible legendary British filmmakers and Mike
was my friend, but we couldn't get him in because
he was just too ill to come to London do
the interviews. And then there wasn't time to go out.
He lived out in the country and it just wasn't
time to get out to him, or he wasn't well
(36:18):
enough when there was time, and that I've always been
upset about that.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
And then he's kind of very funny that Mike Lee
was in it, because he knows how much I disliked
Mike Lee he was. He kind of needled me about that.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
I'm looking forward to reading this, I really am. So
where can people find this? You said yourself publishing.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
It's on Kickstar to write now if you if you
google Kickstar to Mike Codges, you'll find it. It's called
I'll Settle for nothingness, and yeah, it's all done. We're
a week into the campaign and we're almost at sixty
percent funded, so I think it is pretty definitely going
to happen. The book is written and finished and kind
of ready to go, so that's not an issue. How
(37:00):
We've got Simon Minta, who is the designer on the
Meliaz book. He's going to come in and do all
the all the inlayd design for it. And Yeah, it's
just going to be really good, going to make a
really beautiful book, and it's just gonna commemorate Mike in
a way that I think he deserve to be commemorated,
which is in his own words. And also it's just
(37:22):
I think I think it's a really kind of cracking read,
just for anyone who loves films and interviews and conversations,
and like I said, it goes off into all different
places about kind of life and art, politics and philosophy,
and you actually see how it's kind of holistic thing,
how actually that's the stuff that actually informs filmmaking as well,
and you see how it all fits together with you know,
(37:44):
the actual the people who make films, how they fit
together with the films they make how they bring in
the outside influences kind of into it. So like I
just I just think it's going to be a really
kind of lovely book. I'm really happy with it, nice
and people. There's different tiers presumably that people can there's
just two years, like a really simple campaign. So it's
just two tiers where you can just get the book
(38:07):
or you can get the special edition, and the special
edition is basically signed copy of the book. You get
these film cards which are I source these amazing nineteen
seventies thirty five milimeter film reels of Flash Gordon and
Get Carter. They were the original trailer reels from an
old cinema. They've just been sat in an old cinema,
(38:29):
so we've cut those kind of up, and you get
cards with the original thirty five milimeter kind of things
in and quotes from Mike about the films on the cards.
And then as I said, you get the full seventy
eight I think page reproduction of his script for All
at Sea, which he's also illustrated, so there's kind of
photos the whole way through, so you really get a
(38:50):
feeling of what that project was. And like I said,
because it's autobiographical, you know, you get the whole, the
whole kind of spiritual story of him, because his life
before filmmaking was amazing as well. You know, he came
from like the Navy and stuff, and it was really
his experiences in the navy of saying poverty all around
the British Isles that led him to kind of get
(39:12):
Carter especial first place. So that's a beautiful your project
in itself. And just even just getting the script out
that I've been working with the production company who were
making it, and it's they're given us kind of for
permission to reprint the script so people will at least
get to see that. And Mike's sons have given the
film the blessing. They've been great so given the book
the blessing. So yeah, it's it's a nice package. And
(39:34):
if you've ever enjoyed any of his films, which I
think people have.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
And even if you haven't, done like, this is a
way to discover them, right, I mean, this is a
way to discover a new layer. I mean, there's nothing
I love more than like when I was a kid
in the like eighties and nineties when Channel four would
show the season of a director, and I'd just be
like tape in you know who's this Curasawa guy, Who's
this Scorsese guy, you know who's this Finchy guy.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Whatever.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
And I think this book is a good sort of
route into that for people to kind of work through
his filmography of what is available at least and maybe
get some pressure on getting those things that aren't available
to actually get a released finally hopefully.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
And like I mean most of that, he only really
made nine big feature films, and most of them have
they're still I mean, like a Preyer for a Dance
for the Dying I think is not on blue ray,
which is crazy, so that's quite big film. But it's yeah,
it's it's about kind of kind of getting his filmography
and find discovering all these films. I mean, like I said,
(40:34):
if nothing else, if this brings people to morons from
out of space, I'll be happy. Everyone who watches more
and from out of Space, it's a vindication for me.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
You're part of a special group if you see that
and love it.
Speaker 4 (40:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Actually, there's a great bit in the book where you know,
you know, you've dealt with prop store with Stephen Lai.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I knew.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Stephen a while back and I'd said to him, mourns
from out of Space, and he goes, We've never had anything.
He's like, it's just not a film, that's you know,
nothing's come through. And then one day he sent me
an email and he's like, John, you're going to be
very happy, and and he did me a day he
was lovely. But I sent my a photo of me
and my house with mel Smith's Space suit hanging home.
(41:17):
I bought the original Space from face and Mike's response was,
if it's still had his snot in it, would.
Speaker 4 (41:25):
You have bought it?
Speaker 3 (41:28):
If the hell it was available and it still had
his snot in it? Would My response was, I think
we both know.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, for everybody listening and watching, get over to Kickstarter.
I'll settle for nothing. This conversations with Mike Hodges by
John and yeah, get get your money in there and
get it. When when you're expecting the book to be
actually delivered to people.
Speaker 3 (41:50):
I think it's going to be kind of April May
kind of time that will be actually fit.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
So yeah, so yeah, so go and buy it now,
guys and girls, and you know you'll get a little
future present from your past else so you know.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
There you go a basic. Thanks Jamie, well.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John. Always great
to talk, great to see that he's.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
Got another project out. He's always a very considered creative person.
If you do love the podcast, please consider supporting it
on Patreon. It's patreon dot com. Forward slash Jamie Benning
and I'll see you in twenty twenty six.
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