Ep 142 | Jon Spira — New Mike Hodges Book (Get Carter, Flash Gordon)

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, 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, 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.

John. Great to have you back on the podcast this time about a book. Tell me about this book, tell me about his genesis. 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 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 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. Yeah, it's just a pleasure. Just enjoy it.

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 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. 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.

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 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 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. What was that about?

Eighty four? Eighty five was it? 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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.

Angster movies, you know. I mean it's it's pretty amazing really because so many directors do get pigeonhole, but he seemed to avoid that totally. 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 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 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 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 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 kind of his view of his career was that it was messy and disorganized. It would surprise me hugely. Which I'm sure is the case for a lot of directors. 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. Yeah, he's quite a fragile guy in many ways. And many people in that industry are, aren't they.

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. 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. Got paid for, you know, exactly, they just didn't get out of development. 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 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 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. 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. Yeah, And actually. 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.

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 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? 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 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? And does the book include stuff like that? 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 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. Did he had he worked with him when he was in TV.

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 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. Right, Okay, I see what you mean.

Yeah, I thought you just meant generally films that are populated with big, old movies. 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, 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 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. 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. Kind of on a glossary of Mike Codge's terms of phrase. Then in the back I. 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 he paved the way for Julian Fellows. Wow, so he's not holding back. 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.

He was he aware that he had that kind of as. 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. Ended up in lists in those sort of nineties movies magazines. Didn't they top ten, top one hundred.

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, 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. 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.

This is how it should be done by myself. 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 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 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. Always was like seventy seventy four.

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 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. He did, actually didn't. 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.

Wasn't it? Michael Crichton as swell, wasn't it? 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. But Kubrick loved it.

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 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. It was do some great stuff. Yeah, beautiful, I. 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. I didn't know it had come out, honestly, Yeah, exactly. 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 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. And do you think that's one of the films that he's sort of had the best time making or something? Is there something about the experience itself? 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. 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, 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 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. 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? 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

Yeah, well that was going to be my next question. 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 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 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. 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 was too long before the end. 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? 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. 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, 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 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, but you know, yeah, let's do yeah. 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 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. But what's great about that is that you've got this. 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. 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. Without that happens sometimes yeah, yeah, but. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 enough when there was time, and that I've always been upset about that. Yeah, Yeah. 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. I'm looking forward to reading this, I really am.

So where can people find this? You said yourself publishing. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 if you've ever enjoyed any of his films, which I think people have. 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. Whatever. 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.

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, 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. You're part of a special group if you see that and love it.

Yeah. Actually, there's a great bit in the book where you know, you know, you've dealt with prop store with Stephen Lai. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I knew. 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. I bought the original Space from face and Mike's response was, if it's still had his snot in it, would. You have bought it? If the hell it was available and it still had his snot in it?

Would My response was, I think we both know. 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.

I think it's going to be kind of April May kind of time that will be actually fit. 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. There you go a basic. Thanks Jamie, well. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John.

Always great to talk, great to see that he's. 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.