Michael Tommy "Mike" Hodges is an English screenwriter, film director, playwright and novelist. His films as writer/director include Get Carter, Pulp, The Terminal Man and Black Rainbow ; as director, his films include Flash Gordon, Croupier and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. His theatre plays include Soft Shoe Shuffle and Shooting Stars and Other Heavenly Pursuits, which was adapted for BBC radio. Other radio plays include King Trash. His first novel, Watching The Wheels Come Off, was published first in French by Rivagse/Noir in 2009 then in English in 2010. In 2018 his trio of novellas was published by Unbound. Retrospectives of his work in television and cinema: NFT 1980; MOMA 1990; American Cinematheque 1990; Munich 1999. Another retrospective at the NFT is planned for May, 2020. He was awarded the degree of 'Doctor of Letters" by the University of the West of England Bristol in 2005.
Life and work
After qualifying as a chartered accountant and serving out his two years' National Service on the lower deck of a Royal Navyminesweeper, Hodges got a job in British television as a teleprompter operator. This allowed him to observe the workings of the studios, and gave him time to start writing scripts. One of these was Some Will Cry Murder, written for ABC’s Armchair Theatre series. Although never performed, it served to get him enough writing commissions to quit his job as a technician. After that, he quickly progressed to producer/director status, with series such as Sunday Break for ABC Television, World in Action for Granada Television and the arts programmes Tempo and New Tempo for Thames Television. He wrote, directed and produced two filmed thrillers, Suspect and Rumour, again for Thames Television. These films formed the basis for the creation of Euston Films, the influential television production company that continued into the 1980s. These two films also led to Hodges being asked to write and direct Get Carter, which has been described as "one of the great British gangster films of all time." Hodges worked with Carter star Michael Caine again in Pulp, before proceeding to make films such as the Michael Crichton adaptation The Terminal Man and the space opera Flash Gordon. Some of Hodges later films include A Prayer for the Dying, Croupier and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead. Interspersed with his cinema work are some interesting and critically successful television films, including The Manipulators, Squaring The Circle, Dandelion Dead, and The Healer.
