in Silvertown for Hodges’ controversial 1987 film A Prayer for the Dying. Camera operator Gordon Haymen (bearded) and cinematographer, Mike Garfath, on the left; both longtime collaborators with Hodges
in Silvertown for Hodges’ controversial 1987 film A Prayer for the Dying. Camera operator Gordon Haymen (bearded) and cinematographer, Mike Garfath, on the left; both longtime collaborators with Hodges
“Many films are pre-sold around the world. But are these people selling what the filmmakers are making?
And if it’s pre-sold, how can a film have the spontaneous life on which all art is based?”
Mike Hodges
The year 1986 began with the debacle that was Florida Straits. On his return from America, Hodges was asked to direct a screenplay based on the Jack Higgins’ novel, A Prayer for the Dying. First-choice director, Franc Roddam, had walked only weeks before the offer came. According to the producers he had rewritten the screenplay, turning it into an “extremely violent” version, which was not to their liking. “Quite right,” explains Hodges, “the whole point of A Prayer for the Dying is that it is about a man turning his back on violence.”
Time wasn’t on Hodges’ side. The normal pre-production period is eight weeks; he had four. The producers had a million-dollar pay-or-play deal with Mickey Rourke and he had another film tied in to his busy schedule further down the line. They had no other actors signed up.
“On the walls of most film production offices is a supposedly humorous poster entitled, ‘The Six Stages of Production’. Stage One is listed as ‘Wild Enthusiasm’. Stage Six as ‘Promotion of the Incompetent’. Heavy-handed humour sadly based on fact. It was
“This was anthropological work.” Mike Hodges
Stage One for me in August 1986, and producers Sam Goldwyn Jr and Peter Snell did seem enthusiastic when I agreed to take on the project. ‘Wild’ enthusiasm would be an exaggeration, but they were mighty relieved. Maybe it was because Rourke had to be paid one million buckeroos whether the movie was made or not, and it had to be finished within 12 weeks. A tall order, especially when the script needed re-writing, locations had to be found, crew chosen and 60-odd actors cast.
“So why did I take such an enormous professional risk? Money (I was still in the divorce trap), Mickey Rourke (I really liked his work), excitement – and subject matter. It was in my manor. I’d already made a successful gangster film. I’m fascinated by the antics of funeral directors, having made a documentary about them for World In Action. And I am a lapsed Catholic. This was anthropological work.
“The advantage of having to work quickly is that you operate totally on instinct. Firstly, I persuaded Bob Hoskins and Alan Bates to do a script they both found unappealing, by reversing the obvious; offering Bob the role of the Catholic priest, Alan the funeral undertaker gang boss. I also pruned the violence to a minimum. That done, I was able to provide the proper frame for Rourke’s characterization – on which he had done considerable work, much of it painful. He’s an actor who has to experience the actuality; for example, Martin Fallon had a tattoo. He could easily have had a transfer but Mickey insisted on a real one. Sadly, it went septic, presaging the film’s fate. Of course, we didn’t know that then.”
A Prayer for the Dying was shot on location in Silvertown, East London. It went smoothly and the finished film was delivered on time and on budget to Goldwyn. There was, however, one major glitch; the American producers hated Rourke’s performance, and Rourke took an instant dislike to their locum. He had him banned from the set.
The film opens with the view of a narrow country road in Northern Ireland. IRA man Martin Fallon (Mickey Rourke) watches from a wood above as his team rigs a bomb. It is intended for a convoy of British army trucks scheduled to pass. As they approach they pull to the side, allowing a school bus full of kids to pass them. A mortified Fallon can only watch as the bus explodes.
The scene shifts to London, where the rest of the action is set. Local crime boss Jack Meehan (Alan Bates) wants Fallon, now on the run, to kill a prominent rival hood named Kristou. In exchange, he will be given $50,000, a new passport and the chance of a new life in America. Fallon initially declines. Damaged spiritually by his murderous work for the “glorious cause”, he wants no more of killing. “I never killed for money, or because I enjoyed it,” he says. When he learns that IRA agents Liam Docherty (Liam Neeson) and Siobhan Donovan (Alison Doody) have come after him for “desertion”, he agrees to the deal. Useless to his cause, hunted by police and IRA, he’s left with no choice – it’s either kill Kristou or be killed.
Disguised as a Roman Catholic priest, Fallon tracks Kristou to a cemetery. He kills him beside a relative’s grave. Seen by a local priest, Fr Da Costa (Bob Hoskins), Fallon silences him by confessing to the murder, sealing his lips under the pact of the confessional. Fallon also meets the priest’s blind niece, Anna (Sammi Davis), who, of course, falls in love with him. Fallon takes her to the local funfair, watched from a distance by Meehan’s thuggish brother Billy. Fallon leaves her at the presbytery not knowing that Billy is waiting inside. When he attempts to rape Anna, she stabs him with a pair of scissors.
Hodges and Rourke with the completion bond broker, who guarantees to finance the completion of a film should something go wrong
Eventually Fallon is tracked down by Docherty, but he cannot bring himself to shoot his friend. This failure costs him his own life. Donovan executes him. Angry that Fallon has not disposed of the priest, Meehan ambushes him aboard the ship taking him to the US. His master plan includes blowing up Da Costa and Anna with a bomb, designed to implicate the IRA. But Fallon escapes the trap, reaching the church before the bomb goes off. He confronts Meehan with the news of his brother’s death, and frees Anna and Da Costa. In the ensuing struggle, the bomb detonates. Meehan is killed and Fallon mortally wounded. Before he dies, trapped under debris, Da Costa recites “a prayer for the dying”.
Rourke is a compelling figure. His performance as a man caught in a moral dilemma is fascinating to watch. Whenever he’s on screen, an air of tension surrounds him. Bates, too, seems to take particular pleasure in playing the amoral sadistic mobster who, conveniently, also owns a funeral parlour.
The film returns to many of Hodges’ constant themes. Religious imagery is present throughout – even in the cut that was released. A Prayer for the Dying is replete with an almost biblical blind person, a statue of the Virgin Mary spattered with blood, and a massive crucifix falling from the church ceiling. In the film’s finale Fallon clings to the figure of Christ before both crash to the floor, ending up as a pile of rubble, much like his own faith had 40 years before.
Despite Hodges delivering what he thought was an efficient, gripping film to Goldwyn, it was taken to America and completely re-edited. Even Jon Scott’s minimal score was replaced with Bill Conti’s sickly-sentimental cod-Irish soundtrack.
“I had really enjoyed making the film and thought Mickey Rourke was just great in it. He had mastered the Belfast accent brilliantly, no easy job, and I thought we’d pulled it off. Again, I was wrong.
“I remember Goldwyn Jr telephoning just two days into shooting to ask how I was doing. I replied, ‘It’s like surfing!’ He laughed. I never heard him laugh again.
“The first intimation that we were making something beyond the ken of our American producers arrived by telex. They hated Rourke’s performance, describing it as ‘listless’. As further encouragement, they sent another telex suggesting he be replaced because he was mentally and physically incapable of performing the role. As Rourke’s characterization was based on a man having a breakdown, having lost his beliefs, their opinion was a triumphant endorsement of an extraordinary performance. Sadly, they didn’t see it that way. They imagined the IRA more as Mafia hit men, cross-fertilized with the heroes of Kung Fu movies. The realization that we were making different films dropped like a hand grenade. Only it didn’t explode for some months.
“. . . the director has to encompass the whole film in his mind, that’s his job. He has to stand firm while others have doubts, or the whole edifice will collapse.” Mike Hodges
“The problem is always the same in filmmaking. How do you get everybody involved to synchronize? The answer is, you can’t. You hope that when the jigsaw puzzle is finally put together, they will get the picture, so to speak. It’s an act of faith. But the problem of a united vision goes beyond even the makers, to the sales force. Many films are pre-sold around the world. But are these people selling what the filmmakers are making? And if it’s pre-sold, how can a film have the spontaneous life on which all art is based?
“Of one thing you can be sure, the director has to encompass the whole film in his mind, that’s his job. He has to stand firm while others have doubts, or the whole edifice will collapse. I completed A Prayer for the Dying in December 1986, on time and on budget. Some weeks later, I was recording organ music for the soundtrack. We were in St Paul’s, the actors’ church in Bedford Street, and I was looking at the commemorative plaques. One read, ‘Foolery, sir, does walk the orb. Like the sun it shines everywhere.’ Another portent? Soon afterwards, my version of the film was delivered to, and aborted by, Sam Goldwyn Jr in sunny Los Angeles.
“It’s an often-forgotten fact that a film is simply a juxtaposition of images and sounds; the order of which is decided by the director, together with his or her editor. It is then shown to the producer, and amended until both are satisfied with the cut. Previews with test audiences follow, so that the final version can be verified before cutting the negative. If the director is not allowed to control the order of the images and sounds he or she has created, then that person can no longer be considered the director. I don’t have to remind anyone of the fate meted out to Orson Welles, Von Stroheim, Keaton and many other cinema luminaries. This struggle for creative freedom has been a long and bloody one.
“In July 1987, five months after I delivered my version of the film, I was finally shown what Goldwyn Jr had perpetrated in my name. The film had been completely re-edited, and a different music and soundtrack substituted. The atmosphere was all gone – they went for mundane storytelling with the pace of a TV serial. I hated it. It was no longer the film I had made. Worse, that trust between director and actor, in this case Hoskins and Bates, had been breached. The role of Da Costa suffered the worst. Whilst the film released is not a totally awful film, it is nothing like the film I delivered.
Hodges with production supervisor Christabel Albery
“Goldwyn Jr later excused himself by saying that the film was now ‘more acceptable to American audiences’. Later he made me choke over my breakfast when, in a Sunday broadsheet, he is quoted as saying: ‘My crusade has always been to make British filmmakers believe in themselves, rather than to ape the American market.’”
Hodges washed his hands of the whole affair, publicly disowning the film after the producers refused to remove his name. “I often wonder if American audiences realize what is done in their name,” asks Hodges. “A Prayer for the Dying was one of many of my films to have been tampered with ‘in their name’. I think they would be deeply insulted.”
Hodges’ public condemnation attracted widespread coverage, across all media. This was mainly due to a press release Hodges’ put together through the PR company Sue Rolfe Associates, with the headline “Mike Hodges Disowns A Prayer For The Dying”. This news release read:
Press Release
“Film director Mike Hodges completed the film A Prayer for the Dying for Samuel Goldwyn in February this year. Since then the first opportunity Hodges was given to view the final version was on Tuesday 14th July. He was appalled by what he saw and immediately demanded that his name be removed from the credits. Hoskins and Bates having seen Hodges version asked Goldwyn to change it but to no avail. Mickey Rourke has already disowned the film. A Prayer for the Dying is due to open in America on August 28th. Peter Snell, the producer, refused to remove Hodges name from the film despite the fact that he had always insisted that he would have the right to do so should he wish.”
This press release was originally intended for the trade papers, such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. However, it was released to all UK national newspapers. Somehow a rumour began to circulate that Hodges’ version had been re-edited without his consent because it had a pro-IRA ending – a serious allegation implying he was sympathetic to that cause. Hodges responded in an open letter to the Daily Telegraph: “Let me make it clear, A Prayer for the Dying is the story of a man who has defected from the IRA, sickened by the use of violence. It is simply not possible for any version of the film to be pro-IRA. Even my adversaries in this dispute would agree with that.”
The storm that surrounded the film was similar to the subject of his second film Rumour. The irony of this didn’t go unnoticed by Hodges: “Now I really knew what it was like to be set on by the rat pack. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. The lies and the ignorance undermines any belief system you may have left.”
This was the third film in a row to be taken away from Hodges and re-cut without his approval, something which angered him greatly. “After going public,” he explains, “no one in the industry wanted to know about me. Defend your films and you risk being branded as ‘difficult’. Be passionate about them and you’re vulnerable. I learnt that throughout the 1980s.”
Not many people have seen the original director’s cut of A Prayer for the Dying. It is certainly a different movie: different in mood. A weird concoction of religion, politics and gothic melodrama, it is very much a mainstream movie.
Interestingly, the director’s cut of A Prayer for the Dying may well find an audience after all. Hodges has been in talks with MGM, which now own the rights, to restore the film to its original form for a special-edition DVD release. “The material they cut must be sitting on a shelf somewhere,” says Hodges. “It’s just a matter of tracking it down. I would really love to see it released in its proper form. Will we keep Sam Goldwyn Jr’s name on it I wonder?”
After the ordeal of A Prayer for the Dying, some close friends approached Hodges to write a script based on events surrounding the controversial 1937 musical drama, The Cradle Will Rock. It was written by Marc Blitzstein and directed by the 22-year-old Orson Welles. Very influenced by Bertolt Brecht, the setting was an American steel town. The subject was the exploitation of the workers, and prostitution at every level. When word got out that the musical was an attack on capitalism, resources from the New Deal funding were cut off and they were even denied use of the theatre. On the opening night Orson Welles and John Houseman, the producer, moved the show (and the audience) 20 blocks up Broadway. There it was performed without scenery, props or costumes. “Instead of breaking under political pressure,” explains Hodges, “they just took the show to another venue. The only problem was that the cast couldn’t legally appear on stage as they were under contract. John Houseman realized that, under the American Constitution, nobody could stop them joining in the musical from among the audience.” This they did and the play was a hit. It ran for three months.
“I agreed to write this piece with the proviso that all the characters were not Welles and Houseman but actors ‘pretending’ to be Welles, Houseman and the others. I set all the action in a theatre and, as in Squaring the Circle, had characters talking to camera, in this case two stage hands.
“My finished script was good enough to attract Tim Robbins as Orson Welles, Jeff Goldblum as Marc Blitzstein and Alan Rickman as John Houseman. But sadly it was a bit too off the wall for the money men, and, at the time, this cast was relatively unknown. We didn’t get the finance.
“A few years later, I was in Los Angeles, visiting Bob Altman on the set of The Player. It was at this point I actually met Tim Robbins for the first time, as up until then our dealings had been through his agent. When I was introduced to him, I asked if he remembered my script, which I’d been calling Midnight Shakes the Memory. He told me how much he liked it and that he still kept a copy at home!
“Cut to the chase! When he became a major star because of The Player, and Alan Rickman’s career took off with Truly, Madly, Deeply, I suggested we try to get financial backing once more.
“Not surprisingly, the Houseman role was now too small for Alan. And when they approached Robbins he said ‘yes’, but wanted to write and direct it himself. I stepped aside immediately, knowing full well that with his name attached to it, it would be made.
“I had written the original script for a token $10,000 and assumed I would now be paid a proper fee for my work. Wrong again!
“I’d used a paragraph from Houseman’s biography in my script and required permission to use it. Houseman read it just before he died and approved – but we still had to pay $10,000 for the rights. The producers, however, could only afford $5,000 – so I gave half of my fee straight back! Now, years later, they were expecting me to simply sign over my rights so that Robbins could make his film. And for this they offered to repay me the $5,000. This time around I wasn’t prepared to be screwed and made sure they paid a substantial fee for my work. Robbins’ film was a properly funded big-budget film with lots of stars. They could afford to pay me properly but, needless to say, they tried not to.”
Tim Robbins took over the project, turning it into a tapestry of interwoven stories far removed from the original story: Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) commissions Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades) to paint the lobby of Rockefeller Center, while Italian propagandist Margherita Sarfatti (Susan Sarandon) sells Da Vincis to millionaires to fund the Mussolini war effort. A paranoid ventriloquist (Bill Murray) tries to rid his vaudeville troupe of communists, and a 22-year-old Orson Welles (Angus MacFadyen) directs his Federal Theater group in an infamous stage production of The Cradle Will Rock, which is closed down on the eve of its opening by US soldiers. The film, which he called The Cradle Will Rock (1999) also stars Hank Azaria, Joan Cusack, Cary Elwes, Philip Baker Hall, Cherry Jones, Vanessa Redgrave, John Turturro, and Emily Watson.
Hodges received no credit on Robbins’ film – and says he wouldn’t want one:
“It was a mess. I thought it was pretentious twaddle. He overcomplicated a wonderfully simple storyline by filling the film with superfluous posturing characters like Rockefeller and Diego Rivera – presumably to cast it up with famous people. He literally lost the plot, which was a great shame. What I had written originally was so simple and I believe simplicity is the key to everything.”
