I watched TCM Remembers just before Christmas, a look back at all of the movie lights that have gone out this year. The British filmmaker Mike Hodges died too late - December 17 - to make the cut. He was 90. I've written about his work before on this blog, but I haven't devoted a post to what is my favorite of all his films, Pulp (1972), which he made after his first film Get Carter became a huge hit. Pulp, however, was a financial failure, and it sent Hodges's career in a different direction. Moving easily between film and television, a career spanning forty years had its surprises and disappointments.
The claims I'm going to make for Pulp are largely personal. Since I first watched the film, on a late night television airing in the late 1970s, every time I had an opportunity to see it again over the fifty years since, I did so happily. By now I must have seen it seven or eight times. I became a part of its cult following.
Pulp is an odd, one-off, and rather self-indulgent film, the work of a young filmmaker who had a rare opportunity to make a personal statement with resources he wouldn't otherwise have had at his disposal. And Mike Hodges did dispose of them, as surely as if he had misplaced them. The Three Mikes production company (Michael Klinger, Michael Caine, and Hodges) would dissolve and Michael Caine would never work with Hodges again.
The stodgy plot is uneventful. In a publishing house typing pool "somewhere in the Mediterranean," a writer of low-grade novels crammed with vicarious crime and sex - otherwise known as "pulp," named Mickey King turns up for an appointment with the representative of a mysterious client who wants Mickey to ghost-write his life story. King is played by Michael Caine, coiffed and bespectacled in 70s style, and he narrates the story with characteristic deadpan humor.
The mysterious client turns out to be former Hollywood star and associate of gangsters, Preston Gilbert, played by Mickey Rooney, now retired and living in a secluded villa. (The locale feels like Italy, but shooting was done entirely on the island of Malta.) Gilbert wants Mickey to write his tell-all biography, but before Mickey can even commit an opening sentence to paper, Gilbert is murdered at a party. Feeling cheated out of a lucrative fee, Mickey proceeds to investigate the crime on his own, and almost gets killed following clues to a dead end. He winds up the captive of a corrupt prince, recuperating from a gunshot wound to his shin. Sitting on a terrace and writing of his imagined revenge on his captors, he mutters, "I'll get the bastards yet!"
As Mickey, Michael Caine is engaged with the material, even when the material isn't engaging. Mickey Rooney is typecast as a Hollywood has-been, showing off even when no one is watching. He's killed in the middle of a painful slapstick routine, posing as an incompetent waiter. When he falls dead, the crowd applauds. Lionel Stander, always playing heavies, is at least authentic, even if nothing he says or does is. Micky's noirish one-liners are used as a counterpoint to the action, which accentuates their falsity. Hodges is spoofing his own spoof. The cast is dotted with Italian actors, notably Leopoldo Trieste. Pulp was partly an homage to John Huston, and in fact the Italian actor Giulio Donnini appeared in Beat the Devil nineteen years before Pulp.
Having seen the film so many times, I was curious to know what Michael Caine had to say about it in his memoir, What's It All About? Having met Shakira, his wife-to-be, shortly before shooting in Malta, his memory of it is rose-tinted:
Pulp was the second film that I produced with Michael Klinger after Get Carter, and Mike Hodges was again the director. It was a strange little piece and it had also been written by Mike as a sort of homage to John Huston. It was a real oddball of a movie that never really quite worked. Its heart was in the right place, but in a business where wallets are kept over the heart it did not count for much. Pulp never made any real money, but I again had a wonderful experience making it so I remember it with affection. It was winter in England when we arrived in Malta, where it was beautifully warm so we were ahead already. Shakira eventually joined me and the temperature got even hotter as we embarked on an idyll of really discovering each other in a hotel on the beach, which couldn’t have been better had we planned it. Being absolutely besotted by this lady I don’t remember much of the actual film-making, even though I was supposed to be the associate producer, but Mike Klinger held it all together and gave us his blessing. He was a small rotund man with a perpetual smile on his face, and what with this look and his benevolent attitude towards Shakira and me, he always seemed like an elderly and slightly sinful Cupid.(1)
I recently found some remarks made by Mike Hodges in a Foreword to a book about Get Carter that apply equally to Pulp:
It is salutary to be reminded of the process of creativity. For film makers of my age influences have often become obscured. Ghosts in the machine. Pentimento. A film seen just once in the distant past – and I mean just ‘once’ – for this was long before videos. Then you will come across it decades later – usually on – and recognise where some ‘moment’ in one of your films has come from. It is always startling fact and fiction occupying the same territory in one’s brain – recognising our amazing ability to collect and store slivers of time. With that comes the realisation that originality is not quite what it seems.(2)
It's difficult for me to properly assess the qualities that I like so much in Pulp, since it's become such a private place. "Everyone walking this earth," Mickey wrote, "has a secret closet he'd rather left closed. Stop." Having no one with whom to share this little film suits me just fine. Again, I won't call it a work of art, since I'm quite capable of distinguishing between what I like and what is demonstrably good. Pulp falls considerably short of greatness, but I love it. Every time I remember the film I think of the bittersweet theme music composed by George Martin. Like the film, it's stuck in my head on eternal repeat.
Remember that thou art pulp and unto pulp thou shalt return.
Cheerio, Mike Hodges.
1 Caine, Michael, What's It All About? (London: Arrow Books, 2010)
2 Chibnall, Steve, Get Carter (London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2003)
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