It's All Going Wonderfully Well - Growing up with Bob Hoskins - Review

****

Written by Rosa Hoskins

Bob Hoskins with baby daughter Rosa

Bob Hoskins, one of this country's best loved actors and who tragically died in 2014, never wrote an autobiography - in fact one can actually imagine his scorning the pomposity of such a suggestion. And in the absence of such a memoir, It's All Going Wonderfully Well - Growing up with Bob Hoskins written by his daughter Rosa proves to be an enlightening and reflective read.

To many around the world, Bob Hoskins was probably most famous for playing private eye Eddie Valiant in Robert Zemeckis' Oscar winning live action / animation mash up, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But it was before Hollywood studios were to summons him from North London, back in the early 1980's, that Hoskins achieved British stardom on screen and stage with two remarkably different and yet towering performances.

In John Mackenzie's 1981 release The Long Good Friday, Hoskins played Harold Shand, an old-school London gangster. Colossus-like, Shand bestrode his empire, oblivious to the forces of political crime and terrorism that were eroding his firm from within and which would ultimately destroy his traditional East End villainy. Barrie Keefe's script for that movie was as brilliantly funny as it was brutal (only Tarantino has since combined violence with wry wit to similar effect) and much of the film's success (it is frequently nominated in the top ten of British films and at #1 in British gangster flicks) is credited to Hoskins' performance.

And then a year later Richard Eyre, in one of the bravest and most visionary casting decisions ever, chose Hoskins to play Frank Loesser's low-life Nathan Detroit in what was to be the National Theatre's groundbreaking and first ever musical production, Guys and Dolls. The production scooped countless awards and nominations and is still talked about to this day. With his three fellow leads and a faultless company of actors and creatives, Hoskins learned to tap-dance, polished up his singing and proved that his indomitable Cockney charm could work as well on Broadway as in Bethnal Green. Born in 1983, some months after her dad had moved on from the show's cast, one of Rosa Hoskins' fondly spoken regrets is that she had never seen her dad's take on Nathan Detroit.

Her book however is more than a biography of Bob Hoskins' career. Rather, it is a deeply personal and incredibly poignant look back and appreciation of a young woman's love for her father. There is an unpretentious and at times unflinching honesty to this woman’s writing. She speaks with radiant warmth of her dad, but also and without self-pity, talks of her own struggles, both personal and professional and how her father tried at all times to support her. There are also some wonderful glimpses into her father's private life. In the latter part of his career, when the film parts offered were not quite so glamorous he described the "cameo role" in a movie as "....the governor....you're paid a lot of money, everybody treats you like the Crown Jewels, you're in and out and, if the film's a load of shit, nobody blames you". If Harold Shand had ever given up crime for acting, those words could so easily have been spoken by him!

The book is meticulously and beautifully researched, with Zemeckis, Dame Judi Dench and Ray Winstone amongst many of the industry greats and not-so-greats sharing their memories of Hoskins with his daughter. Perhaps the only omission is Helen Mirren, whose portrayal of Victoria, Harold’s moll in The Long Good Friday, came close to matching the complex depths of Hoskins' performance.

As an impressionable sixth former and then student both The Long Good Friday and then Guys and Dolls burned themselves into my appreciative psyche and to this day many of Harold Shand's phrases, as delivered by Hoskins, can aptly sum up so many of life's moments. And it is a mark of crafted talent in Rosa Hoskins' writing that the man she writes of so fondly as her father, is also so recognisable as the man that millions loved on screen. Like myself, one may have never met the man or his daughter personally and yet this book suggests that what we saw on stage and screen was, at all times, the very essence of the man himself - irreverent, witty and above all caring and decent. Rosa Hoskins’ words paint a rich picture and her sentiments will touch the hearts not only of those who admired her father's work, but quite possibly of anyone who mourns the loss of someone deeply loved.

It's All Going Wonderfully Well, is a rather wonderful read, hard to put down and keep the tissues close at hand. I never knew Bob Hoskins personally - but after reading Rosa's book, it turns out I did.

My reflections on The Long Good Friday can be found here.

And my reflections on the National Theatre's 1982 production of Guys and Dolls can be found here.

It's All Going Wonderfully Well - Growing up with Bob Hoskins - Can be purchased in bookshops and online through all good distributors.

30 years on - Looking back on The Long Good Friday

 *****

 

Hoskins addresses friends....

It is sobering to acknowledge that more than 30 years have passed since The Long Good Friday was released to the British audience. Film more than any other medium, has the power to jolt us into this recognition of time passing. The viewing of a striking piece of cinema can stay with one for a long time and combining this power of recall, with the massive audience that a movie can be exposed to ( as compared to the more intimate reach of say a stage masterpiece, restricted to only one theatre, rather than a general release to cinemas)  and a film, especially one that is popular, can very quickly be established as a recognised moment, or milestone, in a society's cultural history.



..& enemies in The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday is one such seminal and popular movie. I first saw it on its release in 1981 having just finished my A levels and having grown up in 70's London. The film’s impact then was breathtaking. The storyline was brave and credible.  The screenplay was from Barrie Keefe, whose mastery of the nuances and grit of London at the start of Thatcher's 80s had an almost Dickensian accuracy for its time and with a soundtrack that at all times complemented the graphic and often brutal imagery of the movie. And atop this excellence, a collection of performances that would go on to define many celebrated acting careers, all deftly helmed by the perceptive eye of the late John Mackenzie.

So why write these thoughts right now? A chance scan through Twitter this week told me of a screening of the movie, at a small screen in Stratford E15, followed by a Q&A with producer Barry Hanson. How to resist? I rarely visit this part of London (though when I do, to visit the Theatre Royal Stratford, the entertainment is usually excellent) and so to arrive and witness the dominance of the Olympic park construction bestriding the area, the resonance of the film’s vision for how London was even then on the cusp of change, rang so true.

The film's story follows the decline of a "traditional" East End gangster Harold Shand, who fails to recognise the power of the tentacles of an Irish politically-based terror campaign that is methodically waging a violent and destructive war against his 'Corporation'. A sub plot depicts a relationship that Shand is seeking to cultivate with the US mafia to fund  the development of a future London Olympic park and who have sent two key players over from New York to negotiate with him. As he is betrayed and his empire disintegrates not only before him but humiliatingly, in front of the Mafia stooges too, Shand's rage, disbelief and inability to cope with the new world order, is a masterful performance by Bob Hoskins.

Helen Mirren plays Victoria, a youthful but smart moll/wife to Shand, and it was interesting to hear from Hanson, and indeed to concur with him, that in his opinion, throughout the story, it is Victoria who is perhaps the most powerful and manipulative character of all.

But Hoskins and Mirren, whilst the two star names of the movie, led a cast that had not only aspects of the UK's established best - Dave King as a deliciously bent copper stands out - but so many other names who were to reach later stardom. That Pierce Brosnan, a future James Bond no less, as a young bare chested Irish assassin barely features on the credits and Derek Thompson who played a critical role in the film's story and who was to go on to lead the cast of BBC TV's Casualty drama series but who was professionally unknown at the time of filming, is a measure of the quality of the production's casting.

I make no bones about it: I admire and enjoy the film. Keefe's script is as timely today as it was then and his writing, combined with Hoskin's unique vocal style, is the blackest of comedy. The writer has a talent for penning moments of deepest London based Blitz-spirit irony. Hoskins' farewell speech to the Americans in particular shines, though the script is peppered with wryly observed gems, brilliantly delivered.

With the London Olympics about to start, and Operation Elveden digging into police corruption, to echo just two of the films themes, the story's message remains as relevant today as it was at the start of the 80s. If you've seen the film before dust down the DVD or rent it from iTunes/Netflix, and watch it again. If you haven't yet seen it, then do so. The Long Good Friday is British filmmaking at its best.