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When Jamie Met Jack

There are lots of good stories about Jack Bond. There’s the one with the armed helicopter that chased him across an Italian mountainside, there’s the one about getting sacked from Points of View, and the one about doing LSD on...

WORDS BY ALEX MILLER, PHOTO BY WILL FAIRMAN

There are lots of good stories about Jack Bond. There’s the one with the armed helicopter that chased him across an Italian mountainside, there’s the one about getting sacked from

Points of View

, and the one about doing LSD on television. There are the stories about Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, Cecil Day Lewis and Renne Magritte; but, it’s the one about the naked BBC employee and the waste paper basket which got him the nickname Mad Jack.

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I first interviewed him in 2009. Three films he’d made with his lover Jane Arden had been re-released after 20 years locked away by a grieving Jack when Jane had killed herself in 1982.

Anti-Clock, Separation

and

The Other Side of the Underneath

are remarkable, surreal films full of murder, conspiracy, madness, and paranoia and they completely freaked me out.

I wittered on about Jack for a year to anyone who’d listen. I’d go to parties with his DVDs, handing them out to anyone who expressed interest in what I was going on about. Klaxons’ Jamie Reynolds was one of those people. When he borrowed the movies he became as obsessed as me and desperate to meet Jack.

So, one Saturday we arranged for Jack, Jamie and a VBS crew to hang out in Hampstead. They drank a few pints of Guinness, went to the fun fair and talked about girls, and art, and Jack losing 50 mental patients in a wood. The film,

VBS Meets Jack Bond

, is live on VBS now. I spoke to Jamie about it.

Vice: Hey Jamie, so why were you particularlinterested to meet Jack Bond?

Jamie Reynolds:

Having seen his films, which are some of the most brilliant films I’ve ever seen, I thought he was clearly a very clever man, somebody I would very much like to sit down and have a natter with. Someone whose brain I could pick at. And I was very much wishing that I would become friends with this man.

Do you think you managed to become buddies with him?

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I think we’re good mates, yeah! I think he’s kind of becoming the champion of our circle. We’ve been fatherless for a while, but this wonderful man has come along and he’s a definite contender to be our leader.

So what’s your favourite of his movies?

My favourite is probably

Anti-Clock

, but I think the one that hit me, the one that I got really excited by, was

Separation

. That one hit a nerve because it’s about girls. It’s quite sad and quiet and cold, quite distant and awkward. I think I shared some of those feelings and I thought: “Here’s a man that understands.”

He said that he’d seen Klaxons on Jools Holland’s show and that we’d had quite an interesting performance. He’s an amazing man, he’s lived a million lives and every story he tells always betters the last. He’s possibly the most inspirational person I have ever come across.

In 1979, emotionally exhausted after the completion of

Anti-Clock

, Jack escaped to Europe where the life of this young filmmaker took a surprising, and violent turn. What follows is an abridged extract from the excellent

Mad Jack

—Jack Bond’s autobiography-in-progress.

I arrived in Rome and checked into an expensive hotel. Awaking from a long sleep, I went downstairs to the bar, ordered a large scotch and soda and slumped into a comfortable leather armchair. Seated in a corner were two smartly suited men wearing shiny lace-up shoes that I took to be in their late thirties. They were speaking in lowered tones until they caught me looking at them. They raised their glasses in mute salute and signalled me over to their table. “You British?”

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They were, in a word, smugglers, removing very large sums of money out of Italy to safe havens in Switzerland. The prohibition on moving unauthorised cash was strictly enforced but they had managed to leave no trace and had an ever-growing list of eager clients trusting them with sacks full of the stuff. I was indeed intrigued sufficiently to ask if I could join them. So now they were three.

Our first assignment was on behalf of a motor manufacturer. Steve and Ludovico were my mentors and one morning we set off in a battered black Mercedes 280 SE Cabriolet on the long run up to Turin. Over a great meal in the simplest of roadside cafes, I reflected on my new life. Steve and Ludovico had generously offered me practically as much money as they would make for themselves. Steve, the tall blond American from Margaretville in Upstate New York was the more taciturn of the two, friendly but taciturn. Dark haired, Ludovico sounded as American as apple pie in a Bronxy sort of Italian way. As for myself, Jack Bond of Little Venice, London, educated at Richmond and East Shene Grammar School and then National Service in Hong Kong with the Royal Army Education Corps, thereafter with BBC Television, I was most definitely going off the rails.

On the outskirts of Turin we passed through the gates of a grey factory. Steve headed for a circular ramp, up and up to the top of multi-storey car park and then parked in slot 13. Two cars on the otherwise empty floor flashed their lights, then moved, stopping one on either side of us. We three got out of the Mercedes. The drivers of the station wagons threw open their rear doors. Still no one was talking and so, in total silence, fifteen or so boxes were transferred into the boot of the Mercedes.

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En route to the Swiss border we stopped some distance before the border and turned off up a slope to an isolated farmhouse. Steve drove up to a makeshift barn, gently nudged the doors open with the bumper and drove inside. “Jack, in your terms the script goes like this. Tonight we pack the money into backpacks. Day off tomorrow, we’ll just hang around here. Then at dark tomorrow night we go up and over on foot. We get picked up in a track and down to the bank. We deposit the dough. We wait while they count it, pick up a receipt, say goodbye, spend a few days in Geneva and then go back the way we came.”

And so it came to pass that we climbed all night on sheep and goat tracks. I was practically dead with exhaustion. Every muscle creaked and ached. The weight of my pack was intolerable. The best bit had been unloading the money. A lot of the cash was in brand new notes and the smell was intoxicating, like the smell of new mown hay.

The legwork over, waiting for us in a lay-by was a Toyota Landcruiser driven by Ski Tony, a tanned mountain racer who in winter ran a ski school. As we were ushered into the German bank through a side door and thence to the top floor, I couldn’t help feeling like a passenger in every sense to the operation. I watched as they meticulously counted and weighed the money at blinding speed and resolved that if I was to stay with them I wanted a more central role.

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In just five months we made real progress. A total of eleven runs had gone smoothly. I had my highly placed Police Officer on board and one other in Customs. Ludo was a top-flight manager and kept a general sense of calm and alertness to danger. I moved us all, now eleven strong, to a small family-run hotel where the lift did not stop on the third floor without a special key, giving us the privacy we needed. Our group was chosen for youth, fitness, and a clean-cut appearance. They were, all of them, making money beyond their wildest dreams, which for safekeeping was kept in a company corporate account managed by Ludo.

As our distinguished client list grew to embrace many prosperous walks of life, even including the movie business, I noticed that I was putting on weight, dressing ever more perfectly thanks to a stylish but subtle tailor. Life was good, exciting and, dare I say it, beginning to feel normal. Once a week I went for dinner at my Police Chief’s pretty apartment where his perfectly formed, plump wife would cook us home confected magic.

Then one night he dropped a bombshell. He heard that a fraud squad based in Turin was on its way to Rome where they would be based. He would never know whom this plain clothed group consisted of. Their brief would be to wipe people like us out. He was genuinely afraid, as was Francesca. I was going out with their daughter and had become part of the family.

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Ludo took the problem seriously. “The next run is our biggest group run ever. We can’t quit on that. We’ve already got the money…but…let’s consider it. By the way the new kid on the block looks good, American football player, only nineteen, called Lewis.”

So, we would stop. Nobody in the team was to know anything until the last and very final run. Then I would dismantle the entire edifice, making sure that we did not leave one debt unpaid—tailors, bars, garages, all would be settled. We would undo the changes we had made to the third floor of the hotel, decamp to Geneva, divide up, fly everybody home or to wherever they wanted to go, after one big blow out party.

The last run was a monster. Eight cars, every last member was on board, including me, and I hadn’t personally been on a run for over a year. The excitement was palpable, but I for one had come accept the disbandment with something close to relief.

Halfway up the steep but manageable path and everyone was scrambling with verve, even my underused legs were holding up. Up and up we went, our broken-in boots kicking aside small bestrewn rocks. Just a few small hours to our waiting coach and the familiar run down into dear old Geneva, the count up and the usual division of the spoils.

Then from behind us came the sound of a small helicopter clattering in. Soon it was overhead and low. Everyone stopped to look up at the hovering bird of prey. A loudspeaker blared with the raucous but indecipherable sound of a man shouting. Suddenly we were bathed in white light as the chopper’s spotlight picked us out, then more of the staccato, distorted sound of an angry male voice.

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Ludo came over to me. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know. But I do know this. They can’t possibly land here.”

Again the spotlight raked us. “Fuck them. Run,” I yelled.

We lugged it as fast as we could. There came the unmistakeable crackle of a machine gun spattering the rocks around us. “Fuck them, keep running.” The bird flew round again and re-approached, once more the brittle rattle of the machine gun wildly sprayed its unpleasant message of late. Nobody stopped running. Then abruptly, the helicopter span away and clattered off into the distance, leaving the sky peaceful once more. “Ludo, is everyone okay?”

Ludo and I slid back the way we had come until we found Lewis, stone dead. We sat beside the fallen Lewis and reflected on the nightmare of it all. Lewis had only just turned 20, three days before. We disengaged the body from the backpack, which had itself been ripped by the gunfire. Blood began to form thick pools on the rock-strewn earth. “Let’s bury him,” I said.

“How?”

“With stones. Make a cairn with stones.”

With hardly a word exchanged we straightened poor Lewis out with his arms crossed on his chest, like the fifteenth knight of old. I took off my shirt to cover his face then we tenderly enveloped his cooling form with an intricate placement of stones. The cairn took on the formal shape of a tomb. After a prayer led by Ludo, we silently completed our journey.

I needed to call Lewis’s family in Arizona. A woman’s voice answered. I couldn’t deal with a mother and I gently clicked off the phone. Two hours later I got a man’s voice. “Am I speaking with the father of Lewis?”

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“You are. Who is this please?”

“My name is Jack Bond. I am afraid there is dreadful news for you… (my silent pause was matched by his breath) I have to tell you that Lewis is dead.” Another long pause, then he spoke, “I was always afraid of something like this. I know who you are Jack, and I knew what Lewis was doing.”

Thirty-six hours later I was waiting for Lewis’ father Frank at Geneva airport. He came through carrying a small suitcase. I had expected a tall figure on account of Lewis’s stature, but I found myself shaking hands with a short, bald headed man resembling Phil Silvers. Ludo had picked my Bentley up from the garage and as I put Frank’s suitcase into the boot, I saw Frank’s eyes rake the luxurious car, and I’m not entirely sure with approval.

On the drive I told him everything, down to the last detail. To my surprise he made it clear that he attached no blame to me. When we finally made it to his son’s resting place we sat side by side on some rocks close by. “The options are that I get him back to America…”

He cut me short, “How do you propose to do that? It’s not that simple. How many times was he hit?”

“Three times, in the back, two amidships and one in the spine. He died immediately.”

“You can’t just ship a body. The formalities are hairy. They would demand an autopsy. He didn’t die of pneumonia.”

“You know about these things, do you?”

“Enough.”

“I never did ask Lewis what it is you do.”

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“He wouldn’t have told you. FBI.”

“FBI, Christ Almighty.”

“He doesn’t play much part in it.”

“I imagine not…Lewis was due quite a lot of money. I can arrange a banker’s draft.”

“How much?”

“About eight hundred thousand dollars.”

“Can I get it in cash?”

“I can do that tomorrow.”

He stared at the little stony pile, “There’s something else, can we build the stones higher?”

“Is he going to stay here?”

“He is.”

And so, over about three hours, we meticulously built up Lewis’s cairn. When we had done what Frank thought was enough, he bent down and kissed the last stone we had laid, then turned to me soulfully, “He was a beautiful boy, Jack.”

“I know.”

For more information about

Mad Jack

, please contact Laura Morris Literary Agency.