"Why have they made a film about him?" one old-time villain asked me. "As a criminal hes nothing!" Taking the former Michael Petersons career into account, youd be forced to agree: arrested and sentenced for minor robberies; his terms substantially increased due to dangerous behaviour and nuisance value inside; serving a virtual life sentence after taking hostage the teacher who encouraged his fascinatingly primitive art. A Great Train Robber Charlie Bronson is most definitely not. But this seemingly psychotic prisoner also has an innate sense of the drama of his own life. A naturally violent man, he was given his 70s movie-star nom de guerre by a bareknuckle boxing promoter (Charlie himself hadnt seen any of the movie-star Bronsons films - not even the sublime Once Upon a Time in the West). Since then, his increasingly deranged antics - often attacking his enemies in a naked wardance-like ritual have added to his notoriety and his jail terms. Freddie Foreman, who served time with Bronson at Her Majestys Prison Full Sutton, in Yorkshire, empathises with the convicts sense of psychodrama. "He has to perform to an audience because all the other prisoners are waiting for him to kick off: 'Whens Charlie gonna start? Whens he gonna attack a screw or a prisoner? When hes gonna get up on the roof and throw all the slates off?' Its like showbiz with him." Foreman claims to have pitched the project to Guy Ritchie before it was taken up by Danish crime movie director Nicholas Winding Refn. As with the filmmakers subsequent Drive and Only God Forgives, Bronson skirts a strange line between the crime genre and surrealism - leavened with tragicomedy, as the prisoner becomes a clown in his own mind. While barely shown in US theatres, its a modern cult classic that earned a 76% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also opened up a portfolio of true crime-inspired roles for Tom Hardy - leading on to Lawless and Legend, via his terrifying tour de force as 1920s London gangster Alfie Solomons in BBC2s blinding Peaky Blinders.
Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
