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Howard Marks has enjoyed a colourful life, after studying Physics at Balliol College Oxford he went on to become one of the world’s most wanted drug smugglers.
At one point the man now known as Mr Nice, reputedly controlled 10 per cent of the world’s hashish trade, before being captured and imprisoned for seven years.
The Welshman has given up on the marijuana trade, now touring the world as a speaker and author and there is a movie in the pipeline of his best-selling autobiography Mr Nice.
Now the one time drug baron has opened up about his favourite movies of all time and how it should be compulsory for all children to watch the Peter Brook’s film, Lord of the Flies.
The 66 year old said: “Peter Brook’s adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a truly great movie, that’s the one that sticks in my mind from my youth. It’s one of those anarchic films that all kids should see, even if their parents don’t want them to.”
“I saw it as a kid, and I just became much more suspicious of peoples motives. I hadn’t read the book- never have- but I think film is much more powerful medium anyway.”
When asked which film he would take on a desert island with him, Marks chose Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic Mean Streets.
He said: “Mean Streets was one film I particularly liked, I would have to take that with me. I loved the soundtrack. One of the best soundtracks ever and the timing of each song was perfect.
“When I saw it, it was when it came out in the early 70s. I thought of myself a bit like Johnny boy, the Robert De Niro character. I was living in New York at the time and I felt like I was living that kind of life back then.”
One film that gets mentioned over and over to Marks is Ted Demme’s cocaine-centric movie Blow, but he admits he has never seen the gangster caper saying: “Given my own past activities with various substances, a lot of people mentioned blow to me. And it’s not that I’m being perverse or anything, but I have genuinely just never got round to seeing it.
“Cinema’s don’t allow smoking, so I just don’t often go! You can’t get away with it. But I like Johnny Depp as an actor, I’ve seen the pirates ones.”