When the best-laid plans work out – thanks to John Hurt

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Given that this year's Bradford International Film Festival runs for just 11 out of 365 days, I'm waiting for the moment when someone asks "So what do you do for the rest of the year?"

It's a fair question, I suppose. But like any long-term project, it's the pre-planning that's key. Get enough work done at the start of the year and, 12 months on, things fall smoothly into place.

But such a scenario works only in an ideal world. The reality is much different and involves tortuous, interminable negotiations with sundry film financiers, distributors, managers, PAs, secretaries and, the bane of any festival director's life, the dreaded agent.

The last year has supplied me with several anecdotes to fill a chapter or three in my modest memoirs, should they ever materialise. Of agents and their snootiness, my favourite scathing riposte came courtesy of a reply from Jessica Lange's representative.

I'd drawn up a hit list of potential guests, all of whom had significant careers worthy of big screen retrospectives. Topping the list was Ms Lange, an actress whose career had soared in the Eighties and who collected an Oscar in 1995 for Blue Sky, the final film by Bradford-born writer/director Tony Richardson.

A formal and congratulatory letter was duly written. It emphasised the celebratory nature of the planned film season, linked Lange and Richardson with his Yorkshire birthplace and ended by inviting Ms Lange to accept a lifetime achievement award.

The word on 60-year-old Lange was that she was a personable and delightful guest who travelled with her playwright husband, Sam Shepard. Together, they made for a tremendous in-person double-whammy. And the films – among them Frances, Tootsie, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Cape Fear, Music Box, All That Jazz and Titus – would set any cinephile's mouth watering.

I opened my inbox one morning to find an email from Lange's agent containing eight words that ruined my day. In lower case, it read "she will not be in the uk thanks".

No "Dear Mr Earnshaw". No "Thank you for your kind letter, but..." No apology. No explanation. No interest. No grammar. Nix. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

Irked, I moved on. My list contained several other names. One was John Hurt. A few short weeks later, a colleague worked with Hurt on a pioneering theatre production and asked, quite casually, if he had ever received a retrospective of his work in the UK.

It turned out Hurt had not. What's more, he was intrigued by the idea. A letter la Lange was sent. Hurt's wife, Anwen, responded by email. Subject to work, she said, John would be delighted to accept my invitation.

Over the next eight months, I stalked my quarry via his wife.

Inevitably, the response was the same: the date is in the diary but

he can't commit yet. Time ticked on. Always there was the potential for Hurt to back out.

He never did, and tomorrow night he'll be my guest for an on-stage interview at the National Media Museum. Call it kismet, but clearly some things are just meant to be. And who needs agents, anyway...?