Klinger contacted Hodges on 27 January 1970 with a copy of Jack's Return Home and contracted him[REF] to direct and adapt the screenplay, paying him a flat fee of £7,000 for his services [REF].
Locations along the east coast of England had been scouted by Hodges and Klinger in the spring of 1970, to find a landscape that suggested a "hard, deprived background" [REF].