James Caan: my lunches, fallouts and golf-shoe hunts with the Hollywood legend

I can’t remember calling him James. It was Jimmy from the off. An email came from his agent: Jimmy wanted to talk about my script but he’d prefer to meet me in person. Could I come to Los Angeles? I was on the next flight. I wanted him badly for the role of Tom Rockwell, a retired air-force colonel with a lot to hide, for my film Out of Blue, a neo-noir adaptation of the Martin Amis novel Night Train, starring Patricia Clarkson as the detective investigating the death of Tom’s daughter.