Alexander Cox (born Bebington,^[1] Merseyside, 15 December 1954) is a British film director, screenwriter, nonfiction author and sometime actor, notable for his idiosyncratic style and approach to scripts^{[citation needed]}. Cox experienced success early in his career with Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, but since the release and commercial failure of Walker, he has focused his career on independent movies.^{[citation needed]}

Background[link]

Cox has previously cited Luis Buñuel and Akira Kurosawa as influences,^[2] as well as the great Western movie directors Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and John Ford. Cox also wrote a book on the history of the genre called 10,000 Ways to Die. While he once directed films for Universal Pictures, such as Repo Man and Walker, since the late 1980s, he has found himself on a self-described blacklist, and turned to producing independent films.^[3] Cox is an atheist^[4] and is decidedly left wing in his political views. Many of his films have an explicit anti-capitalist theme or message. He was originally set to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but was replaced by Terry Gilliam due to creative differences with Hunter S. Thompson.^[5] By August 2009, Cox had announced completion of Repo Chick, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival the following month, but he remained ambivalent as to whether the film would ever be distributed to theaters.^[6] His previous film, Searchers 2.0, was not released theatrically, and only appears on DVD in Japan and North America after a televised screening in the UK on the BBC.

Film career[link]

Hollywood and major studio period (1978-1987)[link]

Cox began a law degree at Oxford University, but left to pursue a film career. Cox studied Radio, FIlm and TV at Bristol University, graduating in 1977. Seeing difficulties in the UK film scene at the time, Cox first came to Los Angeles to attend film school at UCLA in 1977. Here he produced his first film, Edge City/Sleep is for Sissies, a 40-minute surreal short about an artist struggling against society. After graduation, he formed Edge City Productions with two friends with the intention of producing low-budget feature films.

Cox wrote a screenplay for Repo Man, which he hoped to produce for a budget of $70,000. While seeking this funding, he met Michael Nesmith, who agreed to produce the film, and convinced Universal Studios to back the project with a budget greatly increased to over a million dollars. During the course of the film's production, management changed, and new management had far less faith in the project. The initial theatrical release was limited to Chicago, followed by Los Angeles, and was short lived. After the success of the soundtrack album (notable for featuring many popular LA punk bands), there was enough interest in the film to earn a re-release in a single theater in New York City. This ran for 18 months and eventually earned $4,000,000, despite arriving after the movie was already on video and cable.

Continuing his fascination with punk music, Cox's next film was an independent feature shot in London and Los Angeles, following the career and death of bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, initially titled Love Kills and later renamed Sid and Nancy. It was met warmly by critics and fans, though criticized by some for its inaccuracies. The production of this movie also sparked a relationship with Joe Strummer of The Clash, who would continue to collaborate with the director on his next two films.

Cox had long been interested in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas (both Repo Man and Edge City made references to Nicaragua and/or Latin American revolution), and visited in 1984. The following year, he hoped to shoot a concert film there featuring The Clash, The Pogues, and Elvis Costello. When he couldn't get backing, he decided instead to write a film that they would all act in. The film became Straight to Hell. Collaborating with Dick Rude (who also co-starred beside Strummer, Sy Richardson, and Courtney Love), he imagined the film as a spoof of the Spaghetti Western genre, filmed in Almeria, Spain, where many classic Italian westerns were shot. Straight to Hell was widely panned critically, but successful in Japan and retains a cult following.

Continuing his interest in Nicaragua, Cox took on a more overtly political project, with the intention of filming in Nicaragua. He asked Rudy Wurlitzer to pen the screenplay, which followed the life of William Walker, set against a back drop of anachronisms that drew parallels between the story and modern American intervention in the area. The $6,000,000 production was backed by Universal, but the completed film was too political and too violent for the studio's tastes, and the movie went without promotion. When Walker failed to perform at the box office, it ended the director's involvement with Hollywood studios, and led to a period of several years in which Cox would not direct a single film. Despite this, Cox and some critics maintain that it is his best film.

Mexican period (1988-1996)[link]

Following the commercial failure of Walker, Alex Cox struggled to find feature work. Effectively blacklisted he finally got financial backing for a feature from investors in Japan, where his movies had been successful on video. Cox had scouted locations in Mexico during the pre-production of Walker and decided he wanted to shoot a movie there, with a local cast and crew, in Spanish. Producer Lorenzo O'Brien penned the script. Inspired by the style of Mexican directors including Arturo Ripstein, he shot most of the movie in plano secuencia; long, continuous takes shot with a hand-held camera. El Patrullero was completed and released in 1991, but struggled to find its way into theaters.

Shortly after this, Cox was invited to adapt a Jorge Luis Borges story of his choice for the BBC. He chose Death and the Compass. Despite being a British production and an English-language film, he convinced his producers to let him shoot in Mexico City. This film, like his previous Mexican production, made extensive use of long-takes. The completed 55-minute film aired on the BBC in 1992.