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Interview: Alex Cox Talks Repo Man, Walker, and More

Iconoclastic British filmmaker and punk auteur Alex Cox is something of a film historian and conservationist.

Interview: Alex Cox Talks Repo Man, Walker, and More
Photo: Alex Cox

Though few people think of him this way, iconoclastic British filmmaker and punk auteur Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy) is something of a film historian and conservationist. His various recent projects range from a documentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa to one about the famously imitated Emanuelle sexploitation films. Before that, he was the host of Moviedrome, a BBC2 dedicated to introducing viewers to cult films like The Wicker Man and Django. In 2005, he published 10,000 Ways to Die, a book he’d written as a student about the semiotics of the spaghetti western, and last year he premiered a restored version of Straight to Hell, his surreal homage to more offbeat spaghetti westerns like Django, Kill. Straight to Hell Returns includes new footage not previously released from the film’s original 1986 theatrical cut and new color correction from cinematographer Tom Richmond. I talked with Cox this past Sunday about the importance of legacy, being blacklisted after making the anti-Reaganite, Sandinista-financed acid western Walker, as well as RoboCop and Sarah Palin.

Your projects of late largely concern legacy—cinematic legacy specifically, whether it’s your films or other directors’ films or characters. Do you often think of how people will remember and accept your films?

Not really, I don’t think, for the long-term. Of course, a filmmaker can’t help but think of how the audience will respond when they first see it, but beyond that, I don’t think very far ahead into the future, especially, funnily enough, with the most recent films I’ve made. What form will digital movies survive [in]? When movies were kept on film, there was a certain longevity to them, a certain understanding that they could be projected or copies could be made. But now there’s no certainty that the media will endure, that the little flash cards that we use, or tapes, or whatever will have information that will be meaningful. I don’t know.

That’s interesting. I was just in a rental store yesterday and they didn’t have a single DVD on the shelf—it was all VHS and it seemed so…strange.

Retro!

There’s this great joke in a YouTube video I recently saw where Nicolas Cage’s agent is joking that they’re going to shoot his next film on Fruit-by-the-Foot instead of actual film stock [Cox laughs]. There’s no way to know where the medium is going, whether it’s evolving or devolving at this point.

Yes. The special machinery that we watch movies on, or the format. Will a Quicktime movie or doc or file have any meaning in a generation’s time? Or will everything have to be migrated to new formats once or twice to be viewable? I don’t know!

Would you say that you’re optimistic about where film is going?

Oh, I think that we face far more serious problems than this! [laughs] I don’t think it matters in the least compared to some more dreadful and pressing problems, such as war or the destruction of the environment. That’s the least of our worries.

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Can you talk a little about how people’s perceptions of Straight to Hell has changed over time, if you’ve even noticed a change?

Not really over time in the sense that there’s been an evolution of people’s responses. There really are two Straight to Hells: there’s the original Straight to Hell, which came out on film in 1986, and there’s Straight to Hell Returns, which was generated on HD Video from a film negative. We filmed it purely for the television market and it’s been beautifully preserved at Cannes. The digital version has scenes that were cut out of the original 35[mm print]. It has new stuff: a stop-motion animation skeleton, a shot of Miguel Sandoval’s feet, all kinds of stuff. There’s also a new color treatment by Tom Richmond, the cinematographer, which makes the film look very yellow and the blacks look very crushed. It gives it a very contemporary, postmodern, very fucked-up look as opposed to the very pure colors of the original.

I didn’t really answer the question though. So therefore, there are two different versions of it. One can say, “I like the first version better” or “[I like] the second version better.” I think the second version has been responded to with greater enthusiasm because everybody’s living in a postmodern world now. The original audience that saw the film has also grown older: people who say 25 years ago now have children and grandchildren. And they look at the film and think, “Ahhh, happy days,” you know? “Oh, Joe Strummer was a handsome bloke!” For them it becomes more of a…nostalgic, introverted experience. And then there are people who haven’t seen it before and are seeing it for the first time.

Speaking of postmodern viewership, you yourself were the host of BBC2’s Moviedrome program.

I did the introductions to a bunch of cult films of minor interest and foreign-language films, yes.

Because of that, I’m curious about what you meant by a more “introverted” audience, a more individualized viewing experience for cult film and film in general to a postmodern audience. How does that effect moviemaking and movie-watching?

Even though that’s a phenomenon that we expect to see more of, prices for paying audiences go up every year in terms of demographics, or what someone’s paying to do. So going to see film as a communal experience is dying out, but maybe it’s being restricted to these very large studio pictures with lots of tie-ins and stuff…novels. It’s like you say: Then people who see art films or foreign films or old film, do they become lone media consumers as opposed to part of an audience? I was going to the cinema to the second half of obscure double bills anyway, some obscure spaghetti western. But it’s changing. It’s becoming something else, the experience of how and what a film is. Maybe a film will become more like a game eventually.

One of the things I noticed on your website is that in the section of FAQs about Walker, you don’t really talk about what happened to your career as a result of your film. I imagine I can understand why, but I’m curious how you now feel about the way you were so despicably blacklisted and the effect it had on you, not even your career or your moviemaking. Would you be willing to talk about that a little?

Well, I think mutter and grumble, really. Things could have been worse. It’s not really…you intend to do battle with vast corporate entities or the evil empire. That’s okay. It’s all right. How many people get to work in the film industry and make one film—how proud are they of their films? Are the films personal to them? What kind of a career would I have had if I were acceptable to studios after Walker? I would have made movies like…I would have liked to have made Intergalactic Hero, which was written as a riposte to [Robert] Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. But Starship Troopers got greenlit as an anti-war, very funny, very subversive, grandiose vision of the future where people battle bugs with nuclear weapons. They’re different visions, you know, the anarcho-pacifist dream is quite different from the Hollywood version.

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I was just thinking yesterday that you would have been perfect to make a Judge Dredd movie, considering the subversive humor that’s peppered throughout that.

Yeah, and RoboCop is really good too in the sense of how it married a very frightening right-wing worldview with these left-wing subversive jokes. I thought that was very clever. But that’s personal-minded, too, isn’t it? It’s just a moneymaking machine that’s able to incorporate irony.

Do you think there’s a chance that movies like RoboCop and Starship Troopers could be made today?

Verhoeven really is an auteur director. He’s a genuine director that likes to make films that are so…the corporate industry only incorporates so few people like that, if any. I don’t suppose it would be possible to make either of those films today. They were talking about remaking RoboCop for so many million dollars. All the people that originally made it got very excited that they’d get to share in that bounty, but for some reason the project got trashed…it seemed too risky.

Switching gears a bit, can you tell me a little about why you often cast musicians in your work, especially in something like Straight to Hell?

That was because of the circumstances of Straight to Hell. It had been on a rock ‘n’ roll tour and there were all the guys that you see in the film, like Elvis Costello, Joe, the Pogues, and they were supposed to go on a Nicaraguan tour out of solidarity with the Sandinistas. We were going to pay for this tour out of the proceeds of the video cassette sales [of the concert]. We just couldn’t do it—no media copy would buy into it, or bankroll a thing like that. Eric Fellner, who was the producer of the tour said, “Why don’t we instead make a film? I think I can raise a million dollars to make a feature that has all these bands in it.” Island Pictures, which is the filmmaking subsidiary of Island Records, did indeed come up with a million dollars. So we had to make a film that starred both real musicians but also actors to kind of balance it out. That was how Straight to Hell came to have so many musicians in it. Some of those guys, like Joe and Spider Stacy and Zander Schloss, came to Nicaragua for Walker.

Do you find in general that a musician, like Iggy Pop in Coffee and Cigarettes, delivers a different kind of performance in concert than when he’s on set, in front of a camera?

Oh yeah. It depends on the person. I haven’t seen that film so I don’t know how he performs, but some musicians are actually very good actors, and most of them aren’t such good actors because it’s a different thing. I think Tom Waits is an extremely good actor. I think he was the best thing in that Dracula film that Gary Oldman was in. He’s an American and he’s affecting a British accent—and he’s just very good. Then there are some rock ‘n roll stars that have been actors in films, but they aren’t typically known as actors. It’s a different medium. Bowie…I think Bowie is just fantastic, he’s just a genius as a performer, absolutely fantastic. But I don’t think he’s the world’s greatest actor.

How would you characterize the way Joe Strummer performed?

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I think he’s very interesting because, really, Joe’s not necessarily the best actor either, but there’s something about him that’s really compelling, that really draws your eye. If there’s a bunch of guys in a shot and one of them is Joe Strummer, you want to look at him—he’s very beautiful, particularly in his time. So that’s kind of interesting because in this new version [of Straight to Hell] you really get drawn to Joe. In the film’s previous incarnation, I just let him pass me by in the big mélange, how important he is in the film, how very specific and how he catches your attention and sticks with it. Now that I’m looking at the film, I’m very impressed by him.

The filmmaker that made Highway Patrolman seems very different from the one that did Repo Chick. Is that strictly a function of the differences in either story or do you think that you’ve changed as a director between then and now?

I like Highway Patrolman’s style best. I think that’s much better. The long-take style is so much more fun. But you can’t do everything that way because it’s such a travail. I think with Revenger’s Tragedy, the producers said they wouldn’t do the film if I tried to do a long take. So I had to cut it out and do it in proper cuts. Ditto with Searchers 2.0, ditto with Repo Chick.

I ask mainly because the revenge subplot in Highway Patrolman at the end is curiously straightforward and honors the concept of the main character’s judgment as an individual. Repo Chick on the other hand seems like it’s very much about overwriting the narrative of Repo Man for the sake of showing how power is now concentrated in the hands of a disenfranchised yuppie. Is that just a sign of the times to your mind?

No, I think she [the protagonist of Repo Chick] is just the most active character in the thing. I think everyone else is just going through the motions, punching their time cards. Her character is the difference—she’s the most motor, the most dynamic, fastest-thinking, most entitled person in the film and she is just going to win. Then she becomes Sarah Palin. She’s just going to win! She’s just going to win.

Are you afraid of a Sarah Palin victory in 2012?

[laughs] What real difference would it make?

How do you take in current events? What outlets do you pay special attention to or do you give preference to lived experience?

In terms of information access, we [Cox and wife/collaborator Tod Davies] live in the forest. We are far from any media channels. So I just read stuff on the Internet. I read The Guardian. I sometimes also go to town and get the San Francisco Chronicle if I want to get a real newspaper and read it.

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How did that effect the way you summarized America in the ’80s in Repo Man, in the ’90s in Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, and in the aughts in Repo Chick?

I have an advisor, Olivia Sandoval, who is the daughter of [regular Cox collaborator] Miguel Sandoval and his wife Linda Callahan. [Olivia] keeps me updated on things on current practices and lingo. If I have any issues about what the newest thing is, I’d be lost without her aid on such projects. She’s down with the people that are current.

That’s a lot of responsibility for her.

I know! Because if she’s lying to me, if she’s pretending, if she’s telling me, “’Such and such’ is a commonly used phrase in America” and I believe her, what will the result be? [laughs]

It also seems like your sense of humor hasn’t changed much however. Do you think the spaghetti western’s sardonic, surreal, and oftentimes lowbrow sense of humor was a big influence on your on your own style of comedy?

Oh, no! I don’t think there’s anything lowbrow about any of my films! I think it’s a rather elite sense of humor, you know? There’s no vulgarity in any of my films. Violence, sometimes, bloody. But that class of humor doesn’t go with my stuff. Like the fact that the DVD of Straight to Hell Returns comes in a golden box, like a kind of a religious shrine. This is it, this is that kind of transcendent…

How were you involved with putting together the spaghetti western DVD collection named after 10,000 Ways to Die, your book on the spaghetti western?

[laughs] Not at all, but it’s there, isn’t it? I think it’s funny because there are so many spaghetti westerns that there’s got to be some good ones on there. I think the more spaghetti westerns are out there, the better, you know? Because there’s something like 500 and 800, depending on how you count, and I think that the more of them that are available via DVD or download, the better. Especially because some of them aren’t available yet, like Requiescant. How can you see Requiescant now? It’s such a good film, so well-made, so well-acted.

Speaking of 10,000 Ways to Die, though, in your introduction, you allude to writing your “old man’s book” on the spaghetti western. How’s that coming along?

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Well, I’m waiting to do that down the line a little bit, you know? I’m not old enough yet.

I’m especially curious because not too long ago Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, your comic book version of your first intended sequel to Repo Man, came out. Ever thought of making that into a film or are you over and done with that project now?

[laughs] It’s late! It’s too late. We did try though. I think that the last time where all the producers of Repo Man got together, including Michael Nesmith, the executive producer, and we brought it to the executives at Universal and said, “We want to make a sequel to Repo Man.” And we realized that the executive we were meeting with hadn’t even seen Repo Man; he was quite young.

Have you ever thought about doing a thematic sequel similar to Repo Chick for either Walker or Straight to Hell?

Wouldn’t it be good to do—well, you couldn’t do much of a sequel to Walker. You could do a prequel.

I was thinking more in terms of picking a different historical character, like Sarah Palin, and using them to mirror current events like you used Walker to reflect Reagan-era imperialism.

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? These are just front people. Walker’s a dynamic character because he’s aggressive and dynamic. They’re replaceable, too. If it hadn’t been Walker, there’d have been somebody else that could have played that role. But that doesn’t really mean that there anything more than just front people of the corporate parcel.

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Do you think then that Palin, for all of her claims of being a maverick, is just an interchangeable face?

Yes. Of course, she can be replaced by somebody else and will be as soon as she ceases to be useful. How else do you get to be a presidential candidate, right? [laughs] Suitability to the job? I can’t imagine.

But would they be as entertaining as Palin?

Oh dear, I don’t know if I’d call her entertaining; very ineffective. [laughs] Very ineffective.

To finish up, because it is Oscar night, dare I ask what you think about the Oscars and tonight’s ceremony?

I don’t know what’s up for them—we haven’t even got a telly. Even if we were keen to watch the Oscars, we’d have to drive to town, go through the pass, through the snow to see them on a big-screen TV in a sports bar. Luckily, I’m able to be ignorant.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Roger Ebert, and The Wrap. He is the author of The Northman: A Call to the Gods.

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