It's clear that
English-born writer-director Alex Cox got into the movies to have fun. He sure
didn't do it to get rich. Aside from his second and third movies, 1983's Repo
Man and
1986's Sid & Nancy, Cox has had no major financial successes; he was rejected as
a possible director for Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas (though he worked on the
script), and his most expensive picture, 1987's Walker, shot in Nicaragua, cost
less than $7 million.
But like most folks who
hold an exalted place in the margins, Cox is full of good stories. X Films:
True Confessions Of A Radical Filmmaker is Cox's filmmaking memoir, almost entirely about
life on the set. He only brings up his background as it relates to moviemaking,
as when he mentions his grandfather's auto-accident death as an inspiration for El Patrullero,
his 1991 Mexican production. Cox intended to write a partial guide for young
filmmakers, and while that means X Films is occasionally more technical than the
lay reader can follow, it's imbued with sardonic good spirit and often highly
readable.
Cox is a can-do guy who
seems to relish his work. And anyone who treasures Repo Man or Sid & Nancy will find scads of
fascinating stories about how Cox made them. While filming the former's
baseball-bat confrontation between the repo men and the Rodriguez brothers, the
movie's star, Harry Dean Stanton, insisted on using a actual bat rather than a
fake, howling at the director, "Harry Dean Stanton only uses real baseball bats!" The movie
was buried at first; it wasn't until the soundtrack album sold 50,000 copies on
its own, once the picture moved to cable and video, that the studio was forced
to give it a wider release. Another fun fact: Cox considered casting Sandra
Bernhard as Sid & Nancy's Sid Vicious.
After Walker, which was buried by the
studios (it was issued as a Criterion Collection DVD in February 2008), Cox, no
longer bankable, began making super-low-budget films. X Films is clearly one-sided, but
it's an entertaining side, especially when Cox sends himself up, as when a
Dutch extra in Walker waits until the last day of primary shooting to walk up and
punch Cox in the head. The director finds this laudable: "He'd waited nine
weeks, respectful of my directorial authority, as long as it lasted," he
writes. "I've always admired the Dutch—so able to combine justice with
timing and common sense."