{"id":25176,"date":"2024-12-11T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=25176"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:59:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T01:59:39","slug":"alex-cox-says-goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/alex-cox-says-goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Cox Says Goodbye \u2013 and Good Riddance \u2013 to Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From the start, British-born director Alex Cox and Hollywood were destined to be at loggerheads. Of his first four features, three were studio releases, although it would be more accurate to say they escaped. (The exception, 1987\u2019s Straight to Hell<\/em>, was independently financed, a harbinger of how the balance of his career would play out.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cult favorite Repo Man<\/em><\/a> cost $1.5 million on a negative pickup deal executive producer Michael Nesmith negotiated with Universal Pictures, which promptly buried it. Cox\u2019s follow-up, Sid and Nancy<\/em>, was made for $4 million and distributed by the Samuel Goldwyn Company, which failed to recoup its investment. And Walker<\/em>, which Universal backed to the tune of $5.6 million, was essentially orphaned, putting an end to his relationship with the studios. In the decades since, Cox has met the challenge of financing his idiosyncratic films on his own terms, operating outside a mainstream he never truly felt comfortable in. The boldly postmodern Walker<\/em> is simply proof that going against the grain was always his default setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drawn to the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, Cox was invited to make a film there and brought screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer (Two-Lane Blacktop<\/em>, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid<\/em>) on board to draft the script. Instead of a contemporary story, they chose as their subject the US\u2019s first misadventure in Central America, centered on William Walker, a long-forgotten historical figure who led a ragtag group of mercenaries in a quixotic invasion of the country in the 1850s. Over its increasingly surreal and chaotic 94 minutes, Walker<\/em> upends all the expectations of the historical epic, fashioning a poison-pen letter to the twin concepts of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the keys to its success is the casting of Ed Harris in the leading role. No stranger to playing charismatic, if slightly cracked, visionaries (see also: his King Billy in George A. Romero\u2019s Knightriders<\/em>), Harris is fearless even when his character is not. Cox and Wurlitzer take every opportunity to undercut their ostensible hero, and Harris isn\u2019t afraid to make himself look utterly foolish and misguided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aiding Harris is a cast drawn from veterans of Cox\u2019s earlier films (chief among them, Sy Richardson as Walker\u2019s right-hand man and Xander Berkeley as a journalist along for the ride) with some new faces, including Peter Boyle (as the odious Cornelius Vanderbilt), Richard Masur (as his go-between), and Ren\u00e9 Auberjonois (as one of Walker\u2019s frazzled military advisors). The two strongest characters in the film, however, are the women in Walker\u2019s life. First up is Marlee Matlin (in her first role after winning the Best Actress Oscar for Children of a Lesser God<\/em>) as his deaf lover Ellen Martin, whose influence over Walker is such that he feels cast adrift when she dies of cholera. Just as formidable is Blanca Guerra as Guatemalan aristocrat Do\u00f1a Yrena, who manipulates Walker to her own purposes, but finds him too unpredictable to pin down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Walker<\/em> proved challenging to critics as well, sharply dividing them at the time of its release. One thing it got dinged for was the deliberate anachronisms Cox and Wurlitzer slipped into the narrative to draw attention to the connections between past and present. Some of the more amusing ones are Walker\u2019s appearances on the covers of Newsweek<\/em>, People<\/em>, and Time<\/em>, but the pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance<\/em> is the chopper that airlifts his few surviving men to safety at the end of the film, an echo of the fall of Saigon the previous decade. It continues to resonate, with Cox pointing out the parallels with the Iraq War, then ongoing, when he recorded his commentary for the Criterion DVD in 2008. Since Universal did all it could to suppress Walker<\/em>, the size of its cultural footprint is largely attributable to Criterion\u2019s efforts to rehabilitate it, eventually giving it a well-deserved Blu-ray upgrade in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, Cox got on with it, making well-regarded (if little-seen) films in Mexico (Highway Patrolman<\/em> and Death and the <\/em>Compass) and his native Liverpool (Three Businessmen<\/em> and Revengers Tragedy<\/em>). Another close call with Hollywood came when he worked on an adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/em> that ultimately fell through. He and partner Tod Davies retained a screenplay credit on the version eventually made by Terry Gilliam, which was released by \u2013 wait for it \u2013 Universal. He even did a film for Roger Corman \u2013 2007\u2019s Searchers 2.0<\/em> \u2013 which is the sort of thing most directors get out of their system at the beginning of their career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To date, Cox\u2019s last completed feature is 2017\u2019s Tombstone Rashomon<\/em>, which like its two predecessors (Repo Chick<\/em> and Bill the Galactic Hero<\/em>) raised its lean budget through crowdfunding. While it\u2019s played relatively straight \u2013 the mock-documentary framing aside, this is the closest Cox has come to making a classic western \u2013 there\u2019s a definite nod to Walker<\/em>\u2019s anachronisms when the Earps and Doc Holliday hop in a police car and drive to their showdown at the O.K. Corral. Hey, if you\u2019re going to steal, might as well be from yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of Alex Cox\u2019s films can be found on various streaming services. \u201cWalker\u201d is not among them, but it is available on <\/em>Blu-ray<\/em><\/a> from the Criterion Collection.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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