Alex Cox is a gifted Western
filmmaker and a Punk Rock legend! The Liverpudlian auteur first made a splash
writing and directing 1984’s dark comedy delight, Repo Man for Monkees
bassist-turned-producer Mike Nesmith. “(He)
was pretty great actually. He was funny and he was quite low key, and had his
opinions; strong opinions. He said at one point, ‘Don't think for one moment
this is gonna be all full of punk rock.’” Alex also has strong opinions: when
the film was finished, the soundtrack included songs by Fear, Black Flag, The
Plugz, Suicidal Tendencies, The Circle Jerks, with a theme by Iggy Pop.
Alex went on to direct the biopic Sid
and Nancy, about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, then in 1987 made the first
Punk Western, Straight To Hell, starring Joe Strummer of The Clash, and
Courtney Love of Hole. He turned down offers to direct Three Amigos! RoboCop
and The Running Man to make the wild biography Walker,
starring Ed Harris as William Walker, the American mercenary who became
President of Nicaragua.
His encyclopedic knowledge and keen
insights into American and Spaghetti Westerns have enriched his commentaries on
numerous Westerns, and in 2017, his audacious and thought-provoking Tombstone-Rashomon
examined conflicting versions of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, as seen
through the eyes of extraterrestrials making a documentary.
His newest film is a Western, Dead
$oul$, which was named Readers’ Choice for Best Western Movie of the Year
in the January/February 2026 Best of the West issue of True West Magazine.
When I interviewed him for that piece in November of 2025, distribution in the
United States had not been set, but I heard the good news from Alex yesterday that
the prestigious Kino Lorber will be distributing, with a theatrical release in
July, followed by streaming and discs.
Based on a novel by 19th century Russian author Nikolai Gogol, Dead $oul$ stars Alex Cox as Strindler, an at-first innocuous-seeming Englishman travelling from town to town in 1890 Arizona. He’s willing to pay cash for the names and descriptions of dead Mexicans, but for reasons he will not reveal. Not surprisingly, chaos ensues as locals fear what use he might make of that information.
Our discussion began as soon as
Alex was able to convince his dog, Ben, to share a bit of the chair with him.
Henry Parke: I enjoyed Dead
Souls very much. I love your ability to tell a story in a humorous fashion
without getting too jokey and undermining the drama, the reality of it. It's a
visually beautiful film, wonderful location work. I really like your
performance in it.
Alex Cox: Oh, thank you. It's
beautifully photographed too. It has two D.P.s (directors of photography), and
they both do a great job.
Henry Parke: A wonderful job. You've
had cameos in your films before, but was this your first lead?
Alex Cox: No, I played the main guy,
or the co-lead, in a film with Miguel Sandoval called Three Businessmen (1998).
But I think that's the only time I've been the lead in anything; other than
that I was a supporting actor.
Henry Parke: With Three
Businessmen, were you directing?
Alex Cox: Yeah, I was directing. It
was super low budget, but the conceit of the film was that we go all the way
around the world in a single night looking for dinner, never find it.
Henry Parke: Normally as the writer/director,
you have a lot of the responsibility on your shoulders anyhow. How did you like
having the responsibility of also carrying the whole story yourself?
Alex Cox: Well, luckily I had a
very good producer. Merrit Crocker was the overall producer of the film, and so
he took a lot of the burden off the director. I originally wanted to do this
with Gianni Garko.
Henry Parke: Yes, star of the Sartana
Westerns. I saw that he co-wrote it with you.
Alex Cox: Yes. I wrote the script
and I wanted him to play Strindler. But Gianni is I think 91 years old. It
probably would've been too much. He would've needed more than three weeks to
pull the film off. He probably would've wanted five or six.
Henry Parke: My goodness! Did you
shoot this whole film in three weeks?
Alex Cox: Yes. One week in Spain,
two weeks in Mescal, in Southern Arizona.
Henry Parke: Your character,
Strindler is so mysterious, so oblique and menacing without being directly
threatening.
Alex Cox: The protagonist of the
book Dead Souls, he's doing what Strindler's doing, he's compiling a
list, but he's considerably younger and more charming and gay, in the old-fashioned
sense of the word. The protagonist in the book, he's quite different in his
approach to things and his appearance.
Henry Parke: Why did you decide to
shoot part in Tabernas and Mini Hollywood, and part in Mescal?
Alex Cox: I originally wanted to
shoot it all in Spain in three weeks; to shoot, in addition to Mini Hollywood’s
El Paso location, in either Rancho Leone or Fort Bravo, but they were all full.
There was this enormous quantity of production at the end of last year in Spain.
There was a Dutch Western, German Western, a French one all being big shot in
Almeria around about the same time. So we were very lucky to be able to get
access to the El Paso location, because that was built as El Paso for Leone's
film For a Few Dollars More. So we were able to revisit it in its
original incarnation.
Henry Parke: Was it a special
feeling to be on those Leone sets?
Alex Cox: Oh, it's such a great set! It's a really
beautiful set. And it was built for A Few Dollars More, so there's the
enormous bank that Indio (Gian Maria Volonte) robs,
and there's the two hotels facing each other, so Eastwood can stay in one, and
Van Cleef can stay in the other. It's a very purpose-built location and a real
pleasure to work in. And it's dominated by this mountain of (Cerro) Alfaro. All
western towns in Almeria (are) facing this incredible-looking triangular mountain.
Henry Parke: Did you shoot on film
or electronically?
Alex Cox: No, on the electronic
camera. When we were in Arizona, I said to the American DP (Chance Faulkner),
“Use the same equipment exactly as the Spanish guy (Ignacio Aguilar) used,
right?” And he goes, “Absolutely, chief!” And then of course he got a much
better deal, for the same money; a much better camera, much better lenses. So
really disobeying me, he shot with completely different (equipment). I think in
the end it all merged and looks good.
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Henry Parke: I think it looks great;
it cuts together perfectly.
Alex Cox: Yeah, it's very nicely
done. Chance Faulkner, the American DP also did the color grading.
Henry Parke: Do you storyboard?
Alex Cox: No. I would draw a
storyboard for visual effects because it's useful to the real effects people, and
to the camera department. But other than that, no. We just show up on set and
figure it out, you know, have a rehearsal, then talk to the cinematographer and
see how best to shoot it.
Henry Parke: Will you tell me approximately
what your budget was?
Alex Cox: Very, very little money.
Henry Parke: I think people will be
very impressed with what you accomplished in three weeks in two countries.
Alex Cox: Well, we had a couple of
weeks off in between, which is just as well, to get reoriented.
But the location that we found is
the western town called Mezcal, in Arizona. Great, great interiors, fully
dressed.
Henry Parke: I've been to Mezcal
for a couple of shoots; it's a very nice place. Maybe it was there and I missed
it, but I think yours is the first new Western I've seen in five years without
any drone shots.
Alex Cox: No; we had a drone shot in the last Western that I did, Tombstone-Rashomon: the beginning of the drone. At the very end, there's a drone shot where the camera pulled back and up away from the grave of the Clantons, and all of those who got shot, the two McClaurys and Billy Clinton. We drone up at the very end of the film to reveal the Western landscape. But no drones in Dead Souls. It's totally earthbound. I think that's right. I don't think we should do it.
Henry Parke: Is it the same Johnny Behan, Jesse Lee Pacheco, in both of these films?
Alex Cox: It is. And it's the third
time he has played Johnny Behan. Because Geoff Marslett did a western called Quantum
Cowboys. It's very cool, very worth watching. It's sort of a parallel
universe type film, with a couple of cowboys ne’er do wells as the
protagonists, and Jesse is their jailer.
Henry Parke: Your westerns have
such a classic look to them. Is there something different in your approach?
Alex Cox: I don't really know. It
just depends, because the Western can be shot in different ways. The Spaghetti Westerns
were sort of rule breaking, and usually original. But at the same time, they
did sell the great landscape. And that's the thing: gotta have the big
landscape there.
Henry Parke: In the cemetery, I
noticed a cross with Charles Buchinsky, Charles Bronson’s real name, of course
recalling Leone’s cemetery in My Name is Nobody. Are there any other
names I should have spotted?
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Strindler looking for customers
Alex Cox: All the names in the
cemetery, or almost all the names, are backers of the Kickstarter campaign. It
could be that a Kickstarter backer was using that as his Nom de Kickstarter. I think
we had, like 70 people sign up to have their name on a cross in the cemetery.
The production designer in Spain built every one of those crosses. We planted
them all, but we couldn't guarantee that everybody was gonna be seen on-screen.
But everybody got a photo of their grave, to prove we did it.
Henry Parke: I've been a big fan of
your work ever since Repo Man. There's always your distinct sense of humor
in your films. I'm thinking of things like the speeded-up action as you walk
through the cemetery, and the flashback of your childhood, which is animated.
Alex Cox: Isn't it great?
Henry Parke: I love it. But I was
wondering, did you plan to do that with actors and decide to animate it? Or was
it always planned that way?
Alex Cox: We were shooting it in
front of a green screen, and the producer on-set said, do you want us to find a
kid to play the part? I said, we'll deal with it later. I'll hire the kid later;
it's all green screen. And then of course it was much simpler not to hire the
kid, so I never did. Then I asked the guys who work at Tippett Studios (note:
Phil Tippett shared a Special Effects Oscar for Jurassic Park), I said,
do you guys want to do an animated Young Strindler? And they just said yes. So
he did.
Henry Parke: Let me ask you about the
current state of Western films? Have you seen anything lately that you liked,
or didn't like?
Alex Cox: There aren't that many. I
know there's been some more just come out that I haven't seen yet. But it's
interesting that there's a Western Film Festival in Almeria, where we shot this
movie. They have the (classic) films that they have every year; and they have
films in competition. But a lot of them, maybe they've got 10 films in
competition, but only two of them are really westerns, and the others are
contemporary revenge stories. You can kind of scrunch up your eyes and say,
well okay, we'll call it a Western, it's in the Western Spirit, you know? But
actual Western films set in that period of time, those locations, are comparatively
few. Although they still get made.
Henry Parke: Did you see Kevin Costner’s
Horizon: Chapter One?
Alex Cox: No, I didn't. Was it
good?
Henry Parke: It was very good as
long as you went in understanding that it was the first third or quarter of a
story and not a whole plot. I was just watching a video of you speaking about
Sergio Corbucci.
Alex Cox: Oh, <laugh>, where
I denounced him being mean to actors.
Henry Parke: Yes. I’ve gotta say, I
was feeling sorry for poor Sergio, 'cause he's certainly one of my favorite
Spaghetti Western directors. But you seem terribly disillusioned with him.
Alex Cox: Me too. But then, that's
really mean to play those kinds of tricks on your actors, to show up late to
the set and blame it on a flat tire, you know? I mean, that's like bullshit <laugh>,
disrespectful of the crew and of the cast, don't you think?
Henry Parke: Oh, absolutely. It's
the sort of trickery, it reminded me a little of stuff that Hitchcock
supposedly did, but I don't think he was ever late a day in his life.
Alex Cox: And also John Ford was
horribly mean to some of his actors, abused them physically. But it was those
wacky days.
Henry Parke: What are you up to
next? Do you have another project?
Alex Cox: My next project is I have
to make like 750 DVDs and Blurays and mail them out to the Kickstarter backers.
RENDEZVOUS WITH A WRITER PODCAST - MAY 7TH
Join me, hosts Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell, and guest Mark Archuletta, author of Bank Robber Henry Starr, his biography of one of the most remarkable figures in the American West, the outlaw nephew of Belle Starr, who became a Hollywood actor! By the way, I join Bobbi Jean and Jim on the first Thursday of the month, but their show is on every Thursday, always with a guest author.
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...AND THAT'S A WRAP!
See you next month!
Much obliged,
Henry
ALL ORIGINAL CONTENT COPYRIGHT APRIL 2026 BY PARKE - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NOT TO BE USED FOR TRAINING A.I.
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