Alex Cox: An American Cinematheque Retrospective

ABOUT THE SERIES:

The American Cinematheque is thrilled to welcome punk auteur Alex Cox for an in-person retrospective of his work both in and outside of Hollywood. He’ll appear alongside many of his long-time collaborators, including Chloe Webb, Dick Rude, Zander Schloss, Greg Gardiner, Lorenzo O’Brien, Del Zamora, Merritt Crocker and composer Dan Wool. Together, Cox and company embody the spirit of community that lives in the heart of every true punk. They’ll join us to revisit everything from Cox’s latest film, DEAD SOULS, to cult classics like REPO MAN and SID AND NANCY and Cox’s turn toward the weird western with WALKER, STRAIGHT TO HELL and EL PATRULLERO.

The series will celebrate the most recent entry in Cox’s filmography, DEAD SOULS. An adaptation of Gogol’s unfinished work of the same name, Cox both directs and stars as the lead of this American fable. He plays Strindler, a wealthy drifter who wanders from town to town offering up fat lump sums for the corpses of Mexican laborers. An entirely Kickstarted venture, it’s the natural culmination of Cox’s work, which has left the studios behind for independent artistic expression.

Cox saw great success with his first two features, REPO MAN and SID AND NANCY. REPO MAN stars a pre–Brat Pack superstardom Emilio Estevez as a young LA punk whose new job in repossession gets him tied up in an alien conspiracy. With a main theme written and performed by Iggy Pop and a soundtrack just as hardcore, it’s no wonder he delved even deeper into punk legend with SID AND NANCY. A seminal cult film and a must-see for a young Gary Oldman’s iconic performance, it cemented Cox’s interest in counterculture and rejection of mainstream storytelling.

This led him to one of his wildest creations yet, WALKER, which highlights Cox’s love of the American West and interest in the US’s complicated relationship with Latin America. A postmodern, anachronistic and hilarious bit of filmmaking, its failure at the box office led Cox to say goodbye to Hollywood and embrace the world of independent film. His next two features, STRAIGHT TO HELL and EL PATRULLERO, continue to examine American mythology, greed and capitalism with a spaghetti western aesthetic.

Cox’s filmmaking celebrates the weirdos and the underdogs and refuses to play by the rules of traditional Hollywood. His punk rock approach is matched by his soundtracks, which highlight some of the biggest names in the scene from The Circle Jerks to The Pogues to Black Flag. Join us in saluting one of cinema’s true rebels.