Alex Cox, the return to the desert of a cult filmmaker, free and wild

The British director will shoot 'Dead Mexicans' in Tabernas, raised through crowdfunding

La Voz de Almería

By Evaristo Martínez

October 9, 2024

[Alex Cox, director of films such as ‘Repo Man’, ‘Sid and Nancy’ and ‘Straight to Hell’, in Oasys MiniHollywood.]

Almost 40 years ago, a lanky Englishman gathered a ‘wild group’ of musicians and counterculture figures to film a contemporary ‘spaghetti western’ in Almería. Joe Strummer, Shane MacGowan and The Pogues, Courtney Love and Elvis Costello let themselves get carried away (and they did) under the orders of Alex Cox (Bebington, Merseyside, 1954) in the unclassifiable (and pre-Tarantino) ‘Straight to Hell’ (1987). Dennis Hopper, Grace Jones and Jim Jarmusch also joined the party.

Now, Cox, an occasional actor, scriptwriter and cult director thanks to this title and his two previous films, ‘Repo Man’ (1984) and ‘Sid and Nancy’ (1986), returns to the scene of the crime with ‘Dead Mexicans’, a Western adaptation of Gogol’s novel ‘Dead Souls’. A production raised, like his latest works, through crowdfunding: 200,000 euros, which has tripled the original goal. The co-producer is Guillermo de Oliveira from Vigo (‘Unearthing Sad Hill’).

“A movie based on a Russian book, these days, and produced by Netflix? That’s not going to happen,” jokes Cox in pleasant Spanish with a slight Mexican accent during a meeting with the press at the Oasys MiniHollywood in Tabernas. The town will host part of the filming that will begin on Sunday, October 13 and will last about six days, followed by a couple more weeks in Arizona.

“My original idea was to shoot it entirely here, but there are so many productions: a German one, the French are back with ‘Lucky Luke’, a Dutch western… All the villages are occupied. It’s sad for me, but very good for Almería. These locations are historic,” says Cox with the mischievous and excited look of a big child.

The surroundings of the El Cóndor set, which the props designer Leonardo Giménez will turn into a cemetery full of crosses, and the Tabernas boulevards will be other settings for ‘Mexicanos muertos’. A film in which Cox reunites with accomplices already present in ‘Straight to hell’, such as Zander Schloss, Del Zamora, Edward TudorPole, Sy Richardson and Dick Rude. “Sadly, some like Joe Strummer, Shane MacGowan and Dennis Hopper have died, so it's a great opportunity to shoot again with this old crew," he says.

Love for Tabernas 'Mexicanos muertos' marks Cox's film-loving reunion with Tabernas, where he arrived in the 1970s following in Leone's footsteps. "MiniHollywood wasn't called that, it was El Paso or Yucca City because of those films. And there was no tourism like now: in the sheriff's office there was a man with a portable refrigerator, Coca-Colas and beers."

Cox lived in this town for two decades and the Almería Western Film Festival awarded him the Tabernas de Cine award. Today, when he returns, he continues to stay at the home of his great friend Rafael Rodríguez.

His first professional visit to the area was to direct the video for ‘Love Kills’, a song by Strummer included in ‘Sid and Nancy’. He brought The Clash singer and a young Gary Oldman, the protagonist of that biopic about the Sex Pistols bassist, to the sets of Texas Hollywood and El Cóndor, to Los Escullos and Pozo de los Frailes.

A year later, he returned with ‘Straight to Hell’, a surreal western – very appropriate for someone who considers Buñuel his go-to filmmaker – shot in Almería, Benahadux, Tabernas and Gádor, with a million-dollar budget and four weeks of filming (one more than planned). The film failed at the box office and was repudiated by critics, but it generated an immediate cult following. A reunion of friends bathed in beer (the Mahou bottles in many sequences were probably more than props) and songs (from that fantastic scene where, as a last supper, the cast sings ‘Danny Boy’ at the ‘Party’ that The Pogues composed during filming).

Alex Cox, the filmmaker who was turned away by Hollywood when he committed himself to the Sandinista cause during the filming of ‘Walker’ (a blockbuster with Ed Harris shot in Nicaragua), is back riding, free and wild, through Tabernas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a0fcGY4ofI