He Did It His Way: Alex Cox on Dead Souls

“I don’t know if I have faith in anything. I have hope. I hope independent filmmaking will survive. I hope people will continue to detest AI and that it will ultimately disappear up its own ass in an enormous financial crash. . . . It’s my hope that people will continue to make independent films regardless of the idiocy before us.” – Alex Cox

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In the punk film of all punk films, Alex Cox’s Sid and Nancy (1986), Miguel Sandoval’s character, a record company executive, pitches an awful song, which he comedically classifies as having a “punky sort of feel,” to the Sex Pistols on their tour bus. The song, titled “I Want a Job,” goes, “I want a job. I want a job. I want a good job. I want a job. I want a job that pays. I want a job. I want a job. I want a real job. One that satisfies my artistic needs.” When asked what he thinks of it, Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) mockingly replies, “It’s lovely.” When asked for his seal of approval, Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) is so unenthused that he doesn’t bother responding. This scene symbolizes what renegade auteur Cox faced when attempts were made to bring him into traditional studio system filmmaking. Declining the opportunity to direct Robocop 2 (1990) after Sid and Nancy, Cox preferred to forge his own path, with underground literary legend Rudy Wurlitzer by his side, with Walker (1987). Shot, amazingly enough, in Nicaragua, Walker used an anachronistic approach to highlight the injustice occurring there and, by extrapolation, elsewhere. Cox and Wurlitzer suggested that William Walker’s 19th-century expansionism, misguidedly justified by manifest destiny, mirrored America’s presence in Nicaragua during the Contra War. The film was very controversial at the time and branded as “too anti-war.” Cox responded, “I didn’t know it was possible to be too anti-war.”1 Walker killed his shot at Hollywood filmmaking, but without that happening there would also be no Straight to Hell (1987) – the director’s spaghetti western riff on a canceled Sandinista support concert, starring the likes of Joe Strummer, the Pogues, Courtney Love, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello, and Zander Schloss of the Circle Jerks.

Like the forementioned Sid and Nancy scene, Cox’s filmography is filled with many other memorable moments. Among the most quoted are those from his feature debut, Repo Man (1984), in which Harry Dean Stanton professes to Emilio Estevez, “An ordinary person spends his life avoiding tense situations. A repo man spends his life getting into tense situations.” Cox is no repo man, but his punk spirit has put him in plenty of tense situations in the film business. He is a man of his own convictions and one of the last great truly independent filmmakers. Other highlights in the director’s catalogue include the banter between Ed Pansullo and Del Zamora in the Roger Corman-backed Searchers 2.0 (2000), the Buñuelian escapades of Three Businessmen (1998) as they struggle to get something to eat, and Repo Chick’s (2009) acknowledgment of golf’s wastefulness. All three films are due for critical reassessment. Apart from Cox’s knack for his inimitable comedy, he also has been successful with serious films like the underrated Spanish-language Highway Patrolman (1991).

Originally titled Dead Mexicans and Government Work, Cox’s latest and best film since Highway Patrolman, Dead Souls (2025), offers a western take on Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 eponymous novel, deemed by the author an “epic poem in prose.” Directed and co-written by Cox with spaghetti western veteran Gianni Garko, Dead Souls was filmed in Almería, the land of classics like For a Few Dollars More (1965) and Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and in Arizona. Cox’s Kickstarter-funded Dead Souls brings new life to the western, simultaneously paying respect to the genre’s tropes and poking fun at them. This should come as no surprise from the man who wrote the go-to spaghetti western book – 10,000 Ways to Die: A Director’s Take on the Italian Western. Apart from his talent as a filmmaker, Cox, a former professor, is also a respected film scholar. Clocking in under ninety minutes, Dead Souls employs the same critical thought as Cox’s books, documentaries, and work for the Criterion Collection.

Dead Souls centers on a shifty chameleon-like figure, Strindler (Cox), who seeks to buy dead Mexicans in place of the dead Russian serfs that were Chichikov’s pursuit in Gogol’s source material. Cox’s take on the novel is both an inventive filmic adaptation and a timely anti-war/pro-worker-rights statement. As he pursues his quest, Strindler morphs his identity to fit his surroundings, deceiving the desert town into thinking he is a holy man. He is joined by Borracho (Zander Schloss), who leads the wagon trail to the morally bankrupt owners of dead Mexicans. Dead Souls has something to say about American greed and the price that was paid for the western frontier; it also has something to say about how we’ve gone backward as a society. Dead Souls offers some of Cox’s sharpest satire. But it is also great fun, and the actors are clearly enjoying themselves – witness Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry in Cox’s music video for their cover of Cole Porter’s “Well, Did You Evah!”

Like Kris Kristofferson in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), times may have changed but not Cox. Just as the subject of Sid and Nancy, Sid Vicious, famously snarled about doing things his way in his cover of “My Way,” Cox has similarly made a career of doing things his way with his artistic integrity intact. He poignantly concluded his autobiography, X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, by writing, “It isn’t what you achieve that matters. What counts is how you comport yourself.”2 Such a remark aligns with Wurlitzer’s recognition of “abandoning superficial ambitions which are full of aggression and ego enhancements”3 in his powerful book Hard Travel to Sacred Places.

Lively as ever, Cox spoke with me via Zoom from Oregon with his eclectic book collection behind him – a background that fans of his bonus feature contributions for the Criterion Collection would recognize. Given Dead Souls’ subject matter, it was fitting that our conversation took place on Labor Day.

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JONATHAN MONOVICH: Following its theatrical release, Dead Souls is available for video on demand September 22 and Blu-ray October 20 via Kino Lorber. A double book, including Cox/Garko’s screenplay for Dead Souls and Gogol’s original text that inspired it, is available from Kamera Books on November 19.

I was reminded of Searchers 2.0 while watching Dead Souls as you can see your reverence for the western genre. In your book 10,000 Ways to Die, you recalled your teenage years, becoming immersed in spaghetti westerns in Paris. You also made a cool short film, The Black Hills (1977), in Almería as a film student that you include on the bonus features of the Straight to Hell Blu-ray. It must have been a bit of a full circle moment to be returning to Almería to make another western of your own. Can you speak a little bit about what Almería means to you?

ALEX COX: Oh, I don’t know. I lived there for a while. I had a place in the village of Tabernas for about twenty years. In succession, I had two little flats. I used to spend a lot of time there. It was always a great pleasure. When I was living in England, I would be glad to just be at the airport because I knew I’d soon be in Almería. It’s a great place. It’s very beautiful. The desert is very dry and there is very little in the way of greenery. The Almería Western Film Festival continues to happen, so you could go this October.

I would love to make a trip out to Almería one day. I’ve never been to that part of the world, but the Southwest is a very special place to my family. Given your long track record of collaborating with musicians, it’s fitting that there’s a “Streets of Laredo” musical number in Dead Souls. The score for the film is done by Dan Wool, whose score for Sid and Nanc, ranks amongst the best film scores.

The score for Sid and Nancy is a mixture, though. It’s a mixture of Dan Wool and the Pogues.

And Joe Strummer.

Yes, Strummer wrote two songs and a whole bunch of background music that plays during the film. Really, it’s a combination of the works of the three of them.

That’s true, but Wool’s music is the most evocative. It’s so haunting and really sticks with you. What did you discuss with Wool beforehand about what you wanted to achieve for Dead Souls’ music?

His concern was that he didn’t want the music to be too Italian Western-esque, because he had done Italian Western stuff before with Straight to Hell and Searchers 2.0. He was looking to do something a bit different as he did with Tombstone Rashomon (2017). In this case, it’s a bit between the two. It’s somewhat Italianate but not entirely. I always defer to Dan. It’s whatever he wants to do. I don’t really know a lot about music, so I tend to defer to the composer.

What made you want to shoot the musical number in?4 I know that was a stylistic choice that you were fond of for Highway Patrolman.

That was the DP, Chance Falkner’s, plano secuencia choice. I was his assistant director on that scene. All I had to do was run back and forth between the set/the costume department and get the actors to come on time. It was pretty relaxing, because there was only four or five actors. I was just a witness to the plano secuencia of it all. I like that they made that decision. They had to go fast, since they only had part of the afternoon to shoot that entire scene. I think doing it in a single master was definitely the right choice.

Just before the musical number is Strindler’s duel with the Kid. Strindler comically gets exonerated as the mayor suggests the stray bullet hit the sheriff, which is obviously not what happens. This seems to be satirizing the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory for the JFK assassination, which relates to your book on the subject – The President and the Provocateur: The Parallel Lives of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald. How did you come up with this idea?

I guess it is. It’s a preposterous explanation for what happened . . . that all these bullets flying in every direction just managed to hit their mark [laughs]. It’s preposterous, but it solves the mayor’s problem as to how to deal with the situation.

There’s a moment where Strindler visits the sheriff, and he has a copy of William Walker’s book – The War in Nicaragua. Of course, this made me think of your film Walker, which you made as a moral imperative about what was going on in Nicaragua in the 1980s. You’ve done something similar with Dead Souls, recognizing what’s going on today with the ongoing exploitation of laborers, the west’s dependence on immigrant workers.

Isn’t that the truth. And maintaining endless wars!

Yes, exactly, and how pockets continue to get filled with money the those who start wars at the expense of the lives that are lost in the process. Is there anything further you’d like to add on that?

You just said it all. That’s the problem. There’s a lot of money to be made from treating people like commodities and selling weapons. Nothing has changed, except there’s more of it now. There’s more people, there’s more money, there’s more weapons, and there’s more misery.

It’s a sad state of affairs.

That’s why we make comedies.

I commend you for having the courage to still bring attention to subject matters like these in your films.

Peter Watkins made an amazing film, The War Game (1965), about nuclear war. It isn’t a comedy at all. It’s a brilliant film, but the best film of all about nuclear war is Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

I agree with you on Dr. Strangelove. It was also clever that you had Strindler confused about the accusation of forging the widow’s will when he’s being read his list of offenses by the prosecutor.

It’s outrageous [laughs]. He did all the other things that he’s accused of like murder and arson, but he didn’t forge a widow’s will and is really annoyed about that.

Yes, it makes for a funny scene. It’s also a reference to Gogol’s novel as Chichikov similarly faces that accusation.

That shows up in Gogol’s second volume of Dead Souls. The second volume only exists in fragments. Chickikov is accused of forging a widow’s will, but there isn’t the text that explains how that came about. From my perspective, it’s just an appalling calumny that the widow makes to stick the knife in and twist it. She says he forged her will and tried to dispossess her of her home, but it’s all a lie.

The way you changed Dead Souls’ ending was appropriate, especially in the context of it being a western. You use disturbingly realistic Peckinpah-esque violence to serve an anti-violence message. Were you consciously thinking of Peckinpah when you were making Dead Souls?

That was the producer/editor, Merritt Crocker, who came up with that idea. Originally, I just had Strindler pull out his derringer, which he’s had all along and kept it secret. I suggested he shoot the prosecutor twice and win. Merritt said, “That’s no good. He has to be more involved, pick up the rock, and bash the guy’s brains in.” I said, “Oh, dear! How distasteful.” But he was right. It needed to be more involving and couldn’t just be death at a distance. Strindler needed to get his hands covered in blood.

It’s interesting that you’ve revealed several of the ideas that I mentioned came from others. That supports the notion of filmmaking being a collaborative art form, which you advocate in your book – Alex Cox’s Introduction to Film.

If you have good collaborators, then it’s a pleasure to hear what they have to say. And having good actors makes a big difference.

In the screenplay for Dead Souls, it seemed to me that you were making a reference to the television show The Prisoner (1967-1968) when Strindler says “Be seeing you”5 to Rose when he flees the jail cell. In your book I Am Not a Number: Decoding The Prisoner, you analyze the show as a cautionary tale of what could happen if we fail to be thoughtful individuals. This message continues to be increasingly relevant, and it’s great that the show is getting a new life on the Criterion Channel.

It’s a great show, but it’s unfortunate how relevant it remains. What you’re describing was in the original version of the screenplay, where Strindler ties Rose to the bars of the cell like a crucifixion before escaping. In the end, I thought, “Where’s the politics?” It was an entertaining scene, but where was the politics? That’s why that scene went by the wayside, and we shot the scene in the missile silo instead.

And the scene in the missile silo is very effective in the vein of the anachronisms from Walker. As I’ve mentioned, there are many ties to your books and prior films in Dead Souls. In a way, it’s an amalgamation of your body of work. Was this by design to go with the tongue-in-cheek “last movie” branding of the film, or was it organic?

I think it was probably organic. A person has all kinds of things in their head and presumably they come spilling out, especially if you’re a writer.

In Dead Souls it is shown that when money comes into the equation, those that Strindler schemes buying the dead Mexicans from are happy to oblige. It reminds me of Rudy Wurlitzer’s Candy Mountain (1987), how Julius is corrupted when the prospect of money becomes involved and he is more concerned with fame than his art. If one’s motives are impure, art never works. However, you have always stuck to your artistic integrity and are the antithesis of Julius, which would have made it very ironic if you played that character as originally planned.

Well, Rudy offered me the role, but I’m not a musical person. It would have been wrong for me to play this aspirant guitar player, but I love that script! I thought the script was really good and well observed. Some of the things that happen to Julius along the way, like when he’s held prisoner by the Canadian sheriffs, are really something. It’s really great that it’s been re-released. It was almost unfindable, and now it’s available again, which is so great because it’s really a great film. It’s a good road movie, and it’s a road movie that goes to Canada, which makes you go, “Wow!”

Having artistic integrity has unfairly had its consequences for you, but it is also the reason why your films are so revered and have stood the test of time. Do you agree?

I think it’s probably good. Isn’t it? If I had been given a load of money, I wouldn’t have artistic integrity. It comes from having no money, so it’s interesting. If I had a lot more money, I would live in Los Angeles in a house with a swimming pool. It’s ok.

It was great to be able to read the unmade screenplays for Body Parts and Zero Tolerance by way of Sticking Place Books’ new release. I reread your interview with Rudy Wurlitzer from the Walker companion book afterward, and you were hinting at those films in that conversation.

Yes! That’s what we were talking about doing next. We were discussing making films about the trade of infant body parts and the politics and mechanics of the Contra War.

You and Wurlitzer have a close relationship. Besides writing Walker, supposedly Wurlitzer had the idea to bring the sci-fi element to Tombstone Rashomon. In addition to Gianni Garko, did you bounce any ideas off of Wurlitzer for Dead Souls?

Not so much for Dead Souls, but yes for Tombstone Rashomon. Rudy thought that movie should start with the Earp women selling all their memorabilia at a yard sale and then have the time travel come out of that. Gianni really became my writing collaborator for Dead Souls, because he’s so totally involved as an actor. He came up with ideas for new scenes and new endings. My character would wear a certain kind of hat, and he would show me a portrait of a guy beside his bed. Gianni’s a really interesting guy. I’ve never met an actor who’s so engaged. It was really a pleasure working with Gianni just as it had been with Rudy. Rudy wrote the scripts himself, whereas Gianni would send me a scene, send me several pages, or send me notes and keep tweaking the script as a result. It was great.

Speaking of Wurlitzer, is there any possibility that his scripts for Slow Fade or Zebulon could become future films of yours? You’ve been passionately talking about trying to make them for years.

I don’t know. There’s a producer who has the rights to Zebulon and is still trying to make it. They tried to make Zebulon with Hal Ashby, with me, with Roger Spottiswoode, and with Jim Jarmusch. A whole slew of directors were attached to Zebulon, and it should have been made. It’s a great screenplay. It’s really weird because I thought Slow Fade was the best of all of Rudy’s books and the best of all his screenplays. For some reason, it just didn’t seem possible to get it on. I don’t know who owns the rights to Slow Fade now. Maybe it’s Rudy and Lynn [Davis]. In a weird alternate universe, where a sentimental millionaire decides to spend ten million dollars to make Slow Fade, I guess it could happen.

What prompted you to remove the Jack Kerouac quote, “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night,”6 from the film? It was an interesting way to kick off the screenplay.

It didn’t seem necessary for the film. It really refers to Gogol’s Dead Souls. The first volume of Dead Souls ends exactly with that feeling. Chichikov and his servant are racing through the night in their wagon. They’ve just escaped town, and they don’t know where they’re going. Whatever it is they’re escaping, they got away with it, and they’re racing out of town. The wagon’s going faster and faster, they’re whipping the horse, and they’re just exhilarated and full of life. Then the book ends. That seemed to me to be very much like the Kerouac quote. Both the heroic aimlessness and dangerousness of that scene made me think Americans and the Russians have a lot more in common than is generally acknowledged. The film doesn’t end that way, so as it changed, it made less sense to include the Kerouac quote as a reference.

Something that I’ve always theorized is that Sid and Nancy brought back the outlaw love story. Shortly after it came out, it paved the way for Wild at Heart (1990), True Romance (1993), Natural Born Killers (1994), Another Day in Paradise (1998), and so forth. I haven’t really seen anyone acknowledge that, though. From your perspective, do you feel Sid and Nancy had to have been an influence on these films?

Leaving Las Vegas (1995) is another one. It’s interesting because I was talking to Mike Figgis, and he said something about how he liked Sid and Nancy. I said to him, “I knew you did, because when you made that film in Newcastle, Stormy Monday (1988), you hired the entire crew of Sid and Nancy [laughs].” It was his first feature, and it’s a crime thriller about “America Week” in Newcastle. Stormy Monday’s a great-looking film, but when I saw it, I knew he was keen on Sid and Nancy. Sid and Nancy’s a sentimental film about junkies, and I guess people like films that are sentimental.

I’ve heard some great news that you plan to launch a Kickstarter for Repo Man 2. Repo Man was made out of fear of a looming nuclear apocalypse, and you have written about your contemporary fears of nuclear demise based on current global tensions on your website, making it an appropriate time for a sequel. I’m curious, will the screenplay resemble your graphic novel, Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, or do you have something new in mind?

It won’t be like Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday, because that was meant to be a Repo Man sequel for the 1990s. Now, we’re in the 2020s, and new and improved horrors face us. I am going to do a Kickstarter. The maximum time you can run a Kickstarter is sixty days, so I’m going to start it on November 5th, Guy Fawkes Night, and run it until the beginning of January. We’ll see if we can get enough money to make Repo Man 2! As a backer of Dead Souls, you have to support Repo Man 2 as well [laughs].

[Laughs] I definitely will and hopefully other readers will too. In your book X Films, you say, “An independent filmmaker is a revolutionary figure, in a prolonged popular war.”7 You are one of the very few who I think fits that description of a true revolutionary independent filmmaker, continuing the legacy of filmmakers like Dennis Hopper. When you were a professor teaching film students at the University of Colorado, Boulder and from what you’re seeing today, what gives you faith about the future of independent filmmaking?

Oh, I don’t know! I don’t know if I have faith in anything. I have hope. I hope independent filmmaking will survive. I hope people will continue to detest AI and that it will ultimately disappear up its own ass in an enormous financial crash. I hope that we will continue to make movies long after the studios have destroyed themselves with their greed and their political biases. I hope there will still be people who enjoy dramatic narratives. We have the cameras and sound recording to make them and the art department and actors among ourselves, but distribution is harder than production. It’s my hope that people will continue to make independent films regardless of the idiocy before us.

Amen to that. I’m fortunate to have spent several family vacations at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. I had to ask you, is the church in Dennis Hopper’s Backtrack (1992) El Santuario de Chimayo? Whenever my family visits New Mexico, we stop there. Given that you worked on that film, I had to ask.

Yes! Dennis wanted to use that church as a location, and he wanted them to go in the back by that little hole in the ground, which allegedly possesses healing qualities. There’s all kinds of New Mexico stuff in the film about Taos and D. H. Lawrence. Dennis lived in Taos for many years. He owned the movie theater in town and owned the house next to it. He’s buried in a little Catholic cemetery outside Taos.

Thank you for confirming my suspicion.

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Unless otherwise noted, all images are screenshots or publicity stills from the production company.  Please consider contributing to the Kickstarter campaign for the long-hoped-for Repo Man 2. Click here for the details.