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Long-form conversation with independent filmmaker Alex Cox, on Alex in winter wonderland, diegetic sound, Oxford days, the changing climate at Oxford, an environment of the oligarchy, the idiot rich, film school years, Repo Man, Harry Dean Stanton and Saturn return, Stanton’s character, how Hollywood agents operate, Repo Man as prototypical punk cinema, Sid & Nancy and the punk world, Cox and Sebastian Horsley planning a Dandy in the Underworld film, John Lydon & Sebastian, Jimmy Savile, BBC, organized abuse, the problem of nihilistic glamor, heroin addiction and childhood trauma, plugging Sebastian’s book, turning pain into glamor, covering up crimes, Jimmy Boyle and the Kray twins, David Hayman-as-Boyle, the nexus of crime, politics, & entertainment, Lobster magazine, getting labeled a conspiracy theorist, the ban on “Sandinista,” the Clash and the Gateway Exchange, John Lyndon on Sid and Nancy, Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain’s murder-suicide, comparing childhoods, Alex’s mystic mother, the evil of money, the power of love, Universal studio’s subterfuge with Walker and the Havana film festival, tricking Castro, gray studio suits faking hipness, how Universal abandoned their own movies, Lou Wasserman and the life of a low-level exec, political control of the studios, Easy Rider 2, the kickass times, pure propaganda movies, CIA film production, Operation Mockingbird, Carl Bernstein’s career trajectory, Bob Woodward and Naval Intelligence, Hollywood intelligence link, The Counselor and Tony Scott’s suicide note, the Scott brothers, glimpsing inside the structures of power, joining the Hollywood mafia, saving the whales, the moment of transgression, Bill, the Galactic Hero, Cox’s crime of finishing Walker, being offered Three Amigos, Sam Peckinpah’s blacklisting, Dennis Hopper’s struggle, the liberal cloak, Easy Rider & the capitalist dream, Dave McGowan and Laurel Canyon, CIA-LSD, writing and casting Fear & Loathing in Last Vegas, meeting Hunter S. Thompson, HST’s Hollywood enablers, Loose Change, David Lynch speaking out on 9/11, TM vs. Blue Velvet, religious control accepting authority, God as a weaponized meme, the mad sky god, maintaining the oligarchy, Room 237 and the cult of Kubrick, Kubrick’s familiars, Rashomon and quantum field experience, Rashomon Tombstone and crowd control, how to assert authority without hurting anyone.
Songs: “El Mariachi” and “Monkey Said,” by The Freak Fandango Orchestra; “Big Nothing,” by The McManus Gang; “The Good the Bad & the Ugly,” by The Pogues; “Money Guns, and Coffee,” by Pray for Rain. (All songs from Straight to Hell soundtrack, used by permission of Alex Cox.)
That was an excellent conversation; it seemed to move seamlessly. Alex knows his stuff and strikes me as a switched-on, down to earth person. The syncs with regard to your brother must have been interesting for you.
Are you aware that Dave McGowan passed away last Sunday? He was already in quite an advanced stage of his cancer when it was diagnosed earlier this year.
I was aware, yes. It moved terribly fast; I invited him onto the podcast just a few months ago and he responded by mentioning health problems.
That was a very enjoyable and stimulating conversation. I had no idea Alex Cox was so clued up. It’s not something I expect from film directors, even those on the fringe. Such a shame Alex struggles for funding. Those with talent and/or integrity really don’t thrive in the age we live in. Maybe they never have.
Yeh he does indeed sound like a wise elder with quite a piercing worldview . I thought it was hilarious how he ever so gently resisted the paranoid worldview and Jason you were ever so polite and restrained , well done !