Alex Cox Movies and Career Information

Alexander Cox (born Bebington, Merseyside, 15 December 1954) is a British film director, screenwriter, nonfiction author and sometime actor, notable for his idiosyncratic style and approach to scripts. Cox has previously cited Luis Buñuel and Akira Kurosawa as influences, as well as the great Western movie directors Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and John Ford. Cox also wrote a book on the history of the genre called 10,000 Ways to Die. While he once directed films for Universal Pictures, such as Repo Man and Walker, since the late 1980s, he has found himself on a self-described blacklist, and turned to producing independent films. Cox is an atheist. He was originally set to direct Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but was replaced by Terry Gilliam due to creative differences with Hunter S. Thompson. By August 2009, Cox had announced completion of Repo Chick, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival the following month, but he remained ambivalent as to whether the film would ever be distributed to theaters. His previous film, Searchers 2.0, was not released theatrically, and only appears on DVD in Japan. Cox began a law degree at Oxford University, but left to pursue a film career.