Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954) is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with Repo Man (1984) and Sid and Nancy (1986). Since the release and commercial failure of Walker (1987), his career has moved towards independent films, including Highway Patrolman (1991) and Three Businessmen (1998), and microbudget features such as Searchers 2.0 (2007), Repo Chick (2009), and Dead Souls (2025).
Cox has taught screenwriting and film production at the University of Colorado, Boulder and has written numerous educational books on film and television.
Cox was born in Bebington, Merseyside, England in 1954 and attended Wirral Grammar School for Boys. He began a law degree at Worcester College, Oxford, but later transferred to the University of Bristol, where he majored in film studies. Cox secured a Fulbright Scholarship, allowing him to study at the University of California, Los Angeles, United States, where he graduated from the School of Theater, Film and Television with an MFA.
At UCLA Cox produced his first film, Edge City (also known as Sleep Is for Sissies), a 40-minute surreal short about an artist struggling against society. After graduation, Cox formed Edge City Productions with two friends with the intention of producing low-budget feature films. He wrote a screenplay for Repo Man, which he hoped to produce for a budget of $70,000, and began seeking funding.
Hollywood and major studio period (1978–1987)
Michael Nesmith agreed to produce Repo Man, and convinced Universal Studios to back the project with a budget of over a million dollars. During the course of the film's production, the studio's management changed, and the new management had far less faith in the project. The initial cinema release was limited to Chicago, followed by Los Angeles, and was short-lived.
After the success of the soundtrack album (notable for featuring many popular LA punk bands), there was enough interest in the film to earn a re-release in a single cinema in New York City, but only after becoming available on video and cable. Nevertheless, it ran for 18 months, and eventually earned $4,000,000.
Continuing his fascination with punk music, Cox's next film was an independent feature shot in London and Los Angeles, following the career and death of bassist Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, initially titled Love Kills and later renamed Sid and Nancy. It was met warmly by critics and fans, though heavily criticised by some, including Pistols' frontman John Lydon, for its inaccuracies. The production of this film also sparked a relationship with Joe Strummer of the Clash, who would continue to collaborate with the director on his next two films.
Cox had long been interested in Nicaragua and the Sandinistas (both Repo Man and Edge City made references to Nicaragua and/or Latin American revolution), and visited in 1984. The following year, he hoped to shoot a concert film there featuring the Clash, the Pogues and Elvis Costello. When he could not get backing, he decided instead to write a film that they would all act in. The film became Straight to Hell. Collaborating with Dick Rude (who also co-starred beside Strummer, Sy Richardson and Courtney Love), he imagined the film as a spoof of the Spaghetti Western genre, filmed in Almería, Spain, where many classic Italian westerns were shot. Straight to Hell was widely panned critically, but successful in Japan and retains a cult following. On 1 June 2012, Cox wrote an article in The New York Times about his long-standing interest in spaghetti westerns.
Continuing his interest in Nicaragua, Cox took on a more overtly political project, with the intention of filming it there. He asked Rudy Wurlitzer to pen the screenplay, which followed the life of William Walker, set against a backdrop of anachronisms that drew parallels between the story and modern American intervention in the area. The $6,000,000 production was backed by Universal, but the completed film, released in 1987, was too political and too violent for the studio's tastes, and the film went without promotion. When Walker failed to perform at the box office, it ended the director's involvement with Hollywood studios, and led to a period of several years in which Cox would not direct a single film. Despite this, Cox and some critics maintain that it is his best film.
In 1988, The Writers Guild of America West barred Cox from any future membership because he had worked on scripts during the writers' strike. Effectively blacklisted, Alex Cox struggled to find feature work. He finally got financial backing for a feature from investors in Japan, where his films had been successful on video. Cox had scouted locations in Mexico during the pre-production of Walker and decided he wanted to shoot a film there, with a local cast and crew, in Spanish. Producer Lorenzo O'Brien penned the script. Inspired by the style of Mexican directors including Arturo Ripstein, he shot most of the film in plano secuencia; long, continuous takes shot with a hand-held camera. El Patrullero was completed and released in 1991, but struggled to find its way into cinemas.
Shortly after this, Cox was invited to adapt a Jorge Luis Borges story of his choice for the BBC. He chose Death and the Compass. Despite being a British production and an English language film, he convinced his producers to let him shoot in Mexico City. This film, like his previous Mexican production, made extensive use of long-takes. The completed 55-minute film aired on the BBC in 1992.
Cox had hoped to expand this into a feature-length film, but the BBC was uninterested. Japanese investors gave him $100,000 to expand the film in 1993, but the production ran over-budget, allowing no funds for post-production. To secure funds, Cox directed a "work for hire" project called The Winner. The film was edited extensively without Cox's knowledge, and he tried to have his name removed from the credits as a result but was denied, but the money was enough for Cox to fund the completion of Death and the Compass. The finished, 82-minute feature received a limited cinema release in the US, where the TV version had not aired, in 1996.
Damián Alcázar, who had a small role in El Patrullero, went on to collaborate on many occasions with Mexican director Luis Estrada, in two of whose films, Herod's Law (1999) and A Wonderful World (2006), Cox appears. However, in A Wonderful World, Cox's role is reduced to a cameo at the end of the film.
In 1996, producer Stephen Nemeth employed Alex Cox to write and direct an adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. After creative disagreements with the producer and Thompson, he was sacked from the project, and his script rewritten when Terry Gilliam took over the film. (Cox later sued successfully for a writing credit, as it was ruled that there were enough similarities between the drafts to suggest that Gilliam's was derivative of Cox's. Gilliam countered that the screenplays were based on the source book and similarities between them were a consequence of this.)
In 1997, Alex Cox made a deal with Dutch producer Wim Kayzer to produce another dual TV/feature production, Three Businessmen. Initially, Cox had hoped to shoot in Mexico but later decided to set his story in Liverpool, Rotterdam, Tokyo and Almería. The story follows businessmen in Liverpool who leave their hotel in search of food and slowly drift further from their starting point, all the while believing they are still in Liverpool. The film was completed for a small budget of $250,000. Following this, Cox moved back to Liverpool and became interested in creating films there.
Cox had long been interested in the Jacobean play, The Revenger's Tragedy, and upon moving back to Britain, decided to pursue adapting it to a film. Collaborating with fellow Liverpudlian screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, the story was recast in the near future, following an unseen war. This adaptation, titled Revengers Tragedy, consisted primarily of the original play's dialogue, with some additional bits written in a more modern tone. The film is also notable for its soundtrack, composed by Chumbawamba.