British director Alex Cox made his name in the 1980s with two cult hits, the nihilist fantasy "Repo Man" (1984) and the punk valentine "Sid & Nancy" (1986).
His third feature, "Walker" (1987), finally arriving on DVD this week (Criterion, $39.95), was the last film he made in Hollywood. At once a biopic of a forgotten 19th century soldier of fortune (played by Ed Harris) and an act of protest against the Reagan-sponsored Contra war in 1980s Nicaragua, it remains one of the boldest and strangest political films ever made for an American studio.
In the years since, Cox has become a genuine outlaw filmmaker, working with minimal means on the margins of the system. He has directed a string of inventive, low-budget films, including "Highway Patrolman" (1991) and "Three Businessmen" (1998), some of which have been released straight to DVD. He recently completed a feature, shot on digital video and produced by Roger Corman, called "Searchers 2.0," a comic riff on the John Ford western. His website (alexcox.com) contains detailed information on future projects -- among them a slate of single-take "microfeatures" and a documentary about the Trident missile -- and offers free downloads of his produced and unproduced screenplays.
Speaking by phone from his home in the mountains of southern Oregon, Cox reflected on the perils of political filmmaking and the movie that just might have ended his Hollywood career.
When did you first become interested in Central American politics?
What was interesting to me was the way the media portrayed the Nicaraguan revolution. In 1979, right after the revolution, the Sandinistas were portrayed very favorably. We were told they were these passionate revolutionaries who had overthrown hated dictators. But then the slant in the media changed radically, and that's what got me interested. I went to Nicaragua around the time of the presidential election in 1983, met some teenage guys and made the mistake of telling them I was a filmmaker. They said, "Well, you should come down here and make a film about Nicaragua."
How did you learn of William Walker? And why did you make him the focus of the film?
