Alex Cox - WEBSITE

May 2004

SCREENWRITER BEWARE!

SOFTWARE SALESPERSONS, GURUS, AND INTERNET SCAMSTERS WANT YOU!

One of the cruellest things about the film business is the status of screenwriters.

Film financiers often claim that all they want is "good scripts." This is bullshit. Film financiers care not what scripts are, good or bad. What they are looking for is 1) a simple hook that will attract 2) one or more vainglorious movie stars and their skittish agents, and 3) under no circumstances be intelligent or ironic.

Writers are of course involved in the process of making a major feature motion picture. But so are caterers, an area of production far more important to most crew members than the writing contingent.

Elsewhere I've repeated the vile joke about the actor/actress who was so stupid that he/she screwed the scriptwriter so as to get a part in a movie (link to THE INDEPENDENT).

Unfortunately, some people still believe that screenwriting is an entree to the glamorous world of film. And - as with refugees everywhere - these wandering, hopeful, fearful waifs are preyed upon by wolfish, unscrupulous, vulturous opportunists.

Recently I have been harrassed by one such gang. Can you believe it?

The people bugging me with spam emails are located in Maryland, USA - spooklandia - but there are many such outfits, I think: especially in California and New York, where the pickings are traditionally excellent. All appear to operate some variant of the "send us your money and we'll teach you to be a Big-Time Hollywood Screenwriter" scam - sometimes on the internet, at other times in one-on-one tutorials or in group sessions.

For them to try and sign me up is a bit like teenage would-be pirates in New Bedford trying to shanghai Queequeg. "I was writing screenplays for pay while your babysitters were watching FLASHDANCE. Come near me and my harpoon and ye'll be needing a new spleen..."

But who knows how many suckers (sorry, I mean less-hardened, uncynical types) are actually sending these shysters their parents' money for script lessons and "professional consultancies" and "discounts" on "essential screenwriting software"?

Too many for Queequeg to shut up about it.

The internet scam works like this: you set up your writing academy or diploma mill and then spam all the real professionals whose email you can get hold of with your newsletter. And then you dangle your mailing list (George Axelrod and A.I.Bezzerides read this!) in front of students and prospective students. Sign up with Big Vinnie's School of Successful Screenwriting and you get access to the greats: orson.welles@paradise.net will receive your your emails and read your scripts!

So if anyone tells you I'm on the mailing list of something calling itself, say, "scriptmag.com" it's because "scriptmag.com" refuses to unlist me or stop sending me their spam emails.

Asking 'me politely to desist seems only to encourage them, and their e-newsletters and offers of a chance to win screenwriting software continue to appear in my email.

So toothless is US antispam legislation that it appears there's nothing I can do about this (though I receive said spam at a British email address, on a server at Liverpool University, which makes me wonder whether European law might not be applicable to "scriptmag"... no wonder the Americans are pushing so hard to "standardize" EU software law on the consumer-disastrous US model).

Anyway, to get to the nub of it, as it were: there are three secrets to screenwriting. None of them involves the services of a "screenwriting guru," or the use of special software, or of a website or of internet spam. In fact, they are all free:

1) Set two tabs on your typewriter or text editor: one for the beginning of each line of dialogue; the other for the speaker's name, in capitals.

2) No scene longer than three pages, without a note from the Goddess of Screenwriting.

3) You are either a (screen)writer or you are not. If you are not a (screen)writer, none of the above will help.

[If you're still reading, I can now reveal that there are in fact Seventy Six Additional Secrets To Successful Screenwriting, and I am a personal conduit to the said Goddess of Screenwriting and Internet Millions and if you'll just wait here till I've got the PayPal set up, Honest Al's Screenwriting Academy and Virtual Bar will be happy to take your money...]

February 2004

WALDO'S HAWAIIAN HOLIDAY SCRIPT AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY FOR "REPO MAN" FANS SAYS FAN CLUB LEADER TUXTON

TUXTON, organiser of the REPO MAN fan base of Cumbria, told a crowded conference of cineastes gathered in the Lounge of the CAMRA-approved Lamb and Axeman in Lower Slaughterer, on Valentines Day 2004, that

REPO fans should rejoice at the opportunity to download the screenplay of the never-filmed sequal, WALDO'S HAWAIIAN HOLIDAY, from the AC site.

"We will never have the chance to see this film in Cumbria," said Tuxton. "But at least we can read the screenplay, and look at the special effects storyboards."

January 2004

I'M A JUVENILE DELINQUENT - JAIL ME!
premiered on BBC2 (UK) at 0200 hrs, Thursday 15 Jan 2004

I'M A JUVENILE DELINQUENT - JAIL ME!

a half-hour drama written by Tod Davies, directed by Alex Cox, produced by Sol Papadopoulos, with music by Pete Wylie.

UK premiere Thursday 15 Jan 2004, 0200 hrs, BBC 2 TV

Q: What is this?

A: It's a 30-minute film about reality TV, the exploitation of juveniles, ownership of UK broadcasters by foreign media megacorps, and eco-tourism.

Q: Who's in it?

A: Barry Sloane and Neil Fitzmaurice play the detestable Piers and Dean; Carla Henry is their nemesis, Bette, aided by a group of talented teenage criminals; all other roles are played by Christene Tremarco, Shaun Mason, and Andrew Schofield.

Q: And why is it playing at two in the morning?

A: It was made for BBC education, and plays at that odd hour as part of something called 'The Learning Zone.' Teachers are supposed to set the timers on their VCRs and tape it, then later screen it and discuss it in class. Now you know about it, you can tape it, too, or wait, and buy the DVD.

September 2003

News from the Exterminating Angel Garden

The hummingbirds have started coming round, and so I have refilled their feeder. This is a red plastic dish with holes in it and an inverted glass bottle - you fill the bottle with one third white sugar and two thirds warm water, shake it up and voila! hummingbird drink.

You then snap the red plastic dish/container shut, invert the bottle, and hang it up.

Presumably the surface tension of the water in the red plastic container prevents the liquid simply squeezing out of the feeder holes, but does nothing to impede the entry of the hummingbirds' beaks.

Unfortunately, nor does it impede the entry of ants, who crawl all over the roof and eaves and love anything with sugar in it.

So the ants crawl down the outside of the glass bottle, and into the sugared water via the feeder dish holes. Once in the water, they drink for all they're worth, but can't get back out, and instead float to the surface of the water in the glass bottle.

Where the hummingbirds, and I, are shortly treated to the sight of a sargasso sea of large black ants, some alive, mostly dead, floating on the surface of the water.

The hummingbirds don't like it very much. They look at the mosh of drowned and drowing ants distastefully, and buzz away, before returning to drink. I should think the protein of decaying ants adds to the goodness of the sugar water, but the birds don't seem amused.

There is definitely some message here, as I watch the constantly-repeated drama of live and free ants running down the outside of the glass past their trapped, sugar-deranged and drowning cohorts inside the bottle, in order to meet the same fate...

On the work front, Tod Davies has returned to Exterminating Angel from her sabbatical setting up Toxteth TV, and will produce HELLTOWN - to be shot, we hope, in January and February 2004, in Almeria, with your correspondant directing.

Tod is also planning a TV series with Margaret Matheson, who was her co-producer on REVENGERS TRAGEDY, and writing a script for Hotel Modern in Rotterdam.

Exterminating Angel is also kicking around the delightful possibility of a series of Jacobean and Elizabethan revenge dramas (including WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN, THE WHITE DEVIL, MALFI, DR FAUSTUS, VOLPONE and 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE). The slate would begin with Tod's adaptation of Kyd's SPANISH TRAGEDY, performed/filmed in The Box in the FACT Centre in Liverpool, starring Derek Jacobi. I don't know if I can get the entire Jacobean slate past her, though, since she has vowed never to become involved in any project whose script includes the word "wench."

Other highlights of the Exterminating Angel five-year plan include the TV series "Five Star Restaurants - Are They Worth It?" and "The World's Finest & Most Exclusive Hotels - Or Are They?" in which viewers can text us as we sit in fine restaurants or loll beside enormous swimming pools, courtesy of (*** special offer *** Exterminating Angel Ltd offers broadcasters two-for-one frivolous time-slot fillers! *** That's right! Two hours of useless lifestyle programming for the price of one!)

Alex

Alex Cox has a weekly diary on the BBC website.

Tod Davies has a weekly diary on the Exterminating Angel site

June 2002

REVENGERS TRAGEDY TO PREMIERE IN SEPTEMBER

The film is done and dusted. Anyone interested in the film's various twists and turns can find its weekly diary at bbc-films or visit its website, revengerstragedy.com, for pix and background info. The 35mm negative, 16mm negative and digital video elements all went into a computer in at DFL in Copenhagen, and came out the other side on 35mm. DbPost in London did the post-production sound. Margaret, Tod, Len and I saw the "married" answer print in late January. The TV/VHS/DVD versions were in theory output last December but technical difficulties slowed them down, and the credits of the video versions are currently being re-made (which gives us an opportunity to correct the misspellings of three actors' names and to add a couple of embarrassingly omitted "thank yous.")

The gala premiere will be in Liverpool at the Philharmonic Hall in September: all proceeds go to a local educational charity. The film opens in Britain in October, bizarrely enough as a possible to tie in with National Schools Week (10-18 Oct), since to my surprise and delight REVENGERS remains on the A-level sylabus for another year.

Things are hopping at the Mission Hall. Our current development activities include HELLTOWN, an extreme action film with Michael Madsen; and a stage version of another Renaissance revenge tragedy. Neither is up and running yet: my hope is that one of the two will be in the theatre or in the can by the end of the year. Realistically I wouldn't count on a time frame for either: worthwhile projects tend to take 3-5 years to gestate, and often the gestation period is all that ever happens. In the mean time I've been invited to direct an episode of a Japanese detective series - MIKE HAMA, PRIVATE EYE - in the Autumn.

Feb 2002

REVENGERS TRAGEDY SCREENS IN LIVERPOOL

Apologies for my failure to contribute much to this site of late. I've been in the final stages of post on REVENGERS TRAGEDY, which is now, at last, finished. The cast and crew screening took place last night, at the Crosby Plaza, Liverpool's number one venue for art cinema.

Now that REVENGERS is done I am back in the warp and woof. I'm plotting - with Liverpool-based Extermingating Angel (extang.co.uk) and Bard Entertainments, naturally - a feature to be shot in the desert with a Liverpool crew.

I remain concerned about and opposed to whatever stupid war our dear leaders currently have us in, and in favour of the renationalisation of the railways, the Tube, the water, the air, and everything else - except for the nuclear industry, the arms business, and the meat producers, which must face up to the harsh reality of capitalism and go bust a.s.a.p.

On the general/editorial page is an article I wrote for the INDEPENDENT at the time of the release of the movie BLACK HAWK DOWN.

Alex Cox The Mission Hall Liverpool L8.

Aug 2001

REVENGERS TRAGEDY WRAPS

With great pleasure I report that the feature version of REVENGER'S TRAGEDY, written by Thomas Middleton four hundred years ago, adapted by Frank Cottrell Boyce, directed by me, wrapped on Friday last.

This particular project has been in the works since 1976, when I read the original text in the library instead of revising for my exams. The editing, special effects work, and music (by Chumbawamba?), will be complete by Xmas 2001, and the film will beo ut next year.

In the interim you can download the script or view the opening scene, and read the director's diary, at either revengerstragedy.com or bbc.co.uk/films. The presence of my diary on the BBC website has led some viewers to imagine that the BBC have a hand in the production. Not a bit of it. Neither the BBC's Film Prevention Officer and Channel 4's FPO have put as much as a sou into the production of REVENGERS TRAGEDY, which was financed by The Film Council's Weird Films Division, Northcroft Films, and Cable Hogue, the Japanese distributor.

This is almost a 100 per cent English film. My first one. Though perhaps not in the Merchand Ivory tradition of Englishness. It is a vicious and sardonic tale of North Versus South English parricide and fratricidal warfare, set in the year 2011, first published in 1607, and made in our esteemed royal benefactors' 50th jubilee year. Then as now.

DVD UPDATE

June 2001

The American DVDs of STRAIGHT TO HELL, THREE BUSINESSMEN and DEATH & THE COMPASS are now available, from Anchor Bay. The packaging is most attractive and I believe all the additional elements on them to be complete and unadulterated!

The British DVD company, ILC, apololgises for missing elements on DEATH & THE COMPASS and THREE BUSINESSMEN! Once their website is up and running they promise to make ammends. Meanwhile they are still sending out scripts on CD-ROM for all four features -- STRAIGHT TO HELL, HIGHWAY PATROLMAN, DEATH & THE COMPASS and THREE BUSINESSMEN. These can be ordered separately, you pay postage only. If you want the script of DEATH & THE COMPASS you are better off with the ILC version.

If you want to see an alternative version of the same Borges story, directed by Paul Miller and entitled SPIDERWEB, you want the Anchor Bay edition. Sorry about this international disparity. (The ILC DVDs, interestingly, are REGION 0 -- i.e. non-region specific. Does this mean they will play on any DVD machine?

-COX

About a year ago I had dinner with a friend who is a film critic and documentary maker. He told me that he was looking forward to an exciting cine-related weekend.

"Going to the pictures?" I enquired. "Curling up with a few videos?"

"Nope," my mate replied. "I'm going to watch the American DVD of MARRIED TO THE MOB and listen to Jonathan Demme's audio commentary! I've been looking forward to this all week!"

At the time I hadn't laid eyes on a DVD, much less paid attention to their "additional features."

To be honest, the whole thing seemed a little suspect. Wasn't this yet another consumer durable we didn't need, being test-marketed on obsessives?

Well, now I am an obsessive, too. An obsessive producer of DVDs. In the last twelve months I have done six of them. In two cases, the American DVD of REPO MAN and the British release of SID & NANCY, my involvement was peripheral: I turned up at the appointed hour and participated in an "audio commentary" a la Demme.

In four, though, I have put together the package -- a new digital master of the film itself from the original negative; additional material such as shorts and documentaries; screenplays and soundtrack music; and, of course, the "audio commentary"

The process of recording the commentaries is fairly simple. The director sits watching a video of a film he or she has made, most likely several years previously. As the film plays, he or she is expected to sagely regale a microphone with anecdotes about the making of the film.

It helps if the director has managed to snag someone as "back up" -- the producer, or the writer, or an actor, or the composer... Quite often this person's recollections will be completely different. And if two are present, the likelihood of both nodding off during a longeur is halved. If they are sufficiently loquatious, all is well. If not, the recording has to be done in stages so that the "turns" can be prompted/woken up/given more drink.

(I was lucky in that at each recording session I had someone interesting to share the booth. Interesting is too mild a word to describe Drew Schofield -- with whom I did the SID & NANCY commentary -- and his tale of a soiree in New York with Johnny Rotten.)

My digital crop consists of STRAIGHT TO HELL (made in 1987), HIGHWAY PATROLMAN (1991), DEATH & THE COMPASS (1996), and THREE BUSINESSMEN (1998). It comes out in Britain next week, in the US at the end of April.

In addition to the above-mentioned features, in Britain you get: a documentary about the fate of those who appeared in STRAIGHT TO HELL (Strummer still soldiers down the rock'n'roll trail, Miguel Sandoval claims that everything has turned out exactly as he expected); video promos for "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" by the Pogues and "Did You Evah?" by Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop; an alternate version of Borges' story "Death & The Compass", entitled SPIDERWEB; and the screenplays of all four films, on CD.

Are these DVDs worth it? It would clearly be cheaper to buy a VHS copy or just tape the films off the telly. So do the "extra scenes" and documentaries and director's commentaries really add anything?

I think in the ideal instance DVD "additional elements" can provide some sort of film literacy, even insight. More importantly, perhaps, they represent the Return of the Director, an endangered species rarely glimpsed in recent years.

One of the reasons most English-language films are so bad is that they are written by committee, test-marketed by consultants, and tweaked by the producer or distributor long after the director has gone. The idea that a film director is an "author" is maintained by a tiny band of believers: the Directors' Guild, people who live in Paris, and -- at least for now -- the buyers of DVDs.

Because, for a DVD to be worth purchasing, it must have its additional elements -- and first among them is the "director's commentary." Wonder of wonders! Directors whom the studios have treated as ingrates or nuisances are suddenly in demand again. Monte Hellman and Werner Herzog are essential elements, where DVD sales are concerned.

This is a promising thing. I'm delighted to participate. I wasn't able to supply another much-appreciated DVD element, though: the expanded version, or "director's cut" of a film.

Rather boringly, all four films are already director's cuts. Only STRAIGHT TO HELL underwent any serious re-jigging in post-production -- in order to cut a four-day structure down to three.

There was some funny stuff in the excised scenes: particularly Elvis Costello, tied to a chair in a butler's uniform, being tortured by Kathy Burke and by his future wife, Cait O'Riordan. But when I tried to re-incorporate the "missing" scenes, they didn't work.

So the STRAIGHT TO HELL out-takes went into the documentary, BACK TO HELL. And a series of ironic commercials - written to interrupt a longer version of THREE BUSINESSMEN - were included in the audio commentary, instead.

The availability of screenplays on CD or as hard copies speaks to that film literacy thing again. The enthusiast may print them out or view them on his compu; other consumers have acquired a handy silver beer mat. If the audio commentaries are interesting, it is partially because they were all made some years after the films. With the passage of time, irony is possible, which isn't in the traditional promotion of the product.

That's what's been unusual about the DVD process: you can hear directors and cinematographers talking about their work, but they don't have to promote it. They can be dispassionate, analytical, years after the event. Monte Hellman isn't promoting TWO LANE BLACKTOP for the studio. Herzog isn't chatting to Barry Norman. Instead they are reminiscing seriously about the process of creativity, of production and distribution, thirty years down the line.

But honesty is a rare commodity, especially in dreamland. Over the last year, DVD "additionals" have become delivery requirements for studio features. On the day the filmmaker turns the film over, he/she must also hand in the the DVD "Making Of" Documentary, and the once-elusive "director's commentary"...

"How was it to direct this picture, Bud?"

"Great! We had a great script! A great cast! I feel like the king of the world and you will too as I take you on an interactive magic-carpet commentary. First I'd like to thank Megalithic Studios, our product-placement sponsors FedEx and Microsoft, d my agents at CAA..."

It will be harder to enjoy that show.

ALEX COX Liverpool, MARCH 2001

The above can also be read at the Guardian Unlimited site in the article "Is DVD worth it?" dated February 23 2001