Book description
40 years ago as a Graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti
Westerns, called 10,000 ways to die. It's an embarrassing tome when I
look at it now: full of half- assed semiotics and other attenuated
academic nonsense. In the intervening period, I have had the
interesting experience of being a film director. So now, when I watch
these films, I'm looking at them from a different perspective. A
professional perspective maybe...I'm thinking about what the
filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt
when his film was recut by the studio and he was creatively and
financially screwed. 10,000 Ways to Die is an entirely new book about
an under- studied subject, the Spaghetti Western, from a director's
POV. Not only have these films stood the test of time; some of them
are very high art." - Alex Cox
Maverick British filmmaker Alex Cox is responsible for directing a
host of acclaimed films from Sleep is for Sissies, Repo Man, Sid &
Nancy, Straight to Hell, Walker and Highway Patrolman to Death and the
Compass, Revenger's Tragedy and Searches 2. 0. From 1987 to 1994 he
presented the acclaimed BBC TV series Moviedrome bringing unknown or
forgotten films to new audiences. He's also the author of X Films: True
Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, and has written on the subject of
film for publications including Sight and Sound, The Guardian, The
Independent and Film Comment.
