buzz Ben Kraus
UPCOMING AT eTOWN HALL
Jan
8
Bill, the Galactic Hero was made by a cast and crew comprised of University of Colorado film studies students.
Concert Series:
Govinda & Soulacybin
A night of electronic music & dance
Jan
9
Live Radio Show Taping Justin Townes Earle
An
& more tba
Jan
10
Live Radio Show Taping Strand of Oaks & Chuck Prophet
Cooking Class:
Jan Delicious & Healthy 12 Winter Cooking With Nancy Thompson
Jan 11 - Handmade Song Series Vol 2 Album Release Party Jan 24 - Music & Dance Gala Fundraiser:
Jack Hadley Band; Sherefe Ensemble w/ Sheldon Sands; Ben Waligoske & Ryan Tipton Duo - Benefit for Abrahamic Reunion
Jan 25 - Radio Show Taping: PAUL THORN & RUTHIE FOSTER Feb 20 - Radio Show Taping: JORMA KAUKONEN & JOE PURDY Feb 21 - Concert Series: An evening with JORMA KAUKONEN & JOE PURDY Feb 27 - Concert Series: An evening with KARLA BONOFF
WHERE: eTOWN Hall 1535 Spruce Street Boulder, CO 80302 TICKETS: eTOWN.org 28 December 18, 2014
inde
p e n d e nt f i t f o r B o u
Alex Cox on ‘Bill, the Galactic Hero’ and the future of independent cinema by Michael J. Casey
I
s Boulder, Colo., the future of independent cinema? Alex Cox seems to think so. The British filmmaker and assistant professor to the film studies program at the University of Colorado Boulder doesn’t just know a thing or two about this sort of thing; he’s doing his part. Bill, the Galactic Hero, Cox’s most recent project, held its world premiere on Dec. 12 at Muenzinger Auditorium to two packed houses. But Bill is unique. Bill, the Galactic Hero isn’t just an Alex Cox picture. It’s a film studies program and department of theatre and dance picture, with the art and art history department and aerospace engineering department lending a hand. Not your ordinary independent picture, Bill is an honest-togoodness, homegrown movie from right here in Boulder. However, these sorts of things don’t just happen overnight. In fact, the history of Bill goes all the way back to 1983, when Cox was a 28-year-old University of California, Los Angeles, graduate who had just completed his first feature for Universal Studios, Repo Man. Starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, as well as a slew of
actors who would become a sort of Cox Stock Company — Sy Richards, Miguel Sandoval, Zander Schloss, etc. — Repo Man went on to a modest amount of success, motivated primarily from its punk-themed soundtrack (headed by Iggy Pop). Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote in his 1984 review, “Repo Man comes out of left field, has no big stars, didn’t cost much, takes chances, dares to be unconventional, is funny, and works. There is a lesson here.” Cox followed up Repo Man with Sid & Nancy (1986), a heroin-fueled romance featuring the sadly true tale of Sex Pistols bassist, Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman), and his shrill girlfriend, Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Sid & Nancy was another success, but the following year saw Walker (1987), a Western set in Nicaragua starring Ed Harris, costing $5.6 million and Cox’s career in Hollywood. Walker was deemed too violent and Cox claims that it got him banned from future studio work, but it didn’t slow him down. He would go on to make movies on his own terms for the next 20 years (from this period Highway Patrolmen from 1991 and Three Businessmen from 1998 are his best), but in 2008 the bottom dropped out and Cox was left looking for a career. “Up until 2008 it was possible to make something of a living from one’s back catalog as a filmmaker,” Cox told Boulder Weekly. The recession put an end to that and with no money coming in from licensing, Cox — who just celebrated his 60th birthday on Dec. 15 — heard the words every artist has heard at least once: “My wife [Tod Davies, herself a writer and producer] said,
r e ld
‘You’ve got to get a real job.’” That job turned out to be as a film professor for CU’s film studies program. “This was the Stan Brakhage School,” Cox explains. “So I had this notion a professor could be both simultaneously a teacher and an artist.” Filmmakers working at universities to pay the bills while incubating other projects are nothing out of the ordinary. Brakhage taught at CU from 1981 to 2003 while continuing to work and experiment — quite prolifically — with cinema. For Cox, here was a chance to bring his long lost project to fruition. Bill, the Galactic Hero (reviewed in the Dec. 11 issue) is a project that Cox tried to get done in 1983, but couldn’t. Cox was told the project was “too expensive and too anti-war” and the initial option for Harry Harrison’s 1965 novel lapsed. Harrison and Cox remained good friends with a working relationship, and a few years ago, brilliance struck. “I said to Harry, ‘I’m at CU now, and what if you gave me an academic license to make Bill with students?’” Cox recalls. “[Harry] goes, ‘What’s an academic license?’ ‘I have no idea. I don’t know,’” Cox recounts, laughing. “‘But let’s figure it out.’” An academic license meant that Cox and his students could adapt Bill for a film project without paying for an exclusive option, so if a studio wanted to buy the rights to Harrison’s novel, then both projects could move forward simultaneously. “The deal was, nobody could be paid,” Cox says. “The film was to be made purely as a student project at CU, or some other film school, and that’s when we started the see BILL Page 29
Boulder Weekly