Seems an interview Alex Cox did recently where he called Emilio Estevez's career "less than illustrious" rubbed Emilio Estevez the wrong way, as he recently fired back a response saying it "unfairly taints me and my character" and basically calling him a liar.
http://austin.decider.com/articles/exclusive-emilio-estevez-responds-to-alex-cox,28370/
Emilio's response was classy. Alex Cox is a pretentious arse, and I bet he still can't get over how anyone with half a brain panned his utterly stupid movie "Walker".
Then again, Cox probably still has a belly full of Sandinista jism.
Why would Alex Cox care about the career of Emilio Estevez? Emilio Estevez was hired to do a job. He did a damn good job. The job ended. Everyone moved on to the next thing.
shareEmilio's response was classy.Yeah, I agree with that. It didn't seem nasty at all. It was well-written, informative, and humble.
"Emilio's response was classy. Alex Cox is a pretentious arse"
Agreed about Cox, you should see him pontificating on Kurosawa.
However, Estevez's career HASN'T been that great. Look at some of the junk he's appeared in. Young Guns anyone?
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
Agreed about Cox, you should see him pontificating on Kurosawa.
The guy hasn't made anything worthwhile in 20 years. Who is he to speak derisively about Emilio Estevez?
Estevez also has not made anything worthwhile in 20 years and as a director he is garbage.
At least Cox can analyse a film as he was a long time presenter of the Moviedrome series.
Its that man again!!
Well, at least we know you're an idiot. Have you seen Emilio's films? They are pretty damn good and even if you didn't think so he is doing much more than the *beep* Alex Cox. Who gives a f^ck if he can analyze film?
shareThe movie with him and Charlie Sheen the great about porn pioneers the Mitchell brothers was half decent. But, yeah, if it's between Emilio Estevez and Alex Cox? It had better be about personality, or Cox wins by default. Emilio. lol. I just can't get the image of the jock in Breakfast Club out of my head.
shareEstevez is a better director. I enjoyed his Bobby Kennedy movie called Bobby and his most recent effort. He's a solid director.
Big deal. Cox is talking about things as they were 13 years ago and Estevez is acting like it happened yesterday. He comes off wicked sensitive, not wicked smart. There are would be actors who would kill for a career that was "less than illustrious".It's not some big insult.
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Thanks for the link, woodiehoot. I'd never read that before, and it was refreshing to see Emilio talking about Repo Man. I wish they'd have a hug and decide to work together again someday, but in Cox's defense, turning down one of his movies because the script "didn't make sense" is a bit like turning down a role in a Russ Meyer movie because there's too much boob. Cox is a bit of a surrealist, a cinematic punk. His films are meant to be chaotic, like a room full of people yelling at each other while something by Iggy and the Stooges blares out of a tinny boombox in the corner. That's why they're great.
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I'm only five foot one
I got a pain in my heart
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Well his career has certainly not been ´more´ than illustrious... or anything really worth mentioning, for that matter. Although, for Repo Man alone, he´s still ten times the actor his mishappen brother Charlie is/was - the young punk has got pretty awesome comic timing here.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Cox has no right to call anyone out. He wasted his talents and he can try to justify it however he wants but he has no right to call out Emilio who has had a great acting career and has now mostly moved behind the camera.
Bobby wasn't the best movie I've ever seen but it was better than anything Cox has done since Repo Man.
As much as I love Straight to Hell, it's a mess. I get his sense of humor and laugh my ass off (both at the jokes and how disjointed the movie is) but STH is very amateurish and plays best as a series of random scenes and jokes. It's like something you'd get a bunch of friends together and make in your backyard (with a million dollar budget of course) which I guess is what it is....but just as a film.....it's a mess.
I can't stand Sid and Nancy, Walker was pure crap and his other films barely got released, his last that I saw a trailer for was Searchers 2.0 and it looked like a student film.
And Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday was just nonsense.
In short, Repo Man is one of my all time favorite movies but Cox peaked with it and never lived up to his talent level. Him calling anyone out about wasting talent or not living up to their potential is a serious case of the pot and the kettle.
Saying that Estevez hasn´t had much of a career, is not necessarily "calling him out" - especially as he happens to be right about it. And what, exactly, does "calling him out" ´mean´, anyway? How is it different from expressing an opinion which, as far as I know, hasn´t yet been outlawed in the US?
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan
Emilio Estevez has had a fine career. I don't think I would quite call it "illustrious" but it would certainly be envied by the vast majority of actors who struggle to make it in a tough business. The career of Alex Cox, meanwhile, pretty much fell off a cliff in the mid 80's and has never recovered. Still, he has a couple of very good films to his credit. Advantage--Estevez.
"I don't want any Commies in my car. No Christians, either."
Cox never called him out here. In the original articles the OP was referring to, Cox simply said that he was shopping a script for a Repo Man sequel way back in the mid 1990s and, for whatever reason,producers weren't enticed by the fact that Estevez might be involved. Whether that had to do with the fact that his career was "less than illustrious" as Cox perceived, or not, we will never know.
But this one remark inspired Estevez to write a rambling e-mail to this Austin publication to "set the story straight." Could you imagine Tom Hanks or George Clooney writing something like that about a small time director they worked with a quarter of a century ago? Is Estevez that insecure?
Not entirely true. In the original interview, Cox says "Then, suddenly, Emilio Estevez just dropped out, and from then all the energy just fell out of it." Estevez's response was basically to say that he had never been involved in the first place. Perhaps his response was way more extensive than necessary, but I can understand him not wanting Cox's assertion to go unchallenged and become the accepted story if he felt that it wasn't accurate. Also, if true, the inability to get funding may not have been due to his lack of drawing power but the fact that he wasn't actually involved.
shareIMO, it was probably more Hollywood politics than anything else. Estevez probably told Cox he was interested in doing a sequel, then Cox told his potential backers about this,then Estevez gets around to reading the script and decides he isn't interested. If Emilio's involvement was not a big seller, it's probably more because of his involvement in the Mighty Ducks movies than the state of his career, maybe producers didn't think audiences would buy him as an angry punk anymore.
I just got tired of people bashing Cox. It's not really fair to compare their careers because Cox is primarily a director, and Estevez was, until recently,primarily an actor. As Estevez has discovered himself, it's not easy to direct a successful, well-received film.
Make no mistake about it, I think Cox is a brilliant director and a very perceptive film critic. "Repo Man" is my favorite film, "Three Businessmen" and "Walker" are both very underrated, and "Straight to Hell" has a lot of unique qualities to offer. His commentaries are always very informative and entertaining, as were his books "50,000 ways to die" and "X Films". I also enjoyed the Davies biography of him.
It's clear that Cox is a very opinionated person and his opinion is one for which I often have a great deal of respect. I do have some reservations, however, after having read those books mentioned above, listened to commentaries, and exchanged a few e-mails with some people who tried to make a version of Waldo (and read the script for Waldo). I get the impression that his memory or understanding of events is often distorted as necessary to support the stories he has created to describe them. In this case, I find Estevez's version of events to sound more credible.
Alex Cox>>>>>>>Emilio Estevez
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Since the link is dead, here's what Alex Cox actually said:
"Michael Nesmith and the producers of Repo Man proposed this sequel to Repo Man to Universal about 12 or 13 years ago. The weirdest thing is Universal never got back to us, so we raised the money independently. It was kind of hard to raise money for a film with Emilio Estevez, because his career as an actor hadn’t been very illustrious. Peter McCarthy, one of the producers of Repo Man, worked and worked and was finally able to put together a deal. Then, suddenly, Emilio Estevez just dropped out, and from then all the energy just fell out of it."
and the reply from Emilio Estevez:
"I was disappointed to read the Alex Cox comments about me in your interview with him in Decider on Monday. I have nothing but respect for Mr. Cox and consider Repo Man one of the finest experiences I've had shooting an independent film.
With respects to his comment about "having difficulty raising money with Emilio Estevez, because his career hadn't been very illustrious," that may or may not have been true from his perspective, or that of his financiers and producers. But the fact of the matter was the screenplay, as presented to me, did not make any sense on the page. Unlike my reaction to reading Repo Man for the first time, which had me FDOTFLMAO from page one to the final scene, Waldo's Hawaiian Holiday was difficult to understand from the opening sequence. More importantly, Alex and his producers had no business calling it a “Repo Man sequel,” but they insisted it was so.
In my conversations with both Alex and his producers, I mentioned that I was suffering from "sequelitis," having done two Young Guns films, two Stakeout films, and three Mighty Ducks movies. I told them I was officially getting out of the sequel business. I never committed to their picture, contrary to Alex's comment and memory."
By the way, how hard could it be to replace Emilio Estevez, Hollywood is full of actors of that type...
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Tally-ho, my fine saucy young trollop!
"By the way, how hard could it be to replace Emilio Estevez, Hollywood is full of actors of that type... "
Agreed, although I think Cox was harsh about Estevez.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
Repo Man is literally the best film ever made in the Western World. Emilio Estevez is literally the best actor in the Western World. A sequel to Repo Man would be the best sequel of all time.
Repo Man is literally the best film ever made in the Western World. Emilio Estevez is literally the best actor in the Western World. A sequel to Repo Man would be the best sequel of all time.
I wouldn't go that far.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
Emilio Estevez is by no means an A List actor but he's a far bigger name then any actor he could've gotten to star in a Repo Man sequel. It would've been over a decade after Repo Man came out, chances are that a sequel wouldn't get that much of a theatrical release.
share"Emilio Estevez is by no means an A List actor but he's a far bigger name then any actor he could've gotten to star in a Repo Man sequel. It would've been over a decade after Repo Man came out, chances are that a sequel wouldn't get that much of a theatrical release. "
That's with hindsight.
Estevez was not a big actor at the time, although he came from an acting family.
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It's not "sci-fi", it's SF!
Thanks for the posting the actual exchange between Alex Cox and Estevez. IMHO, Estevez provides better context (i.e. sequelitis, bad script) for his decision to not participate in the sequel. Cox directed more than his share of badly scripted films and this proposed sequel sounds like it could have been in that category.
No one could ever take away the brilliance that both Estevez and Cox amply exhibited in Repo Man though.
Cox's commentary on Estivez's standing in Hollywood doesn't make much sense. In the five years after Repo Man, I counted 9 films he's credited in, many with titles I actually remember and some like St. Elmo's Fire, Breakfast Club and Young Guns did amazing box office and were quite popular. He may not have competed as a "serious" actor, but financing films is about selling movie tickets, not pleasing movie critics, and at the time his pictures were selling a lot of tickets.
As for how easy it would be to replace him, I don't know that a Repo Man sequel makes much sense without Estivez. You could get someone else in the role but it would make as much sense as Back to the Future part 2 without Michael J. Fox. And I'm inclined to believe Estivez's criticisms of the sequel screenplay. It's hard to imagine a sequel that branched off the original Repo Man narrative.
Now maybe a reboot/remake might make some sense.
I got to meet Alex Cox last summer at a 30th anniversary special showing of REPOMAN in Jacksonville, FLA. Cox provided live commentary during the showing and shook hands, chit-chatted and allowed "selfies" afterward. He was very pleasant, humble, honest and not at all haughty throughout the proceedings. He seemed genuinely pleased that such an enthusiastic following still existed.
That said, I don't think the comments by EE or AC are outrageous or mutually exclusive. Sometimes nuance is lost with the written word and too many times conflict is fabricated in contemporary media.
Let's go do some crimes.
A tempest in a teapot. Alex did not mean to insult Emilio. He was referring to financing and Emilio didn't like the script for the remake and the film was not made. No big deal.
I haven't seen this film in a long time. I remember I liked it when I saw it back in the day.
'men at work 2' when he's going to make that happen?
“Can't go wrong with taupe."- Wynn Duffy
That really is the most civil mini-press beef that I have ever heard of, kinda a dick move to knock estavaz like that, but it sounds like something that just got blurted out. Honestly Cox, awsome as he is, dosent seem like the kinda guy to think to hard before he says something, and all in all I think thats a good thing. How could he make a punk rock movie if he wasent in some way punk, and straight up, I think Repo man could be THEE most punk rock movie, just in its general since of cluster f*ery and joyus comentary. Any movie that TRYS to be punk generaly fails to do so, repo man just kinda was...
I figuer cox is looking at estevazes carrier and being who he is thinks, f* man!, what a whore... and naturaly thats going to generate a bit of negativity, expecialy with the lack of success cox has had in this past decade or so.
I was just thinking my self whilst re-watching this a bit ago, what the HELL happened to estevaz? He realy dosent seem like the same person in this as he does in his other films.
Take Young Guns for example, some buddies of mine said, HEY you GOTTA see this movie, its awsome, how have you not seen it. And I look at estevaz's name in it, and I think about the last movie I had seen him in being repo-man at the time and bam right from the start in that GOD AWFULL movie, i get hit, THIS is the guy who did 3 mighty ducks movies...
Now estevaz is a fine actor. just like denis quade is a fine actor, but just like denis quade he is also kind of a whore... and on top of that hes not good enough to be one and still be likeable or in some cases watchable in these terrible movies. Actors like Jason Statham, Jack Black, Liam Nesson, ect. can be in a trove of crap movies and still have a generaly good rep because they are usualy even in the crap movie, good to watch, and on top of that they have enough decent material to re-enforce that they do real movies, and can truly act (jack black is a bit of a dodge on this list, as he isnt allways good in the bad movies, but on a whole I would say he has built up enough of a likeable persona that regardless of the crap, people look to him as a good performer).
Estevaz seems like wasted tallent. Course a lot of people would say COX is wasted talent... that being said, at least cox has his pride, course that may very well be the problem.
Though this little interchange kinda gives me a better opinion of estevaz as he may be a bit of a whore, but at least he isnt a dick... and honestly cox may be a dick, but at least he isnt a total epic narccistic uber a$$ hole like so many in hollywood, like say Bryan singer, michal mann (brilliant, but total douche), brent rattner (tweeny f*er), frank oz (hyper paranoid), Jason Mewes (soicopath, morphine addict, pimp), mel gibson (toooootal coke and booze hound), the list goes on... waaay too long...
I mean it could be worse.
How is Michael Mann a "total epic narcissistic über-as-hole"? I´ve seen and read some of his interviews and by no means does he appear to be a "total douche".
But, anyhow, I´d certainly rather be a "dick" than a whore.
"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan