Alex Cox’s Last Movie in Almeria 1

Alex Cox is currently at work on what he is calling his ‘last movie.’ And, of course, it involves shooting in Almería. Last month I had the extraordinary opportunity to visit the set.

Cox has been drawn to Almería since he was a teenager outside Liverpool. As he explained in his introduction to my photobook Once Upon a Time in Almería, he made his first trip there in the early 1970s, by bus, train and bicycle. Cox would return in the 1980s, bringing along a film crew and a cast of musically-inclined friends, to make Straight to Hell. For twenty years he maintained a house in Tabernas.

Thus, it’s no surprise that Cox would want to return here for his last hurrah. The original plan was to shoot the entire film in Almería, but as the province is experiencing a resurgence in film production, everything was booked up for the rest of the year. In the end, the crew spent four days shooting in the area, making use of two historic film sets leftover from the 1960s.

Much of the cast and crew came together for the first time on Saturday evening during the Almería Western Film Festival to participate in a read-through of the script under the working title Dead Mexicans. The story is loosely inspired by Gogol’s Dead Souls but is set along the US-Mexico border. The cast includes familiar faces from previous Cox productions, including Del Zamora, Edward Tudor-Pole, and Zander Schloss.

On Monday morning the sky was unusually cloudy. Shooting began at Oasys Mini-Hollywood, a western theme park built around a movie set first constructed for Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. The old west town was quiet and empty, apart from a handful of extras wandering about. (The crew would return later in the week when the park was open to tourists, having to shoo away curious onlookers and pause filming during the mid-day stunt show.)

It was inspiring to watch Cox and his outstanding, mostly Spanish, crew at work. Guillermo de Olivera of Zapruder Pictures handled production for the shoot in Spain and Almeria-based Impossible Makers were brought in for prop and set design. Cox, who turns 70 in December, appeared as energetic as ever bounding around the set and exuding an infectious enthusiasm. Cox has an eye for seeing potential in others and finding roles for them in front of or behind the camera. Indeed, if you hang around long enough you just might end up in costume in front of the camera.

The final scene took place alongside the deteriorating remains of a fortress first built for the movie El Condor (one of the Kickstarter campaign rewards was to have your name on a cemetery cross). In the late afternoon sun, the crew moved quickly to plant wooden grave markers in the ground, using rocks to reinforce them against the harsh winds. Once the set was ready, a few quick takes before the sun went down, and it was a wrap for the Almería production.

Cox and crew have now moved on to Arizona to finish shooting at the Mescal film set outside Tucson.