Alex Cox - October 1996

Alexander B. H. Cox (born 15 December 1954)is an English film director, screenwriter, actor, non-fiction author and broadcaster. Cox experienced success early in his career with Repo Man and Sid and Nancy, but since the release and commercial failure of Walker, his career has moved towards independent films. Cox received a co-writer credit for the screenplay of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) for previous work on the script before it was rewritten by Gilliam.

I have photographed quite a few English, American, Canadian, Irish and Polish film directors in my life as a magazine and newspaper photographer. I can state here that the most wonderfully off-the-wall unusual one was Alex Cox who faced my camera for 9 exposures on October 1996 in Vancouver at the Pacific Cinematheque.

Wikipedia has a lot of detail about him but fails in informing us well about two films he made that are, like him, most unusual. One is El Patrullero (Highway Patrolman) filmed in Mexico in Spanish with Mexican actors and Cox has a bit part in it. It is a film in which a young rookie policeman, upon graduation from the academy, has to face corruption.

El Patrullero - the full movie

The other film, the reason why he came to Vancouver in 1996, was to promote a film based on a Jorge Luís Borges story called La muerte y la brújula (Death and the Compass) made in 1992. The story ends with a Borgesian-labyrinth-of-a-problem in which our protagonist states he will kill a man twice.

I will stop here to explain that the titles of books and films in Spanish only capitalize the first word and any given names within the title. And Argentines (I am an Argie) usually put the index contents of a book at the end. Nationalities are never capitalized. Soy argentino.

By a curious coincidence the Cox film on the Borges short story was filmed in the polluting Azcapotzalco refinery in Mexico City. While I lived there we all complained that the refinery on the north side of the city with the north wind it made the air in Mexico City one of the worst in the world at the time.

In 1969 I was living in Mexico City and I had recently married my Rosemary (Feb 8, 1968). We paid our rent by teaching English to Mexican executives of American companies. One in particular was Colgate Palmolive. My students there were unusually literate so I brought a Borges book I had purchased that year called Ficciones. My students were assigned to translate passages from it into English. One of the stories they translated was La muerte y la brújula.

While I have always been interested in Borges, and I have read most of his output, it was Cox who put that bug into me that to this day I persist in. I read one Borges poem every night.

Cox  lives in southern Oregon. He communicated with all the people he had emails for (me included) asking us to help make his Last Film (his words). He even warns us that many directors who start with a film sometime don’t make it or don’t finish it.

Below is the email contents and the link to information on his forthcoming (last) film.

Dear Friend

I'm contacting you since we've corresponded regarding film-related matters, and I've just launched a Kickstarter campaign - the last one, I promise! - for a feature film i'm calling My Last Movie.

The details of my new project are here:

Kickstarter - My Last Movie

If you're unable to back this one (or not interested) I understand.

And if you can spread the word, I will very much appreciate it.

Warm regards

Alex

PS if you receive more than one copy of this email it may be that I have more than one address for you, or that you feature in more than one mailbox. If so, apologies!

Top Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' - below left Rosa 'Duchess of Montebello''  - right Rosa 'Duchess of Portland' and below Rosa 'Queen of Sweden' - 14 May 2024

The closest I ever got to royalty happened when Queen Elizabeth came to Vancouver to perform a pre-launch of Expo 86. I was attached as a stills photographer with the CBC crew. I may have been around 10 ft from her.

In 1975, before we left Mexico for Vancouver, I took my eldest daughter Alexandra who was 7 at the time, to a polo match between the Mexican National Team and Windsor Park which at the time was Prince Charles’s team. I took her so that she could one day boast that she saw a future king play polo. Windsor Park lost as their horses could not keep up with the lack of oxygen in the high Mexico City altitude.

On June 2, 1953, it was lunchtime in Buenos Aires. My mother said, “Alex wash your hands and knees (I wore short pants) and come to lunch.” I answered, “Mother I cannot as I am listening on the radio to the coronation of my queen.”

I have four roses blooming right now. Rosa 'Queen of Sweden', Rosa ‘Duchess of Montebello”, Rosa ‘Duchess of Portland’ and Rosa “Princess Alexandra of Kent”. That is why I came up with a justification to cut three blooms today, scan them and write this blog.

There is a little tradition of royalty named roses and yours truly. I was bored one summer afternoon in 2001 so I came up with the idea of scanning a rose. I cut a lovely Bourbon rose, Rosa ‘Reine Victoria' and I lucked out as the scan was perfect. The rose succumbed the next year but it provided me with the impetus to keep scanning. I have over 3000.

This blog shows that first scan and it explains how I believe that even when a rose in my garden dies I have its Platonic identity in my scan.

Roseness & Catness

Gary Cullen

In 2015 I shot a Georgia Straight Fall Arts Preview. I had been doing these for years. I was supposed to pick a theme and then photograph the actors, dancers, comedians, artists and musicians with that theme.

Gary Cullen's Wondrous Tatra

The 2015  theme was the use of Gary Cullen’s Czechoslovakian, circa late 50s Tatra. Because I had known Cullen before as he used to have a camera repair business I knew he had a great collection of pristine cameras. I asked him if he had an Exakta VXIIa. He did. We decided to play a joke just for ourselves in the we would place the camera in every shot (partially hidden) for the Straight. The idea is that since the Tatra has a dorsal fin on the back it almost has not rear window. Jimmy Stewart used an Exakta VXII2 in the film Read Window with Grace Kelly. Nobody who saw the Straight spread noticed so our joke became just ours.

Gary Cullen's wife Karoline is a very good photographer. She assisted me and helped me light the Tatra

The Exakta with my repaired Widelux

 

When Horst Wenzel died quite a few months ago I was not only upset because we had been friends for many years but also since he repaired all my cameras and my panoramic Widelux was broken.I called Cullen and he told me he would look at it. He fixed it.

I decided to pay him by giving him my inkjet prints of him with the car, with the Exakta and with his wife Karoline. I drove to Tswwassen today and was greeted by the pleasant pair, who offered me tea and cat cookies (don’t ask). My camera was repaired.

In addition I was given a gift of a circa 1951/52 Exakta with two finders, the pentaprism and a waist level one. Additionally, since the camera is extremely complex Cullen gave me an instruction manual for the VXIIa which he says has all the info for my now earlier Exakta.

Once I can figure it all out I will putting film into this camera. That is an exciting prospect. The camera is extremely heavy. It could easily be a weapon.

Alexandra & Rosa 'Princess Alexandra of Kent' 12 June 2024

 

As I see my lovely rose blooms in all their glory I know I can snip them to scan them because with the garden visit by the Vancouver Rose Society a few days ago, no more people will be paying me a visit.

But I still have the problem of finding a justification beyond the scanning of a rose. I have found one, one that I have used a few times before with this English Rose, Rosa ‘Princess Alexandra of Kent’. It was a favourite of Rosemary’s that went to more than its size (5 inches wide). She loved it because of the name Alexandra which is the name of our oldest daughter who lives I Lillooet.

In the last year I have been using my scanner not only to scan plants, negatives, slides, etc but also to use it as a tabletop camera. I chose a striking photograph that I took of Ale years ago on a ferry. Note how I especially move the rose leaf so that there is no doubt that both rose and framed photograph are scanned together.

The size of my flatbed scanner glass is limiting. I like that, as a limitation spurs creativity.

Important, really, is the justification to scan and not only place it in my two exterior hard drives.

Rosa 'Emily Carr' 11 June 2021

Rosa 'Emily Carr' 11 June 2021

Cultural institutions in Vancouver all seem to go their individual way. It was not always like that. I remember quite a few years ago that there was a show of the photographs of Robert Frank at the North Vancouver Presentation House that included his controversial video (monitors in gallery) Cocksucker Blues. At the Pacific Cinematheque they screened his videos and films. This meant that many of us with interest in Robert Frank gladly went from one place to the other.

Rosa 'Emily Carr' & Senecio candicans 'Angel Wings' 10 June 2021

My case here is that I acquired Rosa ‘Emily Carr’ two years ago. Here is the info on it:

Family      Rosaceae

Genus      Rosa

Cultivar    'Emily Carr'

Tradmarked Name   Canadian Artists™

Patent Number Canadian Plant Breeders Rights (Certificate No. 05-4907)

Category  Woody

Type Shrub (deciduous)

Origin      Introduced by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in June 2007. Emily Carr is the result of crossing Lammert's selection × Morden Cardinette × Morden Cardinette and Cuthbert Grant.

For those who garden in Zone 3 like my daughter Alexandra in Lillooet this is a rose that she can grow. In fact this rose can be grown almost everywhere in Canada.

I find it difficult to understand how a rose that was introduced 17 years ago is not better known in these parts. Few of my fellow members of the Vancouver Rose Society have it in their gardens.

For me it is floriferous until late fall. The red of the blooms is so intense that it is almost black.

I can imagine this rose being sold (special botanical permission?) at the Vancouver Art Gallery and at other local galleries. They could be shown and sold at the Granville Island Market.

Meanwhile I have enjoyed scanning them.

Rosa 'St.Swithun' - 11 June 2024

Scent in my life has been important ever since I was a little boy. I have written about it a few times.

Today as I went around my garden I noticed that the English Rose, Rosa ‘St.Swithun’ was in bloom. My only excuse to snip 3 blooms and scan them was to write a blog about their scent.

It is interesting that there are good smells and bad smells but scents have to be always pleasant. In Spanish we have olor for smell but aroma for scent.

St. Swithun has for me the intense and refreshing scent that the English call myrrh. When David Austin introduced his first English Rose, Rosa ‘Constance Spry’ in 1961 the rose had an intense smell only had in what was called the Rosa ‘Yorkshire Splendens’ which is a very old rose with that unique scent. Austin had crossed Rosa ‘Belle Isis with Rosa ‘Dainty Maid’. It was the former that had that myrrh scent.

Rosa 'Constance Spry' & a happy man

Immediately the rose world was in two camps. There those who loved the scent and those that simply cannot bear it. Luckily my Rosemary noticed the smell in a garden sale at VanDusen. She told me, “Alex I saw a rose today and want to go back to buy it.” It was St.Swithun.We have had that rose (and that specimen) since.

Some people say myrrh is much like licorice. I don’t exactly care much for licorice. I sense beside liquorice, some pepper and a similarity with the most supreme scent (my opinion) in botany which is that of the Southern Magnolia or Magnolia grandiflora.

Some years ago I was in Memphis working with an art director for a book. On a Sunday he insisted on taking me to church. On the way I spotted a grandiflora. I asked him to stop. I got out and smelled one of the blooms. I then told him, “I have been to church. You go. I will stay here.”

And so today Tuesday, 11 June I went to church. I am a happy man.