Editing Alex Cox (section)

===Mexican period (1988–1996)===
In 1988, The Writers Guild of America West barred Cox from any future membership because he had worked on scripts during the writers’ strike. Effectively [[blacklist]]ed, Alex Cox struggled to find feature work. He finally got financial backing for a feature from investors in Japan, where his films had been successful on video. Cox had scouted locations in Mexico during the pre-production of ''Walker'' and decided he wanted to shoot a film there, with a local cast and crew, in Spanish. Producer [[Lorenzo O'Brien]] penned the script. Inspired by the style of Mexican directors including [[Arturo Ripstein]], he shot most of the film in ''[[long take|plano secuencia]]''; long, continuous takes shot with a hand-held camera. ''[[El Patrullero]]'' was completed and released in 1991, but struggled to find its way into cinemas.

Shortly after this, Cox was invited to adapt a [[Jorge Luis Borges]] story of his choice for the BBC. He chose ''[[Death and the Compass]]''. Despite being a British production and an English language film, he convinced his producers to let him shoot in [[Mexico City]]. [[Death and the Compass (film)|This film]], like his previous Mexican production, made extensive use of long-takes. The completed 55-minute film aired on the BBC in 1992.

Cox had hoped to expand this into a feature-length film, but the BBC was uninterested. Japanese investors gave him $100,000 to expand the film in 1993, but the production ran over-budget, allowing no funds for post-production. To secure funds, Cox directed a "work for hire" project called ''[[The Winner (1996 film)|The Winner]]''. The film was edited extensively without Cox's knowledge, and he tried to have his name removed from the credits as a result but was denied, but the money was enough for Cox to fund the completion of ''Death and the Compass''. The finished, 82-minute feature received a limited cinema release in the US, where the TV version had not aired, in 1996.

[[Damián Alcázar]], who had a small role in ''[[El Patrullero]],'' went onto to collaborate on muiltiple occasions with Mexican director [[Luis Estrada (director)|Luis Estrada]], and in 2 films, [[Herod's Law|Herod's law (1999)]] and [[Un mundo maravilloso|A Wonderful world (2006)]] Cox appears. However in A Wonderful world, Coxs role is reduced to a Cameo at the end of the film.