Repo Man director urges fans to "pirate a bunch of my stuff right away"

Alex Cox, director of the classic Repo Man, talks with The Quietus's Craig Terlino about his frustrations with the entertainment industry, the alleged longstanding studio grudge that's prevented a US Repo Man Blu-Ray reissue, and his desire that his fans should "pirate my work."

It's so corrupt. Now they want to have longer copyright periods because they say the young artists are relying on this money. The young artists never see any money because they sign away that money to big media corporations, like Universal and Viacom. We, the artists, lose all of our rights to these massive corporations, who then come down heavy on these kids for downloading films and music that we never see a penny from. It's complete bullshit. I want to encourage your audience to go and pirate a bunch of my stuff right away.

Repo Man Rides Again: Alex Cox Interviewed (Thanks, Joly!)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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The_Sixth_Sedge

This is a moral dilemma! D: I don’t know what to do!
- Ambiguity
  
  Bummer — it’s not a dilemma for me.
  
  Repo Man is actually one of the handful of DVDs that I do already own.
  
  It’s not that I pirate a lot of movies — I don’t. It’s just that I believe in putting my money where my mouth is, so instead of spending all my time complaining about the MPAA (which seems to be the Internet sport du jore), I just more-or-less refuse to consume their product.
  
  It creates surprisingly little hardship!
Tony

Let’s go download movies, and then not pay!
- bibulb
  
  Goddamnit, now I’m hungry!
  - grimc
    
    How about a plate o’ shrimp?
Tor Lillqvist

And since when is it only the director who owns copyright to a film? What about all the other people who participated in the creation of the work who might get royalties from sales through legal channels? Sheesh.
- L_Mariachi
  
  What participants in the making of Repo Man do you suppose are getting residuals? hint the answer is zero
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=853490450 Stephen Olson
  
  He also wrote it, and how far do we wish to take this exercise. Grips aren’t getting residuals…
  - http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson
    
    Depends on if there’s a union contract on the production or not. And the crew themselves don’t get the residuals – it goes into the pension fund, instead.
- satn
  
  What about you finding out who is making money from the movie, instead of guessing that somehow the corporation is really the good guy without us knowing?
- Matt Moylan
  
  More importantly, who paid for the film in the first place? Who paid for the cast and crew? Who paid for distribution? Who paid for marketing?
  - James B
    
    The audience?
http://twitter.com/koopero Sam Cooper

Challenge accepted. This dude’s made some dope films, and now I’ll enjoy them again. Cheers, Alex Cox.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

“Let’s go eat some sushi and do crimes!”
- Wild Rumpus
  
  Debbi: Duke, let’s go do some crimes.
  Duke: Yeah. Let’s go get sushi and not pay.
http://twitter.com/badblokebob Richard Nelson

So he’s involved in the creation of the UK BD, but then tells people to go pirate it rather than, say, import it? Hm.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IH3CQ7VQW6OVWD2OW367WYETXU William
  
  The UK BluRay of Repo Man is region-locked, unfortunately.
http://web.ncf.ca/shawnhcorey/ Shawn H Corey

He can’t be serious. If he was, there’d be a torrent link. Too bad. :(
- Andrew Singleton
  
  Yes but that would be illegal, or at least it would incur heavy actions against anyone hosting those links.
  
  Besides. you know Search-Fu do you not
  - andygates
    
    Let’s test that out. Voila, Repo Man: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:b637be50ad87fe942d74b1a990200a00b9307045&dn=Repo+Man%5B1984%5D+-+Movie+%26+Soundtrack&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.openbittorrent.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%3A80&tr=udp%3A%2F%2Ftracker.ccc.de%3A80
    
    (man, that is one ugly link)
    
    Big Entertainment? Come at me bro.
    - Andrew Singleton
      
      Aaand if SOPA were in place (or some of those other laws/treaties/whatever that’s been making the rounds) were/going to be/are in place this site would then be blacklisted/have finances cut in that country.
      
      Which nicely illustrates why it’s a terrible idea since between the time link is posted and a mod gets around to removing it somebody could get their panties in a bunch, file to have your site branded as evil child murdering pirate haven and that’d be the end of that.
    - JammitTimmaj
      
      Sowing the seeds…
scatterfingers

I wish these guys would set up a tip jar or something so if I were theoretically to pirate one of their works, I could compensate them somehow.
- Andrew Singleton
  
  Quite. Even if nothing illegal is being done having a way to directly pay the directors/writers/whoever we happen to like (while leaving a notewhy money is being handed out) I would be all for it.
http://nawel.tumblr.com Nawel

I like the jar tip idea. Now if you excuse me, I have some torrent search to do. I rented Repo Man back in the day (in VHS!). I could have copied it then I guess. Ah well…
irksome

Now I feel guilty for owning the DVD.

The line “There’s one in every car; you’ll see” inspired me to hang a pine-cone air freshener from the handlebar of my motorcycle oh so very long ago.
- penguinchris
  
  Yeah I was going to say – whoops, I bought the DVD a few years ago. I’ll have to download the BluRay next time I want to watch it (it’s one of a handful of films I like to make people I get to know watch), that’ll show em’.
- Bad Juju
  
  Heh. You too? (the motorcycle part)
  - irksome
    
    Also, most times I open the trunk, I say/think “Ohhh, you don’t wanna open the trunk.”
    
    You too?
Kevin B

He better watch it because sometimes people just explode!
Mark Lyon

It’s available for free streaming through Amazon Prime: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ID1J54/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=marlyo-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000ID1J54
- Ambiguity
  
  ”Ordinary fucking people. I hate ‘em!”
thuxley

Wish someone would do that with Walker (1987):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096409/
Ambiguity

I don’t know if this is really on-topic or off, but folks should check out the Screenplay for the Repo Man “sequel,” Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday. Alan Cox has posted it on-line, and it’s a fun read.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IH3CQ7VQW6OVWD2OW367WYETXU William
  
  There’s also a graphic novel (comic book trade paperback) of the Waldo’s Hawaiian Holiday screenplay, for those who like pictures.
- retchdog
  
  you shall not overflow a buffer, nor through inaction allow the stack to be overwritten.
10xor01

“Let’s go do some crimes”
Dave Jenkins

“They don’t buy movies in Russia, it’s all free.”
“What are you, some sort of Communist? Cause I don’t allow Communists in my car. And no Christians!”
http://danielgibson.org Daniel Gibson

Cox is a great director, he also made the TV-edit of Repo Man highly amusing, replacing every instance of “motherf****r” with “melon farmer”.
philipbarrett

Repo Man is ALWAYS intense
photodawg

Why not just purchase the Canadian BD version ? I have many BD films issued in Canada before they were available in the USA. There are at least hundreds available on E-bay. I just can’t bring myself to download movies or music, unless it is explicitly marked as FREE. Otherwise, it is just plain, stealing. There is no rationalization that changes that fact.
- irksome
  
  RE: “stealing”; THANK you.
- http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IH3CQ7VQW6OVWD2OW367WYETXU William
  
  Because there isn’t any Canadian BluRay of Repo Man?
- http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
  
  Actually it’s not stealing, it’s the violation of a copyright license.
  
  The ‘crime’ is unauthorised duplication and distribution. Which is normally a civil matter (try calling the police because somebody violated your copyright).
  
  Leave the herperbole for propaganda at the beginning of the DVD.
hugh crawford

“Now they want to have longer copyright periods because they say the young artists are relying on this money. The young artists never see any money because they sign away that money to big media corporations, like Universal and Viacom. ”
Not to take sides one way or another, but in most industries , signing away that possible future money is what the artists are getting paid for when they sign the contract. If there are no rights to sell , then the artists can’t sell them.

Retroactively giving extra rights to the current rights holders seems pretty unreasonable. Imagine how far you would get with legislation awarding a free second car to all current car owners at the manufacturers expense.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IH3CQ7VQW6OVWD2OW367WYETXU William

He’s not completely insane, but his repeating his assertion that the film Repo Men was somehow trading on the reputation of Repo Man (“We took Repo Man sequels to Universal and proposed they do it, but they weren’t interested. What they did instead is they brought out a movie titled Repo Men and pretended that was the sequel.”) is absurd.