Forty years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 Ways to Die. It's an embarrassing tome: full of half-assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense.
Thirty years later I wrote an entirely new book with the same title, about the same subject, from a different perspective - that of a working film director. What interested me was what the filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt when his film was recut by the distributor, and he was creatively and financially screwed.
Now I have prepared a new edition of 10,000 Ways to Die. It reflects my changing thoughts about the Italian Western, which I still greatly admire. It includes corrections, additions, and new sections on films I changed my mind about, or hadn't seen - including Lina Wertmuller's BELLE STAR - the only Italian Western directed by a woman.
40 years ago as a Graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called 10,000 ways to die. It's an embarrassing tome when I look at it now: full of half- assed semiotics and other attenuated academic nonsense. In the intervening period, I have had the interesting experience of being a film director. So now, when I watch these films, I'm looking at them from a different perspective. A professional perspective maybe...I'm thinking about what the filmmakers intended, how they did that shot, how the director felt when his film was recut by the studio and he was creatively and financially screwed. 10,000 Ways to Die is an entirely new book about an under- studied subject, the Spaghetti Western, from a director's POV. Not only have these films stood the test of time; some of them are very high art." - Alex Cox
