Repo Man
All actors and roles (10)
All team (51)
Short description
Repo Man follows Otto Maddox, a young punk in Los Angeles who loses his supermarket job and, after his girlfriend leaves him for someone else, drifts into work as a repo man. The seasoned Bud takes him on to repossess cars from owners who have stopped paying, a dirty and sometimes dangerous trade. The two are promised a large sum for recovering an old Chevrolet, and competing repo crews begin hunting the same car, which the authorities also want. The pursuit draws in a government investigation, a nuclear physicist, and reports of strange phenomena surrounding the vehicle. The film is a comedy with science fiction elements, and it stays ambiguous about how much of what Otto encounters is real.
Alex Cox wrote and directed the film, his first feature, produced by Jonathan Wacks and Peter McCarthy. Emilio Estevez plays Otto, with Harry Dean Stanton as Bud, Tracey Walter as Miller, Olivia Barash as Leila, Sy Richardson as Lite and Susan Barnes as Agent Rogersz. It was made for about 2 million dollars and took in roughly the same amount worldwide.
Audience response has been solid rather than enthusiastic: on IMDb it holds 6.8/10 from 45,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.6/10 from 709 votes. The film critics' rating stands at 8/10 from 54 reviews, noticeably higher than the audience scores. Cox went on to direct Sid and Nancy, Walker and other features, including Repo Chick in 2009 and Dead Souls in 2025.
What's left behind the scenes
- To make the Chevrolet Malibu glow in the impound lot, no special effects were needed. It was simply coated with 3M reflective paint, costing approximately $600 a bucket.
- The photograph of aliens that Leila shows Otto, and which some believed depicted sausages, actually shows water-filled condoms.
- When someone pointed out that director Alex Cox didn't have a car of his own, he was offered the use of the Chevrolet Malibu. He once drove it to a meeting with producers, and during that meeting, the car was stolen. The shooting schedule had to be urgently changed, and an immediate search for a similar vehicle began. A comparable car was found, but almost immediately after, word came that the stolen car had been found abandoned. It turned out to be found just in time, because the very next day actor Fox Harris (1936-1988) was involved in an accident in a Chevrolet, crashing into a gas station. The consequences of this accident can be seen in the car wash scene, when the damaged gas pump is visible in the background.
- The character played by Susan Barnes has a mechanical hand in the plot. The film's budget wasn't very large, so making a convincing prop hand with that money was not feasible. Therefore, the hand in the film is simply a glove made of metallic fabric. It looked unconvincing, and many viewers didn't understand what other characters in the film found so fascinating about the hand, why they kept staring at it.
- When one of the characters is standing in a phone booth and talking to Leila using a 'coding device,' his speech is played backwards. At the same time, a poem from Lewis Carroll's (1832-1898) book *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* (1862-1865) is read aloud.
- The shootout in the store had to be filmed with consideration for the new rules of the American Film Association regarding the depiction of violent scenes. The scene shows a lot of blood, but Alex Cox specifically showed ketchup bottles exploding in the background from the bullets, so it's unclear what the red substance everywhere is – blood or ketchup.
- As Alex Cox wrote in his autobiography, Zander Schloss was initially hired as an assistant director. He asked to be given the role of Kevin, Otto's friend, but the role was first given to Chris Penn, who repeatedly asked Cox for a role and initially hoped for the role of Light. However, Cox already had an actor for the role of Light, and after the first day of filming Penn in the role of Kevin, Cox decided that he wasn't playing it correctly, and the role of Kevin went to Schloss.
- At the beginning of the film, Estévez’s character gets into a five-door Oldsmobile Cutlass with a beige interior, but then there are alternating shots where, instead of the aforementioned car, there is an Oldsmobile coupe with a raspberry-colored interior.
- After the credits, when we are first shown Malibu, it has New Mexico state license plates "KSB-283". Later in the film, the same car always appears with a different plate — "127-CBH".
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
