<DIV><DIV><P style="MARGIN: 6pt 0in 3pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 12pt; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; mso-layout-grid-align: none">"40 years ago as a graduate student I wrote a book about Spaghetti Westerns, called <I>10,000 Ways to Die</I>. 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. <I>10,000 Ways to Die</I> 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."  ?<I>Alex Cox</I></P></B></DIV></DIV>