"Edge City", a.k.a. "Sleep Is for Sissies", is director Alex Cox's first movie. Made for $8,000 while Cox was a student at UCLA, the 36-minute picture already includes a number of the distinguishing features of his works. That means a Repo Man, a Chevy Malibu, and Ed Pansullo; references to Nicaragua and Sid Vicious; class exploitation, absurd violence, and creative sound editing. As usual, characters work at cross-purposes and don't listen to each other. Jokes are reminiscent of Harvey Kurtzman-era MAD comics.
Its "trippy, associative editing style," which Cox says was influenced by Nicolas Roeg and Lindsay Anderson, just about obliterates whatever narrative was there to begin with. "At one point there was a 50-minute version which was sort of intelligible," Cox explains in Alex Cox: Film Anarchist, "but I was embarrassed by it after a while because the story seemed so mundane. Then I deliberately cut 10 minutes to make it more obscure."
The part of Beauregard, the writer, was nearly played by Timothy Carey, who in 1962 had written, directed and starred in The World's Greatest Sinner, scored by Frank Zappa; however, just when Cox was about to film Carey's first scene, the actor demanded $10,000.