News of Cop on the Edge IX spreads as the film hits the newspapers, the TV and the magazines…

This is an article that appeared in the ‘South Wales Argus’ in the run up to the premier of ‘Cop’ back in November of ’98. The photograph was taken in the basement of the college at Caerleon, which was used to film a scene with lots of guns – the main action set-piece, the ‘warehouse shoot-out’. All the over head pipes made for a classic action movie setting, even if they did make those backwards dolly shots a tad dangerous for our cameraman who was over 6 foot.

I guess someone was stuck for a story this week, as the South Wales Echo resorted to printing pictures of us brandishing our weapons. All this free advertising really helped to plug the movie though. The photograph was taken atop the high-rise that dominates Newport’s skyline, scene of the opening shoot-out for the movie.

OK, so the high-rise was actually a multi-storey car-park, but Newport doesn’t have that many interesting buildings.

A glowing review of the movie from the South Wales Argus, commenting on all the applause we received for the more comical moments of the film. Among those being the legendary moment that the Coten Films model work division (Daz, Ed and Nick) kicked in and exploded a £9.99 remote controlled oil tanker into a £2.99 pull back and go van. Truly exceptional, and truly hysterical.

Hey, if they can get away with really crap model work on Hollywood movies like Goldeneye, Cliffhanger, and the appalling Deep Blue Sea, then I don’t see why we can’t.

Of course, what the audience didn’t see was how Eddie, our fire and safety expert, extinguished the blaze… you can probably guess.

A small reminder here from the Argus the night before the big movie opens, they really were struggling for stories that week.

An article in the Big Issue about our movie, will wonders never cease? This edition was focusing on Welsh Film, our film lecturer Clive Myer will be well pleased we gained this publicity, I think not. The interview was quite thorough, and covered many of our experiences with making the film – even the not so positive ones.

And here is the cover of this issue of the Big Issue.

It should have been Jake cop on the cover, what’s this blonde MTV presenter got that makes her so special?… OK, don’t answer that. We bought a few copies of this each, just to help out the homeless, of course.