(was ) my real ally, the one whose opinion I came to depend on for making changes to the script... He looked not unlike Marty Feldman, the same square Jewish face. He had been a pro cyclist, competed in the Tour de France, and had smashed one side of his face in a bad fall. It had been rebuilt and a glass eye fitted, so that he had a similar disconcerting way of looking yet not looking at you, as Marty had. He was steeped in film and became my passionate advocate and counsellor.〔Boorman p 117〕

Alex found his spiritual home in Hollywood. He was a movie buff. He could pitch ideas. There was no one better at meetings. He was, as they say in Hollywood, 'great in a room'. He eventually became a rewrite man, a script doctor. When they had a project with intractable problems, they would send for Alex. He would demolish the script, reduce it to rubble, then when everyone was in despair, he would rebuild it into a potential masterpiece. I used to marvel at his profligacy. 'There's the germ of a great idea here,' he would say, slapping the script or twisting it in his hands, as though squeezing out that little pip of importance from the hundred or so pages of dross. Or, 'the audience is way ahead of you. The script is just the first third of the movie.' He bamboozled. He bludgeoned. He knew how to cut through to the quick, to what was essential, as he did on ''Point Blank''. Sitting down and writing it, justifying what he had improvised at the meeting was another matter. He was at his best pacing a room. A typewriter did not inspire him. He had the temperament of a producer rather than a writer.〔Boorman p 144〕

The first scene... takes us into a dank prison cell. We hear menacing grunts and stare in amazement at a grimacing, brutally determined convict "spread eagled across the ceiling like some huge dark spider" as he struggles through this bizarre isometric exercise. It's a spectacularly dynamic image that sums up the character and charges the movie with instant power.〔ALEXANDER JACOBS: ALWAYS TO THE RESCUE
Dempsey, Michael. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File) (Angeles, Calif ) 02 Dec 1979: n38.〕

Too many were perfectly willing to let Alex serve merely as an adaptor, a rescuer of troubled projects, a brain to be picked. They knew how unerringly he could respond with a torrent of stimulating ideas. During meetings, even the stodgiest of executives would find themselves fascinated by his imagination and volatility. But Alex also scared them. He cared about his work with an intensity they considered uncool. He wasn't some unmanageable kid who would let himself be led by the nose in return for the chance to make a movie. He knew world cinema too well for that. Indeed, he was a constant magnet for people who, weary of the usual obsessive gossip about what's going through the roof and what's bombing this week, wanted good, lively talk about film itself. Alex was that rarity, an established screenwriter who constantly helped the unknown and the inexperienced.〔