#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking

The following is a conversation with Robert Rodriguez. a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita, Battle Angel, The Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his first film, El Mariachi, that he famously made for just $7,000. on that film and many sins.

He was not only the director, he was also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects supervisor, sound designer, composer, basically the full stack of filmmaking. He has shown incredible versatility across genres, including action, horror, family films, and sci-fi. with some epic collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and many other legendary actors and filmmakers.

He has often operated at the technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD filmmaking, digital backlots, and 3D tech, and always. Through all of that, he's been a champion of independent filmmaking, running his own studio here in Austin, Texas, which in many ways is very far away from Hollywood. He's building a new thing now called Brass Knuckle Films, where he's opening up the filmmaking process so that fans can be a part of it as he creates his next four action film.

I'll probably go hang out at his film studio a bunch as this is all coming to life. His work has inspired a very large number of people, including me, to be more creative in whatever pursuit you take on in life and have fun doing it. And now a quick view, second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got InVideo AI for video generation, Brain.fm for focus.

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This episode is brought to you by InVideo AI, a video generating app that allows you to create full-length videos using just text prompts. Perhaps, obviously, InVideo is the perfect sponsor for this conversation with Robert Rodriguez. He has been for decades, the guy willing to use cutting edge technology, digital HD.

VR, 3D. And now we're in a time and a space where it is not quite used by the big filmmakers because they're not really sure how to leverage its power. And so I think it's really the role of the independent filmmakers. Start playing with video generation. Start playing five seconds, ten seconds at a time. Seeing what you can do in a storytelling art form.

I do think it's a skill I've used in video a lot. There's some aspect of it you have to kind of nudge the system into that direction. I mean, it really is like having two directors. And there's things that humans are really good at, and there's things that AI is really good at. The dance between the two is where the art form is.

Anyway, you can try InVideo AI for free, saving you lots of time and money you'd otherwise spend on editing, animating, and other production costs. Go to InVideo.io slash LexPod. That's InVideo.io slash LexPod. This episode is also brought to you by Brain.fm, a platform that offers music specifically made for focus. I remember thinking that focus or the lack of focus... was 100% the consequence of your mind and nothing else.

that you should be able to shut off the world and deeply focus on a particular thought or line of thought or on nothingness or on your breath, you know, like you do in meditation. You should be able to do that just with the power of your mind. And in some sense, I still believe that. But I think there's just some things that make it easier. I first discovered that, I don't know how long ago now, but listening to different kinds of noise, white noise, brown noise.

and realizing whoa, something is happening here. The mind is just much more naturally, much quicker, much more efficiently. able to achieve that state of focus where you shut off the rest of the world. And so brain.fm takes it just to another level. There's just so much variety for any working environment where you want to optimize the kind of audio landscape. Increase your focus and try Brain.fm free for 30 days by going to brain.fm slash lex. That's brain.fm slash lex for 30 days free.

This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. Boy, are we really getting to understand the inner workings of individual businesses and the interaction between those businesses. supply chain domestically and internationally now with a new evolving trade policy.

I probably have several conversations with the top leadership on this topic soon. The economy is both an incredibly resilient and a fragile system. Whenever you have these centralized, big, giant hammer type policies, they can have an impact that reverberates not just through the direct consequences of those policies, but just... second, third, fourth order effect.

plus they create the psychological effects within human minds of uncertainty, of fear. And based on that, they make decisions which are often suboptimal for the economy. So you get to see the inner workings of businesses and how they function in response to those, almost like an immune system within each business to see how can we survive? How can we turn a profit still?

And all of that comes into play, all the HR, all the inventory, all of that. I'm deeply grateful for the wisdom and the power of the market. We should be careful not to mess with it too much. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com. That's netsuite.com. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Speaking of capitalism, I've also been reading a large amount of literature on China.

To understand the culture, the peoples, the mechanism used by the government. All that to help me understand. and break through some of the propaganda of the Western perspective. Of course, there's truth to it. The skepticism and the caution that the West has. But I think there's a lot of interest at play here and a lot of warmongers that want to wage war instead of make peace.

I do think that the economy and economic relationships and trading and buying and selling, all of that is a fundamentally peaceful action that protects us from escalating military conflict and otherwise. I continue to hope we're past all that military conflict. But anyway, the thing I love about America is the company. The huge number of entrepreneurs building stuff, creating stuff, dreaming, buying and selling from each other. I don't know. That just fills me with hope.

that individuals can dream and have the power to bring that dream to a reality. Anyway, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Lex. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode was brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix that I'm drinking now as I'm traveling in the middle of nowhere. Barely know where I am. Barely know who I am. Barely know what time it is.

I've been feeling lost and out of bounds for many reasons. Hoping there'll be a sign of some sort. Some sort of little miracle that'll help me find my way. This conversation with Robert was an inspiring one. He really did everything he's done against all odds. fearless and bold. When shit goes wrong, he just figures it out. There's something about him, just being around him, the energy of urgency. of creative excitement to just take on the problems of the day. It's not like excitement to create.

It's excitement to take on the problems that will for sure come when you try to create. The different angle is a more honest one. It's a more inspiring one, more energizing one. Yeah. Anyway, what were we talking about? Element. Watermelon salt. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Robert Rodriguez.

a time when there was like one take and you only have one take to get it right oh all the time where you're just like or just you know how long it'll take to reset and you're just But then you know what? You got to just work with what you got. You got to work with your results. You get nervous or no in that moment?

Oh yeah, you're nervous going like, just I hope it goes off because then to fix it, I'll have to go do a bunch of other steps, which we don't have time for. But a lot of times, you know, I've just learned that if something happens, it's just meant to be that way. I got used to doing things in one take and just living with it. It didn't bother me. One movie, it was even a low-budget movie.

rigged a car to implode because I was going to throw a guy at it. So we needed a car to implode and then we're going to throw them and marry it together, right? The car guy goes, yeah, we're going to have three cars rigged. Three cars? Well, in case...

One doesn't work, and then we have a second, we have a third. We don't have all night to go shoot take after take. We're doing just, just get one car. And if it doesn't work, we'll figure it out. You know, because you don't have time to do it again sometimes. It's such a long setup.

So I go, no, I'm good with just going, in a grindhouse movie, they only had one take, so that'll make it more authentic. When it all goes to shit, when it fails, you just, what's the next thought? So I'll tell you, two things happened on Just Till Done. First was... okay you know how those explosions when somebody walks away in slow motion from an explosion that's become kind of

You know that started with Desperado? Desperado's the first. If you look at all the montages, Desperado's first. That's right. That is the meme. Because it was an accident. It was just supposed to be, it was just two grenades, not a nuclear bomb. He throws them over the side. I just want to like some body parts or, you know, something to fly up some shrapnel. It literally says shrapnel. And my effects guy was so ragged, running so ragged. We get to there and I go, do you have any?

body parts of stuff we can throw up or something you can shoot up pat and realize it's so high to get past that second floor he's like no i don't i can give you fireball i can give you a nice you know um fireball with propane but it burns away really quick like how fast like that but it'll be big and orange okay we'll shoot it in slow motion so it lasts a little longer because it just goes poof

So I told the actors, I know how big this fireball is going to be, but just walk really fast and just look real determined and then just keep walking. Don't stop and turn around because you might get your eyebrows sinned. So they take off and boom, it goes. And in slow motion, it looks great, right? Remember showing it, Jim Cameron.

before it came out. And his hand went up like, you've never seen that before. Six months later, Dust Till Dawn came out. So I liked how much it looked so much that in Dust Till Dawn, I did it again. So those movies came out within six months of each other. That's why it turned into a thing because people saw it. And so I thought, how about for the opening of George Clooney and Quentin walking out of the gas station?

that we have the whole place just blowing up and they just keep talking like it's not happening. You know, like take it another step further so I'm not just doing the same thing. okay that one it's like okay you're gonna walk out and it's all in one take so we only can do one take we're going to blow the thing up. We're going to start with just, you know, some smaller explosions. Then when they're further away and it's safer, then we'll do the big fireballs.

So we're going and you're nervous because like if one of them trips up a line and you know, the pressure's on them, it's not just you that's nervous. You're nervous for them. They're the ones who got to walk out, do that whole. speech, get in the car and drive away. What if the car doesn't start? There's a lot of things that could happen. Well, guess what happens? The thing you would not expect.

They go in, they come out, they start talking, shoot it. It's perfect. Great. We can move on. And the camera guy comes. I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here, it goes, yeah. We have an autofocus on the Steadicam. We have a focus thing. It just went like this. I felt it go.

whack all the way out of focus and whack for a second back like it just reset itself i don't know why it did that you know because it's radio controlled and we can't tell because we're shooting film you know so we're like oh shit let's watch the dailies sure enough let's see if we can get maybe i can scratch the film right there. No, it goes completely out of focus and back in focus within a second. Now we got to reshoot it.

So we had to wait till we're back in that location. We rigged it for two more takes just in case. So that thing that was supposed to be the one take is three takes. The other thing that happened was the front of the Dusk Till Dawn bar.

That same guy that did those explosions, he packed a bunch of explosives behind the actors. When the actors come running out of the... of the bar at the end of the movie and there's an explosion through the door because all the vampires are blowing up he didn't just he put like 10 times so it blew you see it in the movie you see this huge fireball going up and if you watch closely you see it already start to catch the whole place on fire the whole front of that which is foam

Catch it on fire. And I cut just before you see that it's on fire. and we that was the first shot at that bar because we weren't going to start shooting the other stuff till night so the first shot is that and the set's ruined burned to a crisp the neon lights blew up. So we couldn't even, Cheech goes, well, I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight. And, but right away, this is what, this is what happens. My first AD, Doug. Arnachowski comes over to me, and I go over to him.

guys came out with the fire hoses the fire hoses weren't even adding any water it was like the thing was just scorching the whole production design team was in tears because they had just spent weeks building this thing and it was up in smoke and charred I said, let's just keep shooting. Let's just keep shooting because... It looks really kind of cool like this. Yeah, they're going to have to come repair it and we'll have to come back.

But it's all black and charred. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheech and the building's black. We didn't go over there and touch that up. That's real flame that burned. And it ended up looking great. So then the next week when we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they had repaired it and we shot all the night stuff, which is the majority of the stuff in front of.

So sometimes you got to roll with it and look at the blessing you get because of this mistake. You probably actually got a better take by doing it later with them. And then you had this incredible look for the end of the movie that looked apocalyptic. If it had looked just clean.

you would have actually seen that it was kind of a foam set. This made it look better. So I kind of let the universe push you where you're supposed to go. Just roll with it. You got to roll with it because you don't know what the grand plan is. You have your plan. Just know it's probably all going to fall apart. It's just like the movies. You come up with your plan of what you want to accomplish. That's like your script.

Then you go scout your location and figure out what your project's going to be. And you go try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Then you go to do your project. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up. You watch this thing not work. everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves.

and creatively figure out a way around it. You turn chicken shit into a chicken salad. And by the end, you have a result that's better than what you sought out. But that's the process, and that's life. And that's watch, rinse, repeat the rest of your life. That's what everything's going to be like. It's just like a movie. Because when you think about it, you're writing a story for a film.

And you're also writing the story of your life at the same time. How are you going to react to things? How do you make your character react to things? You make him kind of superhuman. Why don't you just make yourself that way? You're writing your own story. And you start really seeing the more you get into storytelling. that life imitates art and art limitates life, but the process is also the same.

So you write the story, the script, and then you have it collide with the chaos of reality. And in that moment, when you said you see the chicken shit, you have to be able to keep your eyes open. You have to do that.

You have to do that. Wait a minute. Okay, stuff changed. It's discipline. Where's the, not to be cliche about it, but where's the silver lining of this? Where's the path to actually make something good out of this? And that's a skill, right? I call it, and it's one of my favorite stories. I was doing one of these talks.

And they said, come talk about creativity. I go, I understand because a lot of people read my book, Rebels Had a Crew, and told me, oh, it made me be a filmmaker. But a lot of people said, it helped me start my own business because they just see how you can go be entrepreneurial like that and go where no one else is going.

And I'm giving all this talk about this kind of positive stuff. And this one woman goes, you're real positive. But what do I tell myself when I just wasted a year and a half of my life doing something that didn't? That's a real negative way to ask that. Can you just rephrase the question a little more positively before I even attempt to answer it? Because already her point of view is exactly what you're saying. She's not looking at all. She's just concentrating on what.

what didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else that's there. Very reluctant. It was so perfect. I wish we had filmed it. She goes... And I said, that still sucks. I say, when you. Follow your instinct. If you follow your own instinct to go start a business or go make this movie, it wasn't someone saying, go over there and you'll make a million dollars. It was your instinct, and you fail. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. You fail.

sift through, it's like the silver lining, but I call it sift through the ashes of your failure and you'll find the key to your next success is in there. But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it. I'm going to tell you one. And I tell them the four room story. I said, I made a movie called four room.

It didn't make any money, right? When Quentin asked me, hey, do you want to make a movie with me and two other filmmakers? It's an anthology. It's on New Year's Eve. It's in a hotel. You have to use the bill hop. We're not going to know what each other's making. And we make it, we put it together. My hand went up right away, just instinctually. Yeah, I'll do that. I'll go make that with you. Now, should I ask the audience? I like to throw it to the audience and her.

Should I have not raised my hand that quick? Shouldn't I have done a little studying first? Or should I just go blind instinct? Or should you do instinct with some studying? Okay, well, I could have gone and studied, and I would have found that anthologies never work. Even when it's Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen, they bomb, because people can't quite rip their hands. What is this, Twilight Zone? I don't want to go see that.

But that's not, I still said, yeah, I think I should still go by instinct. So my instinct was to raise my hand. We're going to make that movie because I love short film. I made like bedhead in short films. And I thought, oh, here's a way. If this works, I can make short films in anthologies and I can.

have the best of both worlds. And by the way, anthologies is when there's multiple... More than multiple one story. In one movie. Yeah, one movie. So if you did the research, you would know that very few people ever got that to work. Yeah, the audience can't quite wrap the render, and it feels like the movie's starting three times, you know? So I make that movie. It bombs. Now, I could feel real bad about that, but if you really think about it, you go, well...

Why did I sign up for it? Did I raise my hand because I thought it was going to be this big financial success? No, I did it to work with my friends, to do something creative, to try something. But that's still not good enough. I need to really sift through the ashes. And if I look through the ashes of that failure, I find two keys to my biggest successes in there.

While I was on the set, they said it has to be New Year's. So I thought, I'm just going to do like bedhead. I'm going to have two little kids that are running around in this room. And we have to use the bellhop as a babysitter. Well, it's New Year's. Let's dress everybody in tuxedos because it's New Year's. They're all going to go out, but the parents leave without him. When I saw Antonio and his wife, I thought...

Wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies? And these two little kids, one of them keeps falling asleep on the set. He's so young. They barely tie their shoes. They don't know parents are spies. They have to go save them. Okay, there's five of those movies now, right? The other one. was I really love making short film.

I really want this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories, like a three-act director, not four? Same director, not four different directors. I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again? Well, because I had already done one and figured out how I could do it better. And that's Sin City. Those are by far two of my biggest successes that came directly from that failure. So I always say. Follow your instinct. If it doesn't work, just go.

Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. So where's the key in the ashes of the failure?

Because if I had an instinct, that means I was on the right track. I didn't get the result I want. That's because the result might be something way bigger that I don't have the vision for and the universe is pushing me that way. By the way, a lot of people that look back to four rooms... see a lot of creative genius in there so you say it flopped it flopped financially financially but you know there's

So many ways to measure. Totally. But like I said, like, I, like I would say, well, it was successful because, you know, even Roger Ubert said, Hey, you furnished my favorite room. I was like, Hey, that's, I could take that. But now that I think there's something else still there. I keep sifting in this, like, Oh yeah. Two big successes came from that. It's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about

Failure. Think of The Thing by John Carpenter. He put that movie out the same weekend as E.T. That thing bombed. Critics were calling it pornography because of all the... all the weird special effects and audiences didn't go either. And he thought he made a great movie. So, you know, it makes you question your instincts. Well, 10 years later, turns out, oh, it's a classic. So sometimes it takes the audience a while.

have some kind of failure on something. You don't let it knock you down. Just go, maybe in 10 years, they'll think it's great. I'm just going to commit to making a body of work, a body of work. Some will succeed. Some will overperform. Some will underperform. It's not your job. You just want to be a creative person. Just create. Stop thinking about movie per movie and worrying so much about each one.

or project to project if you're a business person just commit to making a body of work like an artist would do And you don't know what the masterpieces are going to be or which. You know, someone's going to come and say, oh, that one that bombed. There is some really creative stuff in there. And it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.

Sometimes I think it takes some time to process the failure to make sense of it. At least for me, don't rush making sense of what didn't work, what lessons do I... Take from it, how do I sift through the ashes, as you said? Yeah. It takes time. You have to sleep on it a bunch of nights. Sometimes it's right there, and then sometimes you come back, revisit it later. Because you may not have had some information you have now that makes you look at it a lot differently.

Like when I did, I just did the audio book for Rebel Without a Crew. Yeah, thank you for that, by the way. I hadn't read it since I wrote it. So I didn't remember a lot of the details. And you actually, it's voiced by you.

I voiced it. So I was reading it real time. Yeah. I highly recommend people because you comment, you add additional comments to it. It's great. Most of the time I'm laughing. I can't believe how crazy that story is. I forgot a lot of details. And when you're younger, you know, when you're 21, 22.

Six months feels like six years. I didn't realize how short that window was until I reread it and how impossible most that is. But you see some places where... a setup falls in my lap and then pays off immediately in a big way like magic over and over again it's clear i don't know what i'm doing

It's clear the universe is just pushing you places. So you can't fight it. Because I remember I was really disappointed. And it says in the diary, I'm really bummed that I go home that Christmas not having sold it. to the Spanish home video market, which was my goal. I walked home penniless and I was like, Merry Christmas. I feel like a freaking failure.

Good thing I didn't sell it then. With time, you look back and you go, wow, I got an agent the next month. He wasn't even going to help me sell it. He said, if you can get $20,000 for it, take it. I chased those people down for those contracts. And then Columbia ended up buying it for like 10 times as much. And we released it and did a sequel and did another sequel. If you look back in time, good thing I didn't get my way. My way had this for a vision.

and it needed to do that which you would never know you know you don't know that going through so just if you don't have the answer right away or even in 10 years go maybe it's coming in 20 years don't let anything slow you down Just keep plowing forward, committing to making your thing happen. Don't get shook up.

by something that you might not have an answer for. Yeah, every aspect of your journey is super inspiring. We'll talk about it. Let's go to the beginning because there's a few technical things that are fascinating about your beginning. So you started making films when you were...

very young, with an old Super 8 camera, and you were editing on a VCR. You see, I've met a lot of filmmakers who, you know, they start a certain way, but then they finish another way. They get to be big filmmakers and all that. I still do it that way. Like I still, I like doing things that way.

I have a new company called Brass Knuckle Films where the audience can actually participate by being investors in these movies that are done the same way. They're action films like we did with Mariachi, but 10 to 30 million. It doesn't take a lot of money. to start a billion dollar franchise. You know, like John Wick only cost 20 million, the first one.

Fourth one was $100 because the audience kept growing and growing. By the way, you say $20 million, it's not a lot of money. It's not for an action film. That's right. But also, we should say that El Mariachi, the film on which the book...

Rebel Without a Crew is $7,000 movie. So let's put it all in context. But, you know, you're going to hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor like Keanu Reeves for a $20 million movie. You know, I asked Jim, I said, Jim Cameron, I said, you know, like Terminator costs $5 million. He goes, I wish we had that much. He had less than $5 million for that. So you can start a billion-dollar franchise using these methods.

and with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. That's what I'm going to say now about how I started. You see that DNA of how I give out, you know, I want people to know how I did things with Rebel Without a Crew or with these methods that I started with. You see, that's how we kept going. Hollywood spends way too much. And when you can make stuff for less, your profit margin is much better. So when I first started, I didn't have any money. So I still play like I don't have.

So I had Super 8, my dad had a Super 8 camera, but I couldn't afford it. I shot two rolls that you had to get, you had to buy the film. Shoot two minutes. I shot two rolls of that. It's another same amount of money that it cost to buy it, whatever that was, 12 bucks or whatever, to develop it. You get it. There's no sound.

Most of the shit's out of focus. But then my dad, who sold cookware, had a VCR, one of the first home VCRs for the market, that he would play his sales tapes to his salesman. And it came with a camera attached. Like this cable you got coming out, imagine if that had to go into your VCR. for you to even see what it's shooting this is old camera manual focus manual iris

and 12-foot cable, then I would start making movies with that instead. Now I have for $8, I have a two-hour erasable tape of sound and picture. So I got into digital basically really early. I was doing, which was really frowned upon back then.

and continued to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before everyone realized, oh, that's the future. Yeah, that's fascinating because you were rebel in that way too, using digital. Yeah, well, because of the means and the democratizing of that. The elite didn't like that. You could just go make a movie like that. But I started practicing. And it's much easier to practice when it doesn't cost any money.

Like if you want to be a rock star, right? If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and suddenly go to play. You have to practice to your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and cutting them together. And you just can't afford that on film. Nobody can. With a two-minute roll costing as much as a two-hour tape.

So I was doing all these movies. First, I would cut in camera. And that VCR, that old VCR had a really great pause button that they stopped making. That when you hit pause, it stopped right there. And it stopped with a clean cut. It didn't have all this. And it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it. So if I have people talking, I could hit audio dub and add sound effects. So I could have two tracks on the same one. So that was my filmmaking.

Until I needed to start doing real editing. And my dad bought a second VCR for his business because I stole his other one. And I found that if I hooked them together, I could play on one and use that pause button on the second. And this was the limitation. This is what taught me how to edit in my head. is that if I shot a bunch of footage, I needed to shoot very little footage so I could find it. Sometimes you shoot out of order. So when I cut it, I have to cut in linear order.

Because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut, but it only holds for five minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off. So you got to find your next shot within five minutes. and do that otherwise if you have to start the machine over it added all these color bars and it would be all screwed up so i'd have to sit there and not move for like all day while i cut knowing what the next shot was and once i had it cut

I would then add some sound effects to it. Remember, because I have the audio dub function. But now if I want to add music, I take that tape, which has two tracks now, into the first deck. and put it into the vcr again one generation of loss but i have a little cassette tape player with the music and i do a y splitter so i can add the music and the yeah right just like that that's like being resourceful with what you have

And I made a warrant winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video, not many, but they would always win. And they were always funny as... I stumbled upon Spy Kids that way. Like I wanted to make these action movies in my backyard. But when you're a teenager, you don't know anybody who can come be your action star. And if you just bring your high school buddies, well, they just look like high school kids.

So I use my little brothers and sisters because I'm one of 10, third oldest. They're just sitting around watching cartoons anyway. And I made them the action stars just to like learn. And I found those things would be a winning formula. They'd win every festival I'd send them to. It was my first time using a film camera.

It was a wind-up film camera I got in film school. I went to film school for one semester and realized I already knew more than the film students because they taught you a whole other outdated way of doing it. So I thought, I'm just going to use that film camera to make a low budget.

a definitive film version that I can send to all film festivals of these Action Kids, which is a precursor to Spy Kids. Bedhead's a precursor to Spy Kids. And we should say that Bedhead was an award-winning short film that was probably a big sort of leap for you that...

probably open the door to you to then make El Mariachi. It opened up your brain, especially, because those video festivals, I would win like a trip to New York and a director's chair with a video of shorts that I would put in festivals. But I knew the film festival, if I could get into film festivals, I could send that all over the world. So I made that little short film, sent it, and it was winning all the festivals. And I thought, wow, I made that with a wind-up camera, film camera.

filming just one take each shot, just no slates, because I'm the editor, and that cost 800 bucks. And it was eight minutes. I bet I can make... 80 minute movie for $8,000 if I'd use the same method. So that movie I did. Six months later, I was making mariachi because it opened up my mind that I could try it in a feature.

Can we actually pause on that? Because I think Badhead has a really great, really unique story shot in a really unique way. I think what I'm trying to say is like, it's very important to write, write the right script. write the right story. Let me tell you the trick to that. Yeah. Mariachi is the same way. And this really helped people. Like even Kevin Smith from Clerks said, wow, Robert said, When Mariachi was a success, I talked about how I did it. I said, I looked at everything I have.

What do I have? We have a pit bull. We have a turtle. We've got a bus that Carlos' cousin owns. His brother-in-law has a bar, and he owns a ranch. The fight scene's going to be in the bar. He's going to hit a bus at one point. He's going to, the girl's going to have a dog and a turtle's going to cross the road. It gives you all this production value. So you write backwards.

For Bedhead, I even did that with a camera. I've been shooting video all this time, and one thing I wish I could do on video, I never could, was slow motion.

or stop motion even. So when I got that crappy World War II camera they gave us, in film school i mean yeah i was so pissed like this is the camera i've been trying to get my hands i could have bought this for 50 bucks at a pawn shop old bill and how wind up you couldn't even see through the lens you were seeing through an approximation of the lens but

You could shoot slow motion. I could do reverse photography if I filmed upside down. Because if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focusing right. So I started with it in focus. went back, pulled backwards on a chair. and then reversed it, flipped it, and now it looks like it stops on a dime and focus. The number of times I've seen you shoot backwards is incredible. To achieve a certain feeling, a certain experience, a certain effect.

sometimes shooting in reverse plus the sound effect layer. you can create this reality that's surreal that then results in the story that you wanted. You have to be functioning some kind of... start putting it together right so i've got this different camera well what now i go like oh no i don't want to shoot the same kind of movie if i got a camera now that can do that i can do stop motion so that's why there's an animated title sequence at the beginning because i go wow i i'm a cartoonist

i can slow it down enough it's not it's not a frame by frame but if i get it down like two frames a second i can just tap it and it'll maybe get one frame off so i did 300 drawings by hand for that opening title sequence holy shit that was that was you doing it by hand yeah so you watch that and this is a throwaway title sequence but I really want this thing to win awards. Okay, hold on a second. How long did that take to draw? That's a lot. I remember I drew it.

I drew it over. I was a daily cartoonist by then, so I was pretty fast. But still, that's why it's only penciled. It's not inked. But it looks great. I mean, the camera's going around and all kinds of crazy stuff. But it's just all faked by paper. It took me all night to shoot it because I remember I walked into the film school the next day.

like all sleeping. And I told one of the fellow students, you know, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence. And he went, why are you putting so much work in this? They're not going to grade you any differently. And I was like, grades? Get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town. I'm not doing this for fucking grades.

I want people to see what I can do now. And I want to see what I can do now with this. So a lot of the story came from the limitations or actually the freedoms of that camera. I couldn't have done that story on video. So when I saw, wow, okay, I can do reverse photography. I can do stop motion.

she has to have special powers. Because if she has special powers, then I can utilize, I can really milk this camera for all it can get. There's one of my shots I love the most is where she's standing there in the chair. she makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face. Now, if I do that normally, where would I even put the strings for that?

So I start here with the camera upside down. I have the strings in the back because you're not going to be looking at the back. And as it goes back, you pull it back. And then when you reverse it, it goes. and it looks so good you can't spot this if you look close you see the strings are in the back but your eyes yeah so i did stuff like that and then just her like getting the hose

And then I just do stop motion for the hose turning on, you know, the faucet. That's why I gave her special powers so that, and it made the story better. So sometimes the limitations you have with equipment or location. You can use it to make, you know, take chicken shit, turn it into chicken salad. Take this camera that everyone was like, what's this? And I go, I can do so much with it.

But I tell you, today, I look at that camera, I can't believe I ever made a movie with that thing. It's so ridiculously primitive. I'm just like, how did I even think I could get anything done with this? And it even exposed. And mariachi, the same way. You have to think about it. I shot mariachi on film with a barred 16mm camera. I didn't know how to use it. I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment, and I said, I have an Arri 16S here.

Two motor looking things. One has a 24 and one has a bunch of numbers. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. That means you can do different speed. I can shoot slow motion with this. Oh, wow. Do you have a torque motor? I don't know. What is that? Is there something on the side of the magazine? Yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to do it. I was doing it by phone that way. And then I went and shot the movie right then.

And I didn't know if any of it was exposing or if the film camera was working until I finished the whole movie. So imagine you have to go down to Mexico, shoot for two weeks, come back, send it off to a lab. You want to talk about being nervous. just hoping something exposed. And when I saw it come back and the tape, they transferred it to a tape so I could edit it deck to deck again.

I was so relieved. Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around that. It's like, oh yeah, because I'm doing everything. Like right here, you're doing everything. Imagine if you forgot to stop down and it's open all the way and one shot is blown out. I'd have stuff like that.

Because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it all myself. Wait a minute. You shot a mariachi, the whole thing, without knowing if some of the footage is damaged wrong. Yeah, without any of it. That's why I only did one take. So my idea was this. How gangster is that? It was a test film. Right, right. I thought it was going to be a test film. Yeah. It's the only movie in history ever made.

think anyone would see it and expect it and even set it up that way. I mean, why would I make an action movie for the Spanish market called basically The Guitar Player? Promises no action. No one's going to watch it. But I thought, if someone actually picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're going to be surprised I put a lot of action in. It was just to learn from. I just needed to make it for as little as possible, see how much I could sell it for.

If I could double my money, great, I can make another one and just get more practice. It was just, I was so intrigued by this idea because you've heard advice about screenwriting. I heard a revise back then that I thought was ridiculous. It said, it's going to take you a long time to be a good screenwriter. So write three scripts and throw them away.

It's so hard to write a script. Who's going to write three full scripts knowing they throw them away? Wouldn't it be better if you write three scripts and then shoot each one and be the cameraman, be the sound guy, be everything? Because that way you're learning not just writing, you're learning how to make a movie. So that was my idea. I'm going to make three of these. hide it on Spanish video, but make money back. That's like my own film school paying me, paying me to learn.

so the first one i thought let me just shoot it one take each because my friend Carlos lives in Mexico. If we shoot two takes, most of the cost is to film. I've just doubled my budget. So let me just shoot one take. Some of it's going to not come out, but I'm not going to know what. I'm not going to shoot a safety one. That doubles my, let me, let me see. Some things might come out. I expected like 70% of it to maybe be okay, but 30% I might have to come reshoot.

which is fine i just drive back there and then i just reshoot just those shots right so i just went let's shoot We stop, we come back, then I send it off to develop. Because we're shooting two weeks consecutively to get film shipped back and forth from Mexico to see if it came out. You just couldn't do it. I just had to. One take, everything. I remember one time I was still an actor.

man, I told you to run through that shot. And you go, oh, let me do it. No, one take, dude. Just think about next time. Do what I say. I didn't think anyone was going to see it. And because you don't think anyone's going to see it, you end up doing something remarkable, which is, well, I'm just going to make something for myself.

Because if I was making a movie that was going to go to Sundance, I wouldn't have made that movie. I would have thought, okay, I got to get serious. But because I made this movie that was just entertaining myself like Bedhead, it entertained audiences.

Naivete is really important when you're starting out or at any point in your life. Be naive about what things are going to happen and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson because I didn't want anybody to see it. I just thought, one take, one take. When I got back home... A bunch of stuff didn't come out, but I'm like, I'm not going back to Mexico. I'll figure out a way to edit around it and make the movie shorter.

And that's just going to be the movie. And then that's the one that won Sundance. That was your first feature film. That's the one you made for $7,000. You mentioned your friend Carlos as the star of the movie. Everything one take. I highly recommend people go back and watch that movie. It's just an incredible movie. It's fun, and it's an action film, moves really fast. The story is really interesting, so the script is really interesting. All the actors, you could tell.

They all kind of stepped up and played their own role. They weren't actors. That's right. They were just friends of ours. Which is why, and because, and this was the magic of not having a crew. they didn't feel like they were making a movie it's like this you know we're just here yeah me with my one camera in fact The gal, Carl said, this one girl, I forgot, she's in town. Maybe she would work because we tried to get a soap star and she backed out.

So we got this gal over and she goes, but I don't know how to act. And I said, here, let's watch, I want to show you something on Mexican TV. A telenovela was on and you see someone, you know, all over, over acting. I said, that's acting. I don't want you to do that. talk like you're talking about that the love interest the woman in that that's what you're talking about that's what you're talking about

She's amazing. She's amazing. Because I got a video of her. I said, I want you to just do this one line. Pretend like you're just talking to your boyfriend. Yeah. And I showed her. I showed her the video. That was cool because I couldn't show her the film because we have to develop.

But I showed her a video test of herself doing it. And she saw herself doing it. She suddenly had the confidence. We went through her closet. This red dress you can wear in that. And everyone just brought their own clothes. She really had a sexuality, a tension, a romantic tension that was real. It was in part a great love story, as ridiculous as it is to say. and like a dramatic love story. Yeah, the idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player

Originally, what I wanted to do was like Road Warrior. I said, I want a guy with a guitar case full of weapons going from town to town like Road Warrior. But I don't have enough money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie I do. how we do a genesis story how he became that guy so let's do mad max basically how he becomes that guy So maybe he is a guitar player. So you start writing it out. I was going to show you my writing method.

I write on index cards and I carry one of these, a little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag. And I smile when I run across it because I go... i've made a million dollars with one of these before you know it's like this is the key to your next success. Cards. Because when you go see a therapist, you're not going to them for the answers. You're going to them for the questions.

You got the answers inside, but you don't have other questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering questions like, why am I such a loser? You know, I can think of 10 answers right now. But if you go... What three things can I do today that will not just change my life, but everyone around me? Take steps to that. Take out your cards and start writing them down. You won't come up with three.

you'll come up with 15. I'm like, wow, because you're asking yourself and you'll see him. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player. For real. And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. Sorry about that. He walks into a bar. Bar. Trying to get work. Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Myri. Actually, let's get the hell out of here. So he leaves.

After that whole scene explaining who he is and what his story is, then the shooter comes in with a guitar case full of weapons. He's also dressed in black, and he shoots the place up. Now, if that was a short film, that's how you'd start a short film. But this is a feature movie, so shit, I gotta figure out how to tell a feature. I'm gonna need a few more cards before that, so I'm gonna need... Well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story.

It's a crazy story about a guy who was in jail in Mexico, and he was running his drug business from the jail as protection. He could walk out anytime, but it was to have the cops be his enforcers, basically. So introduce that guy. He's in jail making phone calls. And someone puts a hit on him. So we have action right away. There's a hit on him. He kills those guys because it's his operation. He's not in jail. All the cops are working for him.

And he tells that guy on the phone, the main bad guy, I'm going to come to town. I'm going to kill all your guys and I'm going to come kill you. So then he gets in his truck and you see them bring him a guitar case full of weapons. he passes the mariachi. on the way to town. And now it's his story. The baton gets turned to Mariachi. Mariachi's doing a voiceover. It's easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. We don't have to sing sound.

There was even a scene when he walks into town where we saw these coconuts, a guy cutting coconuts. And we go, oh, let's go film over there. So we filmed the guy giving him a coconut with a straw in it. And he walks out and went, shit, man, you forgot to pay the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, there's one take.

I'll just put in the voiceover that they give away free coconuts in this town. And for years, people in other countries would go, they really give away free coconuts? And no, it's because we forgot to show in pain, you know, little happy accidents. So now, look, you're already building a movie. So it's like, now he goes in the bar. Now he's mixed up. And the bad guy says, find the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. so you just start your movie visually you can start seeing your movie

And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff. It's brilliant. Are you doing this alone usually? Yeah, it's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have the ending. Oh, I know I want this hand shot. He's going to get his hand shot because he's a musician and those ballads are always really tragic.

So the girl has to die. The girl has to die because if it's going to be a tragic song for a songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy. You know, now you got the ending and then your brain starts filling in the rest because you're asking yourself these prompt questions that you already have answers for from a past life, from a vision you had that you don't even know were there.

This prompts it. It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out. What happens if you get stuck? Like this doesn't make sense. Like some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense. You just start writing in the ones you do know. Like, okay, I know. I know at some point she's going to betray him or he's going to think she did.

She betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come. Yeah, those are all like crossroads for the story, isn't that? Like, how do you know she has to die? Can you change your mind about that? I can, yeah. But for now, I felt like...

If I really want, the story's telling me now what it is. I didn't know I was going to make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the road warrior guy, but the road warrior, he lost his family. So really to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So he needs a goat.

So this is a Genesis story of a character. Well, look, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him. It's not going to drive him like that thing. So it's just coming to me. So this is my other trick. And this is the main thing you got to learn about. If you take any away, this isn't me doing.

I totally believe that because when you start doing this, you go, where are these answers coming from? I'm asking the right question, but how come the answers just keep coming like this? I believe, because I do so many different jobs, I've learned this over the years. When I was in 2002, I was like, how is it that I'm—

the production designer, the composer, which I don't even know how to read or write music, and I'm writing orchestral score, and I'm doing the editing, and I'm doing the cinematography. I haven't been trained for any of these. I never went to school for these specifically. Must be something about creativity. So I went on Amazon. It's 2002. I look up creative books. Anything that has creativity in the title, I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on creativity.

And I was reading them through, one of them was like really speaking to me. Yeah, that's it. That's the process. And then it says gels and mediums. And I'm like, oh, this is a book. specifically about painting, but it applies to music, editing, cinematography, writing. It's all the same. So that's when I realized that creativity is 90% of any of those jobs.

The technical part of setting up the cameras, of writing a script in format, or reading or writing music, that's 10% of that. How many musicians don't read or write music and they're fantastic? It's because 90%. What they do is creative. Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music, could literally jump from job to job creatively and do a superior job than most technicians.

And there's also something to say there about the learning, the technical aspects of an art. You collide with the... What happens is, I've experienced this a lot with using cameras and so on. I don't know shit about cameras. And then you roll in, and then there's all the experts. almost talking down to you and telling you how things are supposed to be. Everything is wrong. I talked to somebody about like soundproofing a room.

And they said, they gave me prices that are insane. And like the amount of effort is insane. And the geometry, the dynamics of this room are all wrong. I'm like, why can't I just fucking hang up some curtains? It seems like that kills most of the echo. I don't understand. And they're like, no, this is all wrong. The corners are going to have some... And I'm like, fuck it. I'm just going to try. I'm going to see what it sounds like, A and B.

Okay, here's audio with curtains. Here's audio without curtains. It seems like this is fine. Let's move on to the next thing. I think... When you say creativity, some of that... is being a rebel, like not listening to the experts. Yeah, well, you're going on your creativity, which is, what is that? That's like an, do you consider yourself a creative person? I think you play guitar. Yeah, guitar, piano, yeah, everything. You play piano, but would you call yourself a creative person?

Yeah, I think so. Good. I think that's a positive way to phrase it. I would just suggest to anybody is just own it. Own it. And just say, like, when I do so many different jobs... It sounds crazy when they would introduce me. Hey, Robert Rodriguez, he does this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I get tired just hearing that list. But when I think about it, there's really only one thing I do, and I live a creative life. And when you live a creative life...

That means anything that has to do with creativity, whether it's filming or piano or guitar or sculpting, you can do it. You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better director by doing all this job. Because when somebody just does one job, they barely know that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity. And this is the main thing I learned was that.

I'm writing music for an orchestra. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Why is that coming out? I don't feel like I'm doing it. I feel like I picked up the pen. I feel like I had the idea to do the cards. But then when everything just starts coming out so quickly, that's how fast I wrote that movie. I go, I really feel like something else has taken over. So this is what my belief is.

And because I hear it in different realms, like you asked Keith Richards, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't, I don't. They're floating around the sky and I pull them out first. You know, he asked, you know, Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar? Those solos, he goes, it's like a radio. You know, once you get a tune just right, you can't even believe what's coming through. So I believe, I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us. It's creative.

that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards, and then when you start getting in the flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing, that's that. And if you can have that mindset, you take your ego out of it and go, all I need to do is be a good conduit for this thing.

Be a good pipe and it's going to come through. So you don't ever have to get hung up on that question you had. Well, what happens when you can't come up? It wasn't me to begin with. If it's not coming out, it's because I'm blocking it. And if I were to do this. and I'm flowing, and if I were to say,

Wow, I just wrote 10 cards. I don't know if I can write more. How did I do that? You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You just clogged it because it gets pissed off that you think it's you. It's not you. It's like, dude, just open up. Let me through. Pick up the fucking pen. And I learned this. when I was 19, when I had a daily cartoon strip. I had to draw a comic strip every day.

to get paid and i would be like i'd have to draw like one drawing draw another drawing then it's like okay these kind of go together it was a process you know and sometimes i just felt like i wish i could just envision it

Sit back. I'm going to try that method. I went home and I would sit back and just try to get in my sofa, try the sofa method. I'm just going to try a picture of the comic strip. And then as soon as I go on and I think it's funny, then I'll just go draw that. Right? Be done in a half hour. Why waste three hours?

I'd sit there and sit there and sit there. My deadline would be coming up, got like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh shit, got to go sit and draw it out. And it's like, oh, okay, I got this drawing. Oh, this kind of goes with that. If I make another drawing, I have my strip. That's the only way to do it. If you don't get up. The creative spirit ain't going to come visit you if you're doing this. Yeah. It needs your hand.

And it's not going to reward you for sitting there waiting for it. You have to jump in and do it. And people, when they say, oh, well, I'm not ready. How pissed off is that spirit now? It's waiting for you to feel like you're ready. It's not you. Just start doing the action and it's going to come through.

And the ideas will come and the answers will come because it's not you. And if you can take your ego out of life, you'll be blessed with this never-ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it. And know that if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it because this thing's got endless ideas. And you give that same advice for making films, which is...

You know, don't plan. If you want to be a filmmaker, don't plan like the movie. Don't think about making the movie. Just go in and start. Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring filmmaker and I wonder how, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say, stop aspiring. Because if you call yourself that, you are that.

And you're always going to feel like you're not ready. And you just jump in before you're ready. You don't feel like you're ready. I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi until I was probably in my last few days of filming. You became ready as you went. You didn't know all that stuff. I couldn't have figured all that out in advance.

When my kids worked with me on a project that we did similar, by the end, they realized they did an interview with my son who, after just two weeks of doing one of those projects, you're a different person.

He's suddenly waxing philosophical about the creative process and going, I never knew how my dad did mariachi until we did this project together. And I realized he didn't know either. He didn't know how he was going to do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge that got thrown at him, he had to figure it out. And that's the biggest lesson. Most people never start.

And that's the biggest thing. Don't wait till you're ready or they'll be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. And you don't want to be that guy. Jump in. No, it's not you. You just got to be the hands. And that relieves a lot of pressure from you because then you don't have to ever have to do anything, really. You just have to be the hands.

Can you talk through some of the hats, some of the many hats you wore with El Mariachi? That's an interesting case study, and you've done the same thing over and over in completely different, innovative ways in all the films, but El Mariachi is such a... radical leap for you. That was crazy. That thing's held together with scotch tape and rubber bands because of the camera I borrowed. You directed, you did cinematography, you did the sound.

It's better to just say what I didn't do. I didn't act in front of the camera. Everything else I did. Everything else, I was the whole crew. It's just like you're doing here, except you've got sound recording. right onto the cameras, right? Or do you have it to the system? Separately, but it's synced. I mean, all the modern technology. I didn't have sync camera. Yeah.

So I had a camera that, it was not a sync camera. And the thing was, it was so loud, I would have had to blimp the shit out of it if I didn't have a blimp. And then I would have needed a sound guy. Just to be clear, so people don't understand this, you're shooting basically no sound. Because the camera sounds like this. It's like, it sounds like all your money is going away, first of all. So I would go like this. Action. You start running. Yeah. And I shoot my edit.

yep you know they're still running you know like i'm only using this part and there's no slates there's no nut there's there's guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of roll like this is real seven for just a few frames so i know which real it is and then that 10 minutes of film

one shot after another. And I use almost every frame of those shots because I was cutting in the camera. Now, after I shoot, like, let's say, you know, tell me your name. Lex. What's your last name? Friedman. Where do you live? Austin, Texas. I would do the whole scene, then I would get the sound, bring the mic in close like that. Say it again. Lex. Friedman. Austin, Texas. That'll probably sink. Now, if you were going on and on... There's a place where it'd go out of sync. I hate rubbery lips.

Or to the knife. Or to the girl. And then I'd cut back when you were back in sync. And since these were non-actors, they say everything the same way each time. They would say their line just like they weren't performing it to where they didn't remember how they performed the thing before. They were just talking in their own rhythm. So a lot of the times it's anytime you see anyone on camera talking. They're in sync with themselves. And as soon as it cuts away, they're out of sync.

And it created this really fast cutting style that I probably wouldn't have had. on such a low budget movie, but it was the only way to keep things in sync. So when I would shoot two people talking, I would make sure I'd film a couple of shots of like the dog or a stuffed cat or something, just so I'd have something to cut away to, to get them back in sync. That's so brilliant.

But I call it, it's just resourceful. It's just being very resourceful. And you allow it to get maybe a little bit out of sync sometimes? I didn't allow it, but oh yeah, I would let it if I just didn't have a way to cut away. Right. And I would try to sync it as best I could. But we as the audience. Like, do you understand where the threshold is where we notice something? Yeah. It seems like you can get away with a lot. You can get away with.

I'm just particular about that. I just don't like seeing a dub movie where it just feels canned. It makes you not believe in it anymore. So I just cut away where the lips are just way off. I just didn't want any of that. I just felt like I wanted it to just be believable. And they could be really believable if they were in sync. But I didn't shoot two takes of film or even two takes of audio. Just one take. And what's cool is that because...

So I would go ahead and record them like grabbing the bottle or any action they did, opening the suitcase. I have all the sound effects too. I just have to sync it by hand. That's a lot of work for me, but I got great sound that way because if I had had a sync camera. The mic would have been so far, we would have had to go. But because the camera is off, I could record everything close up. So there was some blessing to that.

You and Quentin Tarantino had a great conversation about a lot of topics, but one of them is how to bring out the best in the actors. In that El Mariachi, how do you bring out the best? in these non-actors? And then maybe what's the thread that connects to your future work too? Would really help.

for those non-actors was that they just look across and it's me filming. They didn't feel like they were being so natural. The guy who played the bad guy, I met him in the research hospital where I sold my body to science. He was my bunkmate.

And I said, dude, you look kind of like Rudger Hauer. And then it's like, we saw another movie. Man, you look like James Spader. Shit, you should be the bad guy in my movie. And it'd be cool to have you as the bad guy. He goes, but I don't speak Spanish. Well, that's okay. All right. And I'll teach you phonetically. And you're going to wear sunglasses. And if you look close, he's holding them. He's holding the lines here and he's looking at the lines like that and just smiling so.

Can't believe he's getting away with this. He's smiling and he's got the sunglasses on. I read that somewhere in the pool. There's like a scene in the pool. In the pool. He's like this. With the sunglasses on. Oh, man. But he was doing it phonetically. And I tell you what, he was so great, that guy, right?

When we do Desperado, I brought him back. Didn't even have to do any dialogue. Watch that movie when he shows up in the opening scene. Desperado, he's playing the guitar in the opening with the credits. to tie it into the first movie, he shows up again. And all he has to do is light a cigarette and you see this.

Yeah. Because he's so nervous because now there's a crew behind me. Now it's real. Before it was just me and him and it didn't feel like a real movie. So everyone gave a great performance. So how do you recreate that later on a big movie? It's just building a report, making a safe zone for your actors.

Quentin once told me, sometimes being a great director is just being a great audience. Because you're taking the place of the audience for the actor. They try something, and if you're enjoying it, they know that the audience is going to enjoy it.

Makes you cry. You know, so sometimes you just, you don't have to tell them a lot sometimes. And if you do have something very specific to tell them, they usually, you know, go with it. But I always just like to see what they do. And a lot of times they just. are in the zone because again they're getting that flow too you create the right environment everyone's getting this inspiration that's all tied together

that you never could have directed. It's just like you just create that space where we're all going to be open to it and it's going to drop in our lap and I'm going to point it out when it does because you may not feel like you know how to play this role yet.

But I say not knowing is the other half of the battle and the more important part. That's the part we're going to discover. And when it happens, I'm going to point it out and it's going to be like magic and we're just going to go, okay, we're accepting it and we do it. And it gets people in that kind of headspace. And then we're all open to it, to where the character is supposed to go.

what it's supposed to sound like instead of me being very, you know, manipulative to get a certain thing. I don't know. It's, it's just whatever feels good. Yeah. There's such an intimate connection between the actor and the director. I've seen some of the behind the scenes footage with you. You are just a fan enjoying the scene when it's done well. But I think there's an aspect, if I were to put myself in the headspace of the actor, they want you as the audience to earn that happiness.

You know, because when a director approves. Yeah, well, you're a performer and there's no other, you know, it's not like a live show where you get the approval of the audience and you're like, oh, wow, they like that joke. Let me do more.

You know, really the director is it. And a lot of times the director is way behind a monitor somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera. So when I'm operating the camera, it's like this. We can have a hundred people here. We wouldn't know because they go away. It's just us. They just disappear when it's the camera guy is the director. And we're going, let's do that again. It was a shot in, I'm lighting sensitivity myself. I had my crew setting lights.

And I have this great shot of Clive Owen where he's holding down Benicio's head in the toilet. Benicio's not there, it's just a close-up of him. at this point. And I'm practicing my shot. I'm zooming in slow in his face and people are still walking behind him on the green screen, setting lights. And I'm like, I'm rolling. We're ready to go. We're getting this. I can already tell we're already in the moment. What you're doing right now, just keep holding that look now.

One jolt, like he's starting to fight back, but you don't even flinch. Cut. Never mind, you guys can stop moving that shit. We already got shot. Holy shit. Yeah, it's like that. Wow. Yeah, it's like that because you're so lucky. That's a great scene, by the way. It's great, right? Holy shit. And you can feel it. If I wait for these guys, this moment will be gone.

And then another one was Mickey Rourke. You know, he had so much freaking dialogue. He had just done this whole big dialogue scene. He had another one that said, let's go ahead and start with a wide shot. where the two actors, if I'm the camera, you know, Mickey and Elijah are here. Let's get a two shot and we'll come around on Mickey close up. We'll turn Mickey around. for the close-up. Let's start with the Y's so they can get used to the line.

Most of it's going to be sold in a close-up. We sit down, Mickey starts delivering the take. I'm like, hold on, hold a second. I brought my camera over, zoom in, just adjust that light real quick because I'm the DP. Because if I had another director of photography, they'd be like, oh, no, no, we have to relight. It's like, no, no, let's just do this. Let's go. He's doing it right now. And I go, and that performance is just right then. And so you can feel that when you're...

Also, you're operating and you're the camera guy and you're the DP. It's like high-tech guerrilla filmmaking. Yeah, we're on a green screen, but it's like all the crew needs are marching orders. Just put a light back there. hitting them harder. Like that's a, this is a 5k, make that a 10k. It's got to be stronger. They don't need to know that I'm going to make that a lamppost later. They just need it marching orders for the moment. So I can just kind of tell people do this, do this, do that.

And then I know what I can accomplish with the actor and then everything else falls into place later because I'm going to put all that in later. You know, things, once you know how to do a lot of jobs like that, you can just move at the speed of thought, which is where the actors love being creatively.

Because nobody knew what green screen was back then. They're like, what is this again? So I explained it as, well, it's kind of like doing theater. But instead of a black curtain behind you with a prop, it'll be a green curtain. And you might just have a cup. or just a steering wheel, but it's just you and the other actors, just like this. And everything else will be painted in later.

We're just talking. We're locked in. We stay locked in. We'll look great when there's rain coming down and we're on a ship later. But it comes down to this, right? It was so fun to do those kind of movies. To this day, you try to be close to the action, connected with the actor. Because it's like a dance. You end up... That's so good to hear. I remember on Dusk Till Dawn, Michael Parks in the opening scene, he's talking about

the two guys that are running around killing people just before he gets shot. And I just start doing this slow zoom. I remember it was take eight, start doing this slow zoom on him. And I'm like... I hope I get all the way up to where it stops zooming when he finishes that speech, because there's no set way, and I don't know how he's going to say it, but you're just locked almost telepathically. And as he's delivered, there's no edits. He's just going, yeah, they killed four angels.

It's just like, wow. And you're just so pulled in. I'm just like, oh my God. And then it stopped. It's like I ran out of Zoom, right, as he finished that speech. So how can a director, because there's a lot of great directors that stay in the...

In the back, I don't know. In the back of the battlefield. You know, they just trust that whatever they get from their crew, they just accept it. Just like, you know, you would get a take to them. There's so much intimacy to that connection. I like that intimate connection because... I could not be behind a monitor.

Even if I had communication with my cameraman, okay, now start zooming in. You're not going to know. You have to feel it. You have to be in there. It's like a dance. It's like trying to do a dance with a partner and you're across the room. You know, it's like, no, you got to be there up close.

Feeling the energy and it's the creative spirits whispering to you both. You know, it's not your own idea. You're capturing a moment that's magic. And there's true magic that happens on a set. And that's what brings you back. Because you know. I didn't direct that and they didn't act that. That came through us and we just had the cameras rolling and we captured a ghost. Just like you said, you had a pen in hand and you were there. It's like that. It's crazy.

All right, your friendship with Tarantino is just fascinating. And just the whole timeline of the history of movies and the two of you collided and met is just a fascinating part of the story. You first met him in 1992 at the Toronto Film Festival. Can you just talk about meeting Tarantino? Yeah, we both had films at the same time with first films, Guys in Black.

Action violence. In fact, I had seen his movie already. My first film festival was a few months before that, the Telluride Film Festival. And Reservoir Dogs was there, but Quentin couldn't be there. He was at Sundance earlier that year.

And the guy who became my agent, he saw it. He said, hey, you're going to like this guy, Quentin Tarantino. I told him about you. You're going to meet him. He's going to be in Toronto. Oh, cool, cool. Okay. And so I went ahead and saw his movie in Telluride. And I was like, holy shit, this guy's in black again, just like the mariachis dressed in black. I said, oh, we're going to like each other. He's going to like...

So then in Toronto, we met and we met first on a, cause I knew I was going to be doing a panel discussion with. They asked us to do a panel discussion about violence in movies in the 90s, even though it was only 92. So we're on a panel together, and that's where I met him. And he's like, hey, Robert, what did you tell me about? And I was like, yeah, I saw your movie Reservoir Dogs. And he goes, oh, you got to come to my screening.

And I'm going to come see yours. So he came to Mariachi and I videotaped the audience reactions because they were insane, insane reactions to it. But I have the first screening he saw of Mariachi sitting next to me laughing. He's laughing at everything. He was just... The best audience. I have his recording of the first time we saw Mario.

oh no really yeah because i taped it he's so loud because he's right next to me well just like you but even probably even more than you he's a fan he watches he just loves movies he loves movies in fact The next time I heard him laugh that way was at his own premiere for Kill Bill. We're watching Kill Bill and he's laughing like it's somebody else's movie. He still enjoys the movie. He loves what all the actors did. And it's like, that's the kind of energy.

you really love, but I'll tell you what, what, what happened. Um, I'm not a very shy person, you know, very shy. I'd have to go talk. I'm sure you probably feel like you're not an orator or anything, you know, just have to go do it. I thought, well, man, I'm going to have to introduce my film and talk about it afterwards. I'm afraid of that. What am I going to do? I've never talked in front of more than five people before. So I went to see this other movie.

And it was good and I was watching and then the director comes up at the end and goes, Yeah, well, that was my movie. And, you know, here's the writer. And it's like, oh, man, I don't like the movie anymore. This guy's kind of a dick. I cannot do that. I'm going to have to go be who they imagined made that movie. So I wrote out my whole intro. It was like a 20 minute intro because no one had ever heard of anybody making a movie for no money, much less without a crew, much less.

The way I did it was just very new. Nobody knew it was possible. You'll see the Columbia logo slapped in front. It's probably cost more than the whole movie. And then I go through, this is how I made it with a wheelchair for a dolly, a turtle. You know, I wrote around things I had. I mentioned the turtle, the pit bull, the bus, the ranch, all that stuff, right? So that when they see the movie... In fact, I think my wife was in the audience. She said, at Sundance?

People were laughing so much at your intro, they just wanted to hear a story like this so badly. I heard someone next to me say, I'm going to vote for his movie. They hadn't even seen the movie yet. Just because the story was so good, they wanted that movie to be great. And when they see the turtle... Big cheers. When they see the pit bull, big cheers. When they see the school bus.

cheers but then when they see how we use it and he slams into it and falls in it they freaking lose their minds because they know how i put it together they know that the rubber bands and the popsicle sticks i already set it up

And so that's why that audience, I just taped the reaction. They're so with it. The context is so key. Like you can watch Mariachi and go, hey, yeah, this looks like a $7,000 movie. But if you know the story behind it, suddenly... i was curious i hadn't seen in a long time i was watching it for the 20th anniversary we did a screening

And the first few shots come up and I'm like, oh yeah, well, it looks like a $7,000 movie. And then it just keeps going. And it's in the, once we're in the jail cell and the shooting's happening and I realized, oh my God, we had these blanks that only fired one shot and it would jam.

show it going, use the sound effect, cut to the other guy, cut back, have another one go. I had to have to do these editing tricks to make it look like, and then repeat a few frames. So it goes, so it looks like a machine gun. All this stuff that I'm start sweating as I'm watching it going. I can't believe I made this movie with that freaking camera. I don't know how I did. I couldn't even see. I'm there with this long lens pulling my own focus. When I finally had to do a real movie.

I was operating the camera in my first real movie with a crew. I get the camera and a guy comes over and he focuses for you. that's your job you focus shit i had to do my own focusing on the last movie i didn't have so hard you're trying to focus on a guy while you're filming you don't know where you are and it's just

I couldn't believe how much easier it is when you have a crew. It's extremely valuable to know that the pain of that, the spectrum of creativity that's allowed within that, even just the focusing. Yeah. Like how focusing fucks up. on older cameras, on newer cameras, what are the different artifacts that come up, just to know the battlefields.

In order to be a great general, you have to know how to be a soldier on the battlefield. Yeah, yeah. It's good to know all that stuff. But, you know, it's like... At the end of the day, you could shoot something on a phone, and if you have a great story, no one's going to even notice. They'll be, oh, you shot that on a phone? I didn't notice. Sometimes people get caught up on, what kind of camera should I have? It's not the camera. That's just the tool. That's just the pen.

That's just like, yeah, you can have different paintbrushes, but you can go, I'm going to limit my palette. I'm only going to use a fan brush and a detail brush, and I'm going to make a painting. Do you think that painting is going to suffer? No. It's going to take on an identity that you wouldn't have had if you had all... So sometimes the limitations help you because when you can do anything,

It can be crippling. When I knew I could only use those things for mariachi, it's like, all right, well, it's very simple now. Let me show you how cheapskate I was. I did not spend on anything. So when you see him walking around with a guitar case, it's a shitty cardboard one, you know, like I got from home. I had to get a heavier one to put the guns in. So we borrowed one.

But it had this material ripped off the top so you could see the wood. It was just the wood on top. So it didn't match the other one because it wasn't all black. And I was too cheap to paint it black. I didn't want to spend money on paint. So you see that cardboard case, he puts it down. And when he goes to open it, I cut to the other one. Once the wood is, watch the edits, you'll see it open. Now it's a completely different case for the guns. And when he goes to cut it.

When you close it, it cuts to the other one. And he goes, oh, that's how I did that whole movie. Again, it was a practice film. I don't want to waste any money on it. I don't know if it's going to be able to, I won't be able to make five bucks. You're one of the few great directors where... Both the movie is genius and the process of making it is creative genius. It's like fun to watch both, to know of both.

you know what I believe. Right. It's from somewhere else. I have to say, that thing is freaking, I didn't get in its way. That's basically what helps. And people say that, you know, don't get in your own way. This is a little bit easier to understand. It's like, keep the pipe clear. Don't block it with your ego. Don't say, you're going to be shocked, but don't ever say.

oh shit, how do I do that? I don't know if I can do that. You didn't do it to begin with, except that it just came through you and try to get back into that headspace, especially when you go to make a second film or a third film or follow up a success. Because sometimes they start tiptoeing around as an artist going like, oh shit, now it's my second film. My first one did really well. They might not like my second one so much.

That's not the headspace you were in when you made the first one. You weren't hesitant like that. So try to keep that very naive. And that's why I say commit to a body of work because I know a lot of filmmakers get stuck on their second one and then go further because they get crippled by the success of the first one. And they start asking, oh shit, how did I do that? How can I do that again? And you get deeper and deeper in a hole you can't get out.

I think you've spoken about that filmmakers, especially early on in their journey, critics and the audience can destroy them, meaning like it creates too much of a burden, too much. just wear them down to where they're almost scared to be creative. Can you just speak to that, how to ignore the critic? I'll tell you something that my best advice ever got early on. I was so fortunate.

From an unlikely place. Because he's such a, he sounded like Clint Eastwood when he said it. It was funny when you said that. But I got, I did Desperado, and it had Antonio Banderas. I brought Antonio to be in it from Europe. Big action movie. And so Spielberg saw it, and he said, hey, I want you to do Zorro with Antonio.

So we're working on it for a while. I did. I was working on the pre-production. I got to work with Spielberg doing that. It ended up stalling me as the, there was like two studios involved and Amblin was moving or it was some weird thing where, but I got to work with him for about five months. And I started getting really nervous because it's like, oh shit, you start thinking about.

Even movies of his that people would say, oh, you know, Temple of Doom's not as good as Raiders. Have you seen Temple of Doom? I'd been killed if I can do that movie. If I could make Zorro as good as that one, the one that people said, it's like people don't know how good they had it with that guy.

But I started thinking, I even said, man, I just rewatched Temple of Doom last night. I don't know how I'm going to do this Zora movie. Like, I've just never done anything like that. You start getting, you know, afraid because you go. Second thing, he said, all right, you're going to do fine. But then I started thinking, this guy at that time, you don't know the era, but this was like mid-90s.

He was making the biggest, best movies of all. And people would shit all over this guy. They would throw so much. They were so jealous. Press, audience, everyone was just like hits at him, just throwing rocks at him for everything. Spielberg? Yeah. You can't imagine it now. You had to have been at that time. Now everyone has respect for him, but they made him run a fucking gauntlet.

And they were like, Jurassic Park, yeah. You can't even imagine it now, but you should have seen the climate. It freaked me out because I'm like... Maybe I should just stay under the radar where I've been, you know, not poke my head out so much. Yeah. Because this guy has a head out.

unwarranted you can't even fathom it now because you weren't here at that time it was crazy you never even think of him that way I'm glad it changed because back then it was just it made people not want to be successful And I made me be worried, like, maybe I shouldn't be go making a movie that has its name on it, that's going to put my head out in a whole different realm of filmmaking at a studio level.

Because even if I make a good movie, if I make a great movie, he's making great movies and he's getting this dog shit. I don't know if I could take it, you know? So I asked him, because you don't know how resilient you can be. So I said, man, how do you do it? How do you, how do you, what do you do when people just throw rocks at you all day long? He goes, oh, Robert, you just don't blink. And I was like, whoa, now I see how he got through it. Just don't blink. Just like, you know, it's coming.

don't blink and to him say it's like a clint eastwood line right but it was like you could see he was telling the truth and you could see that's how he did it He just avoided all criticism by just not blinking. It's like it's designed to make you blink and you're just not going to blink because you're committing to a body of work. He just keeps cranking out movies. Whatever he feels like doing, he does.

And that was like the most, and it never bothered me again. I just like always kept that in mind. I tell that to my actors. I tell that people that story has traveled. I even had some little actors who were starting to get up, and I said, remember, tell you a couple of things. Some people have told me, you're never as good as people say you are, and you're never as bad either, George Clooney told me. He said, remember that. And then the second one. Spielberg, don't blink. Don't blink.

But there has to be a kind of vision for yourself. of what you're reaching for, what you're trying to do. Again, yeah, sort of like I think... If you told me what would be my vision for the future, just committing to a body of work, which I've just kept doing. Like, that's about as far as you can see. Do you have a sense? Do you have a vision?

of the body of work you'll make in the next 20 years? Like, or is it just this fog? Like I wasn't sure because you don't always know what the, you might not have the vision yet because you don't have the information yet. So if you just commit to a body of work, you'll start figuring out more reasons to keep doing that body of work.

So when I turned 50, I was like, I guess I could just keep making movies. I mean, I guess that's been good for me. I guess I could just make more. I kind of done that already, but. It's always fun, and it's always new. But it wasn't a lot of drive, right? It's like, well, I guess I could just keep doing the body. That's not as much as, I can't wait to keep doing another season. But I didn't know how to get to that point.

So I thought, you know what? I got to this job so early. I was in the early 20s. I bet there's some other job out there that exists that I don't even know about because I don't know other jobs. So I looked up, you're going to believe it, but I literally bought jobs for dummies. Nice. It was just like, I don't even know what basic jobs are even out there. Turning the page. Oh yeah. Don't want that job. Don't want that job. Don't want that job. I'm just going through.

And it gets to Filmmaker, and there's a little icon to tell Eddie's job. This icon is a guy like this. Literally, you look it up, and it says, this is the best job. You get to just be creative with your friends, sit back, watch the money roll in, cross the desk. And I said, but... 99% of film students don't get this job, so give up that dream. So I was like, I guess I got the best job. But then I started working with my kids when we did...

I had a TV show called Rebel Without a Crew based on that, where I found filmmakers that only made a short film. They hadn't made a feature. I picked this diverse group of filmmakers. Gave them $7,000 and we documented them making a feature two weeks like I did. You can bring one person, like I had Carlos Gallardo, the producer and star of Mariachi. Bring one person, you can be your cameraman or you can be your sound guy or whatever, but it's only that.

for the shoot and you'd have to do the whole thing and I saw those guys By the time they're like, I don't know, Howard. this movie by the first week of shooting they're already talking about their next feature they became so confident because their idea of what impossible is drops really quick when you yeah anyone interested in unlocking their creativities they're not even just filmmaking i highly recommend that show

And I highly recommend kind of the follow-on show, which is where you make Red 11. Yeah, so that's the one I did. So then it came time for me to do one. So I made a movie called Red 11 based on my experiences in the medical hospital.

But I'll turn it into a sci-fi thriller just to use that so that I can use somebody getting stabbed in the eye. So I'm still going to have more elements to show how you can do camera tricks and stuff with no money. And the whole day is make it for less than $7,000, which I think were like $5,000. mainly because we had a lot of actors I wanted to pay. But the movie itself can make it for nothing. but I brought my son aboard as my number one.

who hadn't been working with me in a while. I mean, he wrote Sharkboy and Lava Girl when he was seven, but then he hadn't really been working on my crew. So he didn't know how to operate the sound equipment, the separate sound system and all that. I didn't show him until the day of filming because I knew we were documenting it and it would make a better tutorial. So by getting them working on the movies together...

They came to be super excited by the end of the day. I thought for sure, oh, they're going to hate this. Even though it's only two weeks, they've got other interests. They don't want to be filmmakers. I thought they were going to be like, all right, I'm out of here after one day. But instead, he came to me and his brother who acted in it. And he went, yeah. The actor didn't show up after the first day. The location didn't match the script at all.

We asked you how we were going to solve the problems, and you were like, I don't know, figure it out. We thought, Dad stumped for once. Is he stumped finally? But then by the end of the day, his eyes were all white. We figured it out. They went, oh, they don't realize this is the creative process every day is like. Every day you don't know your machine's going to not work or you're going to get a flat tire or get fired that day.

Life is very unpredictable, just like a movie set. So I realized I'm going to make them all work on my movies now because it's teaching them about life. I'm teaching them very little about the filmmaking. It's about life lessons, about how you take on something impossible, turn chicken shit to chicken salad and make it work.

And that's the straw and that's life. That's the process of life. So many people say, well, I'm not ready to make my projects. Like you're not ready for life either. You're like this. All day you're dodging shit that's going on. How come art has to be perfect? It's like it should be the same. Life and art should be the same. And I think filmmaking in general is...

of unpredictable things. And in a short little microcosm too, within one project, you've got a whole blueprint for how you're going to solve life. Cause you've just done it on a creative level. I think of all the art forms of all the art mediums like that, it just has so many different components, a lot of components to it. And so like, there's so many ways to fuck things up to learn from, but any of the disciplines, if you add those to it. Like I teach my actors to paint in between takes.

We'll go and I'll take a picture of them in character. I show them a canvas. I show them paint. You don't need to know how to paint. This is to show you the brush is going to know where to go. You just got to pick it up. Pick the colors you want. Doesn't matter how crazy they are, whatever's speaking to you. You lay it down. I'll show you some of the pictures. You're not going to believe the masterworks these actors did like in a day.

They just start doing it. Lady Gaga had her fingernails in there. You know, Josh Brolin's doing his thing. Then I take a picture of them in character, do a line drawing of it. We project it on top. And mostly it's the painting coming through. They're line drawing with a little bit of their eyes painted in. You're not going to believe these things.

They couldn't believe it, but it teaches them that that thing about that the creativity is going to come through so even though they're already acting they're already being creative or already making a movie like you said that's already a really great creative endeavor when we would sneak off and paint you could tell it's firing a whole other part of their brain It was funny. I think Josh Brolin's girlfriend said, Joe said, hey, my girlfriend just said, she said, he's wife now, but it's time.

You leave the set and you come back and you're all like, no, we're painting, we're painting. But that makes sense that you say that because when you get your creativity, firing is more powerful than any drug. And we would come back and he'd be on the set going.

Is it bad that I'm still thinking about the painting? No, I think it's good. I think it's all good. But you can tell it's opening a whole other part of the creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie and the painting is still going to tap. It shows how much untapped potential your creative brain has.

So the more you can do, the more you're firing off. And it was so cool. I remember we did one where Joseph Gordon-Levitt was painting. We came in, and the table was like this. And they said, we have a problem. You want them to throw the playing cards out, but it's so slick, they go sliding off the table. We both look at it, and we both got the solution at the same time. Just have them throw them wherever they go, and then we'll place them.

It's even better that he looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark he is. But that's what we have to do because we're not going to... We can't, we'll be here all day. We're trying to get, if we're going to worry about where they go, just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then we'll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up.

And then we'll marry the two in post. You know, you just come up with creative solutions better, easier, because you were just solving crazy creative solutions in the other one. Like, what paint medium do I use? What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking, you're like, oh, I can figure this out in two seconds.

You know, so it helps you create a problem solve. So that basically working with my kids made me realize, oh, now I know exactly what I want to do for the next 10 years. I only want to make movies with my kids because I'm mentoring them, but they're teaching me shit because they were the age I was when I made Mariachi and Desperate. And their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways. And it's like the greatest parenting.

You can do because you're building a project together and in the same boat together, figuring it out. And it's family time. You're like checking all the boxes. So I thought my filmmaking going forward is going to be checking all the boxes in life. So I'm not not spending time with my family. We're actually giving them lessons that they can go do anything they want in life because they're going to have different interests.

But now it's kind of like going to college. And this college is like the best college because it pays you to learn. You get to do these crazy skills. Like my son is... you know, conducting the orchestra, the James Bond orchestra in London for the Spy Kids score and a score he wrote because I can't write at his level because he was always our best piano player. And you get the charge out of working with them. And by making a label, there's a weird phenomenon that happens.

You guys want to take your game to another level? I stumbled upon this idea. My son. That was my counterpart on that movie, Racer. He was my sound guy, like I said, came up with Sharkboy Lava Girl when he was little. He became my writer, co-writer, co-producer. He had come to me and said, I want to do... I said, oh, well, let me show you as an example of creativity and manifesting. I said, let me show you how it works.

let's let's make a company we'll make a company called double r double r productions because we all have double our names all the kids so if anyone ever wants to do anything we can use our company so let's make a logo And I'll make t-shirts and notepads and stuff. Because once you have a company, you now have to make things for that company. Just like the advice I gave to people, stop aspiring, make a business card that says,

writer, director, cinematographer, I did editor, because then now you have to conform to that identity. So now if I create a label like double R, we're going to come up with ideas. We'll call up VR companies and say, hey, we have a company, a VR company. Would you like us to make you a film? sell your headset. So yeah, they gave us a budget. They're dying for content.

They gave us a budget. We shot a 20-minute action movie called The Limit with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus where you're in an action movie with them. And it was killer. They made us a big double R logo, animated logo. Later that year, we did Red 11, same logo. That movie went to directors Fortnite and Cannes.

festivals were paying us to come talk about how we made that movie. That's when we're doing the cards, throwing the cards out because they wanted their audiences. They knew they would love that. So we could have had a whole gig just continuing to get paid to go to the feds. Usually you pay to the feds, go to the feds. You don't get paid. That's how, what a success that was. But then we had to make We Can Be Heroes.

So we had to stop. But We Can Be Heroes was a Netflix movie where they asked me to make a Spy Kids type thing. And so I thought, oh, okay, I'll just do it with superheroes. That's their, I wrote it with my kids, based it on some of their personalities. It's the most watched and re-watched movie in Netflix history. Like nothing can touch it because kids just keep watching it over because it's kids with superpowers. No one's ever done that before.

And they couldn't believe it. Like, I'd heard anecdotally, that's how the Spy Kids, people said, oh, the kids watch it over and over on video. But you can't keep track of that. You can't on Netflix. Because their biggest thing is people completing a movie. A lot of people don't complete a movie and it still counts as a view. They may watch five minutes and change the channel.

So do you complete a movie? That's really where they, you know, really value not only to complete, but rewatched, rewatched, rewatched per household so many times. That one has a double R logo as well. And my kids are like, dad. it really worked. I was like, I know better than I thought. I didn't know that me manifesting that company was going to turn into that and we just keep making stuff. So I want to do that with Brass Knuckle Films now with the audience.

Because it works. So I said, as soon as you have a logo and a company, your brain starts coming up with all kinds of ideas. And it's a filter. Like I said, sometimes the freedom of limitation. is all freeing. When I had to do four rooms and it's like, we have to use one hotel room. Oh, well then there's going to be a dead body. There's going to be, you can do a lot with limitations. If they said you could use the whole city, it would have been harder to come up with something.

Brass Knuckle Films has a filter. action movies, because that's the stuff that there's always an appetite for. If you ask Netflix right now, what do you need more of? They'll say, action, action, action. We don't have enough action. The last regime didn't leave us enough action. We need action. They'll pay a premium for an action film that we can make at a lower cost. A $20 million action film is very cheap.

studios don't know how to make them that cheap that's why they'll pay for an independent to go do it and right now that's the key is to be independent because a lot of studios that can't even green light anything because things are so expensive they don't want to lose their ass but they need action films so let's make something that everybody needs

And let's make it at a price. And we'll make it in my studio because I got my own studio and I can keep all the costs down because we have all the costumes and props and sets from 25 years of filmmaking to keep the costs down. And we'll have the audience gets to invest. It's not crowdfunding or Kickstarter. You're actually an investor. Anyone who puts money in can pitch their idea for an action film to me.

And I'm going to make one of the four films in that slate from one of those ideas because I want the audience to win. I want the audience to win and be a part of it because the audience is an afterthought in Hollywood. They make a movie. They show the audience the movie. Go tell your friends now so you all spend money on our movie. Well, where's your cut of that?

So I want them to be successful. So if any of the movies in the slate do well, they make money off that one and then sequels or anything. But they're all going to do well because everyone needs an action movie or we're going to keep the cost down. Can I actually ask you, just to focus in on action, you've created a lot of epic action films. What makes for a great action film? It comes down to the character.

If you think about what are the best action films, what are your favorite films? Die Hard. He's a cop, so he's still capable, but he's not Superman. The fact that he's in over his head and you're rooting for him, that's a great character. John Wick, he is Superman, but he's retired. And now he's pissed off and he's going back into a job. You know, so it comes down to the character really being very important because the action will then have a character to it.

I think Leon the Professional. That's a character. I mean, that's all about character. Now that, when I say we're going to do action movies, I mean movies that are really action-first. Like there's some movies that are more dramas that have action. Where's the boundary? So John Wick is action. That's more action, but it has character in it, but it's action driven. What about like Predator?

Predator is a sci-fi action film, so that's kind of a hybrid, which I like, but sometimes it's hard for the audience to know what they're buying into. They focused a lot on the action in the trailer, and then they felt there was some other worldly thing, but you didn't really know. But it's a great movie.

So Die Hard is a good example. It was a good example where I can think of right off where there's a character that really made the difference. And then everyone repeated that. You know, for a while, it was like... under siege. I was like a regular guy who's really actually has some training.

on a ship now. And then on the bus, you got a cop. He's a cop, but he's not super cop. So that's why you root for him. You know, that became an element that people repeated a lot. What about Taken? That's a great one. That's a great character who is superhuman. Yeah. Who's also retired. There's a superhero-type character in an extraordinary circumstance. Now his daughter's taken, right?

And then there's ordinary people, like the Terminator. That's a great character. Not the Terminator, he's a villain, but Sarah Connor. who is a waitress, doesn't think her life's going anywhere, and she finds out she's the mother of the guy who's going to save the human race. And she's got to train him. Suddenly she has to become someone else. Those are cool movies because it's a genesis of a character. And you see a character go from waitress to revolutionary. They step up, yeah.

What about mob movies? I mean, some of them are like Godfather is really not about, it's not action. Not an action movie. Drama that has some action. Right. I mean, John Wick is a mob film in some sense. Goodfellas. I mean, there's a lot of dynamic action.

But there's really not action first. That's really a character type piece. Great. Freaking amazing. And it feels like action by the way he does it. It's just like that. It's like fast paced, fast talking, fast moving. Like Escape from New York is one of my favorites since I was a kid. because every movie, you'll notice this now that I tell you, even like romantic comedy, there's a timeline.

Every movie has to have like a ticking clock. So the audience knows this story is not just going to take over a period of years. So suddenly someone in the movie around 20 or 30 minutes in will say, We've got to go find the groom before the wedding this weekend. You know, it'll be just like that.

Skate for New York has the best example of a ticking time clock because he's literally got bombs in his neck and he's got a watch that shows him. He's constantly clocking it, how little time he has. And he gets you so like, oh my God, is he going to make it? That's the best use of that. No one's ever topped that ticking time clock. All the other ones seem artificial in comparison. Aliens, we got to get off this planet now because this whole thing's going to blow up.

You know, like there's a timeline. It's already urgent, but now there's an extra timeline on it. This is what happens. As you're talking, you're just making me fall in love more and more with action films. Sometimes you forget how much you love action films. A really good action film. Yeah. In fact, like The Terminator. Oh my God.

The original Terminator just came out in 4K. I've been watching it again. It looks like better than most movies look today. And that's a $4 million movie. It looks incredible. You can see every beat of sweat in this movie. I was watching it again with somebody, a female, and there's always a point when you're watching that movie where she'll turn and say, I love this movie.

You know, a point that is, it's a point where Michael Biehn tells her, I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you. Which is, you know, I always have. And you're just like, oh my God, there's like a real emotional. Love story there that he put into Titanic, that he put into Avatar. He figured out that thing that makes those movies work. By the way, I should say that... I mean, there is an aspect of El Mirachi that is a love story.

to me. I don't know if you see it that way, but when I just re-watched it, I was like heartbroken that she's dead. I got heartbroken twice. Let me tell you the second time it happened. One, you're making that and you go, okay, this is how it has to go. But then now you're invested in this person. You go, oh man, she has to die. It's going to be really sad. In fact, the studio even, when they said they were going to remake it.

Good thing I put that ending on. That's the only reason they showed it to an audience. We were going to remake it. They weren't going to put that movie out. They showed it and said, we need to show this movie to an audience. Because they might not like the fact that we killed a girl before we remake it. All right. The show to an audience. The audience liked it the way it was. So they said, we're going to take this movie to some film festivals. And I was like, no, not this movie.

This is my practice movie. No one's supposed to see this movie. And they go, no, no, you got something. No, no, dude, if I knew anyone was going to see this, I would have shot it completely different. Give me $2,000. I'll go reshoot half of it.

Just knowing people are going to see it, I want something. And the head of the studio was really smart. He said, you don't know what you have here. Is there something real special? Let's take it to Telluride and see what happened. Telluride, Toronto did great, like I said, in one Sundance. So now we had to put it out. But I was like, I would have said, don't show that.

But they also questioned the ending and didn't come into play because we ended up making Desperado. And the girl in Desperado doesn't die. You know, we didn't do that. We didn't kill Sama. But that's what needed to happen to Mariachi. Quentin called me one time, people were always saying like, oh, Reservoir Dogs, he borrowed from this movie, Hong Kong action film called City on Fire. It's about these guys, they're all criminals and they kill each other.

And he said, hey, they're showing a double feature called East Looks West and West Looks East. They're showing reservoir dogs with City on Fire, the one they say I borrowed from. And they're showing mariachi. with a Hong Kong film called Run, where they ripped off mariachi. They just took the whole story. It had two Chinese actors in Mexico with guitar cases. They just followed it beat by beat.

So we were watching it, and it was like scene by scene. They just rebate it without even getting the rights or anything. It was so fun to watch. So we saw Mariachi first, then we watched that one. And I'm like... What's this big brothel scene, though? This isn't my movie.

Oh, the bad guy. Oh, there's a scene in my movie where the bad guy has two girls in bed with him and they figured that was a whorehouse, but it was just his apartment. So they got this whorehouse built up. And they have helicopter shots and all kinds of big things. And the action was awesome. Yeah. But then, and the girl's really good. And then midway through the movie, I'm like, oh shit, she's going to die because I killed her.

I don't want her to die. I like this actress. It's really great. And they have a really great love story. I go, well, I hope they change that part. No, they kill her. So I felt bad twice because I sealed her fate. I sealed her fate because... I have a line in Spy Kids, too, because I started thinking when you create stuff, you start thinking.

He's like, oh shit, I just kind of threw that in a memo and now that whole town's going to get wiped out. I didn't even think about the implications of that because there's a line. I was making a character that Steve Buscemi plays in Spy Kids 2, and he's a creator. He just wanted to make a little miniature zoo for kids.

And then he thought, well, what if I put some together, like a lizard with a snake and it's a slizzard, or you have a spider monkey, which is like literally spider legs and a monkey top. So he makes that, and then he thought, hey, why don't I make them a little bit bigger for kids that have big hands? And it got out of control, and they turned into these huge creatures, and now they're trying to eat them.

So he's hiding, and the kids find him hiding. And he says this one line that people keep coming, it's on the internet a lot, this meme about this. Why is this line, this movie? It's so wild, I thought. I wanted Steve to come up to the camera and he's lost in his own creative world.

And he says, I can't even go outside because my own creations are going to eat me. Then he comes up to the camera and goes, do you think God hides in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he created here on earth?

it's like really just for a moment this thing and it's like because you feel like that way when you're when you're creating stuff like you're creating something and then now it's taking on a life on its own and like oh no now this character has to die oh i didn't want that you know this this domino effect of creation And you start thinking, well, that must be what creation, maybe he is hiding up there because look at, he didn't expect all this shit to happen, giving us free will and all that.

I mean, in this particular context, you are the creator of this story. And it, for some reason, makes me feel good to know that you feel the pain of this character dying. Yeah, absolutely. Because if I'm... I'm writing it, but if it's not coming from me, I'm as surprised.

sometimes. And Quentin would say that. He'd say, you just get two characters talking when I'm writing my script, and then suddenly they're just talking to each other. And I was like, what does that mean? And now I know what that means. It's like, he just gave them life, and now the dialogue's coming through him.

Let me just ask you, you're the perfect person to ask, about the genius of Quentin Tarantino. What makes him special? As a director, as a creative mind, what do you see in him that's beautiful, that's brilliant? Since I met him, he was just like this. brilliant uh ball of energy and uh you know like if you see him i walk around his house and i'll see

like a few sheets of paper all handwritten out. I'm like, what's that? He goes, oh, that was something I was starting to write and I'm not going to finish. Can I take these and go turn it into like a whole trilogy of films? You know, like what he throws away, all this mortal men would kill for. You meet people like that. I tell people.

Your parents say, watch out who your peers are. When you're younger, that means one thing. But once you get older, surround yourself around people who swing much farther than you. But that's really true. Just by being around him and working with him, you get by osmosis, you learn stuff.

And it just ups your game because they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that. So like when I first met him, I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know, because I was such a big fan. I was about to go do the Esperanto and I went, hey. I just took a three-day Steadicam course because I can't afford a Steadicam operator. So I'm going to operate Steadicam myself on this barrage.

Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, oh, I did the same thing. I'm going to do the same thing. That would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk. But you want somebody who's above that. You know what he said? He goes, I bought a Steadicam but not to operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one. Us mere mortals trying to learn how to operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy you want to hang out with. Not someone who's doing what you're doing.

So surround yourself by those kinds of people. And that's when you learn things like don't blink, you know, like somebody who's like really swinging for the fences and accomplishing so much. And Quentin was like that. So I met him at the festival. He saw Mariachi. He loved it. We came up, we talked, and he said, you're going to like my next film. I'm writing right now, Pulp Fiction.

So I thought, man, I'm going to put this guy, he's so fun. I'm going to write him in my Desperado script, which I was writing. So that was before Pulp Fiction and all that when I had cast him. I didn't know he was going to go become such a household name. I just was. drawn to his energy and I'd already written him in and I met Steve Buscemi there and I was like, I'm writing a character for Steve Buscemi.

Then I went back to the Sony lot where I was working on Desperado, and Quentin and I ended up having offices right next to each other on the Sony lot. By accident, I didn't even know that. I just met him, and I go back, and he was, because originally Pulp Fiction was for TriStar.

Because Danny DeVito was a producer, and he was going to make it for TriStar. So he was there writing Pulp Fiction, and I was writing Desperado. So I'd go show him storyboards from Desperado, and he'd come act out scenes of Pulp Fiction. And we got to be really good friends that way. We'd go eat lunch at Versailles across the street.

uh the sony lot and then sony passed on pulp fiction it's too weird too long eight million dollar movie or seven million they're like yeah we're gonna go make the next poly short movie instead you know like we don't understand this thing and miramax got it and they'd just been bought by disney so they produced their first film was pulp fiction and then that thing went to can And it was a whole thing. But what I loved about...

When he made Pulp Fiction, he had a director screening. He showed it to some directors, and I wasn't able to go. But anyway, I had dinner with him once. And it was in my journal, because I keep a journal, at 2.40 a.m. after I dropped him off at his house. I said, oh wait, how did your movie come out? You know, Pulp Fiction, he had just finished it and he went, nah, it's dumb. Still feels like a movie Quentin would make. Doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was like...

That's fine. What do you mean? What does it mean? It feels like one of those movies I would make, like Reservoir Dogs. It doesn't feel like a real movie. and i was trying to be the supportive friend going oh man he was so excited about this movie now he's bummed about And I was like, well, it should be different. He's like, wouldn't have it. Drove off. So I thought, I guess that wasn't the one. So I went home and I called some of the directors that were at the screening.

and they go yeah this isn't the one for him it's not they had none of them saw it None of them saw it. But that, you know, you're like surprised. but that happened with george lucas too with star wars everybody Saw that movie and was like, poor George. He showed it to all his director friends. Poor George, what did he just waste all this time with this for? Only Spielberg was the one who said, it's naive and it's going to do really good because it's naive and kids will like it.

But everyone else was like, what's he doing? We're artists. We're making art films. What's he doing this garbage for? Because nobody knows. It shows no one knows anything. Not even the filmmaker. When you're being groundbreaking, you don't know what groundbreaking is. Not you or anyone around you. Except maybe one or two people.

So he said, there was one person. Like, oh yeah, who is your Spielberg? He goes, Catherine Bigelow. Without a doubt, she's the only one who said, there's something here. No one else was saying that. He said, in fact, because he remembered suddenly, he'd forgotten the story. But if it wasn't in my journal, I would have forgot it too. He goes, in fact, one of my friends, Simon, said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with your movie.

but I'll wait till you get back from the Cannes Film Festival. And he goes and he wins the Palme d'Or, and then his friend's like, oh, what the hell do I know? I've only made one movie myself, so never mind. I guess we're all wrong. So even he didn't expect that at all. So that was a shock, you know, even to him.

So think about that. That means, what do you do? Commit to a body of work. Just do that. You don't know. You don't know what's going to be a Pulp Fiction and what's going to be a Jackie Brown. What's going to be, you know, you don't know. And you like to think they know, but they don't know either. They feel it. I asked Jim Cameron, I said, do you see your movie really clearly? Can you see it with hyper-focus? Because it seems like that.

It's like really far. It's out of focus. As you work on it, you work on it, it starts coming. I said, okay, good. So that's normal. I thought maybe he had laser vision or something. But no, even him, he doesn't really know, but he feels that he can make decisions and he understands. what a creative drive is and how to just keep being relentless about it but it's not like they have all the proximity is huge proximity

will change your life. It did for me. Just being around those guys. They didn't teach me, hey, I'm going to teach you how to make a movie. Just being next to them, being in their world, just ups your game. And you're able to do things you weren't able to do before. You get ideas you didn't get to do before. I'll show you one of my painting things.

You're not going to believe this freaking thing. I had a painter friend in Germany, Sebastian Kruger. He gives a workshop once a year. I thought, I'm going to go there and I'll learn more about directing by watching this guy paint. than i will by watching another director because that's just now i know how creativity works you're going to learn lessons outside of the box by doing

And I tried to practice before going out there. I was doing a Danny Trejo. I'll show you the before and after. You're not going to freaking believe what you see. But it really tells the story of how important proximity is. So I do this painting. It's like, ah, it looks garbage. I'll show you, it looks like garbage.

i'm not used i can't do paintings that are just like see you never should say i can't you just cut your leg off but i couldn't at the time paint just paint brush into paint and then write on the canvas like that without using some kind of medium which this guy Sebastian Kruger would do.

So first I did a digital painting of Danny Trejo, like just to get the framing and all that. How's that created? That's just like, that's like on a Wacom tablet. But then I did it with paint and it's like, oh, it's all cruddy. And it's too thick, the paint. And it just looks.

And I just gave up right away. I was trying to pre-practice so I wouldn't be a total buffoon there because I was going the next week. And I thought, he's using a different brush, obviously. He's using a better paint. This stuff just is clogging up and it's crap. I'm sure when I get there.

So I get there, and he's doing a Mick Jagger. And he starts with a mid-tone. He starts blocking in the face with a little tiny drawing of where the face goes. He starts doing that. He starts adding some highlights. There's the photo he's referenced. And I'm like, why are you concentrating so much on the cheek first? And he's like, it's different every time. And I go, why do you, what paints are you using? And he's like, it was regular acrylic paint. What brushes do you have? Regular brushes.

How come mine doesn't look like yours? Let me try what he's doing. You start with a mid-tone. I'm going to do that Danny again. Start with a mid-tone. I'll start adding some highlights. And I did that. And everybody kept coming over going like, did you just do that? And I was like, yeah, I don't know how, but it's very cartoony still. He's doing a very realistic Mick Jagger.

Look how real that is. You're just watching, and he doesn't teach you anything. He just starts painting. This is the photo he had as a reference, but then this is his painting. And because I'm there, he's not teaching you how to paint. Through osmosis, you're learning somehow. You're seeing that there isn't a trick. I thought he had a trick, and that's why I couldn't get any further. He's using the same brush and the same paint.

And you go, you do it. And I go, I'm going to try and do something realistic. I've never done realistic before because I'm a cartoonist and everything, I was cartoony. That was just easier for me because I thought I would need too much training. I did another Trejo. I started doing a realistic. I finished out just one section of his face. and put the pen down because I did that. Shit. The same day. Nice. I got out of my way because seeing him get out of his own way.

I think that's why sometimes people need to go to school for stuff like that, because then now... Well, I just did four years of school. So now I must know. Now you've given yourself permission, but you could give yourself permission right away and it's going to come through.

And drawing Danny Trejo of all people is like, there's so much going on there. It's like, he's so expressive. I mean, you've worked with him a lot and you've, I mean, he's one of those bad-ass humans on the screen. You've created that. Can you just talk about what it's like creating those characters? What was exciting about Desperados, I went to go make it, and there were no Latin actors working in Hollywood because no one was creating roles for them.

So I thought, wow, I got to go create my own stars. We'll bring Antonio from Europe because they kind of know his name from the Almodovar movies. And I saw him in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down when I was in the hospital riding mariachi. Or watching TV while I was a patient. There's a scene where he headbutts Victoria Abril. He just gives her a headbutt.

I bet that guy would want to be in an action movie. He's got something inside. So I called him when we were doing Desperado and I said, would you ever consider doing an action? Oh man, I'd love to do action. So I said, I got a movie for you. I got a movie for you. It was a sequel to Mariachi. And so. Salma, I found in Mexico television, she couldn't get work in the US because of

How did you find her? I mean, this is one of the greatest actors in the world. One of the best stories. I was really determined to hire a real Latin, especially Hispanic, and then she's Mexican, actress to be the Mexican character. That's like as authentic as you can get. And there was no one who was getting any jobs because no one was creating any. So there was no one that had any movies under their name because there was no one. It was a whole systemic problem, right? This was 94, 93.

A Paul Rodriguez show on Univision. Because I was trying to practice my Spanish because I was having to do all these Spanish interviews because mariachi was in Spanish. That was the other part I didn't tell you. I didn't speak Spanish when I made that movie. We didn't grow up with it. So I left that part out of the mariachi story because I thought...

People already didn't believe I made the movie by myself. They knew I made it in a language I didn't speak. I should have said it because it'd be even more inspiring. Like now you have no excuse. I would wrote the English subtitles basically. I wrote the titles what became the subtitles. And then we take it to the actors and the actor would translate it for me. And I was like, I'd be like, I would try to speak Spanish and say, like, let's record. And they'd be looking.

That means, let's remember. The record doesn't mean record. That means gravar. Now I know. Back then, I didn't know. So I'm watching Univision, and then there's Salma. and she's a big soap star down there in mexico and she comes out she's beautiful she's funny everyone's laughing she's sama everyone that we know now And she starts talking about what I gather from what she's saying, that she's having trouble finding any work in the U.S. because of her accent.

uh, poverty, you said, well, say something in English. And then she says, and she sounds just like she does now. And he goes, that's great. She goes, I know, I know. And I went, I think this is the girl. So I called her in my office and I videotaped our first meeting together. So I have that somewhere. Oh, that's awesome. And it's Salma. It's Salma. It's her with her energy, with her.

passion and funny. She became instant friends with my wife. Before they walked over, your wife and I are best friends. She already was part of the family. She's a godmother to my kids. And I thought, I'm going to help you. You're going to help me. I need to have a Mexican actress in this. And you're going to be phenomenal. The studio didn't see it. They were like, what? She hasn't done anything. Why don't you just hire? somebody else who already has a name.

So if we just give her one movie, then she'll be someone who's in a movie and then you can keep casting. So I made a whole movie with her in English called Road Racers. It was my second film for Showtime. Really cool little rebel without a cause type movie. And I gave her a role in that, so we'd have an example of her doing English. And they still were like, we need a screen test. We need to have a screen test with...

a bunch of other actresses, you know. So I said, sure, let's do that. So I went over to her house the night before the screen test, and we worked. on the scene, which is the best scene where she's operating on his arm and they've got all this chemistry. And I was just directing her through it, like completely down to when you pick up the water and you hand him the water.

don't scream oh hot water just be like hot water and while he's spitting it out and it's going to be a big dramatic action with like a very light delivery and so we got it down to a science the next day we show up Antonio does a scene with all the girls come in He does it with her. Clearly, they've got amazing chemistry. She just nails it. He's great. He loves her too.

Okay, you can hire. Reluctantly, like that, right? But once they saw the footage come as we're shooting, and they saw it on the big screen when they're watching the dailies, then they were like, oh my God. And then they saw it. Then they saw what I saw when I met her. But sometimes, like you say, what do you do when people are like, hey, why come you're using these? Just know that not everyone's going to see it. You may have the only vision.

Just keep going. There's an instinct that tells you to keep going that way. You'll get proved right or wrong, or maybe you're slipping on the first two rocks or whatever, but follow your instinct because... Everyone's going to have an opinion. And it's not necessarily the right one. And when you're an independent filmmaker, you can make those decisions to change people's careers, to change the world.

And that's why you want to remain independent. That's why what's happening now in the industry is great because I have to make movies like this. the way i started which is what i've always liked to do which is just doing it where we create our own destiny we go hey we're going to make a movie we're going to make it for this budget so we can make it and the story is going to be so character driven and cool we're going to get big actors to be in it because they're going to want to be

So Danny Trejo, you asked me about Danny Trejo. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, Danny Trejo. We're doing Desperado now. I'm casting all kinds of people. Now I have this character that I want to have a bunch of knives. He opens up his vest and there's a bunch of knives. So bring me all the coolest looking Latin actors we can find.

And before he even walked in, there's a picture of him. He already looked like the guy, but he was younger. He always just played prison inmates. It was a picture of him as an inmate in a prison. I want to give him a cool role, you know, just wherever this actor is. He walks in and I see him. It's Danny Trejo. He sits down and I had the prop knife already made. And I say, you need to have this in your hand and look like you sleep with it. Like just practice flipping it around your hand.

And I gave it to him. You got the role. Just start practicing with that. He gets up and walks out. He didn't have to say anything because there's no dialogue. He walks out. We get to the set and he kept saying, put me in coach. Give me a line. Give me a line. It's like, no, no, you're such a nice guy. You're going to blow the whole mystique. I want this guy to feel like the most evil, scary guy of all. And you're such a nice guy.

I didn't let him talk till dusk till dawn. But one thing I noticed was that the town we were shot in, the Mexican town, which is the same town I shot Mariachi. We went back there because I wanted to pay back the city. And so we had this big movie there. They didn't really know Antonio because he was in European movies. Salma hadn't come to the set yet, but they saw Danny Trejo there in his vest looking like a Mexican icon. They would go like this.

Everyone thought he was the star. And I just know magnetism when I see it. And I went, this guy's got something. so i went to him and i said i got a movie we're going to do someday this was 94. we didn't make this movie for 15 years machete you're going to be machete I had an idea for Machete then. It wasn't the same story. I had seen a story. Actually, the mariachi, the guy from March, sent me this funny story. He said, hey, look at this story.

that the USDA and FBI sometimes would hire a Mexican federale to come do a job for 25 grand that they didn't want to get their own guys killed on. I said, that's Machete, the guy that they pay. But he's not doing it for the money. It turns out he has to get this guy that escaped Mexico. And that's the twist. So that was the original story I had. So we're going to do this someday. And we talked about it for years and never did it.

Never had it, got around to doing it. So when I did Spy Kids, I put them in Spy Kids and I said, hey, let's pay tribute to that character we never got to make and you'll be Uncle Machete. He's a gadget guy, but he's got a mysterious path. But then a few years later, Quentin and I were doing Grindhouse.

And he'd already done Dustal Domini. You know, I was building my own Latin star system. Salmo showed up in a bunch of my movies. Cheech shows up in every movie. Danny shows up. I brought Cheech out of retirement, put him in my movie.

I needed to create my own Latin star system because all my scripts, because when you write in your own voice, you're going to write probably somebody that's Latin. So you need to have a star system that matches that so that you don't have trouble casting and people are like, well, you can't hire this person. So I built up my own star system.

So Danny was one of my stars. So after we were doing Grindhouse, we had to do fake trailers for Grindhouse. And I told Quentin, I know what trailer I'm going to do for the movie I never got to make with Danny Coleman Shetty. That'll be so fun. Finally get that out of our system. And doing a trailer is so fun. It's two days of shooting.

Just still being that resourceful guy, we asked this company that had a digital camera we wanted to use. Can you send it to us for a couple of days' screen test, I mean, camera test? Instead of shooting a camera test, we shot the trailer. We got a free camera, shot the trailer with him. And it's just the money shots, him opening his vest full of machetes, you know, him aiming that gun, him in a waterfall with two gals. And I just came up with this really funny trailer.

People were screaming at the premiere. You couldn't even hear it. They just wanted that movie so badly because there was blaxploitation in the 70s. There was never mexploitation. It felt like this should have existed, but it didn't. Mexican superhero, they'd just never seen anything like that. Now you know. But even his mom calls him Machete. He just became this guy. And of 250 movies that he's been in, Machete is his most famous one. So for five years... Five years, people would come up to us.

Where's Machete? When's that movie coming out? We're like... It's not a real movie, but when it looks real, we want to see that movie. So we finally made the movie because people just asked for it. And I was adamant about being resourceful again. All those shots that are in the trailer are really great. I gotta reverse engineer the trailer into a movie so that I can use that shot that's in the trailer.

Like this girl in the waterfall. Why would this girl be in the waterfall? Don't have a really clever way that he gets the bad guy. Her hair's kind of, her face is kind of covered by this hair. We'll cast Lindsay Lohan there or the Senator will switch it out for Robert De Niro. Well, I just reverse engineered it. So every time there's a shot in the trailer, it's in the movie, but I shot all the footage around Toledo.

That's another fun creative exercise is to reverse engineer something you just did like this on the day. You just threw a bunch of cards out basically with that trailer. And now you got to go make a movie using all those cards. That's like a creative exercise that I thought so satisfying. So fun. Yeah, that was beautiful. You're actually known in part, maybe you can correct me.

to do pretty unexpected, surprising, kind of interesting casting. So Robert De Nier is an example of that. And that's just a great role. The second aspect of that, I heard the story that You can just get an actor in and out in just a few days really fast. The Robert Rodriguez experience, as they call it. How do you make that happen? Can you just tell the story? I'm the editor. I'm the cameraman. I'm the DP.

And so when I call him and say, I've got you as the villain in this whole movie, but I swear I'm going to shoot you out in four days. You come down four days. In fact, there's a scene where he's in the hospital. He's just smiling. He's having such a good time because he couldn't believe it. I said, guess what? When you wake up from your hotel room at the Stephen F. Austin, you just cross the hallway. That's the set. The room next to yours, we turned into the hospital set.

So you're just going to come laying there in your pajamas. Really? That's what you did? Yeah, we had to save time. We only have four days. So everything had to be very thought out to be like, boom, boom, boom, let's shoot the money, get him out of this. We don't have to spend a lot of money on him. Book a room in a hotel. Set up to look like a hospital room. Yeah, that's their scent. It's real. You don't have to dress it. It's just right there.

All you do is put like a little tube there, you know, like for his IV. And then you have a couple of nurses and it looks like. Just genius. It was Robert De Niro. Resourceful, resourceful. Next door. But I said, you're going to think about me when you're on your next Meet the Fockers movie, and you're on there for six months, but they have you sitting in a trailer. I don't like to do that. So I gave Lady Gaga her first two movies. After Machete, she said publicly,

I saw Machete, and my song Americano should have been in Machete. I thought, she saw Machete? So I called her up and I said, hey, I'm making a sequel and I would certainly use your music. But have you ever thought about acting? Because you're an amazing performer. I've worked with a lot of actors who are also musicians and they're always great because I already know how to be a persona, be on stage, be in front of a bunch of people.

most actors can't do and she said actually i studied acting before i became a singer so well you'll never be able to be in a movie because you know what they don't know how to shoot people out They want six months of your time. And you're always on tour. But if you come be here, I have a part for you. I can shoot you out in half a day. This whole section of the movie, and I'll shoot you a movie poster.

She's like, okay. So she shows up. I had all the sets, like a conveyor belt right next to each other. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. She's in the car. That's why she had me do her music video for Rain On Me Later. We should just go to Austin. Robert, put me on a grease. I was throughout that whole movie. I don't know how we did that. It was half a day. She was there half a day. I did the same for Sin City, too.

I was like, I have a set here waiting for you. If you're on tour in Houston, just drive into Austin. I'll shoot you out in half a day. You could be in a scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Sure, she came down. So wait, how do you take Robert De Niro? How do you take Lady Gaga and like... solve the puzzle of all the scenes they have to be in. How do we shoot them quickly, efficiently, conveniently? You have to edit your own movie. I have this analogy.

A food analogy that works really well. Script is like your grocery list. Filming is like grocery shopping. Getting the best performances, getting the best beat, getting the best ingredients, right?

Too much of this and not enough of that. You fuck the whole thing up. So there's so many filmmakers do not edit. Yeah. And they give it to some other guy who might look at all your ingredients and go, well, this is all great, but I'm going to go make a fucking souffle. Yeah. And he makes something else. So by doing that job, I mean, like I've worked on some big stuff and I realized finally after many years, cause I've always edited, I realized this is why movies cost so much.

There could be 150, 200 people on the crew, and I swear not one of them knows how to edit. Not one. So they're getting the wrong stuff. They're having to reshoot shit. The editor is in a room somewhere, useless, calling after the fact. We still need to get this close-up. Or you got to reshoot that because it doesn't match. Because no one knows editing.

So if you just know that, you're already miles ahead of 99% of Hollywood. But that's just how I learned by accident. So I kind of stumbled upon it. But, and I realized that's what the problem is because across the board, I'm watching them going, that's not going to match. You guys are just spending money, sending crews out, shooting stuff for this. It's just, it's a clusterfuck. Let me show you.

Sin City, Bruce Willis, nine days. Brittany Murphy's in all three stories, one day. Benicio del Toro, three days. It's just like you're just shooting their stuff. Mickey Rourke is in a sequence with Redger Hauer. We shot eight months apart. i didn't have redgar howards i was doing shark born lavender So I just shot Mickey acting with me, and then I shot Redgar acting with me, and I just cut them together.

Wow. What's weird is like editing exercises or like I used to do these editing exercises where I would do my VCRs together and I would cut my movies, but sometimes I would just cut a music video. And I cut a music video once because I was a big fan of Rudger Hauer and a big fan of Mickey Rourke. So I said, I want to make it look like they're in a movie together. So I cut this music video together. And so it shows like lightning on Rudger and the Hitcher and then lightning on Mickey.

From Rumblefish, but Rumblefish is black and white. So I made the whole thing black and white. I was like 19. I was 19 years old when I did that. And then years later, I'm making Sin City. I shot Mickey not knowing who the other actor was going to be until I cast him eight months later, and it was Rudger. I'm cutting them together to look like they're in the same movie and it's in black and white. And I'm like, Done this before.

Oh my God, I found that old video. It's like, oh my God, I already made a movie of them in black and white. That's some weird shit, right? That's the magic of creativity. It's like... Sometimes when you have a vision, it's not clear, but it's coming to you from the future. So you got to just follow the voice. No matter what anyone says about your curtains, just follow the voice you got in your head because you don't know and you're not smart enough to know.

And you don't need to know. You just need to do. You just need to be the hands. So this is like what you can do with no time or money when you know all those jobs. It's the benefit of knowing those jobs. Like I said, the more you know those jobs, the more you know your main job. which is being creative, but on the day, thinking on your feet. So I'm going to show you this test.

Okay, so for Dust of Dawn, the TV series, I would always shoot the first episode and the last episode of like a seven or eight episode season. There's three seasons. By the time we got to the third season, I was doing Alita, so I couldn't do the big finale episode. And my actor, who plays the George Clooney character, DJ Catrona,

He's somebody who fucking wanted to be a writer and was writing. He wrote Fight and Flight. It's this movie that's going to come out with Josh Arnett. That's his, he wrote it. And after doing this, he was like, man, hearing you talk. you know what I got? This is what I love about you inspire people. The feedback loop inspires you back. You say, man, hearing your talk for red 11 and the cards and I've got a script that's partially written. I'm just going to go.

I'm going to go crank it out in three days. I'm going to cut off the phone in three days. I'm going to finish that thing in three fucking days. And he came back and he said, I finished the script and I read it. And I go, when you read it in three days and go, well, I wrote something before, but it. I just kept thinking I wasn't ready. And then you told me the thing about not being ready. And you said that it really resonated. I went and I finished it in three days.

man, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go do the DJ method. I call the DJ method. I have a bunch of half-baked ideas that I'm just going to go turn off the phone and finish the thing in three days. And I'll fix it later, but the three days, it's going to be pure pipe.

It's just going to be coming through because you're just going to be picking up the pen. So anyway, he came to me with this idea. He said, oh man, I was hoping you'd do the last episode of Dusk Till Dawn because I had this great idea for a scene. We're in a zombie town, western town. We have those guns where you have to... pull the trigger, the hammer back before you can fire. So I thought, what if I have a gun that's empty? And I got bullets in the other hand.

And I bump into a zombie. The bullets go flying. I jump and I catch all the bullets and shoot the guy before I hit the ground. Okay, that's kind of a real cool, like, desperado type thing. But, dude, this is a seven-day shoot for these episodes. Every one of the crew will have a different idea on how to do that. Stunt guy will put you on wires because you have to do all that action or...

The DP isn't even operating the camera. It's a camera guy. The director doesn't know how to shoot. He's not operating the camera. Your editor is in a room somewhere. VFX guys aren't there. You're not going to be able to ask them how to do it. But I, in my own VFX, I came up with how we did all the shots in Sin City and all the spiking. We need one guy to come do it. I'll come do it.

I'll come do it because I'm already going to be there because I have to shoot a second unit fight scene for the other actor who wanted a cool fight scene. So I was already doing that. When it comes to your scene, we'll switch places because it's got to be done quick because you've got to shoot it in 20 minutes because you've got a ton of other shit you've got to shoot.

And you just never get it. You won't even get it in a film schedule, you know, in a regular movie schedule. It's just too crazy. You need somebody with a vision to do the whole thing. so this is what it would look like if you're on the set i'm going to show you the footage and i'm going to show you the scene i have to show it to you a couple times because you're not going to believe what you're about to see

So if you were on the set, this is what it would look like. So I get there. They said, we're ready for that scene. So I get over there to the set and I go, okay, where are you coming out of? He goes, this building. Where are you getting the bullets from? That body. Okay, bring that body close.

I want to see you just jump and start to twist as if you're turning. I just want to see how much airtime you can get to get any action before you hit the pad. He starts to jump. He barely starts jumping. He's already hitting the pad. So I was like, okay, that ain't going to work. You get out of here. DJ, you're going to do it.

I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I hadn't thought about it before, but now you're there. This is so awesome. And now the options are very limited. Yeah. You're very limited. Look at the sun. You're going to see the sun not move. You see, that's the point where the sun starts getting lost. I have to shoot this in 20 minutes. You're going to do three jumps, and I'm going to cut it to look like one jump. All the bullets are going to miss. The only one's going to go in.

So here, just follow what I'm saying because we don't have time. What cameras do we have? What's on the A camera? A long lens. Oh yeah, that's my camera. I'll operate that. What's on the B camera? steady cam leave it on steady cam no chance no time to convert it at one point i wanted to lower it So just flip it upside down. We'll flop it later. Give me the main camera. Okay, DJ, start running towards that bullet.

and grab it and pretend like it gets shot out of your hand. I shoot it in slow motion, but I'm showing you how it would look on the set. Okay, now the bullets are flying. I'm going to add those digitally and I'm going to hold the bullets up to the light.

in each angle so that they know what it's supposed to look like so they can match that otherwise it'll look phony now first jump i just want you to commit to just jumping out and just look at the barrel just look at the barrel on your hands when you're jumping because that'll look like you're looking at the bullet

And just don't even think about that you're going to catch a bullet. Don't think about that you're going to start turning. Just stretch your body out. Get a really graphic look, how cool that looks. And then the side view, it's shot this at the same time. You can already tell. It's going to look like bullets are missing, right? Okay, now I need this part though. I need the part where he's catching the bullet. This little window there. How am I going to do that?

with a lens that long it's going to be all out of focus it's not going to be slow motion enough He even knows me and he's like, what the hell am I doing? So I just lay on the pad and rock up and down. And as you're coming down, that'll look like you're falling as I'm zooming in because I'm operating the camera and I'm cutting this in my head. Yeah. And I'm saying, just do it again. He's like, what is it?

Rock up, and then as you go down, it's going to look like you're falling. Well done. You've caught a bullet. One went in. Now, second jump. When you do the next jump, as if we just passed those other moments, you've caught a bullet already. So now you're going to snap it close and start your turn. It's all you'll get before you hit the pad.

snap turn, right? So like, okay, this is, I want the cameras to feel like they're dropping with them. That'll give you more of the sensation. So let's actually lower that. steady cam shot flip it upside down and get a low angle so yeah look at the sun's right there hasn't gone behind the building yet that and then my camera i lowered my camera down and i got that

Right? Okay. Now, last jump. I bury a thin mattress because I want him to do all the stunts. I don't want a stunt guy because he does this. himself he just did it in three jumps but the audience will know they'll just be like we believe that this guy can do anything I want you just to finish by turning and cocking the hammer back and firing before you hit the ground. I'll give you two takes for that.

Almost gets it there. Then we do a second thing. Boom. Now that other one was probably a little better even though you don't really see it. I've got to go do everything now. I got to cut it. I got to add the sound effects myself. I got to put the music in myself because music guys would just end up filling it with music and ruin it. Sound effects guys would just fill it full of sound effects and ruin it. I want all the sound to drop out.

So as he's jumping, all you hear is the wind in his jacket, the clinking of the bullets as they're bouncing off. So you have this breathless moment, no music, cut the music. And that moment you cut it. So that you're like, I wonder if he's going to make it, right? So I go home, I cut it. Before I even have the visual effects in, I just cut it that night.

Because I cut my own sound effects. I cut my sound effects in. You can already tell it's going to work. You can already see, even with the bullets not there, you can tell by the sound where they're going to be. It's going to work. I call them up and say, dude, this is going to work great. So then I go to the effects guys and I go, okay.

There's the bullet in this frame, and the next frame is here because I used to animate. In the next frame, it's there, then it hits the barrel, and then it starts bouncing this way. I want it that clear so we can follow that a bullet was supposed to go in and that it bounced way over there, and then this bullet bounced way over there. And they send it back and a bunch of bullets come down. No, guys, listen to what I say. I'm going to show you again. I'm going to draw it to you again.

The sound will play like there's multiple bullets flying. I don't need to see all those bullets or the eye's not going to know where to go. So then they got it right. Brilliant. And then check this out. I'm going to show it to you twice because you're not going to believe it. Wow. Changes direction. Wow.

Wow. Well done. You didn't even see that in a feature film, much less a TV show. Well done. Just as a director, well done. Here, just one more time, and I'll show you something you didn't notice both times. you Ha! That's amazing. Just those decisions coming together perfectly. Just really well done. And like this, you got minutes.

moving the camera like you decided to do really worked really well the balancing of the mattress whatever and it's not like you have this whole plan figured out ahead you're literally in the moment you're It's coming through you. But you're seeing it though, right? I'm seeing it because I've done it enough. That's why you really want to learn all those jobs because it becomes a moment like this when the shit's fucking hitting the fan. You got to know how to pull it out.

You could have gotten all those people together and they never would have figured that out. You had one person had to see it all the way through. You're seeing the bullet, how it's going to go in the result. I've done enough times to know that if you don't do it just right, you're going to... You're going to lose the image. You're not going to know where to follow and you'll miss the point. Yeah, I love that you're thinking about where the eyes of the audience will go.

I feel like too many people might think about some more general concept of a scene versus the audience, where's their eye? Where's their eye? Well, you're drawing it through sound, through picture. I'm going to show you. If you notice, without the sound, you don't really see him. Click that thing back. The sound is so sensory here. Watch this. You don't really... Right. I thought I saw it. You think you saw it, but you hear it, so you feel like seeing it. But watch. It's actually...

He's already finished. You don't really see him do it. But you swear you saw it in a close-up because the sound is in a close-up. I put the sound in a close-up. Now here's another thing you didn't notice. He hits this ground in the first shot. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You didn't even notice it because I didn't play the sound there. If you don't hear it, you don't see it. If you don't see it, but you play a sound.

hear it, then you see it in your mind. So check that out now with the sound on, and you'll see both those parts play completely different now. Now you hear it. I know you can get away with that because I know editing and I'm like, if I don't play the sound, I can go ahead and milk that shot as long as I want. I'll make him be in the air longer, even though he's actually touching the ground by not playing the sound.

And that comes from, you said directing, but it's not directing. Like people can direct and say, this is what I want. But to actually execute it, you need to be a craftsman. And to be a craftsman, you have to learn all those crafts. And not just with the visuals, but with the sound. With the sound, too. Sound is so important. Sound is half the picture.

And if you cut sound, you realize how important sound is. I would learn so much by doing those movies, like Desperado Action Movies, where you go, wow, the sound, I can add an extra sound effect of an extra punch he didn't even throw. And it sounds like he's... beating the shit out of this guy and you only need to see

one or two hits and you can hear five you know you know you know where you can push your limits because you've done it you've done it and you've got the experience it's so amazing that you can use sound to make a person believe they saw something that wasn't actually there on the screen yeah your brain fills it in

That's crazy. And that's why that's so important, because if you don't know that, you'll be on the set shooting 10 takes of that. Because you're like, no, I didn't see him click it back. I didn't see him click it back. That's really needed. I can do that with sound. Let's just go. Let's just keep moving. When you say sound close-up, what does that mean? All the other sound dropped away and all you hear is... The mic's right on that thing so that you hear it so big in your ear.

that you swear it was in close-up too, but just the sound was close. How do you, sorry, just to give an insight into that process of sound design, are you listening to the sound? And just like experiencing the feeling that creates. And then you're like, that's just right. I'm playing in post a lot. So I have a whole library of sound effects from all my movies. So I can pull up like the gun sound we created for Bruce Willis and Sensity and use that and mix it with.

Antonio's gun from Desperado. I remember in Four Rooms, there's a scene where the bill happens. key into it and clicks it. I used all gun sounds for the sound of the key instead of key sounds because it wasn't sound close enough. So if you listen to it, you hear all these sounds from Gunn to do the key. It's like that conveys the sound better. I'll use different kinds of sounds that just have impact and put it somewhere like when he hits the ground. So I like playing with all that.

in post when I'm editing because it makes my editing job easier. Sometimes it's like, oh, the sound is covering me. I don't need to keep trying to massage this. The sound is actually selling. And so I keep those sound effects into the final movie. So it's just all part of the necessary. It's like being a chef. You're there cooking and you're going like, I know the recipe says this, but I think it really could use...

jalapenos and some extra pepper and maybe a little more salt. And then it needs an acid of some kind, so I'm going to add some lemon juice. Yeah, you made me realize, I'm not sure where I saw that, but you were talking about making sort of what it looks like. home films for fun and

You can make a very mundane scene by just adding sound. Oh, yeah. I think there was like a... My little kid with his car. Yeah, one of those little... But I added a motor sound to it, and it's like, wow. And it sounds realistic somehow. Like, I don't understand what my brain is doing there. And then we're playing with these little cars, filming ourselves playing with the cars. But then I replaced it with real car sounds.

And your brain links the reality of the real thing. It's crazy. And you realize how unimportant the visual is and how important the sound is, actually. Sound is everything. That's why I was really lucky in Mariachi that my camera didn't work for sound. Because then I got really good sound that I would have gotten with a shitty mic out of frame. Because that's the first telltale sign of a low-budget movie is bad sound.

bad sound right away you can already hear all this hiss and all this mic was too far and you're like low budget movie before your eyes even tell you the sound gives it away Isn't that amazing? The audio is first. Sound is first. Really. Even though it's a visual medium. That's so crazy. Just on the... What's the plan with the... With the four action films, like what are the next steps?

I'll probably direct more than one because there's already several that I want to do. But I'm going to direct at least one, but I'm producing all three, all four, there at my studio. It does draw you in. It draws you in and it makes you go now think of ideas you never would have thought of for mainly because it has a filter. Well, now...

all these ideas i can only i actually have like that like me on that set there's only very few things i can actually come up with that are just action driven first when i have a great character you'll get to it a lot faster with a filter that's the beauty of a filter is that now you've just shrunk your target.

And now you can hit that target. And people are coming up with ideas because now they've got proximity and they've got a reason to come up with the idea. And they've got a deadline, which is the best thing you can do is have a deadline. Because when you have a deadline, you can freaking move mountains. You know, I had a Spy Kids in the theater every year, three years in a row, not being pre-planned. Every year there was a Spy Kids. Now, the third one was the biggest one, biggest cast.

mostly green screen video game and the first digital 3d movie ever so getting visual effects companies to make that we realized oh i shot it with two cameras That means each effect shot has to be done twice from a different angle. So I went to the studio midway through that and said, there's not going to be a movie in the theaters in time. You're going to have to push the date back. And they said, okay, we've never heard you panic.

We'll push the date back for you. They called back 10 minutes later. I was like, oh, thank God, because it's really complicated. I didn't know it was going to be this complicated, but I wanted a challenge. And they said, McDonald's will sue us for $20 million if you move the date. You have to have a move. We started shooting that movie in January of 2003. It was in 3D in theaters by July. That's the fastest.

any effects movie has ever been done because you had no choice so deadline makes you do things and make decisions really quick and it was the biggest of the three Deadlines are good. And it's hard for us to self-impose a deadline sometimes because we know it's a bullshit deadline and your brain knows it's bullshit. But why do deadlines work? Because when the deadline's coming up, what do you do?

You start to put the pen to the paper and it starts just flowing, right? You have no choice. You have to get out of the way and open the pipe. And it just comes out and you're shocked. You're like, oh my God, I should do everything at the last minute. Well, no, you don't have to. But if you just learn how to open that pipe earlier.

You wouldn't be in a rush, but you had to get out of your way because your deadline was up and you had to come up with it. So many people are going to come up with all these extra great ideas at the last minute. They've already, but it looks like everyone who's already signing on. Because they didn't, it's cool, they don't know when the deadline is. They keep writing in saying, when is the deadline for this? And we say, well, when we close the funding in May.

but we didn't say when still. So I think that gives them like a sense of a deadline, like shit, it might be May 1st or maybe May 2nd, so we better get my idea going. So I think it works in your favor because then you come up with stuff. And you're going to feel so enriched by doing the idea that you're not going to care if it gets picked or not. You're going to love this idea so much, it could turn into 10 other things you never even thought of.

That's the beauty of doing a project. Nothing ever goes to waste. So many ideas that were sitting around that I'd come up with and put a lot of time in are now like, oh, I can do these now. I know how to finish it now. I have to ask you about Alita. So you've done so many incredibly innovative projects. This is one of them. It turned out to be this visual masterpiece. There's a bunch of complexity.

beautiful complexity about it in that it started out as a film that James Cameron was supposed to make and then you started to collaborate with him on it. And these two, I would say brilliant directors, but with different styles, like you were talking about. And so, plus there's the complexity of, for people who haven't seen it, you're... putting this artificial creation, this beautiful... photorealistic, artificial creation of a human being into a real world.

So you have to capture the performance, not just the motion, but the performance of this actor. Put them into this, with the power of technology, into the real world to convey all the emotion, the richness of the human face. Can you just speak to the process of bringing that world to life? Sure. I mean, why not? I never would have attempted if it wasn't Jim, because Jim has figured all this out. So just to get you, again, remember, like I said.

Hey Jim, I'm operating a steady cam. What do you think of that? Well, I'm designing a new system. That's always how it is between him and I. So when I went to show him Desperado and it was done. He said, you might not want to sit through. If you don't want to sit through it while I'm watching it, it's fine. Do you want to read any of my scriptments, my treatment scripts, you know, called scriptments? I said, sure. He goes, I have Spider-Man and I got Avatar.

this was in 95 he was showing me the scriptment for avatar which there was no technology for that he was already doing stuff that didn't exist. Yeah. And I was reading it going like, this is a great story. And he's like, I don't know how the fuck he's going to do this. It's impossible. It's not even, he'd just done, you know, Terminator 2 a few years before. It's like, that was the thing of the art.

So Alita was going to be the movie he did first to prepare for Avatar. And so he had already done some prep work on it. It was based on a manga. But before they did that, they just started doing some tests for Avatar. And then as they got deeper into the test for Avatar to prepare for Alita...

They went, I guess we're making Avatar first. So Alita got kind of pushed to the side and they ended up doing it, which ended up becoming such a journey to make that movie, to get the technology to build it, to make it. Because I remember visiting him on the set. I mean, I've known him so long. I was on the set of Titanic. That's how long I've been around this guy.

I was on the set of Titanic. I was on the set with Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Furlong for the 3D ride he made for Universal a few years later. So, I mean, I feel like I've been around him. a lot of his career and to be able to visit the set you know of avatar and remember him showing me like artwork they did very photorealistic and he goes curious to see how photoreal it'll be when we're finally done with this process because you don't get to see it till it's almost done

And I was like, wow, he's just shooting blind. He's really, talk about me shooting mariachi, not seeing the footage. He's making this whole movie, not even knowing what the end result's going to look like at all. Because you're not going to know till you get there. And when you get there, if you don't like it, there's not a lot you can do.

So I just seen him do that and have that success really made it easier for me to do Alita because then it's like, okay, we don't know. Again, we don't need to know. We know we'll get there, but we don't know how we're going to do it. We're going to start. And anything that I would come up with on this movie. in his team because he had all his wet people working on it.

He had them all working on it too. I do a fast version of his process because it's a lot of live action. Avatar is mostly CG. I have live action sets. You have to come to my studio because I still have the whole Alita City in my back lot. Here at the Troublemaker Studio? Yeah. That's where it was? Yeah, it was shot here.

So when you go see my city, I built it very resourceful. This is weird. It looks just like the town for mariachi. But it's in my backyard. I'm like, it looks better than the town for mariachi. 90,000. It's the largest standing set in the country. Sets are always mowed down for the next movie, but I just kept it there. So we used to shoot it all the time for Mexico or South America or Europe or whatever. It's 7th Street.

And we add it digitally above it. The ceilings are 20 feet high. You got to come see. You don't believe that it's here. It's unbelievable. Where is it? North of Austin. It's where the old airport was. So it's like on 51st street, you know, it's like really close to town. I would love to. You got to come see, you're not going to believe it. All my props, all my stuff from all my movies. So people who are, you know,

investing in brass knuckle. That's why I say it's like a Willy Wonka movie because they're going to get to come check out all that stuff and be in proximity and see, oh, like me with that painter. It's not a trick. He's just doing it. Then you realize you can do it too. We thought, let's shoot mostly live action and we'll just replace her. But we still have to figure her out. You have to cast the right actress.

And when I saw Rosa Salazar, she was just amazing. She made me cry in audition for the first time. I was like, oh my God, this person has something. If we can capture even a fourth of her facial expression, it'll bring so much life. And they got it one-to-one. And it really helped Jim on the next Avatar and Weta because they got to try out a bunch of things. That's why Avatar, the second Avatar, Way of Water, looks so much better.

more refined than the first avatar because of that middle step of doing Alita. It was training ground for them. Can you actually educate me on the Weta process? Is this like a performance capture technology? Yeah, I have her in a suit before. capturing her body movements but also facial capture it's a performance capture of all her performance all her emoting And we have witness cameras around everywhere to pick up where she is. And everything else is real. And we're just replacing her.

but with someone even smaller in size, so you have to erase everything behind her. There's a bunch of technical things you need to do. But the idea is to, whatever performance she gives, she's such a great actress, is to capture all of that, because then this character that doesn't even exist...

will feel very emotional and you have to be tied to it. You have to feel its heart. She was the heartbeat of it. So she's acting with all this? Acting with all that, but it just disappeared. It's not even there. We don't notice that this is here. It's like that. She can just perform through it. What was some interesting, unique, challenging things about you directing her performance in this?

in this kind of world. I just, I just knew she had to be her. It was going to be just so easy with her. She's just so great. She, everything was just so real and everything was like, she's that character. She becomes that character who's seen this world for the first time. No special effects going to help you with that.

if the performance isn't there so it was all about getting the performance and casting the right actors that's why you get christoph waltz there and you get jennifer connelly you know these masters are all in the set. Mahershala Ali, you know, you've got an amazing cast of people. And that's really the heart of it, so that the technology kind of goes away. How hard is it to get the actors?

when the full world is not around you. We put so much of the world around them. When you see the city, we put a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town, we built the real sets so everything was very tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was all done in CG, well then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge.

And that really helps them on Avatar because that whole place is created in Avatar. You could get away with a lot, but they wanted to commit to that kind of detail. And on the next Avatar, that's why it just feels like you're really there. It's just stunning. And you get there by having something to work on like this to take the technology to the next level.

So it was cool to be able to help, you know, knowing that you're being helpful to him in his process and not just distracting him. But then also he liked that his artist had something else to work on besides just Avatar. to just work on something different to freshen up their perspective on things and methodology. And so, yeah, that was a really exciting movie to work on.

And then we got to shoot it here, a Jim Cameron movie here in Austin. That was the best, having him here. And my whole crew, who's worked with me 25, 30 years. Everyone had an extra spring in their step because they're like, wow, we're working on a Jim Cameron movie. I mean, that's just like a high bar.

of achievement for everybody, you know, working on it. Since we talked about a few other directors, can you speak to the genius of James Cameron? Like what makes him special? You talked about some of the difference in your approach and his. He's created some of the most special movies ever. What's behind that? What would you say is interesting about the way his creative mind works? I think any of those guys, George Lucas, him, John Lasseter running at Pixar, it's a mix of...

And I got really lucky. My first job was Photoshop, because my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop. He said, your summer job, when I was 16, go work for my friend Mario. So I go to Mario's Photoshop. And I'm, you know, developing pictures or, you know, I think you develop photos from film.

He said, here, take this camera home. Give me one of his cameras. Take this camera home and some film. I need you to learn how to use the camera so you can help me sell the cameras. So I went home and I have a bunch of siblings. So like, well, the stars are bedhead. Taking all these pictures of everybody. I take it back and he looks at the pictures when he develops. He's like, whoa, these are really creative. You're a creative person.

So when sometimes people tell you something that you can't unhear, and he goes, that's a gift. But you need to know now, now you need to become technical. Because most creative people need technicians, and technicians always need creative people because they're not usually the same. You're born with creativity. It's against your nature to be technical, but you can learn if you apply yourself. And if you're both technical and creative...

You'll be unstoppable. And I was like, stop. Wow. So here I want you to learn zone photography. I want you to learn this, this, the technical part of it. That's why I didn't take a crew of Mariachi, because I knew if I'm just a creative person and I need a crew to go actually technically make the movie, I'll always need something. And when you want to really change your life, you want to get your I need list down to.

Because if you're like, well, I want to shoot my movie, but I need a cameraman and I need somebody who knows how to light it. Your I need list keeps growing. That's further and further and further you will be from what you need to accomplish. So I kind of went down there without any help. So that, remember that script analogy where the guy said, throw away three scripts. I said, no, I'm going to.

write three scripts, and then shoot each one so I get better at each one of those jobs so I can learn to be technical. My technical capability was so little. I'm literally calling the guy on the phone. How do I use this camera? You know, that's how little I knew about it, but I knew by doing the job I would learn. By being both, that's really the key.

So Jim Cameron is like that. Jim Cameron, when you think of those guys, George Lucas, very technical and very creative. John Lasseter, very technical, but very creative. very creative. Putting those two things together is really what sets you apart from other technicians and other creative people.

And it's very, very powerful. A lot of creative people, again, it's against their nature to be technical. They don't want to do it. Make yourself do it. Read the manuals. Take the lessons. It frees you up. Because then you can go do like, you know, I just showed you in that demo. You're able to now be a technical person and creative, and then you're unstoppable. He's one of the best at it. And he just knows how to craft a story. He's very analytical as well.

We bounce off each other in a funny way. He goes, man, he came down to visit my studio before he did Alita, and he went... You only surround yourself with people who are like you. Like you exude creativity, you know, from every pore. And so does everyone at your studio. And I go, yeah, I didn't hire them that way on purpose, but I think if you're not that way, you kind of know, you don't belong there and you kind of leave. And then I went to his studio.

And there are a bunch of Jim Camerons there. They're like, oh my God. They're all very technical. You can't get all kind of fuzzy with the logic or the, you can't get. you can't get really creative with a physics or anything. They're like, no, that's not how it would work. It would be like, and they're just. wow, super great at what they do. Bar is sky high. And they're all like that. Because yeah, if you're not part of it, if you're not like that, you can't hang with those guys.

You can't hang with him very long. I heard a story where... The guitar case being a rocket launcher. where to you, you create this real world where everything is possible. The magic feels real. And for James Cameron, he has to know how a guitar case would work that would actually be able to double as a rocket launcher. When I show him the trailer for Grindhouse and he sees the machine gun laying and all that, he just goes, whoa!

That's unbridled filmmaking from the id. It makes sense only the second you're watching it, not a second after, but the second you're watching it, you believe it. But he's really interesting in that he's so prolific. I walked into his writing studio. And it'd be like on one of the tables. Like, do you have those papers there? Imagine them that thick, that thick, that thick, all script, script, script. What are these?

This is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like, you're just cranking out all this stuff. Like, again. can I take this and go make this, please? But yeah, we bounced off each other because I loved his analytical part of his brain. I'm not that analytical. I'm just kind of like, hey, I'm really creative feeling. I'm like, woo, I'll go this way and then woo, I'll go that way. And he likes that about me.

But I like, I want to be, I think about things too much. Like you think about things like what makes a movie a billion dollar hit? What are the elements that you need? And I'm going to analyze that. And I'm going to make sure my movie does that. And he engineers. He engineers a movie that can break the world record. You know, he's like, he has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rich.

So that's very rare, and he's capitalized on both. He had this submarine model like this big on his desk, the one that he broke the world record for going. And just seeing it and knowing him have kids and stuff and wife. And I'm like, weren't you afraid going down there with, you know, something could happen? It's like, no, I wasn't afraid. Like, why not?

Because I designed the escape vehicle. Yeah, if it was any other bozo, I'd be afraid. But he designed the escape vehicle. That kind of confidence, that's him. He just knows if some other bozo had designed this game vehicle, I would be afraid. But total confidence, because he did it. The confidence of extreme competence is brilliant. Just to get you excited about how creative this stuff is. So Desperado was the only movie. on the Sony lot being edited digitally.

Not only was I editing on a computer, I was editing in my house, which in 1994 was just unheard of. So I'm there in my house and they made me cut in LA because at first I told the studio, I want to edit Desperado myself because it's important that I edit it. And they go, no, you can't. Why not? We've never had a director edit his own movie. so we don't want to set a precedent in case they thought it would give you too much power so this is the power of precedent he said

well, you bought mariachi and I edited that. So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit in LA so we can watch you because we don't think you know what you're doing. We saw the footage and the shots are really short. It's too short. I was like, shots are too short. Oh, because I was shooting my cut.

You know, like they're used to seeing footage of Antonio walks into the bar and it's going to be a dialogue scene. They expect the whole thing done from a wide shot. I would shoot the wide shot. He walks in, cut, move the camera. Let's get over here because I'm not going to use it for the rest of the scene. I know we're going to get into coverage because I've already cut it.

So I was like, huh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. Have you ever seen Desperado? The first scene is the best scene. Steve Buscemi is telling a story. He's talking about the myth of the mariachi. He's doing all this crazy. It's crazy. Great scene. So then they come over. I say, hey, come see my first scene. So they come over to my house. They watch it.

Okay, you know what you're doing. But I was cutting Desperado in my house that I rented there. And then we shot Dust Till Dawn at the same time. So I was cutting Desperado, Four Rooms, and Dust Till Dawn myself. I'm the editor. I don't have an editing team other than the ones who import it into the machine. So Del Toro came over, Soderbergh came over, can I borrow it for Schizophilus? No one had heard of somebody having an Avid in their living.

Jim comes over and he goes, I hear you have an Avid in your living room. And I go, yeah, come check it out. I'm just like, I roll out of bed. It's like. Sometimes unremarkable, because that's what you do right now, but back in 94, it was unheard of. I'm cutting three movies at the same time myself. I roll out a bit, I come here, I can cut Desperado, I can cut Dust to Love, anyway. That's it. I hate working with editors. You know, when I was doing Terminator 2,

They wouldn't even let me put the Bad to the Bone song in Terminator 2 because they didn't think it would work. And I had to sneak into the edit room at night. on the weekend to cut it in and show them the next day. It's like, that's your own movie. You can't give that kind of power to people. He said, I hate working with editors. I'm going to do this. I'm going to tear down a wall in my house. I'm going to put it in an avid. I'm going to cut my next movie.

And he did. He got an Oscar for editing Titanic. He had two other editors, but now no one ever took him for a ride like that again. He edits on every movie. He has other editors, but he can go do his own cuts. When he shows me footage, he's showing me himself on his own machine. And it's like... again it gives you all those tools to be able to

really find your vision that you're looking for because you can't always explain it to somebody because you don't always know yourself. It's part of, you kind of come up with it as you do the process. Just a small tangent about the different software and the technologies involved. So you mentioned Avid.

This Premiere Pro. Premiere was still in its early stages then. I think Soderbergh looked at it and he said, yeah, I can't afford an Avid for this movie. I'm going to go do it. I think he started cutting on Premiere. but um i'm sure it's all better now i just have always used an avid because i just always read it back to the same production i think i've just

I don't have to buy a new one, but there's lots of good... I hear about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one. I guess that's the question I have for you. It's interesting for people. It's very interesting to me, just the... the details use avid like what do you like multiple monitors one monitor have a couple monitors

And then I'm one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene back because the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, if I were to design my own system, I'd probably design it differently. But I'm literally...

worked on that thing since 94 i still don't know all the shortcuts and all that shit i still use it like my tape deck play rewind pause and i can cut so fast with that just i don't use the mouse for shortcuts i'm just like so you found your way preferred way the workflow of using it and now you can let go of the technical and then be creative. Yeah, just be creative. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. It doesn't matter which system it is. If you can get it to work for you, great.

Like there's a lot of problems I have with it that I know are probably fixed on another system, but they don't have a whole other set of problems. So it's like, well, why bother? With that, you know, there's limitations I think that it has that would need to be fixed, but not for what I'm doing. I mean, I can still do what I need. It feels like part of the artistry is every system has limitations, and you learn how to work around those limitations.

I mean, my first VCRs, like those things, those things were, I was always known for taking what little basic equipment and milking the shit out of it. What it could, pushing the boundaries of what it can do. And now it's flipped. Now you're working on a program and you can spend 10 years on this thing and you're scratching the surface of what it's capable of. It's totally flipped the other way. I'm not milking anything anymore. I'm barely getting, you know, the smallest capability of it.

I would have to spend a lot of time to figure out all the stuff that he can possibly do. And I'm sure it's all great, fantastic stuff, but what a different world than when I grew up where it was like, okay, let me splice these two sound things together. It was so hard to get it to do. People would be like, you got that movie out of that equipment? Well, now it's the other way around.

All this equipment is great. So when people come to me and say, I've got, well, I've only got this camera. I was like, that camera's 10 times better than anything I had for my first 15 years of filmmaking. Oh, you have no complaints. This is like, you can just start now and just start making stuff.

I have a lot of friends who are huge fans of your movies. So one of them asked me that I absolutely must ask you, do you know if there's a sequel of Alita coming? We're working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it. But usually when we meet, we talk about it.

I gave him something to read. He's a little busy with his Avatar movie, but I'm going to see him again soon, and we'll see where it's at. But we would love to make another one. We have ideas on how to do it, because it was always built to be a trilogy. and he sees that there's a lot of love for it. It was just weird because it was a Fox movie.

And they got bought by Disney, you know, and then so they weren't really making Fox movies because they had enough work with their Disney movies. But now they're starting to make some Fox movies like they did Deadpool and some Fox movies are starting to get made. time might be right for us to come back and do an Alita. I hope you do soon. But it is, I mean, you do so many different kinds of movies. That's a whole different kind of puzzle, right?

No, but it's not a bad one. It's a cool, it's one of the few, like usually I make kids, family kids movies. Or R-rated action horror movies. And that was the first time I got to do a PG-13 movie, which was kind of like it had a lot of action, but it was for families could watch it too. It was kind of like the best of all worlds.

Have to ask you about Sin City, one of my favorite films of all time. It was a visually stunning world. What are some maybe interesting detailed aspects about you creating that world? This is why you just got to follow your nose and go do something. Jim and I were both into 3D early on. I visited his set for the Terminator 3D ride. Just till dawn, I wanted to be 3D. Actually, when they got to the bar...

If you watch this from that point on, everything's kind of set up for 3D. Everything was shooting into the camera and all this. But the cameras they had for 3D and film were those old shitty ones. They were so bad. Then I went, okay, we can't do it. But I really wanted people to have to put on glasses when they got into the bar, and it was going to turn into a 3D different movie. I got to do that on Spike Gets 3D.

So when I did Spy Kids 3D, I thought, oh, if I get Jim's cameras that he's done for these underwater 3D documentaries, I can make the first digital 3D film for theater. And so I did, and it seemed like the easiest way was to utilize that when you put on the glasses when you go into a game world.

So there's a green screen, and we shot all the actors on a green screen for all the game stuff, and we could do a lot of 3D stuff coming at kids' faces when they're reaching. My 3D is not like the kind they have. in theaters where it's very polite mine's like theme park 3d where kids are doing like that trying to grab that's why it was such a big hit nobody does 3d like

But I wanted that. I want shit falling in people's laps, you know? So you remember, so you would go, okay, this is why I'm wearing the glasses. And I'm wondering why. And when I went to go make my next movie, so this is how crazy it is. We shot. Spy Kids 3, remember I showed you how fast they came out. That was in the summer of 2003. A few months later, once upon a time, Mexico came. two number one movies, both were finishing trilogies of mine. And each one starred Antonio, Danny Trejo.

Cheech Marin. When I was editing those at the same time, you'd be like, whoa, one movie they're killing people and the other ones are like with the kids going like, hey, family. So it was really, you know, fun. It was fun to, it's easier to do very different things than to do like two action movies or two family movies at the same.

But I was like, okay, what's my next movie going to be? Oh shit, how crazy is this? Okay, so Antonio is on the set. I'm going to shoot him out in half a day for Spike is 3D because he's only in the last scene. Shoot him to lunch. Okay, now go away. Put on your desperado outfit because we owed some shots for Once Upon a Time Mexico on the green screen. He finished two trilogies in the same day. That's got to be a first if ever. No one's ever finished.

two trilogies in the same day. And it's just kismet. You know, it's just how it happened to happen that day was just luck or the universe or whatever. But I needed to make it something new now. bookshelves of inspiration and i picked up my sin city books which i've had i used to be a cartoonist and i always loved how he drew that

Every time I'd see a different edition, I'd buy it, go home and go, oh, I already have this. I got like three copies of this already. And it would just always grab me by the throat. And I liked that he was a writer-director in a way, because he would not just wrote the... comic but he drew it too a lot of times it's a different writer or different comic artist he's like a real like a kinship you know this is someone who writes and directs his own thing

But I was looking at it and I went, oh, shit, I know how to do this now. I just did it on the green screen. If I shoot this on green screen, the actors on green screen, I can make the backgrounds look just like this and I can contrast up the actors.

And I could get this very graphic look, which sometimes for a window, it's just a white box. So it's even got a sliding scale for budget. If I run out of money, just put the actors in black and white, just put like a white dot behind them for a streetlight. And that looks just like the book. So I'm going to bring the book to life. So I'll show you how fast we go from development at Troublemaker. It was October. Once upon a time, Mexico would come out.

I was like, oh shit, I know how to do this now, Sin City. I'm going to do a test. I went to my green screen here in my studio. You'll see my green screen where I shot all these movies. And I shot, you know, my sister, myself, put it black and white. Looks just like the comic, but it's moving. So I called a comic book artist friend of mine, Mike Allred, and I said, do you have Frank Miller's number? He goes, yeah, I do. Okay, I'm going to call him. I said, call up Frank Miller.

Hey, this is Rob Rodriguez. I have a test I'm going to show you for Sin City. I'm going to be in New York tomorrow. He's like, tomorrow? Okay, yeah, sure. Come by. Meet me at this bar. Okay, book a flight for New York. I fly up there. I have my laptop just like this. I go to the bar, I show him what looks like an image from his comic, and it starts moving.

And he's like, wow, how did you do that? I said, I got my own studio and all this. And then I started telling him, man, let's make this movie. No one had the rights to it. He never gave the rights to a studio. A lot of comics, oh, Warner Brothers bought this a while back.

Then you got to go through the studio. He still owned his own rights. In fact, he'd gotten burned by Hollywood so many times as a screenwriter that he said, fuck it, I'm going to go back and draw a comic that's so raw that can never be made into a movie. So of course I call him, hey, let's make a great movie. So I show him how we can do it. And I go, I know you don't know me, and I have to earn your trust for you to give me your baby.

But we can make this right away. And he's like, he's all excited for about two seconds. And then he goes, oh no, then we got to write a script and then the studio is going to have notes. All that shit he's been through before. And it's not like that. I have a whole different setup. I got my own studio in Austin. This is how it's going to be. If you like this idea, you're not going to have to take any risk. Let me take all the risk.

I'm going to go write the script myself next month. It's going to be unremarkable because I'm going to write it right out of your book. I'm going to edit three of the stories down. I'm going to just take stuff out, really. It might add a few things to connect it, but I'll write the script in December myself. No money involved. Then we'll call some actor friends of mine. We'll have them come to my green screen. We'll shoot the opening scene as a test, but it's also the opening scene.

I'll do the effects myself. I'll do the sound, do the music. I'll do fake credits. We'll watch it together. If you like what you see, we'll make the movie. You give me the rights then. If you don't like it, keep it. It's a short film to show your friends. This would be really cool. So he's like, all right. There's nothing on him to do. It's all on me. I write the script in December. January, Josh Arnett, Marlee Shelton come down. Fly Frank in.

Shooting for 10 hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence. Incredible opening sequence. Record his voiceover right then in my little voiceover booth. marley shelton comes up why did i hire him to kill me i don't know let's go ask frank he's right here let's go ask frank i want to know myself so he tells her and he's like movie he's already as i tell you frank i used to be cartoonist it's the same thing you're already a director you're just using a pen instead of a camera

The performances you get out of your paper actors are phenomenal. The shots you do are beyond any DP's ever done. And the visual look, we've never seen that. I want to just take this and make it move. I just want the comic to move. Any other studio would just go make it look like any...

gritty crime movie, and they would miss the point. The visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this, because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen, because that's how it reads when I read the book. It's like, if this was moving, it would be the most phenomenal movie.

feel like directing any of these short ones? I thought about directing The Big Fat Kill maybe as a short film. You should come direct that one. Shit, you should direct all of them with me because I'm really copying it right out of my book. You should direct it with me. All right, let's go. So then, uh, January. Okay. So remember I met him in November. I wrote it in December, January. We shoot the test. Took me a couple of weeks to do the effects. He loves it.

I make a meeting with Bruce Willis, show it to Bruce Willis. What's so cool about doing that opening scene is that any actor I show it to now, I show him the book, which is awesome. You'd be playing this character, but look at this test. Let me show you the book, what it looked like before I turned this test into a test. Watches it, Josh Arnett, voiceover, music, titles come on.

First name on the screen, Bruce Willis. And I go, hey, look, you're in the credits. You have to do it now. Manifesting it, right? He's like, shit, man, this is great. I'm in. He's in. Wow. Go get everyone else from that. It was just easy to get. And we were filming the movie, so February, right?

building the few little sets we had, like the bar. I told Frank, we don't need to build a bar, but I'm going to go ahead and build a bar so we have a place to go have script meetings. Everything else will be green screen. We'll build fake steps and things out of green. So we're doing that and I'm casting the first one. We're shooting the movie by March, the beginning of March. And I remember because my son was born March 3rd.

I was in LA for his birth because I was also recording the orchestra for the score I wrote somehow in the past few months for Kill Bill 2. That's how much stuff was going on. That's like when you just... Let it flow. You're just riding the wave. You're not doing any. So that's what's by staying in that like urgent, there's always the deadlines are just pushing you to create stuff. And we shot the movie so fast in record time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year.

I shot The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl with kids. that came out two months after Sin City the next year. Within less than a year, Sin City was out. You're shooting that in parallel with Sin City. That's hilarious. Is that great? Yeah, like sometimes we'd be shooting with the kids and in the afternoon, Rudger Hauer would come and some of the Sin City girls to finish, you know, shooting stuff that we needed to film.

It was just insane how fast we had to move. I was editing. I just edited it. And then I would scan the artwork into the computer. and I would edit the storyboards with the sound effects, and I would do the voiceover. I would imitate Mickey, and I would imitate Bruce. and lay out how fast it was going to move. And you were like, wow. So now we have a template.

with the real drawings and the lighting on how we're going to do it. It's funny because I could do pretty good in Bruce Willis because I know in his career so long. If you're doing his voiceover and he would hear my guide voice for the timing. He'd be like, is that me or is that you? Can't tell. Oh, that one was me, but just do that. It's like, man, it sounds like me. First of all, why haven't films like that been...

made. Well, it's a very specific look because it went to that comic. The first piece of music I wrote for that was the main title and I called it Descent. I wanted the notes to descend because it felt like you were descending into this dark world and you don't come out to the end of the movie. You're just like in this world.

where all these layers of unreality... like water doesn't photograph that way snow doesn't but it's there and you're seeing and you're seeing the actors so you're just really it's like a dream world yeah so i was really into it and i did tests for the most difficult shots first like how do i get his

his tape to glow in the dark, like in the comics, so it's still in the shadow. And I realized, oh, we'll use fluorescent tape and a fluorescent light. That way I can keep it. We can still key it. I started just doing my own visual effects like that early on because I knew.

that I would need to just know how to do it like a magician. Shooting digital, nobody wanted to touch digital back then. DPs were all afraid of digital. They didn't want to have to learn something new. So I had to DP it. So me photographing it, I'm like... So funny, a cut, because, I mean, to light, like, you have to have that light out of frame right now. But I could bring the lights in right here as long as it was...

I'm just going to take it out of the green anyway. So I can have the coolest lighting on everybody. Cool edge lights. You can have an edge light back here, an edge light back here. I feel light here. I don't even erase him. I just take him out. Can you educate me and people curious about this? Like, what is the power of light?

When you're telling a story, when you're creating a feeling, an experience, what's the artistry of that? Well, if you look at the drawings, too, sometimes it's the absence of light. Like you would see this face, but then this would be completely black, but you would still see my eye, which is like impossible, right? But you believe it when you see it because it's there.

So things like that were a lot of the tricks I tried first because I like that about it. It's like you have a guy completely backlit, so there's no light on his face, but yet his glasses are glowing white. So we'd put fluorescent tape in there, hit that with a light, then we could turn it white later. The black and white really helped.

But I mean, it's just something that you have a feeling for, but you're able to try it. In fact, when I took it to George Lucas, who George Lucas said this to me early on, because I was, we're the only guy shooting digital. He said, man, it's so good. You live in Austin. Because when you live outside of this box of LA, Hollywood, you think outside of the box automatically. You're just going to stumble upon innovations. And he was right. It was like...

Yeah, why aren't we shooting digital? Let's shoot digital. Why aren't we shooting digital 3D? Let's do that. Why don't we just use green screen for the background? You just start innovating because you're away from anyone saying, hey, you can't do it that way, which they would say if I was in LA. So we just came up with a whole other method. So I took him to Sin City to check out the first thing I was going to show at Comic-Con. He said,

Now this will really show people what digital is capable of. This really shows. how avant-garde you can get with that shit, that you could never have done that on film. And so by me versing myself in that technology early, I was able to make a movie like that. And then everyone had to play catch-up. You should always just follow your, that's why people say, don't use those curtains. That's not going to work. Just blow past those guys. Go innovate your own thing.

Sometimes not knowing is better, you know, being too naive to, like, don't you know you shouldn't have been able to make that movie that way? People would say like, how did you make Marge for $7,000? You know, it's impossible. It's like, why do you keep using that word? It can't be impossible if I did it because I'm not that smart. And it's like saying, how did you get to the top of Mount Everest? It's impossible. Well, I just kept walking.

i didn't realize it was kind of at a slope i didn't really realize it was going up that high yeah you you've talked about like a big part of your approach to filmmaking to life is manifesting manifesting the reality you want in fact I should sort of comment. I'd love to ask you about manifesting. You asked me at the beginning of this conversation, do you consider yourself a creative person?

Just sort of reflect on that because I was very uncomfortable answering that. Yeah, I noticed a little bit. And I was like, I'm going to free you up so that you're never uncomfortable again. It's scary to say that about yourself. Because you think there's a lot of people who go, well, you're not enough.

You're not a creative person. You're not saying I'm an artist. I'm saying I'm a creative person, but that's an artist too, isn't it? An artist isn't necessarily a guy with the French mustache and the funny hat. That's not necessarily what an artist is. Artists are regular people.

And regular people relate to art that's imperfect. If you can make art that's perfect, no one will relate to it. So when you think about it like that, you go, well, I can make imperfect art. So yeah, I'm an artist. And if you have doubt...

You're an artist. That's an artist. Real artists always wonder if they're good enough. So you are an artist. Just by the fact that you had uncomfortable saying it, you're a real artist. Yeah, and there's some degree, I don't know if you could speak to this, but... There's a fear of creating shitty things. I've created a lot of really shitty things in my life.

That's really important to do. Okay, but you're judging something that you have no business judging. Right. Like, I have so many people. That's why I like making movies on purpose that have less money and less time. On purpose. Like the biggest movie I said of all time on Netflix is we can be heroes. I told him, I don't want to spend more than $50 million. I know you all want to give me 80.

But I want to be a hero and come in at 50 because one, it'll make it better. And then two, you'll make three of them instead of just one. I don't want to just go spend the farm. And how many filmmakers will do that? Don't try to get as much money as they can. But when they're spending less, it's a win-win situation.

And you have more creative freedom because they're going to leave you alone. You can do whatever you want. So I like the creative limitations that come from less money. That's why I like brass knuckle films. Like we're going to make them for less so that they are better. Not because they're not to make them shitty.

So many people have come up to me and said, you know what part I love in your movie? And they'll tell me some scene. And I'm like, oh, well, that's because we ran out of sun. And we had to do that jump with just... Him jumping on a pad three times or whatever it is, it's something that you fumbled together. And that's what they're drawn to. They're drawn to that imperfect thing. And so I wouldn't judge it because somebody...

You know, if you called your movie shitty, that's like John Carpenter saying, yeah, nobody liked the thing. And it's a shitty movie and everyone hated it. So it must not be good. And then 10 years later, it's a masterpiece. So don't judge it because of you words we use on ourselves.

So if you say, well, you know, I'm kind of an artist sometimes, and I make a lot of shitty stuff. Well, that's going to be your lot in life. You know, I'm in pretty good shape for a director. It's not because I'm operating the camera, because I work out, right? But I always hated working out. I was not into sports. I was a filmmaker. I was a cartoonist. In high school, I was really tall. They would say, come be in our team. We need...

It's a small school. We need you. And I'm like, I don't know how to play any of these things. I'm an artist. There's a line in the faculty that was my line to my coaches when they would say, you got to come run with everybody. I would say, I don't think a person should run unless he's being chased. I gave that to the Elijah Wood character because that's the guy I identified with. He's there with this camera and that was me.

So I hated it. And then because I was a cartoonist, you know, drawing like this for hours, four hours, my back would go out, like out for a month. It would just go out from being so tall and crunched over. And then when I started making movies, operating the camera and doing steadicam.

Every year would go out to where I would need cortisone shots to get up again if I'm filming or just be out for a month. And on Spy Kids 2, Ricardo Montalban had bad back surgery that went wrong and he was in a wheelchair. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm in a walker. And he's like, I'm 84. What's your excuse? And I was like, I don't know. I just...

He was operating steady. He goes, you have to work out, Robert. You have to work out. I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, I know, I know. Then I thought, okay, next year I'm working with Stallone. I'll ask Stallone, ask Stallone. How do you get in shape? because I need to get in shape. My back's always going out. He goes, get the trainer. Anyone who you ever saw in Hollywood got in shape, they had a trainer. I say, even you? Anybody? Oh, I need a trainer. He has a trainer.

So I don't know. I need a trainer. I can't train. It's like, well, shit, if you can't even train on your own, then what do us mortal men have? So I got a trainer and guess what happened? Hated it. I would feel sick when he's coming over because I hate sports. I hate working it.

And then some years of doing that, I just, I can't stand it. I know it's good for my health. So the desire's there. So if you can't accomplish something in your life, it's not a lack of desire. Like if you want to be more creative, it's not a lack of desire. It's a lack of identity. Like the fact that you were comfortable about saying creative, it's because there's a lack of identity there. You have lots of desire. You got to get the identity up and then suddenly you're making shit.

So a friend of mine from Mexico, she comes over, I have to stop smoking. My doctor said I have to stop smoking for my health, so I'm not smoking right now. So I've been smoking since I was eight years old. He said, well, you're going to go back to smoking because you just told me your identity is a smoker. So right now you're a smoker who's not smoking. What's going to happen eventually? You have to say I'm a non-smoker. You know, like just that lesson I had forgotten.

You have to say, I'm a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. It's what does a non-smoker do? If you believe you're a non-smoker, you hate smoke. Start choking at the smell of smoke. Okay, I'll try that. She walks off. I go, shit, I forgot about my own. I wonder where in my life I could apply that. Working out. Of course. My God, I hate working out. No wonder I am so miserable. I'll tell my trainer and anyone will listen. I can't stand working out. I don't understand sports. So that day I said.

I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. That's the last thing I would ever call myself all through my entire life. This was 2012. I'm an athlete. By the next day, not only did my life completely change, And it's easier if it's opposite data. If you're just doing it by degrees, that's bullshit. You got to go complete opposite. Because if there's a donut, if you say, well, I'm going to only eat half of it.

You got to go, no, I'm going to get an apple. Opposite is much easier. Not only did I change my life working out, I never needed a trainer. I have not had a trainer since all those years. Because I'm an athlete, I'll just do it. What does an athlete do? An athlete loves working out. An athlete will make time to work out and they'll eat right.

I would never be the person that would call themselves an athlete. But that's how much you can change your life by changing your identity. So if you want to be more creative... You've already got that in your, that desire. You've got enough of that. You don't need more desire. You need more identity. So you got to say, I'm a creative person. With a straight face. With a straight face. So when I say, hey, are you a creative person? You go, yeah.

Because then if you say that, what do you do? You're going to do more creative stuff because that's what a creative person does. It doesn't make sense to me how manifesting works, but it does seem to work. Like basically visualizing. visualizing a path towards a certain kind of future. I guess everything around you, everything within you.

kind of makes way for that, makes way for the possibility of that. It's weird. It's weird, but it's kind of a nice to know that you can do that. But you have to just have that conviction and just say, Yeah, the R. The double R or the label you just gave yourself. Like I changed my label. My label was, I hate working out. I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. I'm not an athlete anymore. I'm changing my label.

And you get so inspired because now you know what to do because you can't help but conform to your identity. You're always going to conform to your identity. So just change your identity and you'll change your life. And it's not that hard. I didn't have to go get hypnotized or anything. It was literally, I just told myself, if I could do that, go from a guy who doesn't want to work out, hates it, hates it. I had the desire. I was already hiring the guy.

I lacked the identity. As soon as I changed my identity, boom. Well, one of the things for me like that is probably music, just playing guitar. Are you a musician? Yeah. I would definitely not. I mean, I'm, I'm going along with it now, but if we're honestly, if we're just, I wouldn't have said, but I heard you rip.

on fucking guitar. And I've heard you play kind of amazing in all different kinds of contexts. Oh, but I should be like freaking Santana by now because I've had a guitar in my hand since I was a kid, but since I'm not a full-time musician... So I'm not as good as I should be. But when you apply yourself to just rehearse for a couple of shows, you book some shows. Look at this. This is me just like playing our first arena show opening for George Lopez. That was crazy to be on the stages.

where your heroes, that you saw them, now you're seeing what their point of view was. It blows your mind. You need to just get on stage. You get on stage once and you'll see that it's not as bad as you think. You're not, you're not like terrified because you're playing pretty complicated things. I've seen you play live. Yeah. And I mess up a bunch of times, but you don't want to focus on that. And you just go like, okay, I got it through it. Cause when you're up there.

It's not that you're like screaming nervous, but your hands just won't work anymore. Something will happen. But that happens to everybody. If you really watch even the best. and their live performances watch really close and you see they screw up a couple things but you just want notes they just go right through it it's like it's about the live performance and that's how you know it's real so i think if you can really

Just lean into it more. Really work on the identity part, because you've got the desire. You want to play guitar. But as soon as you say... Yeah, but I can't play live. You just chopped off your leg at the start of the race. You say, I can't. I don't know. You just chopped off. You're doing this to yourself. You're literally doing this to yourself. I mean, just you. I mean, anybody who pauses, who hesitates.

You don't have to have doubts. Why would you have a doubt? Because you know the process now. It's like, if I don't know how to do something, I know how to figure it out. I didn't know how I was going to do that scene with him jumping and flipping. I didn't know that, but do I have doubts?

that I'm going to go in there and be able to do it. If you say that you do, now you're a doubtful person. That's how powerful that is. But if you say, no, I don't have any doubt because I know I'm going to figure it out when I get there, somehow it'll fall in my lap. I trust the process. You don't have to know. So if you trust the process, that you'll figure it out.

But here's the thing. Like sometimes you fail and there's audience. Yeah. Then you get four rooms. Yeah. Yeah. And then what happens? Right. Don't blink. Don't blink. And then you go sift through the failure. Yeah, exactly. And you go, wait a minute. What did I get out of that? Yeah, I've done that a bunch. It is great. Look, what's the worst that can happen? You go on a stage and you bomb. It's not going to be the first stage.

And it's one of those you can talk about so that when you do the next one and it all, sometimes they all go right. I've had a couple of shows. We did, we did a couple of shows. where we had video cameras set up for the second day. I said, let's not film the first day because we're going to be just finding our feet. Let's film the second day.

fucking flawless flawless because no cameras it's like you just go second day we're we weren't as into it as we had just done it it felt like the second take you know it just didn't have magic and that's the one that's recorded And we're like, oh, kicking ourselves we didn't film both nights. We should have filmed both nights. I love how much of a mess this human existence life is. Yeah. You've talked about the importance of journaling because living is...

Reliving. I love that phrase. I came up with that because it's like, wow, I see so many people who get after you for filming a concert and they go, live in the moment. I'm like, dude, counterintuitive. The moment goes by like this. The fact that we taped it, thank God, because later on it's going to be a file photo of me remembering you. Three-pound me, computer. All I'm going to have is a file photo of you maybe in a suit.

And you're picturing me in maybe a black t-shirt, and the metadata narrative is going to say, had a great talk about if we remember creativity you know like your brain doesn't remember but when i pull up old home movies like show my kids that i just found And they're like, they don't remember it. I don't remember filming it. And it's like new adventures of.

It becomes iconic and it sticks in our head and all our jokes are based on old things that we used to do and say. So reliving, living is reliving. So keep in a journal. It's very important because I found that anything that passed 15 years, it's like I'm reading someone else's journal. I'm like, I didn't even know that's where I got that guitar. I thought I bought that guitar. It was given to me.

It's like a $10,000 Santana. It was given to me my birthday by the studio that I made that movie. How did I not remember that? It's like crazy what you don't remember. And it's the brain is very, it's not a, it's not a very, you know, reliable computer. It's made out of freaking butter. That's a really profound idea that so much of our life is lived. through replaying our memories. And then watching stuff is one of the ways to sort of refresh.

give some more texture and details. It makes it iconic. It makes it iconic in your life and part of your life. Otherwise, it just went by. It went by. I'll ask people, what did we do last Wednesday? I can tell you because I wrote it down, but I'm not going to remember. And then when you see, when you go through your journal, like I go back and I find, wow, life-changing.

thing happened Friday. Another life-changing thing I didn't know at the time until now I know that that really set me on, happened Saturday. And another big freaking thing happened on Sunday. Like, they come in threes sometimes. You start... Being able to predict the future a little bit because you see the patterns and it's pretty wild to do that. And I've talked to people, big group of people, 500 people. How many people here journal?

Two hands, three hands. I couldn't believe it. It's like, man, you guys, if there's anything I'm going to impart on you is journal. Your life is way more interesting than you think because it's not going to feel like anything while it's going by. But in retrospect, you look back. Like I can just go through, I keep a journal. file per year so i started a new one in 2025 if i'm going to look up like i'm going to do a director's chair episode i look up michael man michael man michael man

all the conversations we had since 94 that I wrote down that I felt, and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe we said that. That's how I knew about that thing with Quentin. I had forgotten about that story with Quentin saying, ah, Pulp Fiction. I had forgotten that because

From the moment I asked him that question to the success at Cannes was very quick. So it was a lost moment in time where I had it recorded down to the time, down to the hour. When I asked him that question, he thought it wasn't, he didn't think that was the one for him. Yeah, and there's a, I don't know, when it's private journaling, there's an honesty, there's an innocence.

that about like the dreams you have about the future, the conceptions you have about the future. I mean, that's what this thing is journal is a journal. It's just a journalist. Like, but the profundity comes out of it. It's crazy. Yeah. You didn't. And so much I figured out then I was, I'm talking like a professor by the end of that.

Like people come up to me and they're asking me all these questions about stuff I wrote in there. And I'm like, I wrote that in that book. Shit. I was smart back then. What happened? I don't remember half of that, but I think that it's the same thing when you go to teach someone. Your mouth opens and stuff comes out. I'm always taping myself like when I go to give a talk. Because that's also the pipe working. Someone else is talking to you sometimes.

The act of sharing, that's why I've always liked to share information because the feedback loop is insane. Like me, inspiring Daisy DJ to go write. He writes the script in three days, comes back, tells me now I'm doing that method. And it's like, wow, people come back with their version. And I love telling my kids. Stuff that I learned that I wish I could tell myself.

but I can't take a time machine. The closest thing is telling your kid because then they can take that information and process. So many times they've come back and said, wow, dad, the lesson you taught us about this is really. really become big in our minds. Yeah, what was that? And they tell me, I'm like, I never told you that. They say, yeah, you told us, well, I told you maybe 10% of that.

All the rest, you added. Oh yeah, well, we embellished it. They turned it into something else and it's like, wow, that's so cool. But yeah, that thing about... reliving like that was a one of my favorite ones just yeah my mom turning 75 and not wanting to do anything for her 75th birthday i said why not she goes the whole family's gonna you have 10 kids they're all gonna want to do something for your 75th birthday

Nothing can top my 65th. I was like, what are we doing on your 65th? I didn't remember even. I'm the one who orchestrated it all. She goes, oh, you flew everyone in from all over the country. You gave me a car. I gotta have a journal of that. So I'm sure I have video. I go back 10 years. I see what tape I had it on, find the tape, pop the tape in. Forgot about all this stuff. So I cut together a 10 minute version of it, showed it at her 75th birthday.

Just watching the old one, everybody was like, oh my God, look how young everybody was, like how small the nieces and nephews were. She starts bawling as soon as she gets the key, the gift of the key in the video, because she realizes now what it's going to mean that she's going to get this car.

And so it's like, wow, let's just play the old tapes. We don't even have to do anything anymore. We banked so much amazing stuff that we've all forgotten that, you know, my kids just love watching their old home movies. They hardly remember any of it, but... Even a VHS to them is virtual reality, because compared to our memories, it is virtual reality. They're leaning into the screen to see what's around the corner, and they're remembering the place and the sound.

and they say, oh, we left the living room. It's like we're there. It's like, wow. I was always afraid they would see this old footage and go, ah, this is a dog shit. kind of camera was that this is the limitations of you know you put up one of those files on your screen it's like this big on your laptop now that's how low res shit was back then but that didn't matter it's like compared to our memories that stuff living is reliving like pull up that

shoot as much as you can, take as many pictures, but write the journal because you'll have a picture. I swear, you're not going to know what it's from. Even 10 years from now, you want to know what that picture's from. You read the diary, you go, oh, that's what that is. Oh my God, you can piece together all these things that are important to you.

Or they become more important with time, actually. And you know what's important later compared to what's happening at the time. To add on top of that, so journaling is a kind of raw, or like home films is a raw projection of what's going on in the moment. I think it's also really powerful because I've done that.

description of where your life is for you just for yourself so sometimes journaling is like low effort yeah sometimes it's just i just want to mark that you know we had this conversation i had to go do something at five i did that met somebody that I know last night I met somebody that's going to be life changing. I'm going to write a little bit more on that because I could just, now I know.

But I'm going to just record it so later if I look it up. So one of the cool things you could do is, you know, like, for example, somebody, Jamie and Mr. Beast does these videos, which are great. I think it's a great exercise to do for yourself, which is a video he records. for himself that he doesn't look at to be published 20 years from now. This is a message. to myself 20 years from now, here's where I hope you end up.

you're basically a younger version of yourself speaking to an older version. And then you get, you know, time flies. And like, you get to a point where it's like, holy shit, it has been 10 years, has been 20 years. You get to listen to a younger version of yourself. Like you, it would have been hilarious if you shot videos like that to yourself because it was just like the incredible journey your career has been on. And just to think about that, like.

The delta, the difference between what your dreams were, where you ended up, usually you outdo yourself in many ways. Sometimes your life goes in a totally different trajectory. And the result is kind of funny. It's a nice.

It's a nice illustration of the nonlinearity of life. I would film stuff like that with my kids. I couldn't do it. I would film my kids saying, hey, turn to the camera now and say... hey rebel it's me rebel rebel in the future yeah so you have shots like that yeah and then they show them like cool like that 10 years later and they they're like whoa Just to see it talking to them and saying, and I would do this thing where I would film them watching it and then pan off.

Hey, Rebel, him reacting, pan off to the new Rebel watching it. It's just like keeps going. So I have one like that where it just keeps panning and they're watching themselves within the movie, within the movie, within the movie.

It's like an ongoing project. It's just so fun to just play with memory and make you realize how fast time moves and to go... they go like i kind of remember that but i don't remember being that tiny yeah i had that memory it's like wild how time moves and it makes them feel much more precious about how quick time moves and how important every little moment is because you see the fragility of it too you know does it make you sad break your heart that you know

The number of memories we get to create is finite. This life ends. Eventually the story is over. I had this theory. I'm going to put this in a movie. I don't think I've ever seen this before because I woke up from a dream and it was like trying to remember it. You're like, God, it's so real. If you don't write it down right away, it kind of fades away. But while you're dreaming it, it's really real.

By the time I went to go tell somebody, it's like, shit, I forgot most of it. But I wonder if that's what it's like when you wake up in your consciousness after you die. You wake up in your next consciousness getting ready to move into whatever your next body is. And you're like, wow, I was a filmmaker. And, oh, well, I'm going to be a fish now. It's like a dream. It's like that gone that way. And it's like, that's what past lives are. They're like.

distant memories like a dream that's faded away. That's why you barely feel remnants of it. Do I feel sad about it? When I tell people, they flip out when I tell them that. I want a character to be like that. He's dying. I don't want to forget this dream. I don't want to forget. Don't let me wake up. Don't let me wake up. But you forget, especially the moment you try to tell somebody, you tell the next fish. Yeah. The next is going to be a fish next. But, uh, uh, yeah, yeah. Like it feels like.

I'm a little sad about it, but then it just makes you even more double down to be precious about the life you're in now. And record it, record it. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing, of life? Why are we here? I mean, I really feel... My kids and I were just talking about this last night. We were just blown away. We did this Asterian astrology thing, which is the oldest form of astrology. It just nails each person. And it's like, yeah, because when you have a kid.

You realize right away, this isn't my kid. This is not my, I'm just in charge of him. It's a completely different soul. He's a different soul that ended up in my hands. It's not, there's physical characteristics that get passed on because of just how biology works. Even sometimes posture and movement is the same, but the actual person is somebody else. And all the kids, I have five kids and I have nine brothers and sisters. They're all different. And you realize...

We made a pact in a past life to gather together. Because every time it's like, so good you were born in this family because you were given free reign to go find who you're really supposed to be. And you find out everyone is doing what they were supposed to be doing. But what's cool, almost like this clarity you get by just saying it.

They now know that they were always supposed to be like this creative person or that. And now they can double down on it because they know that's who they were supposed to be. They don't have to have any doubt anymore. They don't have to wonder, well, am I supposed to be more business-minded or can I be creative? Isn't that some kind of frivolous? Is that a real job? Can I do that?

Now they realize, no, you're supposed to be doing that for these, these, these, these reasons. And now they can double down. You can skip all that and just decide, I feel like I want to be that person. So I'm just going to declare I am that person. And as soon as you say it, you are that. And tomorrow your activities will conform to that.

That's how powerful that decision is. So when you walk out of here, it's going to be with a complete commitment. I'm a technical and creative person like my first boss. I'm unstoppable. Because my boss told me that and he was right. I became technical and creative and you're just unstoppable. You can just keep going and just go, I'm unstoppable. That's me. You're going to use your powers for bad, but you've just changed your life by just declaring that.

And I'm also a creative person who lives his life creatively. I'm going to find creative ways to use that technology. If somebody says, you're not the same kind of artist I was expecting, that's their own opinion. Don't blink. Just keep going. All these things that you've learned that people were supposed to tell you along the way.

They're telling you for a reason. Anytime you got pushed, like if you go back to your life, it's your really critical moments in your life where you went that way instead of that way. There was probably somebody there who said something to you that kind of pushed you.

I, there was a, there was one guy when I was in high school, it was like senior year, I wrote a paper and I wasn't a great writer at all. I wrote a paper for a Latin American studies class, gave it to the teacher. And, uh, he said, wow, you. You're going to be rich and famous in four years. Based on what I read. He's like, really?

Four years later, I've done mariachi and I went to him later at a reunion and I said, you called it. You said I was going to be, why did you say that? And he's like, I said, it looked like he would never say that to somebody. You think he would own it and say, oh yeah, I knew. And I told you, no, he was like.

You look like you didn't even know who that was. I feel like he never would have said that in a million years. So again, sometimes things come out of our mouth. That's not us. It comes through us. So if you think of it that way, why are we here? We're here for a reason. We're going to get nudged along, listen to the signs.

Own who you're supposed to be because you are that person. Don't let your human doubt get in the way. That's like the guy closing the pipe. I don't know if I'm really creative. I don't know if I'm really a businessman. And you're just closing the pipe. You're not going to let it flow. Just be a good pipe. Just say, I just want to be a good pipe. Clean, open. And no matter what, don't blink. Don't blink.

No matter how many, that dude was getting so much shit thrown at him. I wish you knew that time period because then you would go like, yeah, that's right. It's incredible. It was unbelievable. I can't even convey. There was no internet and stuff back then. This was like literal press reviews. public it was like why are they targeting this guy you know they just did not like he just had unprecedented success and was a really great guy and was making amazing shit so it was the the triple threat of

make people jealous. Well, he's one of the great artists of all time. So are you. It's a huge honor to talk to you. Thank you for everything you're doing in the world. for creating the world and for inspiring millions of people to also be creators in the world and for your new project that's bringing people in. Robert, as I told you, I'm a huge fan. I appreciate that. It's a huge honor to talk to you, brother. So great talking with you. Great questions.

You're going to change your life. Thank you, brother. Million dollars. Yeah, right there. Thank you for listening to this conversation with Robert Rodriguez. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Alfred Hitchcock. In feature films, the director is God. In documentary films, God is the director. Thank you for listening, and I hope to see you next time.