Robert Rodriguez
Appearances
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 cuts. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Cause we went into, cause I'm not going to use it for the rest of the scene. I know we're going to get into coverage cause I've already cut it. So I was like, huh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. If you've ever seen Desperado, the first scene is the best scene. Steve was telling me, he's telling a story. He's talking about the myth of the mariachi. He's doing it. It's crazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's crazy. So then they come over. I say, hey, you 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't have an editing team other than the ones who imported 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 room. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like, sounds 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 of bed. I come here. I can cut Desperado. I can cut Dust to Love. And he went, that's it. I hate working with editors.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 then 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm going to tear down a wall in my house. I'm going to put it in Avid. I'm going to cut my next movie. Yeah. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Premiere was still in its early stages then. I think Soderbergh looked at it and it 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 I'm sure it's all better now. I just have always used an Avid because I just always rent it back to the same production.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 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 wash, rinse, repeat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't have to buy a new one, but there's lots of good... I've heard about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I 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... I've 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And I can cut so fast with that. I don't use the mouse for shortcuts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's just a tool. It's just a tool. And it's like, it doesn't matter what system it is. It's like, if you can get it to work for you, great. Like there's a lot of problems I have with it that I would, I know are probably fixed on another system, but that they'll have a whole other set of problems. So it's like, well, why bother with that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Oh, yeah, well, look at my first VCRs. Those things were... I was always known for taking little basic equipment and milking the shit out of it. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm not milking anything anymore. I'm barely getting, you know, the smallest capability of it because... I would have to spend a lot of time to figure out all the stuff that it 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. And it was so hard to get it to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
People would be like, you got that movie out of that equipment? Where now it's the other way around. You know, it's like, all this equipment is great. So when people come to me and say, oh God, 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. You have no complaints.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
This is like, you can just start now and just start making stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We're working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it. That's 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Like, how are you going to react to things? Well, how do you make your character react to things? You make him kind of superhuman. Why don't you just make yourself that way?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Time might be right for us to come back and do an Alita.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
No, but it's not a bad one. It's a good one. It's a cool one. 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. And it's kind of like the best of all worlds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Dust till dawn, I wanted to be 3D. Actually, when they got to the bar... If you watch it from that point on, everything's kind of set up for 3D. Everything was shooting into the camera and all this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But the cameras they had for 3D and film were those old shitty ones that were so bad that 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 Spy Kids 3D.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 theaters. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But I wanted that. I want shit falling in people's laps, you know? So you remember, so you go, okay, this is why I'm wearing the glasses. You know, I'm wondering why. And when I went to go make my next movie, so this is how crazy this is. When we shot Spy Kids 3, remember actually how fast they came out? That was in the summer of 2003. A few months later, Once Upon a Time in Mexico came out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 time. But I was like, okay, what's my next movie going to be? 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 scenes. on the green screen, shoot him till lunch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gotta 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You're writing your own story. And you start really seeing, the more you get into storytelling, that life imitates art and art imitates life, but the process is also the same.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But I needed to make it something new now. So I was looking through my 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 a 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 street light.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 had 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And I shot 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 up. So I called Frank Miller. Hey, this is Rob Rodriguez. I have a test I want to show you for Sin City. I'm going to be in New York tomorrow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then I started telling him, man, let's make this movie because 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, you know, or whatever. Then you got to go through the studio. He still owned his own rights.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And he's like, he's all excited for about two seconds. oh no then we got to write a script and the studio's gonna 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 gonna be if you like this idea i'm gonna you're not gonna have to take any risk let me take all the risk
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. We're 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. Marlee Shelton comes up. Why did I hire him to kill me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, He's already, as I tell you, Frank, I used to be a 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
The shots you do are like beyond any DP has 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. In fact, I asked him, do you ever... 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Shit, you should direct all of them with me because I'm really copying and writing a book. You should direct it with me. All right, let's go. So then 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Cause a lot of people read my book, rebels had a crew and told me, Oh, it made me be a filmmaker.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
What's so cool about doing that opening scene is that any actor I show it to now, I show them 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
building the few little sets we had like the bar i told frank we don't need to build a bar but i'm gonna 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 and 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
That's how much stuff was going on. Yeah. You know, that's like when you just let it flow, you're just riding the wave. You're not doing any of that. That's what's by staying in that urgent, the deadlines are just pushing you to create stuff. We shot the movie so fast in record time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I shot The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 shooting stuff that we needed to film. It was just insane how fast we had to move. I was doing it in my head. I was editing. I just edited it. And then I would scan the artwork into the computer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 work? And I was like,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gonna move. And you were like, wow, so now we have a template with the real drawings and the lighting on how we're gonna do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
As funny as I can do pretty good in Bruce Willis, because I've known Chris so long, if you're doing his voiceover, and he would hear my guide voice for the timing, And he'd be like, is that me or is that you? Can't tell. That one was me, but just do that. It's like, man, it sounds like me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Well, it's a very specific look because it went into 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So I was really into it and I did tests for the most difficult shots first. Like how do I get his...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
his tape to glow in the dark like in the comics, so it's still in the shadow and I realized, oh, I'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 technology was changing so fast that I would need to just know how to do it like a magician.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, it's so fun to 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, they're not crossing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm just going to take it out of the green anyway. So I could have the coolest light on everybody. Cool edge lights. You could have an edge light back here, an edge light back here, a fill light here. I didn't even erase them. I just take him out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 liked that about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 helps. And then just upping the contrast. But I mean, it's just something that you have a feeling for, but you're able to try it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
In fact, when I took it to George Lucas, George Lucas said this to me early on, because we're the only guy shooting digital. He said, man, it's so good you live in Austin. That's why I'm in Marin County. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else that's there. So she goes, very reluctant. It was so perfect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I took him to Sin City to check out the first thing I was going to show at Comic-Con. He said, yeah. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then everyone had to play catch-up. So you should always just follow your... That's why some people say, don't use those curtains, that's not going to work. Just blow past those guys. Go innovate your own thing because... 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
People would say like that all the time. How did you make Movement March for $7,000? You know, it's impossible. It's like, why do you keep using that word? Because 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I didn't really realize it was going up that high.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, I noticed a little bit. And I was like, I'm going to free you up so that you're never uncomfortable again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Because you think there's a lot of people who go, well, you're not an artist. You're not a creative person. But 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Right. Like the biggest movie I said all time on Netflix is we can be heroes. I told them, I don't want to spend more than $50 million.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 would do that? Don't try to get as much money as they can. But when you're spending less, it's a win-win situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. We're going to make them for less so that they are better. Not to make them shitty. So many people have come up to me and said, you know what part I love in your movie? Tell me some scene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I wish we had filmed it. She goes, I learned a good lesson the hard way. And I said, that still sucks. And I say, when you follow your instinct, like if you follow your own instinct to go start a business or go make this movie or whatever, it wasn't someone saying, go over there and you'll make a million dollars. You know, it was your instinct and you fail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And so I wouldn't judge it because somebody's, 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 are very powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So if you say, well, you know, I'm kind of an artist sometimes. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
They would say, come work, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 his camera. And that was me. So I hated it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 was operating. He goes, you have to work out, Robert. work out. And I was like, yeah, okay, yeah, I know, I know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And so then I thought, okay, next year I'm working with Stallone. I'll ask Stallone, I'll 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 said, even you? Anybody? Oh, I need a trainer. He has a trainer. I said, I don't know, I need a trainer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I can't train. He's like, well, shit, if You can't even train on your own. And 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 working out. And then some years of doing that, I just can't stand it. But I know it's good for my health. So the desire's there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 went... 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. You fail and You have to really 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So a friend of mine from Mexico, she comes over, I have to stop smoking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I 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. What does a non-smoker do? If you believe you're a non-smoker, you hate smoke.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Start choking at the smell of smoke.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 who 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 day. Like if you're just doing it by degrees, that's bullshit. You got to go complete opposite. Because if there's like 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Not only did I change my life working out, I never needed a trainer. I have not had a trainer since all those years. Cause I'm an athlete. I'll just do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
An athlete loves working out. An athlete will make time to work out and they'll eat right. I was, I would never be the person that would call themselves an athlete, but that's how much it 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So you got to say, I'm a creative person. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's weird. It's weird, but it's kind of nice to know that you can do that. But you have to just have that conviction and just say, start with a label. 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 a non-athlete anymore. I'm changing my label.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I said, I made a movie called Four Rooms. I 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 hands since I was a kid. But since I'm not a full-time musician, I don't get to play it that often. So I'm not as good as I should be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But when you apply yourself to just rehearse for a couple of shows, you book some shows. Look at this. This is me just 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You get on stage once and you'll see that it's not as bad as you think.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But you don't want to focus on that. You just go like, okay, I got it through. Because when you're up there... It's not that you're 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 in their live performances, watch really close, and you see they screw up a couple things, but you just want to notice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
They just go right through it. 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 don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You just chopped off your other leg. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Like, 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 doubt 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I trust the process. You don't have to, you don't have to know. So if you trust the process that you'll figure it out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. Yeah. And then what happens? Right. Don't blink. Don't blink. And then you go sift through the failure. Yeah, exactly. You go, wait a minute. What did I get out of that? Yeah. I've done that a bunch. It was great. What's the worst that can happen? You go on a stage and you bomb. It's not going to be the first stage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 a couple of shows. 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. First day, it was fucking flawless. Flawless because no cameras.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like you just go. Second day, we weren't as into it as we had just done it. It felt like the second take. It just didn't have the 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, it's counterintuitive. The moment goes by like this. We're not going to remember any of 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
All I'm going to have is a file photo of you maybe in a suit. And you 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it's like new adventures of creativity. it becomes iconic and it sticks in her head. And all our jokes are based on old things that we used to do and say. So living is reliving. So keeping a journal is very important because I found that anything in the past 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 can 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 reliable computer. It's, it's made out of fucking butter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It makes it iconic. It makes it iconic in your life and part of your life. Otherwise, it just went by. It went by. Like, I'll ask people, like, we just had a really, what did we do last week? What did we do last Wednesday? And they're like, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can tell you because I wrote it down, but I'm going to remember.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then when you see, when you go through your journal, like I go back and I find, wow, life-changing stories.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
thing happened friday another life-changing thing i didn't know at the time until now i know that that really set me on him happened saturday and another big freaking thing happened on sunday like they come in threes sometime you start being able to predict the future a little bit because you you see the patterns and it's pretty wild to do that and i i've i swear i've talked to people big group of people 500 people how many people hear journal and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Two hands, three hands. I couldn't believe it. It's like, man, you got, if there's anything I'm going to part 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. One file per year. So I started a new one in 2025.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
If I want to look up, like I'm going to do a director's chair episode. I look up Michael Mann, Michael Mann, Michael Mann. 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...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Like even when it's Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen, they bomb because people can't quite rip the hand. 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 films. I made like bedhead and short films.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But the profanity comes out of it, right? You look back and it's crazy. Yeah, you didn't, and so much I figured out then. 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't remember half of that, but I think it's the same thing. When you go to teach someone, your mouth opens and stuff comes out. I'm always taping myself when I go to give a talk. Because that's also the pipe working. Someone else is talking through you sometimes. So the act of sharing, that's why I've always liked to share information because the feedback loop is insane.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 later. but I can't take a time machine. Closest thing is telling your kid because then they can take that information and process it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So many times they've come back and said, wow, dad, that lesson you taught us about this has 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But yeah, that thing about Reliving, like that was one of my favorite ones. 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 going to, if you have 10 kids, they're all going to 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 even remember even.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. got to 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Just watching the old one, everybody was like, oh my God, look how young everybody was. Look how small the nieces and nephew 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We banked so much amazing stuff that we've all forgotten that, you know, my kids just love watching their old home movies today. 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 like leaning into the screen to see what's around the corner and they're remembering the place and the sounds.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 dog shit. What 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, swear you're not going to know what it's from. Even 10 years from now, you won't know what that picture's from. You read the diary, you go, oh, that's what that is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Oh my God, you can piece together all these things that are important to you or that become more important with time actually. And you know what's important later compared to what's happening at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, sometimes it's just, I just want to mark that. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I would film stuff like that with my kids. I couldn't do it, but I would film my kids saying, hey, turn to the camera now and say, hey, Rebel, it's me, Rebel. Fucking Rebel in the future. So you have shots like that. Yeah, and then they show them like that 10 years later, and they're like, whoa.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. The audience can't quite wrap their end. And then it feels like the movie 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 go be this big financial success?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So that 10 years later I could get, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like an ongoing project. You know, 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 when I had that memory. It's like wild how time moves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't think I've ever seen this before. Cause I was woke up from a dream and it was like trying to remember it. You know, you're like, God, it's so, so real. If you don't write it down right away, right. It kind of fades away, but you, while you're dreaming it, it's really real. And it's like,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
almost see the walls but 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 had five kids and oh well i'm gonna be a fish now it's like 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
distant memories like a dream that's faded away that's why you barely feel remnants of it do i feel sad about the when i tell people they flip out when i tell them that yeah like i said i want a character to be like that like he's dying he's like 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 yeah you tell the next fish yeah the next is gonna be a fish next but uh uh yeah yeah like it feels like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. What do you think is the meaning? And record it, record it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I mean, I really feel like 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 bed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You find out everyone is doing what they were supposed to be doing. It's cool. Almost like this clarity you get by just saying it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
they now know that they were always supposed to be like this creative person. 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 at 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 he said, wow, you're going to be rich and famous in four years. It's based on what I read. He goes like, really? I'm like 17 or 18.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Four years later, I did 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 that? It looked like he would never say that to somebody. You'd think he would own it and say, oh yeah, I knew and I told you. No, he was like... He looked like he didn't even know who that was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
He was like asking, acting like he never would have said that in a million years. So again, sometimes things come out of our mouth that's not us, that 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 then that's when the magic happens. And no matter what, don't blink. Don't blink.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Don't 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 everywhere. Public. It was like, why are they targeting this guy?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 triple threat of make people jealous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. A million dollars. Yeah, right there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 films. I really want this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories, like a three-act structure, not four?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But like I said, like I would say, well, it was successful because, you know, even Roger Ebert said, hey, you furnished my favorite room. I was like, hey, I could take that. But now I think there's something else still there. I keep sifting and it's like, oh, yeah, two big successes came from that. It's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about, failure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Think of like The Thing by John Carpenter. He put that movie out the same weekend as E.T. That thing bombed. Critics were calling it pornography, you know, because of 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So sometimes it takes the audience a while. So if you've 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I tell you, 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 was some really creative stuff in there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Yeah. So I didn't remember a lot of the details.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I voiced it. So I was reading it real time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Good thing I didn't sell it then. You know, 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, oh, if you can get 20,000 for it, take it. I chased those people down for those contracts, Spanish market for months. And they never answered me back. And then Columbia ended up buying it for like 10 times as much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And we made it, 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, had this for a vision. And it needed to do that, which you would never 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, well, maybe it's coming in 20 years. Don't let anything slow you down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Second one was 40. Third one was 80. Fourth one was 100 because the audience kept growing and growing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's not for an action film.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. And 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And, uh, and with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. And this is 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 money. 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 buy the film, shoot two minutes. I shot two rolls of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's another same amount of money that it costs 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 salesmen. And it came with a camera attached, like this cable you got coming out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Imagine if that had to go into your VCR. for you to even see what it's shooting. And it's this old camera, manual focus, manual iris, and 12 foot cable. And 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 be able to play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You have to practice till 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 moving all these, doing all these movies. First, I would cut in camera.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 color bars like the later ones had. So I, that was my, and it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 I, that was my filmmaking kit for a while. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So you got to find your next shot within five minutes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And there were always funny as, uh, 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. They're oldest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So Bedhead is, was my first time using a film camera. It was a wind up film camera I got in film school.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, movie, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It opened up your brain, especially because those video festivals, I would win like a trip to New York and 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 an 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 to that. I could try it in a feature.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Let me tell you the trick to that, and 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. And I said, I looked at everything I had. What do I have? We have a pit bull. We have a turtle. We've got a bus that Carlos's cousin owns.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
His cousin, his brother-in-law has a bar and he owns a ranch. So the bad guy lives at the ranch, the fight scene's gonna be in the bar, he's gonna hit a bus at one point, the girl's gonna have a dog, and a turtle's gonna cross the road. It gives you all this production value, so you write backwards. So for Bedhead, I even did that with a camera.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I'd been shooting video all this time, and one thing I wished 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, I was so pissed. Like, this is the camera I've been trying to get my hands on. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a bond shop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Old Bill and Hal 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. I could do, because if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focus in right. So I started with it in focus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
went back, pulled backwards on a chair, and then reversed it, flipped it, and now it looks like it stops on a dime in focus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You have to morph time. You start putting it together, right? So I've got this different camera. Now I go, 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. I go, wow, I'm a cartoonist. If I set the camera up here, I can slow it down enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 you doing it by hand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 seemed like a lot of work. I remember 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence and he went, why are you putting so much work in this?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 and the chair, she makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Now, if I do that normally, where would I even put the strings for that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the string. If you look close, you see the strings are in the back, but your eyes. So I did stuff like that. And then just her, like getting the hose.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then I just do stop motion for the host 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 this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But I tell you today, I look at that camera. I can't believe I ever made a movie. It's so ridiculously primitive. I was 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 and with a bar of 16 millimeter camera, I didn't know how to use it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment. And I said, I have an Aerie 16 S 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Yeah. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You want to talk about being nervous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
just hoping something exposed. And when I saw it come back and the tape, you know, 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, cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And one shot is blown out. You know, I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
That's why I only did one take. So my idea was this. How gangster is that? Wow. It was a test film. Right, right. I thought it was going to be a test film. It's the only movie in history ever made where the filmmaker did not 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Promises no action. No one's gonna watch it. But I thought if someone actually picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're gonna 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It was just, I was so intrigued by this idea because you've heard advice about screenwriting. I heard advice 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. The fourth script will be the good one. It's so hard to write a script.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gonna not come out, but I'm not gonna know what. I'm not gonna shoot a safety one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
That doubles my, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 you know, double down on it, do it. One take everything. I remember one time I was still an actor, man, I told you to run through that shot and you, and you go, Oh, let me do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
No, one take, dude, just think about next time. Do what I say. I didn't think anyone was going to see it. So you, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So that naivete is really important when you're starting out or at any point in your life, be naive about what things are going to, and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson because I didn't want anybody to see it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
They weren't actors. That's right. They were just friends of ours, which is why, and because, um, 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, we're just here. Yeah. Me with my one camera. In fact, The gal, Carlos said, this one girl, I forgot, she's in town.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Maybe she would work because we're trying 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. I want you to just talk like you're talking about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
She's amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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'd have to develop it. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
This red dress you can wear in that. And everyone just brought their own clothes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, the idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player, you know, really 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 about we do a Genesis story? How he became that guy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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'm 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You know, it's like this is the key to your next success. Cards. Because, you know, when you go see a therapist, you're not going to them for the answers. You're going to them for the questions. You've got the answers inside, but you don't have the 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But if you go... what three things can I do today that'll 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. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. So right down there, he walks into a bar bar trying to get work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
bartender looks at him we don't hire mario she'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 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story, this 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 at any time, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And now it's his story. The baton gets turned to mariachi. Mariachi is doing a voiceover. It's easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. You don't have to do sync 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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? No, it's because we forgot to show in pain. You know, little happy accidents.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Then he goes and meets the girl. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Are you doing this alone usually? Yeah, it's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have Danny. Oh, I know I want his 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 his songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
That's going to be over here. 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 are there. This prompts it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You just start writing in the ones you do know. Like, okay, I know at some point she's going to betray him. Or he's going to think she does. She betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a character.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 like It's not going to drive him like that thing. So it's just, 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 way, this isn't me doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 why, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You play piano. Okay. Do you could be, would you call yourself a creative person? Yeah, I think so. Good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I would just suggest to anybody is just own it and just say, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 those jobs. Because when somebody just does one job, they barely know that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 up? 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 really feel like something else has taken over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
This is what my belief is. Because I hear it in different realms. You ask Keith Richards, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't. They're floating around the sky, and I pull them out first. You ask Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar? Those solos. He goes, it's like a radio. Once you get a tune just right, you can't even believe what's coming through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I believe, I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us that'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. It's that's that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm just going to try to picture the comic strip. And then as soon as I got one 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. It needs your hands. and it's not gonna fucking 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gonna 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 like, you'll be blessed with this never ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
and know that if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it, because this thing's got endless ideas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring filmmaker, and I wonder, 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 don't, you just jump in before you're ready.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You don't feel like you're ready till, I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi till 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yep. So I had a camera that, yep. It was not, 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. I didn't have a blimp. And then I would have needed a sound guy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
like it sounds like all your money is going away first of all so i would go like this action you'd start running yeah and i shoot my edit cut 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 rolling this is real seven for just a few frames so i know which reel it is and then that 10 minutes of film
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
is just 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 Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
That'll probably sync. Now, if you were going on and on, there's a place where it'd go out of sync. I hate rubbery lips. So I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the girl. And then I cut back when you're back in sync. And since these were non-actors, they say everything the same way each time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
They would say their line, just like they weren't, they weren't performing it to where they didn't remember how they performed it before. They were just talking in their own rhythm. So a lot of the times it's the, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. It's just resourceful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's just being very resourceful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. It seems like you can get away with a lot. You can get away with, I just don't, 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. Right. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 I just had him go through the whole scene again. So I would go ahead and record them like grabbing the bottle or any action they did, opening the suitcase. I'd have all the sound effects too. I just had to sync it by hand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 get new sound effects. But because the camera's off, I could record everything close up. So there was some blessing to that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
What really helped for those non-actors was that they just look across and it's me filming. They didn't feel like they're 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
he's holding the lines here and he's looking at the lines like that and just smiling so i 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 he's like this with the sunglasses on with an oh man but but he was doing it phonetically and i tell you what he was so great that guy right yeah when we do desperado i brought him back
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Didn't even have to do any dialogue. Watch that movie. When he shows up in the opening scene, when 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. He's so nervous because now there's a crew behind me. Now it's real.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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? is just building a report, making a safe zone for your actors. Quentin once told me, sometimes being, you know, we're talking about directing, he goes, yeah, sometimes being a great director is just being a great audience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You know, being a great audience for the, 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. Or if you're, you know, makes you cry, you know, so sometimes you just, you don't have to tell them a lot sometimes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the, what it's supposed to sound like instead of me being very, you know, manipulative to get a certain thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't know, it's just whatever feels good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. Well, you're a performer and you want, 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, well, they, they like that joke. I mean, do more, you know, really the director is it. And a lot of times the director's way behind a monitor somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Cause 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. Let's do that again. There's a shot in, I'm lighting Sin City myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I have my crew setting lights and I have this great shot of Clive Owen where he's holding down Benicio's head in the toilet. You know, Benicio's not there. It's just a closeup 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Okay. Never mind. You guys can stop moving that shit. We already got it. Holy shit. Yeah, it's like that. Wow. Yeah, it's like that because you're so locked in. That's a great scene, by the way. Great, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Holy shit. And you can feel it. It's like, if I wait for these guys, this moment will be gone. And then another one was Mickey Rourke. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 wise thing, get used to the lines, and most of it's going to be sold in the close-up. We sit down, Mickey starts delivering the take. I'm like, hold on, hold on a second.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 and all this stuff. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 this is a 5K, make that a 10K. It's gotta be stronger.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
They don't need to know that I'm gonna make that a lamppost later. They just need 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 gonna put all that in later.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. If 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? And the more... It was so fun to do those kind of movies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
To this day, you try to be close to the action, connected with the actor that's performing. Because it's like a dance. You end up... That's so good to hear. Remember on Dust Till Dawn, Michael Parks in the opening scene, he's talking about
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
two guys that are running around killing people just before he gets shot and there's a i just start doing this slow zoom i remember this take eight start doing the 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 but you're just locked almost telepathically and as he's delivered there's no edits he's just going yeah they killed four rangers two hostages
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You know, they just trust that whatever they get from their crew, they just accept it. Just like, you know, you would get to take the thing. There's so much intimacy to that connection. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like trying to do a dance with a partner and you're across the room. It's like, no, you got to be there up close, feeling the energy. And it's the creative spirits whispering to you both. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And they didn't act that. That came through us and we just had the cameras rolling and we captured a ghost.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, Telluride. And I was like, holy shit, this guy's in black again, just like the mariachis dressed in black and action. I said, oh, we're going to like each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
He's going to like my movie when he sees it. So then in Toronto we met, and we met first on a, because I knew I was going to be doing a panel discussion with him. 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 your agent told me about you?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And I was like, yeah, I saw your movie Reservoir Dogs. And he goes, oh, well, 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 there were insane, insane reactions to it. But I have the first screening he saw of Mariachi sitting next to me, laughing. He's laughing and everything. He was just the best audience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I have his recording of the first time he saw Mariachi. Oh, no, really? Yeah, because I taped it whole thing. That's so cool.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 happened. I'm not a very shy person. I'm very shy. I'd have to go talk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm sure you probably feel like you're not an orator or anything. You 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 don't, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then the director comes up at the end and goes, yeah, well, that was my movie. And, um, you know, uh, 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. So 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, you know, the way I did it was just very new. Nobody knew it was possible. So my whole intro is like, you'll see the Columbia logo slapped in front. It's probably cost more than the whole movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 then 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 hate the reaction. They're so with it. the context is so key.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 it 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then it 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. So I had to... 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 was, couldn't believe how much easier it is when you have a crew.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So sometimes people get caught up on, what kind of camera should I have? It's like, it's not the camera. That's just the tool. That's just the pen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the other tools.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, like I got from home.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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's 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I don't know if it's going to be able to, I won't be able to make five bucks from it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Right. It's from somewhere else. I have to say, that thing is freaking, I didn't get in its way, is 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. That's when artists get really crippled. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You were just, so try to keep that very naive. And that's why I say commit to a body of work. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'll tell you something that my best advice I 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 Desperado and 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So we're working on it for a while. I was working on the pre-production, got to work with Spielberg doing that. It ended up stalling because 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, you know?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 kill to fucking 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 horror movie. I've just never done anything like that. You start getting afraid because you go, the 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 been at that time. Now everyone has respect for him, but they made him run a fucking gauntlet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Cause 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. Cause this guy has a head out and they're unwarranted. You can't even fathom it now. Cause you weren't here at that time. It was crazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You would 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 his name on it. That's going to put my head out in a whole different realm of filmmaking at a studio level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, damn it, 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 what's coming? Don't blink. And to him, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 part. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I even had some little actors who were like starting to get a bit. 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 it never is bad either. George Clooney told me that. He said, remember that. And then the second one, Spielberg, don't blink.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Again, yeah, sort of. 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, it's about as far as you can see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I kind of done that already, but it's always fun and it's always new. I guess I could make more, but it wasn't a lot of drive, right? It's like, well, I guess I could just keep doing the body. You know, 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 this job so early. I was in the early 20s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, I don't 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm just going through. And it gets to filmmaker and there's a little icon behind each job. This icon is a guy like this. Literally, you look it up and it says, this is the best job ever. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I was like, I guess I got the best job. But then I started working with my kids when we had a TV show called Rebel Without a Crew, based on that, where I found filmmakers who had only made a short film. They hadn't made a feature. I picked this diverse group of filmmakers. Gave him $7,000 and we documented them making a feature two weeks like I did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You can bring one person, like I had Carlos Gaeta, the producer and star of Bariachi, bring one person. He can be your cameraman or he 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 how we're going to make this movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 take it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 as, so that I can use like 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And the old days make it for less than $7,000, which I think we're like $5,000. Um, mainly because we had a lot of actors I wanted to pay. Um, but the movie itself can make it for nothing. Um, 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 Lavagirl when he was seven, but then he hadn't really been working on my crew.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 me super excited by the end of the day. I thought for sure, oh, they're going to hate this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, dad, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And you're 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 wide open. we figured it out. They went, oh, they don't realize this is the creative process. Every day is like that. And in life too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Every day, you don't know your machine's going to not work or you're going to get a flat tire or you get fired that day. So 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like, it should be the same. Life and art should be the same.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And in a short little microcosm too, within one project, you've got a whole blueprint for how you're going to solve life because you've just done it on a creative level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gonna believe these things. They couldn't believe it. But it teaches them that that thing about that, the creativity is going to come through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, it's 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But you can tell it's opening a whole other part of their creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie And the painting's 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. Like I remember we did one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was painting. We came in and the table was like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And they said, we have a problem. You want them to throw the cards out, the playing cards out, but it's so slick. They go sliding off the table. And we both look at it and we both got the solution at the same time. Oh, we just have them throw them wherever they go. And then we'll place them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then digitally, it's even better that he looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark is. But that's what we have to do. We can't hope here all day. If we're going to worry about where they go, just go bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And then we'll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up. and then we'll marry the two in post.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 gonna 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. So it helps you create a problem solve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So that's 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're the age I was when I made Mariachi and Desperado. And their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways. And it's like the greatest parenting experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
conducting the James Bond Orchestra in London for the Spy Kids score, the score he wrote, because I can't write at his level because he was always our best piano player. You get the charge out of working with them. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
My son, that was my counterpart on that movie, Racer, he was my sound guy, like I said, came up with Sharkboy and 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 VR type movie. And I said, oh, let me show you as an example of creativity and manifesting. I said, let me show you how it works. Let's make a company.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We'll make a company called Double R. Double R Productions, because we all have Double R 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Would you like us to make you a film for your, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 were 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 festival. Usually you pay to go to a festival. You don't get paid.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. I wrote it with my kids, based it on some of their personalities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history, like nothing can touch it, because kids just keep watching it over and over, because it's kids with superpowers. No one's ever done that before. And they couldn't believe it. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 really value. Not only do they complete, but re-watch, re-watch, re-watch per household so many times. That one has a double R logo as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And my kids are like, dad, that really worked. I was like, I know better than I thought. I didn't know that me manifesting that company What's 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it's a filter. Like I said, sometimes the freedom of limitations changes. 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. They said you could use the whole city. It would have been harder to come up with something.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Well, Brass Knuckle Films has a filter, only action. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Right now, that's the key is to be independent because a lot of studios, they can't even green light anything because things are so expensive. They don't want to lose their ass, but they need action films.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Let's make something that everybody needs and let's make it at a price. We'll make it in my studio because I have 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 cost down. and we'll have the audience gets to invest. It's not crowdfunding or Kickstarter. You're actually an investor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It comes down to the character. You know, like if you think about what are the best action films? What are your favorite films? Like Die Hard. He's a cop, so he's still capable, but he's not Superman. The fact that he's like in over his head and you're rooting for him, that's a great character.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Like they focused a lot on the action in the trailer, you know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It was a good example where I could 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, who's also retired. There's a superhero type character in an extraordinary circumstance. That's now his daughter's taken. And then there's ordinary people like the Terminator. That's a great character. Not the Terminator. He's a villain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Not an action movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 pace, 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 a romantic comedy, there's a timeline.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Every movie has to have like a ticking clock. So the audience knows the story's not just going to take over a period of years. Though 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 like the best use of that. No one's ever topped that clock.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
ticking time clock all the other ones seem artificial in comparison you know aliens you know 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. In fact, like The Terminator. 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 bead of sweat in this movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 what point that is? It's the point where Michael Biehn tells her, I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you, which is, you know, I always have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, there was a love story.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. They showed it to an audience. The audience liked it the way it was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, you're nervous going like, just, I hope it goes off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I want something. And the head of the studio was really smart. He said, you don't know what you have here. It's something really special. Let's take it to Telluride and see what happens. Telluride, Toronto did great. And like I said, and it won Sundance. So now we had to put it out. But I was like, I would have said, don't show that movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 Salma, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's about these guys, they're all criminals and they kill each other or whatever. 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. Like they just took the whole story.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 thing. And the action was awesome. But then the girl's really good. And then midway through the movie, I'm like, oh shit, she's going to die.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Because I killed her in mine. 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 Spike Kids 2. When you create stuff, you start thinking... I wonder if that's how our creator is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then he thought, well, what if I put them 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Cause 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. And, uh, and I got used to doing things in one take and, and just living with it. It didn't bother me. One movie, it was even a low budget movie. They had, um, rigged a car to implode.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it got out of control and they turn into these huge creatures and now they're trying to eat them. So he's hiding, 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 in this movie? It's so wild. I thought, I wanted Steve to come up to the camera and like, he's just, he's lost in his own creative world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 he 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it's like, cause 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 it's like, oh no, now this character has to die. Oh, I didn't want that. You know, this, this domino effect of creation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And you start thinking, well, that must be what creation... Maybe he is hiding up there because, lookit, he didn't expect all this shit to happen, giving us free will and all that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, absolutely. Because, like, if I'm writing it, but if it's not coming from me, I'm as surprised as... And Quentin would say that, you know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like, he just gave them life, and now the dialogue's coming through them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Since I met him, he was just like this...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 like what's that he goes oh that was something i was starting to write and i you know not gonna finish i'm like 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You know, your parents say, watch out who your peers are. You know, when you're younger, that means one thing. But once you get older, surround yourself around people who swing much farther than you. You know, that's just like, but that's really true. I mean, just by being around him and working with him, you get, by osmosis, you learn stuff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 Desperado. 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 Desperado.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 if you're ill. But you want somebody who's above that. Do 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 festivals. He saw Mariachi. He loved it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Cause 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. And, um, 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 just getting one car.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We came up, we talked and he said, you're 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. But 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I just met him and I go back and he was, cause originally Pulp Fiction was for TriStar cause 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 like storyboards from Desperado and he'd come act out scenes of Pulp Fiction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And when 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. It's too long. $8 million movie or 7 million. They're like, ah, we're going to go make the next Pauly Shore movie instead. You know, like we don't understand this thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 Cannes and it was a whole thing. But what I loved about his story is that when he made Pulp Fiction, he had a director screening. He showed it to some directors and I wasn't able to go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But anyway, I had dinner with him once and it was in my journal because I keep a journal. At 2.40 a.m. when 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 still feels like a movie Quentin would make. It doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was like, That's fine. What does it mean?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 it. And I was like, well, it should be different. It should be like, he's like, wouldn't have it. Drove off. So I thought, oh, I guess that wasn't the one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. None of them saw it. None of them saw it, but that, I know you're like surprised. Yeah. But that happened with George Lucas too, with Star Wars. Everybody saw that movie and was like, poor George. They showed it to all his director friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Poor George, what did he 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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's one person. I go, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And if it doesn't work, we'll figure it out. 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 I thought I'd make it more authentic. Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Then his friend's like, 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. Yeah. That means, what do you do? Commit to a body of work. Just do that. You don't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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'd like to think they know, but they don't know either. They feel it. Like I asked Jim Cameron, I said, do you see your movie really clearly? Like, can you see it like with, with hyper-focus? Cause it seems like that. And he goes, it's like really far.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's out of focus. And you work on it and you work on it. It starts coming. I said, okay, good. So that's, 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 everything. what a creative drive is and how to just keep being relentless about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But it's not like they have all the proximity is huge. Proximity will change your life. Did for me, just being around those guys, they didn't teach me, Hey, I'm gonna 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 bet 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You're going to learn lessons outside of the box by doing that. 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 gonna freaking believe what you see. But this is, it really tells a story of how important proximity is. So I'm, I do this painting. It's like, ah, it looks garbage. I'll show you. It looks like garbage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'm not used. I can't do paintings that are just like, see, you never should say I can't 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then I- 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, it looks, and I just gave up right away. I went, I was trying to pre-practice so I wouldn't be a total buffoon there. Cause I was going the next week and I thought he's using a different brush, obviously.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Two things happened on Dust 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 the first. That's right. That is the meme. Because it was an accident.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, his reference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, what paints are you using? And he's like, it was regular acrylic paint. What brushes do you have? Regular brushes. I'm like, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. And you're just watching and he doesn't teach you anything. So he just starts painting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So this is the photo he had as a reference, but then this is his painting. Right. And because I'm there, he's not teaching you how to paint.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You're seeing that there isn't a trick.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Well, how come I can't do that? And you go, you do it. I go, I'm going to try and do something realistic. I've never done realistic before because I'm a cartoonist and everything was cartoony. And that was just easier for me because I thought I would need too much training.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. The same day. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Now you're giving yourself permission. But you could give yourself permission right away and it's going to come through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
He's so expressive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. I thought, wow, I got to go create my own stars. We'll bring Antonio from Europe because they know his name from the Almodovar movies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 and stuff we can throw up or something you can shoot up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And I saw him in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down when I was in the hospital writing mariachi or watching TV while I was a patient. And there's a scene where he like headbutts Victoria Ablil, you know, he just gives her a headbutt. He goes like that. And I was like, whoa, I bet that guy would want to be in an action movie. He's got something inside.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It was 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It was a whole systemic problem, right? This was 94, 93. So I was watching 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. should have said it because it'd be even more inspiring like now you have no excuse yeah i would wrote the english subtitles basically yeah i wrote the titles what became the subtitles
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then we'd take it to the actors, and the actors would translate it for me. And I was like... That is so inspiring. I'd be like, holy shit. I would try to speak Spanish and say, vamos a recordar. Like, let's record. And they'd be looking at me like, that means let's remember. Recordar doesn't mean record. That means grabar. Now I know. Back then, I didn't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I'm watching Univision, and then there's Salma. as a guest, 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 US because of her accent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Paul Rodriguez 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's her with her energy, with her passion and funny. She became instant friends with my wife, you know, before they walked over, your wife and I are best friends. She already was like 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Pat, I didn't realize it's so high to get past that second floor. He's like, no, I don't. I can give you a fireball. I can give you a nice, you know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 other movie with her in English called Road Racers. It was my second film for Showtime. Really cool little rebel without a cause type movie.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, before the screen test.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, while he's spitting it out. It's going to be a big dramatic action with a very light delivery.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We got it down to the science. The next day we show up, Antonio does a scene with all the girls who come in. He does it with her. Clearly, they've got amazing chemistry. She just nails it. He's great. He loves her too. Studios like, okay, you can hire. Reluctantly like that, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 this? Just know that not everyone's going to see it. You may have the only vision.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And when you're an independent filmmaker, you can make those decisions that change people's careers, that changes 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... the way I started, which is what I've always liked to do, which is just doing it where we create our own destiny.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 in it. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, you know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I want to give him a cool role, you know, 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. And he gets up and walks out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 singed. So they take off and boom, it goes. And in slow motion, it looks great, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
He didn't have to say anything because there's no dialogue. Yeah. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But one thing I noticed was that the town we're 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 and, um, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
had i had an idea for machete then it wasn't the same story i had seen a story uh actually 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. I said, we're going to do this someday. And we talked about it for years and never did it. Never got around to doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So when I did Spy Kids, I put him 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 past. But then a few years later, Quentin and I were doing Grindhouse. And he'd already done Dustal Domini. I was building my own Latin star system. Salmo showed up in a bunch of my movies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Cheech shows up in every movie. Danny shows up. I brought Cheech out of retirement and 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I remember showing it to Jim Cameron before it came out and his hand went up like, I've never seen that before, you know. 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 and So those movies came out within six months of each other. That's why it turned into a thing because people saw it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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're 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 Cole Machete.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 let us send it to us for a couple of day screen test? I mean, camera test. Instead of shooting a camera test, we shot the trailer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So 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. and we shot it, people were screaming at the premiere. You couldn't even hear it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. It's Mexican superhero. They just never seen anything like that. You know, now you know. But like, even his mom calls him Machete. Like, he just became this guy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And out 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 and say, where's Machete? When's that movie coming out? We're like, it's not a real movie. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
All the shots that are in the trailer are really great. I got to 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We'll cast Lindsay Lohan there or the Senator will switch it out for Robert De Niro. Well, I just reversed engineer it. So every time there's a shot in the trailer, it's in the movie, but I shot all the footage around to lead up to it. That's another fun creative exercise is to reverse engineer something you just did like this on the day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 in 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 is like, okay, you're going to walk out and it's all in one take. So we're only going to do one take.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
When you wake up from your hotel room at the Stephen F. Austin, you just crossed 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah. That's their scent. And it's real. You don't have to dress it. And it's just right there. All you do is put like a little tube there, you know, like a, for his IV. And then you have a couple of nurses and it looks like. Genius. Resorts full, resourceful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But I said, you're going to think about me when you're on your next meet the fuckers movie and you're on there for six months where they have you sitting in a trailer. I don't like to do that. So, you know, I gave Lady Gaga her first two movies. because after Machete, she said, publicly, she said, I saw Machete in my song, Americano, should have been in Machete. I thought, she saw Machete?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, which most actors can't do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And she said, actually, I studied acting before I became a singer. I said, 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 a movie and I'll shoot you a movie poster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. She said, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I did the same for Sin City 2. 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 get to be in a scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 performance is getting the best beat, getting the best ingredients, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
editing is like the cooking too much of this and not enough that you fuck the whole thing up so so many filmmakers do not edit yeah and they give it to some other guy who might look at all your ingredients and go this is all great but i'm gonna go make a fucking souffle 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 because i've always edited i realized this is why movies cost so much
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
There could be 150, 200 people on the crew, but 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
We're going to blow the thing up. We're going to start with just, you know, some smaller explosions. And 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. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And that's how 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 this stuff. Mickey Rourke is in a sequence with Rudger Hauer. We shot eight months apart. I didn't have Rudger Hauer until I was doing Sharkboy and Lavagirl.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I just shot Mickey acting with me and then I shot Rudger acting with me and then I just cut them together. What's weird is like editing exercises are 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like, oh my God, I already made a movie with him 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 Dustled on 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, was writing. He wrote Fight and Flight. It's this movie that's gonna come out with Josh Arnett. That's his, he wrote it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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? What do you know? There's a lot of things that could happen. Well, guess what happens? The thing you would not expect happens. They go in, they come out, they start talking, shoot it. It's perfect, great, we can move on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. He said, 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 crank it out in 3D. I'm going to cut off the phone in 3D.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, you read it in three days? And he goes, well, I wrote some of it 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I go, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So anyway, he came to me with this idea. He said, oh man, I was hoping you'd do the last episode of Dust 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, you know, the hammer back before you can fire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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's in a room somewhere. VFX guys aren't there. You're not going to be able to ask them how to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 for you. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
When it comes to your scene, we'll switch places because it's got to be done quick because you've got, you got to shoot it in 20 minutes because you got a ton of other shit you got to shoot and you'll 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 of 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I get over there to the set and I go, okay, where are you coming out of? This building. Where are you getting the bullets from? That body. Okay, bring that body closer. Okay, stunt guy, bring a pad over. I want to see you just jump and start to twist as if you're turning. I just want to see how much air time you can get to get any action before you hit the pad. He starts to jump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. You're very limited. Look at the sun. You're going to see the sun not move.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You see, that's the point where the sun starts getting lost. I have to shoot this in 20 minutes. You're gonna do three jumps and I'm gonna cut it to look like one jump. All the bullets are gonna miss, only one's gonna 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And the camera guy goes, I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here, he goes, yeah. We have an autofocus on the Steadicam. I mean, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 bullets 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Okay, now the bullets are flying. I'm going to add those digitally. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Just look at the barrel on your hands when you're jumping, because that'll look like you're looking at the bullets. 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 at how cool that looks. And then the side view, shot this at the same time, you can already tell...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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? I say, just lay on the pad and rock up and down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Okay, so now you've caught a bullet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 closed 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...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
steady cam shot flip it upside down and get a low angle see i 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 angle right okay now last jump i bury a thin i said just bear me bring me 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 take. Boom. That one was probably a little better even though you don't really see it. I've got to go do everything now. I've got to cut it. I've got to add the sound effects myself.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I've 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, sort of 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 bullet in this frame and the next frame is here. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, they send it back and a bunch of bullets come down. No guys, listen to this. I'm going to show you again. I'm going to draw it to you again. Just, The sound will play like there's multiple bullets flying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
wow well done you don't even see that in a feature film much less a tv show just as a director well done oh thank you here just one more time and i'll show you something you didn't notice both times
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And like this, you got minutes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And it's not like you have this whole plan figured out ahead. You're literally in the moment. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You could have gotten all those people together and they never would have figured that out. You had one person that had to see it all the way through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I've done enough times to know that if you don't do it just right, you're going to lose the image. You're not going to know where to follow and you'll miss the point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So we had to wait until we were 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 clip that thing back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Watch this. You don't really...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You think you saw it, but you hear it. And so you feel like, see, but watch it. It's actually, he's already finished. You don't really see him do it, you know, but you swear you saw it in a closeup because the sound is in a closeup. I put the sound in a closeup. Now here's another thing you didn't notice. He hits this ground in the first shot. Watch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You didn't even notice it because I didn't play the sound there. So if you don't hear it, you don't see it. And if you don't see it, but you play a sound, You hear it and you see it in your mind, right? 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. People can direct and say, this is what I want. But to actually execute it, you need to be a craftsman.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And to be a craftsman, you have to learn all those crafts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And you only need to see one or two hits and you can hear five. You know where you can push your limits because you've done it. You've done it and you've got the experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, was that... All the other sound dropped away, and all you hear is...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Like the sound, like 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-up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the gun sound we created for Bruce Willis in Sin City and use that and mix it with Antonio's gun from Desperado. I remember in Four Rooms, there's a scene where the bell hopped. goes into the hotel room, jams his key into it, and clicks it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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... 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
When the actors come running out 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. It blew out. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 it. And so I keep those sound effects into the final movie. So it's just all part and necessary. It's like being a chef.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I think there was like a- My little kid with his car. Yeah, one of those little zzzz.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And then we're playing with these little cars, filming ourselves playing with the cars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
but then i replace it with real car sounds and it just your brain links the reality of the real thing crazy and you realize how unimportant the visual is and how important the sound is actually sound is everything that's what 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I'll probably direct more than one because there's already several that I want to do. I'm going to direct at least one, but I'm producing all four. They're 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 I don't have to think of all these ideas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, we'll 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, your target and, And now you can hit that target.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
The whole front of that, which is foam, is catching on fire. And I cut just before you see that it's on fire. And 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 shoot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 movie in the theater. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So deadline makes you do things and make decisions really quickly. 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?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So many people are going to come up with all these extra great ideas at the last minute. It looks like everyone who's already signing on Cause 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, when we closed the funding in May, but we didn't say when still.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You're going to love this idea so much, it could turn into 10 other things you never even thought about. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Sure. I mean, why not? I never would have attempted it 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 study 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 when it was done, He said, you might not want to sit through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. So 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
didn't exist yeah and i was reading it going like this is a great story he's like i don't know how the fuck he's gonna 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 elita 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
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And, but right away, this is what, this is what happens. My first AD, Doug Aronikowski comes over to me and I go over to him. Guys came out with a fire hoses. The fire hoses weren't even adding 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
a lot of his career, and to be able to visit the set of Avatar and remember him showing me 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 until 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, And his team, because he had all his Weta 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's mostly CG. I have live action sets.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
You have to come to my studio because I still have the whole Alita city in my back lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 from Mariachi. It's in my backyard. I'm like, it looks better than the town from Mariachi. 90,000, it's the biggest, largest standing set in the country because sets are always mowed down for the next movie, but I just kept it there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So we used to shoot it all the time for Mexico or South America or Europe or whatever. It's seven streets and we added digitally above it. The ceilings are 20 feet high. You gotta 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. It's like really close to town. I would love to visit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But 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 some, if we can capture even a fourth of her facial expression, it'll bring so much life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 more refined than the first Avatar because of that middle step of doing Alita. It was training ground for them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Yeah, I have her in a suit for... 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
It's like 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 will feel very emotional and you have to, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Acting with all that, but it just disappeared. You know, she's not even, it's like, it's not even there. Like we don't notice that this is here. It's like that. She can just perform through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 and, are all on the set, Mahershala Ali, you've got an amazing cast of people. That's really the heart of it, so that the technology goes away. How hard is it to get the actors
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 set, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge. And that really helps them in 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, uh, knowing that you're being helpful to him in his process and not just distracting him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But then also he liked that his artists had something else to work on besides just avatar to just work on something, you know, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And my whole crew, who's worked with me 25, 30 years, everyone had an extra spring in their step because they're like, I mean, that's just like a high bar of achievement for everybody, you know, working on it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
I think any of those guys, George Lucas, you know, him, John Lasseter running into Pixar, it's a mix of... And I got really lucky. My first job was a Photoshop because my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop. He said, your summer job. And I was 16. Go work for my friend, Mario.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 it. 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So I go to Mario's Photoshop and I'm, you know, developing pictures or, you know, think you develop photos from film and He said, here, take this camera home. Give me one of those 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
So here, I want you to learn zone photography. I want you to learn this, the technical part of it. So that's why I didn't take a crew in 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 little as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Like 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Pixar. Jim Cameron, very technical, 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And he just knows how to craft a story. He's very analytical as well. Like we bounce off each other in a funny way. He goes, man, he came down to visit my studio before we 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
But I think if you're not that way, you kind of 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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. Cause 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
When I show him the trailer for Grindhouse and he sees the machine gun laying all that, he just goes, whoa!
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 and you believe it yeah he's uh 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 scripts scripts what are these he goes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
This is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like, he's 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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, because 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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And he engineers a submarine that can break the world record. 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 rare. So that's very rare. And he's capitalized on both.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 he didn't 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? And he goes, Because I designed the escape vehicle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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 the escape vehicle, I would be afraid. But total confidence because he did it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
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.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
And they go, no, you can't. Why not? We've never had a director edit his own movie here. So we don't want to set a precedent. Because they thought it would give you too much power. This is the power of precedent, they 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.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And since they hadn't learned any bad habits, they went, oh, so we didn't have to do anything. We just have to start writing. It's going to come out. Go. Yeah. And they win. They wrote some amazing stuff. And I was like, they don't have to be reversed, you know, reversed. But that that was a very powerful lesson.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
thing and i saw when i did another seven thousand dollar movie recently i had a tv series based on rebel without a crew where i i got independent filmmakers so it only made short films and i gave him two weeks so you gotta do like mariachi you can bring one person to be either a cameraman or your sound guy but you gotta do the whole movie yourself write it direct it edit it and be shot in two weeks that's how long it took me to shoot mariachi
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And they're all, oh, we don't know how we're going to do it. By the week they started shooting, they were already talking about their next three films. Like they changed their idea of what was impossible. It just dropped out. So I was really curious to do mine. I was doing one based on my medical experiments I did to pay for mariachi, which is another story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I brought my son, Racer. Because I knew he hadn't been working with me on the movies for a while. I'm going to make him my second guy. He's going to be my co-writer, my co-lighter, and he's going to be doing the sound. I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment until we're filming because we're documenting it. We made a documentary about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And people really loved about how we made this movie today for $5,000. And he was fumbling around and we're going. And I thought, he's going to hate this. He's got his own interests. He doesn't want to work on a movie. But I need him. And so he comes to me at the end of the day with his brother and goes, Dad, actor didn't show up, the set didn't match, the location didn't match the script at all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Everything was falling apart. We asked you how we're going to finish the day. And you said, well, I don't know. We'll see what happens. And we thought, oh, my God, is this the movie that finally, you know, he can't figure out? But by the end of the day, we figured it out. Their eyes were all wide open. Oh, they don't realize that's the creative process. And that's every day in life and in work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I want to ask you about that because I know you end up doing the same thing a lot.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Life, you don't know. You're going to figure it out as you go. Art should be the same way. And by the end of the two-week shoot, they're interviewing him. He's all waxing philosophical about the creative process like he's been doing it for years. He goes, I never knew how my dad did mariachi. And now I know because I just did this project. He didn't know either. He just started.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he figured it out day by day. Most people never start. I mean, he succinctly encapsulated everything I tried to say in my book, which was you just got to go. And identity is key. Identity is the main thing. All these people who are out there, you got to tell them this. If you are listening and there's something you're not getting in your life that you really want, it's not a matter of desire.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Where it's not manifesting so much in that way. You're just kind of following your nose. You're doing something that just sounds ridiculous. Even when I try to tell one of my teachers what I was going to go do that summer, I said, I'm going to go try and make a movie. He goes, oh, yeah? Who's going to be your director of photography? And I said, I didn't want to tell them I'm the whole crew.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You have the desire. There's a missing element that I talked about in the book and I'd forgotten myself. We forget our own good advice. Over the years, people would say, hey, in your book, it says this. I'd go, I wrote that? I was so smart back then. What happened? I got to go reread my own book. But it was this thing where I told people,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because they would come up to me a lot because I was making films really early on and say, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. You might hear that. I'm an aspiring comic. I'm an aspiring filmmaker. And he goes, stop aspiring. You're calling yourself an aspiring filmmaker. That's now your identity. You're always going to be aspiring. Just say you're a filmmaker.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Take one of these cards and make a business card, even if you have to handwrite it, who you are. I'm a director. I did one. I had it printed up. Director, cinematographer, editor, composer. That's who I am. Now you're going to have to conform to that. And you're going to start making films. I started making these films even for Spanish video. And so you have to think it through.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I'd forgotten that lesson. So I wanted to use your gym because, you know, I like to work out now. I never did. You started as a cartoonist. I'm surprised. I was always an artist. I was really tall, you know, for school.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, well, it started when I was 19 doing the comic, but then it kept getting repeated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It felt like something else, but then it really hit me later on. And I'll get to that one. It really hit me later on where I kind of put it all together around 2001, 2002, when I was doing a movie where I was, again, kind of going back to the way I did Mariachi. I was on a big movie, though. I was the writer, the director, the producer, the cinematographer, the editor, the composer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm the DP. Oh, the actors are going to hate you. You're going to be there setting up your lights all the time. I'm like, OK, I'm not going to tell them I'm the rest of the crew. It was just because I had read this advice that meant to be good advice, but it sounded really depressing. It was someone had written, if you want to write screenplays, write three full screenplays, throw them away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was doing all these things. Plus, I was doing the production design now, and I was taking on more jobs to make it more like a handmade film, more like a lot of factory movies are being made. I said, I want people just to feel different. I think they'll get a feeling from it they don't get from, you know... a McDonald's process.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They're still good, but, you know, there's something about a home-cooked meal. And I didn't even know how to read or write music, and I was writing...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
music for a hundred piece orchestra and i was like how i figured it out by notes going there's only 12 notes you know even less than a scale so you hit three no four notes that's not bad that's a bad note okay that's pleasing to the ear and i was just writing a note by note because it's a kid's movie so i figured it should sound like a kid wrote it and i'm like a kid sound like that and i was writing pretty complex stuff not knowing what i was doing i go how is this even possible that i'm doing all these jobs i wasn't trained in so i went on amazon and i looked up
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
any book that had the word creative or creativity in it i just ordered it i don't know what section it came from they just arrived and i'm thumbing through them and one of them was really speaking about the creative process how it worked and i was like wow wow that's how it is that's how it is and then it said gels and mediums and i was like oh this is a book particularly about painting but it applies to all the other things i'm doing that's when i realized that
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's all linked. That creativity is 90% of any of those endeavors. 90% of it is just being creative. The technical part, like reading or writing music, and there's a lot of great musicians who don't read or write music. They're fantastic. The technical part, you can fudge that, like how to shoot the movie. You can fudge a lot of the technical stuff. 90% is creative.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And if you know how to be creative, you can literally jump from job to job and do it really well because you're coming with your own experience and your own point of view. That's why I teach my actors to paint on the set because they've never painted before and they're already being creative by acting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But in between takes, we'll go paint a portrait of their character where I take a photo of them in character and have them paint a background. I said, just pick up the paint. You can use these three methods, any color you want. The paintbrush is going to know where to go. even though you've never painted before, it's gonna know where to go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And they do it, and I put a stencil of a line drawing of their face over it. I'll show you some. You're not gonna believe it. Josh Brolin was way into it, Lady Gaga did one, Bruce Willis did one. And it's just like magic how it comes together. And it's to teach them that you don't have to know. We always think, I need to know this, I need to know that. What about the other side?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Half of the battle is knowing. What about the other half? Not knowing, I think, is the more beautiful and where the magic is. Because you don't need to know what's going to happen. You just need to show up. You just need to pick up the pen. You need to do the keyboard. Because it just starts coming through you. And they see it. And it helps them go back to the set and solve any creative problem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was much harder in the faint room figuring out gels and mediums and all this stuff. They go back to the set and they can solve any problem instantly. And you'd think that they're already in a creative mode by acting, but it fires off a whole other part of your brain to go do something else creative at the same time. Remember on the set, Josh goes...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
is it okay I'm still thinking about the painting? I go, I think so.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Your fourth screenplay will be it. It's like, I've never written a screenplay. It's very hard to write a screenplay. It's hard to write. It's like three huge meals that you're just going to dump. Why not? Okay, write the script, throw it away. But while you're throwing it away, why not also shoot it and direct it? Light it yourself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. So that's where I started piecing together that it was something, because I really wanted to look it up because it would feel like when I would go to write the music, I don't have to write very many notes before. It feels like I'm being pulled by the hand. Like, I didn't make that. I didn't make that. And I didn't do that. And I didn't do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, if you ask all the disciplines. I ask Jimmy Vaughn. How did you play that? That solo was amazing. Did you have that worked out? It's kind of like tuning a radio. You know, if you get it just right, you can't even believe what's coming through. Yeah. You know, you always hear everyone's version of that. And so I called it something. I thought, I'm going to call it the creative spirit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like there's a creative spirit. Imagine the creative spirit that's assigned to you. And if you're someone who's just like... I don't think I can do this or that. And they don't pick up the pen. They don't actually start. How frustrated that spirit must be.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But yet still, even though it's like that, where it still feels like you have to do a lot. Well, that's how Pressfield talks about it. You just go, I just need to be a pipe. Yeah. A clean pipe, a conduit. So more stuff comes through. And that means take your ego out of it. I mean, just just do the work. Just show up and start.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You're tapped into – I had a friend of mine. Tim Ferriss was over at my house and I was telling him about some – it's a very creative house. Really because it's where I do a lot of my creative work and a lot of creatives like coming to this place. See, you have to come check it out. You can see the frisettas I have.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Oh, my God. Are you going to make a note? Totally. Totally. You have so much of favorite Frazettas. Totally a creative place. And I like people to come there. But it's just inspiring to be in an environment where... Everything around you is about creativity because then you get in that headspace and you're able to do more because you realize it's not you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Do the sound yourself so that you're training yourself on each one. So I thought, where can I do this? where I can get paid to do that, like my own film school where I get paid to learn. So I discovered that there were these straight-to-Spanish movies that are action movies. You go to the... You've seen the HEBs around here?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's just coming through you and you just have to witness it. And it just takes a lot of the load off of you. A lot of people can start easier if they know, oh, it doesn't have to be me. Like my kids, oh, I don't have to do it. I just have to actually pick up the pen. Yeah, it's very freeing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And they're doing that to themselves. You're literally doing this to yourself. So when you say... Well, I don't know if I can just chopped off your leg right at the beginning of the race. Right, right, right. Well, I tried it once before. You just cut the other one off. I mean, you're literally doing your your your own worst enemy. I had this one gal and fear of failure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
This is the base of the best thing. One gal in one of the talks, she said, okay, you're all positive, but what do I tell myself when I just spent a year and a half doing something and it didn't work out? I said, well, that's a very negative way to ask that. Can you rephrase the question first? Then I'll attempt. And she went, I learned a good lesson the hard way. I said, no, that still sucks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If you're focused on the failure, if you followed your instinct and it didn't work out, It doesn't mean you're wrong. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. It's the only way. And if you just stay there, you're not going to go. So you have to embrace the failure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because if you're going on instinct, I mean, you're doing it literally on instinct, not like someone said, hey, go over there. There's a money-making scheme. Go do that. Literally, you had the instinct. And my best example is four rooms. It's a movie I did with Quentin. Because if you study the ashes of your failure, you'll find a key to your next success.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Four different movies, four different stories. And I love short stories because I had made a bunch of short films. I thought, oh, I want to do that. So when Quentin asked, and I asked the audience, I like asking the audience, how would you answer this? Quentin goes, hey, I'm going to make a movie called Four Rooms. Four different directors. You've got to use the bellhop. It's New Year's Eve.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I figured because that's why you're here right now. Because we're not that smart. I'm not that smart. I couldn't have figured this shit out. It's because I was just at an instinct to go that way when everyone else was going that way. And you're going to stumble. You're going to fall. But you're going to stumble upon.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You're going to stumble upon ideas no one thought of because you're going the way that's not picked clean already. Right, right. So I just like four rooms. I said, yeah. Now, if I had just studied a little bit, I would have seen that anthologies like that never work. Like even when it's Scorsese, you know, Woody Allen and Coppola, they did one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There used to be a video section to rent movies, and there was a Spanish section. The Spanish section had movies like, they were just action movies. They had a soap star. They were made for 30 grand, 40 grand. Shot on video, no action, but it had a title that looked kind of like a U.S. title, like Perros Rabiosos 2, written like Lethal Weapon 2.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Nobody goes to see it because they don't know how to wrap their head around it. What is this, three movies? Is this an anthology? It doesn't work. If I had studied first, should I have changed my answer? Nobody knows that answer. Well, I'm going to go on instinct. I'm going to say I say instinct anyway. Movie bombs doesn't do well at all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Now I could be really upset about that and go like, wow, I got to be really careful now going forward. I have to tiptoe around as an artist. Well, that's not the state of mind I was when I won Sundance. I was throwing stuff out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There's a lot of great stuff in it, but it goes even better than that. My whole thing is... Examine the ashes of your failure and I don't find one I find two keys in there to my biggest movies directly from that experience So my instinct was right, but again, sometimes the only way across the river is slipping on the first two rocks I was on the set had to be New Year's.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I dressed everybody up in tuxedos and Antonio had just done Desperado the next week. He came and appeared in there the little boy from Desperado He had a little brother so I hired him And then I just found the best little actress, who's a half-Asian girl, Asian-American, so I cast an Asian mom. So it would look like they were a family.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I'm seeing Antonio and Tamela and Tamita all dressed up to the nines. I went, wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and the two little kids who can barely tie their shoes don't know it? They get captured, and the kids have to go see them. So Spy Kids, there's five of those now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The other key to success that I got on that set was I love doing short films. That's why I signed up for it. It didn't work, but I'm going to try it again. Not four stories, three stories, like a three-act structure. Not four directors, but the same director. I'm going to try it. Why on earth would I try it again?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Except that I had just done one, and I figured out there might be a different approach. That's Sin City. So Sin City and Spy Kids directly came...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
from that thing you would call a failure if you if you focused on the failure so go back and look tell everybody go back and look at something that you had a real instinct for that you did and it didn't work and sift through the ashes of it and you're going to find either that you've already had the success from it and you didn't realize it what you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct or you you will find something
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you would rent it and be like, just crap, people in an apartment talking. So I looked at the back of those and I thought, we can make a better one, probably for like $5,000. Because I had made a short film called Bedhead. by myself with a wind-up camera. It was eight minutes, and it cost $800.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I failed at that. I was going to sell that to the Spanish on video. This is what blew me away about rereading the book. I went, oh, my God, I was so bummed. I finished making that movie. And you see in the book, clearly I'm a penniless, clueless filmmaker. Making this movie, I think by myself, I think it's going to work. I don't know. A borrowed camera. I didn't even know how to use it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I call a place in Dallas that rents this equipment. I go, I got an Aries 16S, you know, on the phone. It has two motor-looking things. One has one number and one's got many. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. It means, oh, can I do slow motion with it? I was literally learned like that. And then I went and shot the whole movie. And I had to shoot the whole movie in two weeks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I couldn't develop the film until I got back. So I shot blind, not knowing if that camera was even working.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, that was accident. Yeah. Yeah. If you can look at all the compilations, it starts with Desperado because it was an accident. I didn't think, you know, this is what happens on Desperado. In the script, it says he throws some grenades over the side of this building to blow up the bad guys, and him and Salma walk away. It was just supposed to see some body parts fly. It was just a grenade.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It wasn't supposed to be a nuclear explosion. Just some body parts, some shrapnel, and some smoke. But it's two stories up, and we get there, and we're shooting so fast. I went to my poor effects guy who was just so busy just having done a big shootout, and I went... I know you don't have body parts, but do you have anything we can just throw? It's so high up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Is there anything you can launch up there? He goes, oh, no, I don't have anything. I need something to come up because I wanted some shit to fly up behind him. He goes, I'll give you a fireball. I said, a fireball? Like... It'll go up 60 feet, but it's propane, so it's going to burn off like that. How fast does it burn off? Like that. So, okay, I'll shoot slow motion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I thought, multiply it times 10, I could do an 80-minute movie for $8,000, but with dialogue and everything, I bet I could get it for under eight, probably more like five or six. Let's go shoot a movie, write it, shoot it. I'll be the whole crew, so I learn all the jobs, And then we'll sell it to the Spanish home video market.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Okay, we'll shoot slow motion. That's all the actors. Just keep walking. Don't turn around because it's supposed to be pretty big, and it might be really hot. I don't want you to singe your eyebrows. Just walk fast. Walk fast and determined, but it's going to feel funny, but when I shoot it in slow motion, it'll look like you're just walking normal speed, and it'll slow down the explosion.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, it looks fantastic. See, they're just walking, they don't know. Look at her, she's just so calm. But if you sped that up and played it in normal motion, it goes by like that. It's crazy because that scene has been copied so many times. It became an action staple.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because it's just like, it's this cool attitude in working with music.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It wasn't an action movie. It was just an accident. Again, the accidents that you stumble upon. There you go.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So that came out in August of 1995. Just six months later, Dust Till Dawn came out. And I made that. I enjoyed it so much.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Oh, thanks. I loved that movie. I showed this explosion shot, you know, the movie to Jim Cameron. He was watching it. I was waiting for his, you know, he was doing movies like Terminator 2, blowing the shit out of everything. So I was wondering if you'd like my little rinky-dink thing. And his hand went up in the air when he saw that moment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I thought, yeah, I'm going to do that in Dust Till Dawn. Dust Till Dawn, I had it where the actors come out doing the dialogue, though. And the explosion just keeps going. And they're walking away while having a conversation. So within six months, you saw two versions of that. So people just started doing it. You see it in Man and Fire. I mean, you see, like, whole combinations of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But it's an accident. That's got to be weird for you. Like, you're like, bitch, that's mine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If I had engineered it, yeah, I'd be really smart. But again, like I said, I'm not that smart.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Who knew? What's so fun is... He's in Desperado now. I met him on the film festival circuit. So in 1992, we both had movies with guys in black and violent movies. In fact, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs. I had Mariachi because they put us on a panel together to discuss violence in the movies in the 90s, even though it was only 92. And so we met there and became friends.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he said, oh, my next movie is Pulp Fiction. And I just thought, this crazy guy, he's so funny. And I said, I'm going to write him into Desperado. It was before he did Pulp Fiction or any of that. So by the time Desperado came out, Pulp Fiction was a phenomenon. And then people cheer when he walks on stage, on set.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
No one will know it's me because it's Robert Rodriguez, a bunch of Robert Rodriguez's. I'll make three of those because I was so young. I was winning a lot of film festivals with short films. But I thought if someone sees one of my short films that's winning all these awards, they're not going to hire me to do a short film. They're going to hire me to do a feature. And I've never practiced that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But when we were doing that four rooms, here's another thing that came from four rooms. If I hadn't done four rooms, it'd be No Dust Till Dawn. When we're doing Four Rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me. It's on the internet. I put it out. Him reading me the first scene of Kill Bill. This was eight years before he made the movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And then he said, my very first script I wrote, and I didn't get paid shit for, like $1,500, was Dust Till Dawn. And now, because of the success of Pulp Fiction, they want to make all my old stuff. And these producers have it. I didn't get paid dick. So I'll do a rewrite and you and I will go in together. You should be the director because it takes place in Mexico and you're Mexican.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I was like, all right. That's the second time he read me a scene in 2001. There's one video where he's even younger in four rooms reading me a second version of it. So over the years, we had an office next to each other when I was writing Desperado and he was writing Pulp Fiction. So he'd read out scenes. There he is. and I would read out, show him scenes from Desperado.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And we just became friends there. He was originally gonna make Pulp Fiction for TriStar and then they passed on it because they thought, it's weird, it's long. And he went, did it for Miramax. Did he want to be the serial killer? I asked him to because I knew he liked acting and I just knew him as a person. Like a lot of times I'll cast somebody just by meeting them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm going to cast you because you realize you can. There's something about them that captures you that's going to just be magnified when you put a 50 feet on screen. That's why I've discovered a lot of talent that way. So I found Salma. I just knew she was going to be it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
um but he was so so great and i thought this is a really fun character i bet he could he likes that i can get a performance out of him and he'll come in with a take on it so i said i'll do that still dawn uh would you be interested in playing richie because i'd love to play richie okay well so he was the first person we cast and he's fantastic in it he's really great he's really scary got all into character he was terrified kind of had this really cool haircut i showed him a picture of uh
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Burt Reynolds in Deliverance said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance. That was really cool. He was like, oh, wow. He just really slipped into it and he was always in character and he was always intense on the set. It was really fun to see him get to do that. He was very believable. He really enjoyed that performance. I said, dude, you're so good in this movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Anyone who talks shit, they're just talking shit. Bullshit through gritted teeth. Don't listen to anybody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I need practice. So I'm going to practice three films, take the best scenes from them, have a demo reel with the money I make from them. I don't know how much I can sell it for, so I got to make it really cheap. Let's just do the first one, then we'll know. Then I'll take that money and make my first American independent film, and that'll be more serious.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, when you get a lot of success, people would tend to, you know, connect you with Target. Of course. So they would say stuff about him and being in a way he shouldn't be acting in his movies.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You know, just bullshit like this. Like, dude, this will shut him up. And if it doesn't, it's just bullshit because you're really great in the movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
don't don't engage like sometimes people send me things i'm like don't send me that man i don't want to read it i'm not gonna read it anyway yeah friends oh my god they don't know any better or my sister might send me something yeah it's just i just go just leave me out of it i got some really good advice early on i like to share people i'll share this with my actors because they get a lot of shit sometimes um
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was afraid to even do like a bigger movie because I was flying under the radar with, you know, Mariachi and Desperado. And then Spielberg sees Desperado wants to do Zorro with Antonio and me directing, right? So I go, cool, I'm working with Spielberg. And they're like, oh shit, I'm working with Spielberg. You probably remember this time because we're about the same age.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
remember the 80s and 90s, people would just throw shit on him all the time. All the time. There was no respect for this guy. They were so jealous. Press, public, everything. He was like, he couldn't catch a break. And he was making like the coolest movie. Ah, that movie sucks. Ah, Jurassic Park sucks. Unbelievable. So I thought, oh shit, that's because he's got his head way up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
maybe I should fly into the radar and not go make, if I can make a movie with him, what chance do I have? I went back and rewatched, you know, like Temple of Doom, which people say, that's not as good as Raiders. I watched it and go, if I can make a movie that's an eighth of that, I'd be lucky. So I called him and said- Bro, you make close encounters. I know, Jesus.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's a fucking incredible movie. But you get that much success and then people kind of resent it, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, but how do you get past it? I was curious for him, so- I said, hey, man, I just saw Temple of Doom. I don't know how I'm going to make this movie for you. He goes, oh, don't worry about that. Just make a great movie. So then I go to him and I say, I'm afraid that if I make a movie at the bigger level, I'm just going to be a target like him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, he's the best filmmaker and he's getting shit kicked out of him. I said, how do you do it? How do you do it? You just get rocks thrown at you all day long. He goes, oh, Robert, you just don't blink. I was like, wow, is that like a Clint Eastwood line? Wow, that's how he did it all this time. It's just like, just don't blink. Commit to making a body of work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I try to tell filmmakers sometimes that they have a success for the first one. They get really afraid of the second one because they think, oh, shit, now I might fail, right? The fear of failure cripples a lot of people. If you commit to just making a body of work, a body of work, Like he did. He just made any movie he wanted. Some hit, some don't. Some overperform, some underperform.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because I threw it away like that, I just thought, well, let me just make something fun. Action movie, I guess I could do action. I started as a cartoonist, so it was more comedic than anything else. I said, well, an action movie, let's make it fun. Let's make it about a guy with a guitar case full of weapons, kind of like Road Warrior, who goes from town to town with a guitar case full of weapons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
A movie like Mariachi that was not supposed to go anywhere way overperforms. And you can't tell what's going to be the one. So just commit to a body of work. And now no one gives him any shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And they may very well want to, but they're getting hurt by the fear.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Doing it to yourself and by doing that to other people. If they would just commit to a body of work, don't blink, and just keep making shit, they'll get somewhere. That's great advice. Commit to a body of work. A body of work. Like, look at someone, I mentioned this, and a friend of mine, a businessman called me and said, wow, that really spoke to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses that I've created that failed and instead of looking at the whole body of work. And I fixate on the ones that didn't work. And it's like, you never know what's going to work or not. That's not your concern. Just go make shit. Follow your instinct. Because again, maybe that one that didn't work is your four rooms.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you get two other great ideas out of it. I've forgotten that Dustal Dawn came out of that as well. So that's the third one out of that four rooms. That thing gave and gave and gave.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Really? So when he first wrote it, he couldn't get made because people... Okay, so this is what happened. The effects company hires him, and they said, we want a movie that'll... showcase our effects in this vampire bar. It's about two brothers that go to a vampire bar. Quentin starts writing. He starts writing Quentin style. He gets way into the brothers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So much into the brothers that it turns into like a Desperate Hours type movie for half the movie. He waits half the movie to get to the bar. So now, for financiers, it's now like a mixed bag. It's like two movies in one, right? But it was a negative then. It was like, this movie's all wrong. It's like suddenly they're, it's one thing and then suddenly it turns into a vampire bar.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We can't make this. But then Pulp Fiction comes out. And now everybody wants to make it. Oh, it's two movies in one. It's great. You know, a whole different perspective change. What a little success I'll do for you. Four Rooms. Oh, Four Rooms. Oh, yes, Four Rooms. Four times the fun, you know. So you never know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I told Quentin, let's make it right now because we made it to our next movie right after Four Rooms. So Desperado, Four Rooms. So Desperado came out in August 1995. Four Rooms in December. Dust Till Dawn was in January. That's how fast those came out. We were working that fast back then. So I said, let's make this right now because you're starting to steal from the script.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But I can't afford Road Warrior on the first one. So how about I just do a Genesis story? So I took out these cards and I go, okay, maybe he was a guitar player. In fact, that'll be a funny title because I have this comedic sense.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That Ezekiel speech that Sam Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, that's from the original Dust Till Dawn script. Really? He just took it. He was pulling stuff out of it because it was just not going to get made. Oh, no, he's scrapping an old car. So I said, before it gets picked clean, let's go make this thing. And we'll shoot it now. We'll shoot it right now. Wow. And it was so fun. It was so fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I loved that movie. It was so fun. Cheech is so great. You know, we did a table read. When we have a table read with your actors, you only have your main actors there. So sometimes you'll assign other parts to other people who are there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So he starts reading and he does each one, you know, it's because in media and he does everything in a different voice. And we're like, by the end, I was like, wow, he should play all three characters. And so I asked Quentin, Quentin goes, Hey, what if we get Cheech to play all three guys? I was thinking the same thing. So I go and tell Cheech, Cheech is just freaking hilarious.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he goes, Hey man, you're going to play all three characters. Do I get paid three times? This is why I love having comedians on the set, you know, because we're out there shooting that desert scene, you know, at the end.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
when the cheech comes and the whole place is burned down it's 125 degrees in the shade we're in barstow in a dry lake bed so freaking hot we're all just like not moving so i'm gonna have to go get something we're all just cheeches like this in a suit with a hat he goes hey robert can I, this is going to be a while. Can I go to my trailer?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was like, oh man, by the time you go, this guy's going to be back and we'll have to start. We should just stay right here. Okay. I'll go into my mental trailer. Okay. Ice cold drinks, air conditioning. Lines up the whole set. Okay. This guy's going to be in every movie. He's been in 10 movies of mine because there's that attitude.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You like that attitude of somebody who can find levity and torture. Because sometimes movies can be torturous sometimes. So having people like that that are really on your team that can really lighten up a set is just the best.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I thought, I'm going to make a movie that's got so much action and it's actually shot on film, but I'll call it basically The Guitar Player, which promises no action whatsoever. Put it on the shelf. And if someone happens to be so desperate to watch it, they'll be surprised. You know, that was like my joke to myself, but I just want to practice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You did animated movies. Yeah, there's a similarity to them. I'm still that cartoonist. So what they all have is they're all comedic. Like, even the action movies are kind of just fun. I mean, think of Desperado. It's like a James Bond movie. He's got a guitar case that fires missiles. He's got this one that's got a weapon design. Spy Kids is very much the same thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's just some are for big kids and some are for little kids. Even Sin City. Yeah, even Sin City is very playful. The Sin City one was so dark. I remember the first book, the one that Mickey Rourke plays. It was so dark. I was going like, oh, my God, it's going to be dark. I have to add some levity to this. And Mickey will bring humor to it. And it's the funniest episode. It's really funny.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But he's in the book. It's just like, oh, my God, he's just killing everybody. But you're really with him because of the way he portrayed it. We didn't change very much. We just added, you know, some humor to it. And that gallows humor, you know, really.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Oh, that's. Yeah, that was a good one. That's a really good use of color.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And it looks like that in the drawing. And I just wanted to, my whole idea was, because I'm so respectful of someone's artwork. You read Sin City and you realize that art is half of it. If anyone else in Hollywood were to make that into a movie, they would just make it like a gritty crime thriller. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And take out the whole visual element, which is that stark black and white where people's eyes glow in the dark. Yeah. And it has all these layers of unreality. And I went to Frank Miller. I said, I want to just make this move. I went, this is like the coolest movie never made.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he actually wrote it because he had been in Hollywood writing a couple of screenplays and he got shit on and screwed around, the whole Hollywood thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And yeah, so he he went and made this comic. He said, fuck Hollywood. I'm going to go make a comic that can never be made into a movie because it's so dark, so sexy. And so every time I call him up, man, let's make a great movie. God, it's so interesting. Bruce loved this. I tell you, it's funny. So this is the fastest I think any Hollywood movies ever gotten made. Really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, I'll show you the process. It's kind of like this cards thing. It's going to blow your mind. What is it now? It's April? Okay, so imagine. If this is 2004, April. Last year, I had two movies out. In the summer, it was Spy Kids 3D. It was the number one movie. A couple months later, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, another number one movie, but also both of them ended a trilogy that I had started.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I did this method where I just got the cards and I go... I'm used to making short films. Guy with a guitar case walks into a bar looking for work. They refuse. We don't hire people. We use a synthesizer now. He leaves. A guy with a guitar case full of weapons walks in after, shoots the place up, says he's going after the guy who owns it because he did him wrong.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I was looking for my next thing, and I opened up Since Cities again, I was like, oh, shit, I know how to do this now. I just did a whole movie on green screen, which was really new back then for Spy Kids 3D because I wanted it in 3D. It was the first digital 3D movie. Because when you're in Austin, you just innovate a lot. George Lucas told me that. He said, it's a good thing you're in Austin.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's why I'm in Marin County. When you live outside of that box, you think outside of that box automatically. You're just going to stumble upon innovations. Yeah. So I thought, I'm going to go take this process and utilize it to make Sin City. So I did a test, a little test of it. I went, oh shit, this is going to work. So it was October when I got that idea. I filmed it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I contacted Frank Miller, met him in New York. I showed him my laptop. It looks like his art, but then it starts moving. It's an actor. And he's like, wow. And he gets all into it, right? It's November. And he goes, um, Oh, no, but then we have to write a script and the studio's going to have notes. No, that's not how it works. I got my own studio. I'll write the script.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's going to be unremarkable. I'm going to copy it right out of your book and I'm going to edit it down. I'm going to edit three of the stories together. I'll write it this month. I'll show it to you in December. And then in January, we'll get a couple of actor friends and we're going to shoot the opening scene as a test. You don't give me the rights yet because I understand this is your baby.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You've never given up the rights. I know what it's like for an artist to make something. Let me take all the risk. I'll go ahead and write the script and We'll shoot the opening scene. I'm going to fly you down so you can watch. We brought Josh Harnett, Marlee Shelton. That opening scene in Sin City, that was our test, 10-hour shoot day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And Marlee Shelton comes up to me and says, why did I hire this guy to kill me? I don't know. Let's go ask Frank. He should know. It's not in the book, but I'm curious myself. So Frank answered her question and said, I want to do this movie. And we had a whole process. I'm going to shoot the opening. I'm going to cut it together. I'm going to put in the effects. I'm going to put in the music.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm going to put in fake titles. Then we're going to watch it. And if you like what you see, then we do the rights and we make the movie. If you don't like it and you're still on the fence about it, just keep it as a short film. Keep the gift. So we committed to the process. We make the opening sequence. He loves it. He wants to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I take it to Bruce Willis first, which was cool about doing it that way, which is unheard of. When I went to his agent, his agent was like, wait, He leans forward very dramatically. You brought actors down. Oh, because I told him, this is Frank Miller. He's one of our greatest artists. He wrote in Hollywood and he got screwed around. And the guy goes, welcome to Hollywood. You know, like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I just thought, hey, you'll be a partner. You're going to co-direct this with me. and we're gonna make this, I'm gonna take all the risks, you're gonna come down, we shot this opening, which I have, I'm gonna show it to Bruce so he can see the book, but then he can see how it gets translated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And the guy gets very dramatic, he goes, wait, you brought the actors down, you shot this, you did the effects for it, and you didn't have the rights? And I leaned in and went, welcome to Texas. All these little monkeys spit out water. Frank was dying. It was super annoying. They said, okay. He saw it. He went, okay, you can go meet with Frank. You can go meet with Bruce.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I showed it to Bruce and he's watching it. He looks at the book and he looks at the thing and he goes, damn, this is really great. And then fake titles come up, his name's in the titles. And I go, look, you have to be in the movie. Your name's in the titles. And he's like, I'm in. So he was in and we were shooting the actual movie by March. Wow. So April, we're already done with it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We're filming the second story by April. It was out the next year. I mean, that's as fast as a movie has ever gone into production. All these actors jumped on right away once we had Bruce. And he loved doing this film noir type thing. And we're doing something very experimental, which is green screen. Nobody knew what green screen back then was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I put those two cards down and I went, okay, that's how a short film would start. But shit, this is a feature. So let me put, it's gonna need like three scenes before. This is how fast you write a script. I wrote that script because it was, again, I'm throwing it away. I'm just gonna make something that I wanna see because no one else is gonna see it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And what I told them was, well, it's kind of like theater. But instead of being in front of a black curtain, you're in front of a green curtain. You'll still have some props. You might have a steering wheel, like Clive just there just had a steering wheel. You might have, but just mainly you and the actors. And everything else goes away. And I'll fill in the blanks.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
later so what's cool is their performances are so focused on each other because there's no other stimulus around that you got these great performances we only built the bar hey frank we'll build the bar so that you have we have a place to hang out with and uh you know do our story meetings but everything else will just be on the same you're going to come see the screen screen when you come visit my studio the whole movie was shot in an area let smaller than this room by the time you bring your lights in where the actors actually had the playground it's unbelievable wow
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That called and said, how did you do that movie? I said, I just put on a DVD. I put all the secrets on there. And they went and they shot the same way. It was such a good movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was an experience for sure. I had a really good plan. And it backfired. So I tried to, right away, when it worked in a different way, I wanted to share that experience. I wrote a book called Rebel Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
No, I was there during it. I remember the studios were just like... we don't understand why this movie's big head. We don't have anything like this coming out except your movie, Desperado, maybe, because Quentin was in it. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we got our pulse on what people want. He was like, we don't know. So I got to tell you really two things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
First of all, George Lucas told me that, and he's like, I showed him the Sin City thing, because we'd both been early adopters of digital, and DP's, directors of photography, didn't want to even look at digital. They were like, They already spent all their time learning film. By sticking your head in the sand and not seeing where the times are going to the detriment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If I can sell it, I'll be paid to practice. So I thought, OK, we got to figure out who this guy is. OK, how about he's a control partner who's coming into town? But wait, who's the guy that shoots the place up? Let's start with him in jail. I read a story about a guy in Mexico who was running his drug business from his jail cell. And he used it as protection. He could walk out at any time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Now the cameras are designed and they don't look as good as they could look. But they weren't a part of the conversation. Rob was shooting my own movies. I wasn't going to let some DP who didn't want to get in digital keep me from making Sin City, so I just shot it myself. I figured it out myself. So I showed it to Lucas. He was like, this movie will show people what digital is capable of.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Finally, more than the Star Wars movies I'm doing because it's just so avant-garde and so crazy looking. But I only made it for me. I really wanted to see it made. I didn't, I literally didn't think it would be successful on its theatrical run. In fact, we didn't even test screen it. They're like, can we do a test screen? I'm like, no. What for? Everybody's going to say it's black and white.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Why is it black and white? Why are there three stories? That's all wrong. It's voiceover. It's all voiceover. That's all wrong. We know it's that way. Why would we go here? People tell us that that's not the way a movie's supposed to be. Let's just put it out. I figure it won't do well theatrically because you'll just see the first trailer and go, okay, black and white. It's not for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's very counterintuitive, which is most of the things I do, just like always go a different way, but they'll find it on video later. And that's, that's good enough for me. But then it was a big hit. Let me tell you about Pulp Fiction because groundbreaking doesn't look groundbreaking to you or anyone around you necessarily when you're doing it. I've forgotten about this, but I journal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I ran across an old journal, and I brought it up to Quentin when I interviewed him for my Director's Chair episode. I have a show called The Director's Chair. I interview writer-directors. His was so big, we did two episodes. We talked about all his movies. And I said, do you remember this time I found in my diary? Right down to the hour. We went out to dinner. I mean, he was so into Pulp Fiction.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Ever since I met him, my next movie's going to be Pulp Fiction. I visited the set. He was into it. He was into it. He finished the movie, and I said, hey, because I live here in Austin. I get to hang out with him except when I go to L.A. How did your movie come out? He goes, it's not the one. It still feels like a movie Quentin would make. I'd be like, what do you mean?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It just doesn't feel like a real movie. It feels like another movie Quentin would make. And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he would put in. It should be different. He's like, man, I just wouldn't have it. It's like two in the morning. I was dropping him off at home after we'd been out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And so I went back to Austin and he had had a screening for all his director friends that I couldn't be at because I lived in Austin. So I called one of them. So how was the screening? He was a little bummed. Nah, this isn't the one for him. I was like, really? Yeah, it's just too... Yeah, it's just not it. And I asked him this and he goes, you're right. You know, he'd forgotten about that moment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He goes, in fact... Yeah, people didn't get it. And in fact, and he didn't get it either. He wasn't sure if it was it. In fact, one filmmaker even said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with this movie. But I'll wait till you get back from Cannes. He goes to Cannes. He wins Cannes. And the friend left him a message. What the hell do I know?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Someone puts a hit on him in jail. He shoots them up, tells the bad guy, I'm coming after you now. I'm coming to your town. I'm going to shoot up your town. He passes the mariachi on the road. The mariachi is a mariachi, the guy who just wants to be a musician. We get to know who he is. And then he walks in the bar. And then the guy comes and shoots the place up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I've only made one movie. Everyone's mind was changed. So he was surprised by it too. So I just want people to hear that because you're making something groundbreaking. It's not like you're going, I'm making something groundbreaking. You don't know that it's going to do that. Sometimes things overperform.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's why if you just commit to a body of work, you're not going to know which one's going to be your Pulp Fiction, which one's going to be your Four Rooms. And if you just do that, because I saw a lot of people get hurt. Like John Carpenter made The Thing. He thought he made a great movie. He thought he made an amazing movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Bombs critics called it pornography at the time if you remember like this the Makeup effects over the audiences didn't go it came out the same weekend Unfortunately as ET right why do we call it pornography just because it was just so self-indulgent and gross and nasty I mean they they really like reamed him to the point. So the special effects.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If you don't remember the time, it was really like that. There was repulsion towards this movie. Wow. I know you don't think that now because 10 years later, and it took 10 years. No, it was not. Wow. 10 years later, it was suddenly considered a classic. Now, if he had committed to a body of work, he would have just let that roll off his shoulders and just don't blink.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But it really fucks you up if you think, my instincts must be off.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's a great fucking movie. It's a great fucking movie, but if no one else is saying that, So I asked Quentin, who... George Lucas had the same thing. He showed famously Star Wars to all his director friends. And they were like, poor George. He's wasted all his time on this movie. And Spielberg was the only one who was like, it's naive. It'll do good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And so I asked Quentin, was there anybody in that director's group? And he goes, yes, there was one. Catherine Bigelow. She was the one who was championed and said, this is something new and different. No one else was saying that. That's pretty amazing, right? That's super amazing. It's really, and I would have forgotten it if I had not written it down.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like his early work was like... That's a... Here's one that fell through the cracks. And I was there at Sony when we were doing Mariachi and Desperado when this movie came out. I remember the marketing team said, we have a really great movie. Unfortunately, no one's going to see it because of the title. So what is it called? Shawshank Redemption. Oh, my God. And it bombed. What?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, now he's got to leave and go to another place. So now he's got to go meet the girl. And because it's a movie about a guitar player, he's got to have some kind of tragic past because Road Warrior had a tragic past. Mad Max, he lost his wife and kid. Oh, my gosh, he has to die because that's going to be every movie is going to be like a sad song in a songbook.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But history gets rewritten. Now, again, you can be Frank Darabont and be, like, really down, but... Fortunately, he didn't have to wait 10 years. As soon as it got to video, it became a phenomenon on video. And now it's considered, if you go on IMDb, it's always neck and neck with The Godfather. It's the best movie of all time. That's the movie nobody saw. So again, look, don't blink.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Commit to a body of work. You may make a classic. It might be the thing, and you're not going to hear about that for 10 years. Just keep going. Don't let it make you question your instincts, because your instincts...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There's a lot of movies that are like... Incredible. That was a time when people could really get a second life on video. Now it's different with streaming and all that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Can you imagine? Just like... I don't know. I thought, you know, as an artist, you're going to be going, I must be wrong. I must have just don't have.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, because if anyone showed up, they would have gone and screamed it to everybody else. Sometimes it's just it's just the way it goes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
it's just it's supposed to go that way now i'm going to give you an alternate one that there's a movie called body parts with a guy named jeff fahey i loved that movie body parts by eric red he did the hitcher he did you would never hear about it because the timing of it and jeff fahey was a big jeff fahey fan Remember in the early 90s, I kept going.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was at my mother-in-law's, and across the street was a dollar theater showing body parts. I'd go every night at 7 p.m. I'd go for a dollar. It was at the second run. And watch it just to hear how an audience responds to it. And he was just great in it. I just felt a connection to this guy. I'd go, I wish I was making movies. That would work with this guy. He's really a cool actor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What is this about? It's about a guy who gets in a car accident, loses his arm, and he's given the arm of a killer just to kind of just replace him. But it... Suddenly he starts doing things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, he was in Lawnmower Man too. Yes. So this should have been something that, you know, was it for him. But this week it came out, they had just caught Jeffrey Dahmer like the week before. So they pulled back on the marketing completely. So no one saw it. And so he didn't get that boost to his career. But the silver lining, the key in the ashes was me. I saw it. every night.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So when I went to do Grindhouse, he retired from acting. He was in Afghanistan. I asked for him to send a tape. He was in Afghanistan? Yeah, he was working, doing work out there. What kind of work? I don't remember. Some kind of, you know, like helping people stuff. He sends me a tape. And so I hire him. I hire him to be in it. And because he was in that movie...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So it kind of just broke that fast. I went and I shot it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
In fact, I'd already hired Michael Biehn. And I went, oh shit, Jeff sent me a thing. God, Jeff's great too. I'll just make them brothers. So they play brothers in Grindhouse. Because he did that movie, he got lost, that show Lost. His whole career came back. So we were talking about it. I just recently was telling him, man, it just came out on 4K. You got to come see.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You've probably never seen it. He goes, I've never seen the finished movie. And I said, you're great in it. I was showing him some scenes. It was blowing his mind. He goes, yeah, this movie didn't do well. I remember now. Why? Because the Jeffrey Dahmer thing just went, that's just how it's supposed to go. But I saw it. And that's why I hired you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And that's how you got that second career later on. Because I was there every night because it was in the Dollar Theater so quick. I wouldn't have been able to afford it any other way. So that's how weird shit happens, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It makes you see that you don't, it's just sometimes that's just how the balls roll, you know?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you have to trust the process. You just have to trust the process. I had someone in the audience recently, I was talking about Brass Knuckle Films and getting everybody all stirred up about it. And one gal goes, you're real positive, but do you have any doubts? I was like, well, I've never been asked that question before. So whenever I don't have an answer, I'll ask them first.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I do this for everything. For everything. I tell people, I do this talk where I, by the end of the talk, I say, I keep these in my... In my bag. It always makes me smile because I know I've made a million dollars with this before.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What do you guys think? What do you guys think? How would you answer? How would you answer that? Do you have doubts? Do you have any human doubts?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So if you're gonna commit to a body of work and not blink, you don't have to worry about that stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. So if you know that's the process, this is my answer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Right. Yeah. So I told her, no, I don't have any doubts. Just to be counterintuitive. And I say, why? Because if you understand the process, why should you have a doubt? You might fail, but it might be four rooms. If you have an instinct to go there... or you don't know how you're going to do it, what's half the battle? Not knowing. That's the magic. I don't have to know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm going to figure it out when I'm almost done. All those things come together.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And because you love it, you probably will have success at it. Yes, yes. Because I'm sure you were drawing, too, you know, in school. I would be drawing all day in school.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'd make these flip cartoon books in the sides of the dictionaries, paper dictionaries, flip cartoon movies. I'd get the dictionary that was biggest and fattest, and I'd make these very elaborate stick figure animations. And everyone in class loved them, and I'd be like, I'm going to be broke. I used to do cartoons.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But did you think you were going to make a career out of that?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
No, of course not. I was thinking, oh my God, I'm going to be so broke. I can't understand what they're talking about. I'm way behind. And I'm not the best artist, so it's not like I'm going to Like I'm some protege or something. So I'm fucked. But that's ended up being my career was just doing that stuff because you love it so much.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Rubber bands. I gave this in a cool little leather bag for my kids one Christmas. I thought they would say, what's this shit? They loved it. I said, you can change your life with this thing. Because a lot of times, you know, you go to therapy not for answers. You go for questions. We have the answers inside us. Usually we ask ourselves terrible questions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I ask people, if you want to find what you're passionate, what is that thing that you run off to do on the weekend?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You put stuff together. Suddenly opportunities are going to fall in. In your lap.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So this is what I applied it to because I'd forgotten this lesson, which was... Just say you're this person. Stop aspiring. Right. Our words we use are so powerful. If you say, well, you know, I'm probably not going to be successful. That's your lot in life. You just you just did that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I had a friend of mine. I mean, like I, I always hated working out. I didn't follow any sports, didn't know sports. in high school, they'd go, we need you. It's a small school. We need you on the team. Look, you're tall and everything. You play basketball. I don't know how to play any of these things. I hate working out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There's a line in the faculty that I gave to Elijah Wood because that was my line to teachers when they'd make me want to run and go, I don't think a person should run unless he's being chased. And they would leave me alone. But I hated it. And so then I became a filmmaker and Oh, when I was a cartoonist, my back kept going out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
19, I'm like, have a cane, and my back would be out for like a month, because I would sit at the kitchen table drawing. I was so tall that it was just, it would throw my back out. I would just, disc would go out. And then when I started filmmaking, Every year we just go out like clockworks. I'm operating the camera. I'm operating the Steadicam.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And when I was doing, you know, Spy Kids 2, I think, with Ricardo Montalban had a bad back that he got surgery and it fucked him up. And he was in a wheelchair. He was paralyzed. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm with a walker because my back went out and he goes, Robert, I'm 84 years old. What's your excuse? You got to work out, Robert. He was always in shape, Ricardo.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That chest in Star Trek II, that's his chest. Yeah, God. I know, and he was in his late 60s or his mid-60s.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he went to a good place, but they just hit something wrong. They fucked him up. It happens to so many people. So I go, okay, I don't want that to happen to me. But I don't know how to work out. So the next year I worked with Stallone. Class Stallone. I got to get in shape because my back keeps going out. And I don't like to work. He goes, get thee a trainer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Anyone you've ever seen in Hollywood who got in shape, they had a trainer. What about you? Oh, I need a trainer. You need a trainer. Well, then if you need a trainer, Mr. Rocky... What chance do us mortal men have? So I hired a trainer. And guess what happened? Hated it. Hated it. I'd hide from the guy. He'd come to my house. I'd pay him not to show up. I'd hate it. I'd hide. I'd hide.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'd call in sick. And then when he did get me, I'd be like half-assed in the workouts, you know, because I hated it. And then one year, it was just torture. I knew I had to do it, but... So this is my point, is that sometimes it's not a lack of desire. So when people really want to become something and not get in it, it's not because they have to change their minds.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The therapist asks you questions like, why didn't they make you feel? Why did you do that? What's going on? If we do our own questions like, what's next? What goes before this? Your mind comes up with the answer if you ask the right question. So I've used this for like, we usually ask unempowering questions.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There's something that goes with it. I have plenty of desire. I was painting this guy. I wanted to get in shape. I didn't want my back going out anymore. I had the desire. I was missing another key element. that I figured out, and it's a lesson I already knew, which was stop aspiring, but I forgot it. So this woman, a friend of mine from Mexico shows up. She's a production manager.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I said, well, you're gonna go back to smoking because you just told me that's your identity. You've been doing it since you were eight. So right now you're a smoker. who's not smoking, eventually you're going to conform to their identity. You have to change your identity. You have to say, I'm a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. Because what does a non-smoker do? They hate smoke.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They get sick of the smell of smoke. She was like, okay, I'll try it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
She really talks like that. So then I go, wait a minute. Shit, I used to apply to filmmaking, but that's all I was back there. Where else in my life can I do a 180? And it's got to be a 180. Because if it's just a matter of degrees, it's bullshit. It's much easier if it's just opposite day. So I went, oh my God, working out. I hate working out. Of course I hate working out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because I tell my trainer and everyone who will listen how much I hate it. I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. The last thing I would ever call myself, Mr. Cartoon Guy. I'm an athlete. By the next day. What does an athlete do? Loves to work out. Makes time to work out. Eats right. And it's got to be opposite day. It's much easier.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
One goes to lay on the couch and they just kind of, no, I'm going to go work out. Or there's a donut. Not going to cut it in half and eat half. That's bullshit. Those degrees fuck you up. Opposite day. There's a donut? No, I'm going to reach for an apple. Not only was I able to work out, this was 14 years ago. I didn't need a trainer again, ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I would just be like making myself do it because I'm an athlete. That's how powerful the mind is. So I'm saying if someone says, oh, I want to go do this thing on the weekend. You might have the desire, but you've got to get the identity too. You've got to say you are that. And it sounds a little awkward. Like I asked somebody, Alex Friedman, I said, do you consider yourself a creative person?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he went, well, you know. That's a good impression. I said, you're stuttering there, man. You're stuttering, you're stuttering. He goes, I know, I know. I said, no, no, no, you got to say, are you technical? He goes, yeah. Okay, you're technical and creative. That was the first thing that stuck in my ear. It's also what Jim Cameron is. It's also what George Lucas is. Technical and creative.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
When I first had my first job, my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop. And he said, go work for my friend Mario for your summer job when I was 16. I went to work for Mario.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
processing film for photos and he gave me a camera and film and said go home and take pictures with this because i need to know how to use that camera so you can help me sell the cameras so i went home and i'm from a family of nine kids i mean 10 kids nine siblings taking all these pictures of them doing cool stuff go back he looks at the pictures and he goes whoa these are really creative you're creative
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You know, the words we use in ourselves are so important, but some of the questions like, why am I such a loser? Well, I can give you 10 answers right now. But if I change it to, what three things could I come up with to start this week that would not just change my life, but everyone around me? You don't come up with three. You come up with like 15. You just keep coming out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You gotta now learn how to be technical, because most creative people always need technicians, and technicians always need creative people. Now it's against your, it's just a gift you have. They can never really be creative, they'll just be technical, but because you have creativity, if you apply yourself, it's against your nature, but if you apply yourself and learn the technical part,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
you'll be technical and creative, and you'll be unstoppable. And I was like, whoa, unstoppable at 16. He goes, here, go, go. I know, sometimes, and I'm going to ask you about who did that for you. Who was, because if you look at, all the different turning points in your life, there was probably somebody who sent you in a direction. It comes through them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because if I were to go back and ask that guy, hey, that advice you gave me, he'd be like, what did I say? I don't remember saying that. It kind of just came through him at the time. So he pointed me that way. And that's why I went and made a mariachi by myself. I didn't want to take anybody because I wanted to learn. I didn't know how to use that camera.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
your i need list if you make a list of all the things you need before you can make your dream happen the longer that list is the less that's going to happen you got to reduce it down to nothing me my hands my bootstraps this camera i'm going to figure it out on the day be technical and creative so i told lex now you got to own it when i say are you creative yeah i'm creative And I'm technical.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I don't blink. I'm gonna create a body of work. He's like, walks out of there supercharged.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And it's nice to be self-deprecating. It's kind of a joke. A little bit. But the words you use in yourself are very powerful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The words you use, and you're doing that to yourself. Yeah. The guy throwing cabbages at you on stage... Look close. It's fucking, it's you. You're doing that to yourself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I talk to some of my kids and we just laugh about it. I go, okay, when shit fucks up, when shit's not going right, Don't be down about it. Don't feel like you're in a slump because now you just stuck yourself in a grave and it's gonna be hard to climb out. Right. When shit isn't going right. Oh, the tire's flat. Oh, I got fired. I call that baseline. You're at baseline. Anything above baseline.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like this right now, we're here having this great talk. This is way above baseline. I'm on the Joe Rogan show. So way above baseline. Celebrate that shit because it's not always there. Don't say that you're going to go down. You're just going to go to baseline. It's much easier to accept and then you're not in a negative position. You're just kind of at a normal.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm at a normal, and I'll really appreciate when anything above baseline happens. My daughter and I are about to go play an arena show. She's going to sing. I'm going to play with my band. I told her, way above baseline. We're going to get a nice hotel. We're going to really celebrate this because this shit doesn't always happen. And when everything is going really, really wrong, baseline.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Only when things are really down would you call yourself low, and you don't want to do that. Otherwise, you'll stay there for a much longer time. If you're just at baseline, that's just life. Oh, yeah, I tried to go make that movie and it didn't work. Baseline. That's such solid advice. It's really, it's mindset. It's all mind. It's all stuff you're doing to yourself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And as you look at them, you go, these kind of go together and are actionable. I can actually start this right now. I mean, you can literally change your life. Business ideas, movie ideas, stories, just with a deck of cards. By the time I build up and show all the examples of it at the end of the talk, I hold up one of these with the rubber bands to the crowd.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And these are things I like to pass on to people because when they come back and give it back to me, I don't know if you'd give your kids advice as you learn it because you learn so much. You've got the best job in the world. You're learning all day. Yeah. I bet you don't know if it's going to stick with them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was shocked how much stuff not only sticks, but they come back and they feed it back to me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What is his name? He was working at the Sony when I first got there for... and I was like, this kid, and there are people my age who are assistants, and he was like, falling asleep at his desk. And I'm like, why are you falling asleep? And he goes, I'm trying to get off coffee. And I was like, oh my God, I'm never going to get on coffee. I want those guys getting their hooks in me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And then over the years, you see like Starbucks showing up and everybody like zombies going in there having to get their coffee. As I drink some right now. It's fucking all marketing. It's made to be addictive, like nicotine and all that. And then your body can't create that. And I already stay up for days as it is. I don't want anything like that. Do you really?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
what's your favorite workout music mine yeah clan i just did i just did a i love classic stuff like van halen and stuff but i just did a music video for wolfgang van halen and uh we shot it in two days and i was up two days cutting it because i just wanted to see what was going to happen next two days two days i was just like i want to see what happens next you don't even notice my shoulder is getting all up and i'm like what's wrong with my shoulder did i pull a muscle and doing some shrugs or something i was like
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I went back to sit in that chair. I was like, oh, because I've been sitting like this for two days. Sitting just doing this. That's insane. But it's really cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's different with editing. Editing is a weird – I was thinking that as I was doing it. I go, I wish I could do this with writing where I could just write for two days straight. But your words will knock me out, put me to sleep after a while. Editing is just visual stimulus, and you're so excited. I kept going, okay, one more hour, one more hour. And you just can't stop.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You just can't stop because now you're seeing it. It came out so cool. It's going to drop like next week. It rips your head off. It's a great workout song for sure, but it's just really entertaining.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The kid's telling me he does all the instruments himself. Really? Yeah, he plays every instrument. He plays the drums, the bass, the guitar, sings, writes the songs. When he goes on tour, he takes this really great band with him because he can't play all the parts. But the albums, his third album, he's working on his... plays all the instruments.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I say, who wants to change your life? Everybody's hands go up. I toss one out. They catch it. In fact, I remember my nephew about seven years ago caught one. And it's funny because he's on Broadway now. It's just like lets you map out your life. Another friend of mine, DJ Catrone, he's an actor, he caught one, and he said, wow, that talk you gave was so empowering on how you wrote it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Super talented. Really, really fun. But I like working with people who just do more than other people. They're just at that level, and it's so inspiring. It inspires you. It's fuel.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You have to. And it's like, you know, your parents tell you, Careful who your peers are when you're younger because it means one thing. Oh, yeah. But later even more. Like when I started going to the film festival and there's Quentin. And then I meet Jim Cameron. And then you meet like George Lucas. It's like you can't hang with these guys if you're not accomplishing something. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So then when they say, hey, what are you up to? Well, I'm down in Texas and I got my own studio and I'm pioneering digital filmmaking and green screen technology. I want to make the first digital 3D movie. And they go, oh, okay, cool. I'm like, okay, I can hang out here for a while. God, I got to be doing something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But still, compared to what they're doing, you know, when I first met Jim Cameron.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
When I first met Jim Cameron. That's why you don't want to be around people who you're the best. You're better, you know. Right. You want to be the one that they're swinging higher than you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So surround yourself with those people and do something so that they let you hang with them. But you want to learn. Like here's to Jim Cameron, for instance, when I met him. I really wanted to impress the hell out of him. So I said... I'm about to go do Desperado and I can't afford a steadicam operator.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I took a three day, three day steadicam course and I'm going to operate it myself on the movie. I'm going to operate the steadicam, that big beast of a camera. And he went, I bought a Steadicam, but not to operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one. So I was like, that's completely who he is. Us mere mortals are like trying to operate the thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He's designing whole new systems. And if you think of it, that's very consistent with who he is. That's the person you want to hang out with. Not someone, the guy had said, oh, me too. I'm doing the same thing. Didn't he go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or some shit in a summary that he designed? Yeah, it's on his desk. It's like this big on his desk, this green machine.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I was looking at it going like, weren't you afraid? I mean, I've got kids and wife. You've got kids and a wife. Weren't you afraid of going down that deep and something happening? He was like, no. I said, why not? Oh, I designed the escape vehicle. If any other bozo had done it, I'd be afraid because he did it. He had all the confidence in the world. Talk about Simon and no doubt. No doubt.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's him though. It's like, yeah, if someone else had designed this escape vehicle, I'd be afraid. But no, I did it. So he had no pause at all. That's so crazy. So that's kind of confidence. That's the people you want to hang out with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It changes your perception of life. And by osmosis, you pick up, I call it this proximity phenomenon. I took a painting class with Sebastian Kruger, a painter in Germany. I saw this class that he gives for a week. I went, I'm going to go do that class. Not to learn how to paint so much. I know I'll be a better director by learning paint because it's another way into creativity.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Again, you just want to get better at creativity. So just do as many jobs as you can that you're interested in. Because if you just do one job, you barely know that job. You have to do all these other ones to kind of inform it. So I went out there. He doesn't teach you anything. He just paints.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'll show you the examples before and after just by, I thought for sure I did a pre-painting before we went out there. It looks like crap. I went, I don't know what brushes he's using and the kinds of paints. It's a different method. He must have some trick. I go and he's painting this amazing Mick Jagger photo reel in front of us and we all can paint alongside him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I went home, and I picked up an old script I hadn't picked up in a while, and I just cut off the phone for three days, and I finished it. And I said, you finished a script in three days? I like the feedback loop that happens when you inspire somebody. I'm going to try that, because I've got a bunch of half-baked ideas that I've never gone and done that with. You did it in three days? Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I go, what paint are you using? It's regular paint. What brushes are you using? Regular brushes. How come I can't do that? I go back and suddenly it's a different painting. I'm going to try one more. It's more photo real. When I show it to you, it's going to blow you away. It looks like I dropped the brush. I was like, holy shit. It's because I finally given myself permission to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because you have the ability, but you're blocking it because you go, I don't know. I don't know. There's something I don't know. So again, you're just chopping off your own leg. And by being around somebody who's doing it at that level, suddenly you can do it too. It's like breaking the M field. Like as soon as I made mariachi, no one had ever done anything like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Suddenly there's 10, 12, 13 movies made, you know, very low budget because they go, oh, it's possible. Now suddenly you can do it too. And when it's in the room, when you're right near it, it's just a phenomenon that you can just glean off them without them teaching you anything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Just recently. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't read it since I wrote it. And I had forgotten a lot of the details. And now I can see why it inspired so many people, because it... You know, when you're in your early 20s, six months feels like six years. Right. So when you read it now and go, oh, my God, from inception to making it penniless by myself to Toast of the Town, it's like that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Just by being around and seeing how they move through the world and seeing they've accomplished and that they're regular people that are just accomplishing at a high level. It just blows your mind. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I love what you've built. You've come here, you've only been here like four years, and you've already built this whole community.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, if you shut the phone off, you can do it in three days. And now that movie's out. It's coming out. It's called Fight or Flight with Josh Hartnett. Wow. After hearing the talk, he went and picked up this old thing that he thought. And I get this a lot when I've talked to people. It's really inspiring to them to hear other people. That's why I'll ask you questions about it too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I believe that. It's just you're stumbling upon these ideas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I tell people that after Mariachi, it's like, I never thought I could get into the industry because I didn't live in L.A. and you need contacts and all that. So I just, you know, again, I made a practice film. But then when it got bought and it was getting released... And in one Sundance, my practice film, I thought, I don't have to move to LA. But they won't even know I'm not there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Between an airplane flight and FedEx, I'll just stay here in Austin. So for the past 35 years, people are like, why do you live in Austin? I don't understand. It's like, now they're all moving here. But it's because you could just think outside of the box here. So, yeah, I would tell people, filmmakers who all thought they needed to move to L.A., stay where you are.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Build up your community around you. We built this amazing community of filmmakers here. All they made here were westerns before that. Suddenly I was making Spy Kids, Sin City, you know, these crazy movies that really changed. The ripple effects to the whole community is huge because you're changing the workforce. Yes, exactly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And so you just by doing that thing and it's like it isn't like an instinct. It's like it's preplanned. It's like it's pre laid out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I tell my artists when you come to my house, you're going to feel it. You'll feel like these connections. And I go, I think we realize we're not that smart. You know, we're not smart enough to predict all that stuff. I think we've lived this life many times before and we forget a lot of it. So we have a barely impersonate impression of what we're supposed to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But it's because we did it a thousand times and we forgot it each time. Like a dream when you wake up from a dream. That might be true. Because, you know, you wake up from a dream and you go, I was a filmmaker in that dream and I had five kids. You know, that's what it's going to be like when our life is over.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You'll wake up and it'll be like your past lifetime just goes away and then you can go start again and only now you're a fish or something. But I had this thought, wow, what if I wake up and I can barely remember the dream? And that's it because it feels like sometimes you feel like you can predict the future but not like you can predict it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You recognize it once it happens like, oh, yeah, this is right. But how did I know to go this way? I didn't on purpose. Like you said, I didn't set all the things that needed to fall into place. They're too coincidental. What is that about? So that's why even more, just follow your instinct. Follow your instinct even if it sounds bonkers. Follow it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And if it fails, keep going because there might be your four rooms or something. Just keep going.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, it's like high school. You go back to, you know, someone famously leaves high school and goes off to college and goes off and sees the world. They come back to their old hometown and they find their old friends still driving the same streets.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They're still doing the same shit the same way. And you just went off the reservation and discover a whole world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What do you mean by being on television? You mean like sitcoms and stuff?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It seems like it's come back the other way. So many comics have such great, like Netflix specials are massive. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's basically them doing stand-up, but... they've got a huge audience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Everyone's waiting. You get a lot more done. I was cranky. Sometimes I'd have two movies out a year. I would be making that so fast because I just had a studio where it's like, let's just make more stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Way better. Yeah. That's why it's like I try to create original franchises. Because if you go direct one of the James Bonds, you're one of the James Bond director. But if you create your own franchise, like a Spike, it feels so much better. Right. When that's successful and someone says, wow, I really like that movie, you go, oh, I did that voice. That's you. Oh, my God. I grew up with that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You know, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a homemade movie. You know, so it's much more gratifying. And, yeah, I did the right thing by moving out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was part of a graphic novel series. Yes. You got to come to my studio. That whole set.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That city is still in my parking lot. Really? 20-foot ceilings, seven streets. It's like the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you're going to go like, okay, because I'm putting you in a movie. Okay. Because talking about what you just said about how people are different here, I just started a... A new label. Like the label I gave myself, I'm an athlete. When you create a label, it's a business thing too. What a label is, is a filter. So I'm doing an action slate.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So that already you get a bunch of ideas because it's just action. An action slate of four pictures. It's called Brass Knuckle Films. And you're going to be in the first one because I'm going to direct the first one. I've already got which one it is. I'll show you. It's a great part for you. You're going to come to the studio and I'll tell you about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But Breast Knuckle Films is cool because it's the first time that it's an investable. Film Slate. So fans can invest in a movie. They get perks and stuff, but it's not crowdsourcing or crowdfunding. Like you can get killed in the movie if you put in a certain amount of investment. But what's cool about it, I just want the audience to win because audience is an afterthought.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like you say, you go to the studios and the people in Hollywood and you go, they barely even watch movies. And then you come meet the real audience and they're so into it. They're so...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
behind it's like where's your cut of it studios only show up to an audience at the end when they want you to go get your friends to come spend money on their overpriced movies so i'm going to do this thing where even at 250 a lowest level you put into this thing any of the four movies one of which i'm going to direct for sure producing all of them they're troublemaker to keep the cost down so they go to profit sooner any one of these movies success you you share in that success all the way through sequels
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And for even the $250, anyone who puts money in, you get to have that proximity effect because we have a whole group together.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And everybody gets to pitch their action movie idea. And I'm committed to making at least one of the movies on the slate from a fan investor's idea. So not only will you be...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
an investor but you'd be a creator so we're almost already topped out we're we're gonna hit our we still have 20 days left and it's going to surge again we're going to raise like 1.5 million development funds and we're yeah we're almost at a million already 22 days left so i'm telling everybody who's listening come in at the lowest level just be part of our community because
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Writers will often put index cards up to just kind of block out a scene. It's a visual way to see your story. Like when you lay it out and you go, oh, this works. I'm missing a section here. But again, like this is asking you, what can I put there? you'll come up with a bunch of ideas. It almost gives you like an overview. But I started it when I was a cartoonist. I had a daily cartoon strip.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
$250. But, you know, you make that back on success of any of the movies. That's awesome. And it just hedges your bets. And it's just action because there's always an appetite for action. Like if you ask Netflix right now what kind of movies do they need, they'll say action, action, action. We don't have enough action.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And internationally, so we're going to make the thing that people always buy, and they're also really fun to make, and you're going to be perfect in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And it's right up your alley. Yes. It's about... The barbarian is actually the one who's got code.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And all the bigwigs are the ones that are like fucking crooked and shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's just so classic. And the barbarians. That guy was from Texas. The guy, Robert E. Howard from Texas. Outside of Dallas. Back where I have a house where I made all these movies. It's in the land that he looked over and saw and said, that's Samaria. That's where Conan's from. So I always felt this connection. I wanted to do Conan. So I almost did a Conan movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We were going to do kind of like what we did with Alita. I said, dude, let's do a Conan movie and we'll make it look like the paintings. Technology wasn't there yet. And I ended up doing Sin City instead. I had already written – it was going to be three movies. So he does different occupations.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's kind of built like a James Bond series, you know, where you follow him on his different – so it starts with him as a thief. And the second movie is him as a buccaneer mercenary. Okay. And the third one is when he becomes king. So the actor can grow with the role. You know, like you took Daniel Craig and started him in Casino Royale, and by the end, he's no time to die.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You got to get an actor who does the whole journey. So I had a whole trilogy marked out. Let's go, dude. I know. Let's go. Netflix had it. I went and pitched it to them, and they let the rights lapse. Sometimes it's too much baggage for a character.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's probably a painting called Chains. Is that the one with the chains?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Or is it the one where he's- There's a bunch of the- He named them different than the books because of the copyright issue.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So whatever's on the cover, you'll find the cover of it, but the painting itself might have a different name.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I would draw on different cards, different drawings. And every day I had to come up with a comedic idea and a drawing and a story. And it was tough. You'd have to draw it out. And you would sometimes make two drawings that you really liked and go, oh, this kind of is the setup. One, two, three, pay off for the joke here. And they'd come up with it like that. So I kind of use it for everything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And it's still imitated today. He has this very triangular way of composing that tells a story. The posters still look like this. Look at the one with the snake. Again, if you see the triangular design, your eyes go immediately to the snake and then down to him. It tells a whole story. I have a theory of why his art is the way it is. Now, you know, I knew him. Did I tell you? Really? Okay.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So first you get to Hollywood, right? So I'm just this kid who's an artist. You get to Hollywood, first thing you want to do is work with all your heroes. So Dust Till Dawn, I said, I want to work with Frazetta. Because he used to do some movie posters, like The Gauntlet with Clint Eastwood. That gauntlet, when he did, was really nice. Look up The Gauntlet, Clint Eastwood, Frazetta. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And so I called him and he said, yeah, I'll do it. In fact, when I showed him the movie, he goes, where'd you find this gal? And I said, yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I wanted to get that for Dust Till Dawn, right? So he said, where'd you find this gal? I wish I had a gal like that to paint. She's based on all your paintings. The girl that's always in your paintings, I made Salma dressed like that because it's a Frazetta come to life. He goes, oh, that's all you need on the poster. I go, well, you had to draw the other actors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So when you come to the house, you'll see the painting he did. It was the year he got his first stroke. So it took him, by the time I got the painting, we'd already made posters. We thought, okay, it's not going to come. And then it showed up at the last minute. But we gave it away at comic book stores. But it's really cool. But at the bottom of the painting, there's some of the actors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He didn't even paint Harvey Cattell. He just like, the other actors, Quentin. And then instead of vampires, he just did his monkey dudes. He always does. And it's really cool. It's really cool. But I got to know him and I got to go visit his studio because we kind of, again, it's that similar mindset. And I didn't realize he had all his originals. I see that little monkey dudes on the bottom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He had all his originals next to his house in his museum. Like all those that you were just looking at. They were all there. I didn't realize as an illustrative artist, sometimes you don't own your own material. He made it a point to own his own originals. So, like, the ones you just were salivating over, those were in my house. Wow. I wish I knew you seven years ago. Damn.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because his kids... Oh, my God. His kids are so impassioned about the art. Even his granddaughter, Sarah Frazetta, she has Frazetta Girls. This is... They're so always, you know...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
bringing up his legacy and keeping it alive so cool but I really wanted to go do like a Conan type movie or a John Carter I wanted to do one based on Fire and Ice which is the only one he had actually it was an animated film thought well maybe if Conan's been used too much Let's do Fire and Ice as a movie because he worked on that as an animated film. I just want his paintings to move.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like add Frank Miller's art move. I want Frazetta's paintings to move because he was transporting us to another world that we all recognized. If you could make that Conan with the sword.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, they've never seen it like that. Yeah. But the thing is, it's like- And look, that's not a guy that's just been in a gym. Right. He looks like a freaking beast. He's been swinging a sword and cutting off heads. And with technology, you can do that. So that's why I'd gotten Jim interested in this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's kind of a more visual kind of person. So it helps you visually see something that's normally like written words and stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And because it was done that way first, like with Arnold in it, people just figured, oh, we'll just hire a bodybuilder to be a barbarian-type character from then on. But to do it really like that, he's more like a James Bond character. You know, he goes from movie to movie. Yes. And he's really fucking smart. Yes. And he's just... No, but I got to meet Frazetta. So keep that up for a second.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I went to his... We talked about his paintings and how he did it, and I got a theory on how he did this. But... When I went and saw the originals, like, holy shit, you got all the originals. how did you make the, and he really loved to live life. Like he'd go play golf, he'd go play baseball. He'd get an assignment and he'd wait till the last minute and go and paint it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So what happens when you wait till the last minute, you have to just open up the pipe and let it through, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I think that's why we all know this place, you know, collectively dream, you know, Jim Cameron would come over to my house, you know, Del Toro, George Miller, John Favreau, to see these originals in person. When you see them in person, it blows your mind. It feels like you're being transported.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I think because he did them at the last minute, they just came from the universe because that's why people were related. People would just buy these paperbacks for the art. Yes. This, this Conan was created in the thirties.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Books came out in the sixties. Right. They didn't become a big hit till these books came out because of the art. Exactly. And then when you read the stories, the stories were really great, but they got them for the art. A hundred percent. And he was showing me his, his, his layout of paintings. And he went two days, one day, three days, four days, two days. I was like, holy shit. Just locked in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Just locked in. And it's just coming out because he had to. And his wife would say, yeah, his pain was still wet when I was taking it to get shipped because he would wait till the last minute. But these masterpieces would come out. And I just was really inspired by him. So when he passed away, his kids said, what should we do with the art? I said, well, let's make a movie based on the art.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Who's got this now? They've sold some of them. Frank Jr. still has the museum up there. He still has a lot of the masterworks. Each kid has some of the masterworks. And and they're all great and keeping his legacy going. And I want to make a movie about it just to get his name back up. You know, we're blown. We were all inspired by him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
How did he find out about those books? I think it was just an assignment. And he would barely read the book. He would just be like, ah, he would just do his own thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And those paintings and those books, no matter, even the best art book today. When you see the original, they cannot capture what the original has. You'll be blown away. I've got like 14 different Frazettas that you've got to come see.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Especially as an illustrator, you're going to freak out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Just pan over to the left, and it's on the left side. I saw it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Oh, fix your life completely because there's another question. It's just questions you're asking yourself. And the amazing thing is once you start doing stories – that's why I like doing a lot of original franchises. I probably made the most original franchises of a film because I don't usually direct other people's stuff – Because you realize you're creating this story.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The kids said, can you take our paintings for us and show them to influential people? Because hurricane season's coming. They lived in Florida. And we don't want anything to happen. They're insured, but fucking they could be gone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was like, fuck yeah, I'll take them to my house. So for a year and a half, I had these... The barbarian one you were just, the one with the sword stand?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I would have everyone who came to South by Southwest or was just in town, they'd come to my house and make a pizza and we would just stare and drool over the Frazettas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It just was dream imagery. It's like you knew what dreams were.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It would feel like we dreamt this, too, and recognized it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, you know, skinny little kid, and you're going like, is that what I'm going to be when I grow up?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I don't know if you've ever read these books, but they were based on, these comics, they were based on the books that would just translate the books.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
um there was a comics code so the conan the barbarian comic had to follow the code but then there's a black and white magazine called savage sword of conan oh i read those they didn't have to follow the code right that's why people would get killed and they would just and roy thomas would just like take the book and put the book in several chapters yeah they were brutal they're really great yeah that's what size grew up without drawing out of that learning how to draw anatomy from the conan book
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They weren't brutal because they had a comics code.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, look at the one where he's nailed to the cross. That's Boris Vallejo.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Oh, this is a great Frazetta story. He's another one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He came out later in the 70s, so this is a great Frazetta story. Several of his paintings, when you see them, they're not very big a lot of times because they were for paperbacks, so they didn't have to be that big. But then there were some, like in the early 70s, that were big. Silver Warrior, Atheist Corps. And I asked Frazetta, I said... What was this era here?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because a lot of these were in the 60s. What's these four bigger ones you did? What was that for? He goes, oh, they were saying I was washed up, that I was finished. It's because Boris Villarreal was coming out, and they're like, oh, he's the new Frazetta. So I did one, two, three, four beauties, shut them all up. That was so cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like, I just made this guy's destiny happen. And I can give him a good outcome or a bad outcome. It's in my control. And you realize you can do that with your own life. So you're writing the story of your own life of who you're going to become, who you're going to be. And as a parallel. And you realize you've got that power.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But you could, you know, I love his art, but you could almost feel the model in it. You could almost see that there was a model he was painting from.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, Frazetta was the Jimmy Page of arts. Everybody wanted to be him. Right, exactly. So you couldn't unsee Frazetta's work when you were doing your own work.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Oh, and the one in the far bottom left is the first issue of Savage Sword. Oh, wow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, I thought that was cool. Yeah. But it doesn't come close to, you know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was just the way he did them. Yes. There's some magic to them. And I'll show you a couple of things that will blow you away when you see them in person. But the in-person thing will really floor you. Just how much even the best books cannot capture the art as it exists. I'm sure. I saw your gym. Your gym is awesome. I thought I had the best gym ever.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You've got a great gym, but I got one thing you don't got. You got to come see. What? I don't have mirrors up. You don't have mirrors on purpose? It's because I just have the original Drew Struzan painting for First Blood Stallone. Oh, wow. Because it's got glass over it. You can kind of see yourself in it. But I just stand in front and I go, I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
To see for form. I can kind of see the form. But that's my mirror when you come. It's the Stallone painting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But it doesn't capture the painting at all. Even this digital copy of it. Like, look at the original poster of it that has the writing on it. The way they printed it was like ass. Look at that thing. So when you see the original one, you're like, oh, my God, this is like fine art. And that still doesn't capture it. But it's closer than the poster.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And then when you see the physique that he has, you're just like, okay, I'm going to work harder. Yeah. But that's in my gym, so you've got to come check that out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And when you realize you've got that power, you can make literally anything happen. And you realize art and life should be the same. You know, so many people, I was telling this story to somebody and they said, wow, you're really positive. And that kind of makes a lot of sense. You know, I have a project that's pretty much all together. Almost the pieces are there. But I guess I'm just not ready.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What's your workout routine? How often do you get to work out?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I do the thing, this might inspire some people, like- So I don't have a trainer, but I like watching other people see what they do in their routine, so I adopt some of that. I saw Josh Brolin all freaking in shape for the Deadpool movie, and I was like, dude, I texted him, what is your workout? Oh, I'll send it to you. He sends me a PDF of his whole workout routine that the trainers had given him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's intense. It was like, okay, if I do one-fourth of this, I'll have a quarter of his results. I'm fine with that because I don't have this shit to do anyway. So I would be in and out of there in a half hour. So you don't have to commit all the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
As long as you're doing something, you're getting up and you're working out and you're doing it very strategically, if you don't have a lot of time, there's no excuse. You can get a lot done in a short amount of time. Reverse pyramid train or something. Yeah.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. I like when I hear stuff like that. I try it. I just roll it into the routine and give it a try. Yeah. Because you don't know what's going to work for you. There's no one right way to do anything. So I try to just get advice and adopt it. I had this funny Stallone once. Have you ever had Stallone on the show? No. He's a great interviewer.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
My best interview on the director's chair is him because it's the most one that any layman could identify with. The guy really is rocky. His story is unbelievable and he's really funny. I interviewed him before for the UFC.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He called me and said, he asked if an actor friend of mine could be in one of the Expendables. He's like, my actor fell through. Can you ask, what's his name? You know, friend of mine. Yeah, I'll ask. So I asked my friend. My friend goes, oh, no, it's too short notice, you know, because it was a last minute replacement. I need to get in shape. Okay, that makes sense. But it's not a physical role.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You're just wondering, I wouldn't want to be in a Stallone movie and not be in shape. So I have to get in shape. and I don't have enough time. I'm just going to shoot in a week. So I go to Sly, and I say, Sly, he said, I figured Sly would understand. Yeah, he has to get in shape.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was probably for Copland. No, it wasn't for Copland.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That did such a great interview because I watched the Rocky movies. When was the last time you saw the Rocky movies?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's going to be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. You can't wait to go do it. Like, life, you don't know what's going to happen. You wanted to work out today. What happens? Bunch of shit, right? Got in the way. Your tire's flat. Fires went up. You just got fired. You're not ready for life. You're like this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah. And you're working the body and you're getting ideas. And I keep my computer there and I write down ideas. Oh, nice. Did you see the – I was watching the Rocky movies again. And I was like, we watched the first one. Showed it to my lady. She loved it. So I said, we've got to watch the second one. Watch the second one. The next night we watched the third one.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Finally, we got to the fourth one. I said, okay, I'm going to write Stallone. I said, dude, you are consistently moving that character through the different eras, and You need to go back to directing because when I worked with him, he'd done a bunch of movies in the 90s and he was telling me why the movies didn't work. I said, you got to go back to directing. No one was at your level.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Directing yourself, getting career bests out of your other actors while you're also not just the star but the franchise and being in insane shape back then, which was way before anyone knew anything about training. You were probably in the gym much longer than you needed to be. And he said, very perceptive. I was like, you probably were way over training because people didn't know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There were no science to it back then. Right. And getting all that work done. So how can you work with another director now? They can have their respect. You got to go back to directing because you can't argue with the result. And he was like, I can't go back to directing. Well, we did this movie together. It was his biggest opening ever with Spy Kids 3D.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Two years later, or a year later, he goes, I'm writing another Rocky. And that was that new Rocky. He hadn't directed in 22 years. Whoa. He went back to directing and writing, did another Rocky, another Rambo, and then a whole new franchise, Expendables.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But for some reason, people or artists think that they need to be ready to create art. It's like, no, you've got to jump in and just start. You just need to start. You're not going to really feel ready until you're almost done with a project. I didn't feel ready to make that $7,000 movie until the last few days when I was like, okay, now I wrap my head around it. I have to figure it out day by day.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
crazy like for your career to come back like that did stunts and expendables and broke his fucking crazy but because he went back and that's sometimes you know that's the key to successes yeah it's late 60s and i said yeah he's doing his own stunts it's harder to go do it all yourself but look you can't argue with the results look at the results you got back then
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm so glad he went back to it because it inspires me all over again. So, you know, I'm sure you've done that. Someone that really inspired you. I want to know who are your heroes that you got to inspire back in some way. And then you're just like, oh, my God, they inspired me so that I could be here for them when they needed to hear that to go on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was unbelievable. I couldn't wait to shout from the rooftops to all the other filmmakers like me who thought they couldn't get in how I did it exactly. I wrote a book about it. And I'd read it now and I'd go, oh my God, this is an impossible story. I keep laughing during the audiobook going, okay, what you're reading right now never happened before and it never happened again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was like all part of the universe of that creativity. You know, you're the one who goes whispers in their ear. Another one with him because he inspired me, you know, so many times was. I started working with my kids more. It's very counterintuitive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like, I don't know if you work with your kids or whatever plan to work with your kids, but I would say to anybody, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, take it. Because when I was like, when I turned 50, I thought, I guess I could keep making movies. It's been good to me. I guess I could just make more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, I was way into it, you know, when I was younger and it's been good to me, but I bet there might be another job I can take. that with the knowledge I have, I could probably make just as much money or something. I don't even know what jobs exist. I got this job when I was 21. So I got jobs for dummies. And I started looking for all the other jobs where, oh, I want that job, I want that job.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And then I get to filmmaker. It has a little icon of a guy with his hands up like this. And it says, this is the best job. Just make movies with your friends. You sit back, watch the money roll in. But 99% of film students can't get this job, so give it up. So I went, I actually got the best job, so I'll stick with it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But there still wasn't enough desire until I made that $7,000 movie with my kids. And they got so into it, and I realized, that's my next 10 years. I'm going to work with my kids. I'm going to make them all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
work on movies because it's not about making movies about life lessons huge project that you have to you don't know how you're going to get through even the day much less the project but that's life it's like i felt so good afterwards saying you know the process now if i get hit by a bus you guys are going to be fine because it's just like the movies the story of life is just like the stories we make up you go get your plan together which is kind of like your script
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You attack it, try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Go for your goal, whether it's building a comedy club or whatever. Watch it all fucking fall apart. And then that's when you roll up your sleeves, turn chicken shit to chicken salad. The finished result's way better than your original vision. Wash, rinse, repeat. That's life. It's a microcosm of how life works.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I made them work on the movies. And I did this manifesting thing. My son said, well, I'd like to do a VR movie. So let's make a company together. We'll call it Double R. You all have Double R names. Double R Company. Watch, I'm going to show you how this works. Because I did this with Brass Knuckle Films, which is creating a label. Double R, that'll be our logo.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I made T-shirts and little notepads, and they got way into it. Because now that we have a company, you have to do stuff to fill the company. So we'll call the VR company and say, you all need to sell headsets. Give us some money to make a movie, and we'll make you a movie. We did one with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus called The Limit. They made us a big Double R logo in the front.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, the procrastination really cripples people. Yeah. It really does. Or thinking that they need to know more. And you don't realize the answers you get that you need are not going to be figured out sitting at a desk, going to be on the floor.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That was like in... March. Later that year, we made that $7,000 movie. That also had the double R logo. Then I went to Netflix and they said, could you make us a Spy Kids type thing that always does well? I thought, okay. I kind of came up with it in the room. I thought, little kids superheroes who have to save their superhero parents. That's We Can Be Heroes, another double R movie.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
My kids wrote it with me. It's the most watched and re-watched movie in Netflix history. Nothing can touch it. Kids cannot stop watching it because it's little kids superheroes. No one's ever done that before. And my kids are like, Dad, stop. It really works, this thing. And I was like, shit, better than I thought. I was just making an example. But that's how it happens, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like it feels predestined, but also you're like, let me just show you how it works. And you go to show someone an example, and that becomes your bread and butter. And so I just tell people, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, You're mentoring them. They're mentoring you because they're the age I was when I was making Mariachi and Desperado. They got so many great ideas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you're taking on this big project that's teaching them about life. And because you're both in the same boat, you both know what it's going to take. And it's family time. So you're like checking all the boxes. And I was telling this to Sly. I was so excited back in 2019. And his wife Jennifer was like, you don't work with your daughters. She hits him. You don't work with your daughters.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he's like, yeah. I was like, oh, shit, maybe I should dial this story back. I was so evangelical about it, but I get people in trouble. But they couldn't hear it. And the next year, the daughters started a podcast. He would show up every once in a while to get ratings up. Now they have a TV show, second season. Family's still on. They're all working together. They're all living the best life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So I tell anybody who listens, because it's something I stumbled upon, because it's very counterintuitive, because you would think, oh, if I work with my kids, doesn't that look like privilege or whatever? So I tell you this. What happens when we die? don't you just give everything that you've created over your life to your kids? Cause they have your last name. They weren't a part of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If you have a chance to work with them and build it with you, you have that next level mentorship relationship. Don't just parent. Cause after a while, once they're in the teens, they don't really need you to peddling over them, partner with them, become their mentor, their OB one. And they mentor you back. It gives them such a boost in confidence when they teach you some shit and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you'll have that next level experience. That way, when you pass on, you give them the stuff, they'll go, yeah, I made this with my dad.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Find your version of it. Not everybody can necessarily work with a kid, but you have an opportunity to do it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That wasn't taught in film schools. That was completely... Again, they don't teach you... They teach you how to do one job so that you can go pull cables on someone else's movie. My thing was, like, be the owner, be the creator, be everything. And you cut the line, and suddenly you're at the film festival. And no one had really done that before you. Nobody had done that before.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was the first time. That's why, even when I was doing it, I was like... kind of have the idea this can do it because I did that short film and I'm doing the math, but somebody must have done this already.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Even when the studio, in the book it shows, even when the studios were flying me up because they saw Mariachi and wanted to do a deal with me, I went, I've never heard of anyone getting the business like this. This must happen all the time where they find some filmmaker, student, they wine and dine them, and then you never hear from them again because I've never heard a story like this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I was the first one. That's why. That's wild. It was really crazy. And I didn't even want them to release it. I didn't want them to release it because it was my practice film. I just threw it away. They said... Wasn't everything one take? One take because I was shooting on film. And if I shot two takes of everything, I'd double my budget because most of the money went to the film.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I wrote the script around everything I already had so I wouldn't have to buy anything. So it's like, well, what do we have? We took stock in what we have. And this is a lesson for life. If you think you can't do anything, well, look around you. You've got a lot of resources. It's about being resourceful. We have a turtle we found. We have a dog. We've got a ranch.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Your brother-in-law has a school line, I mean, a bus line. We'll borrow one of the buses. When you see what we do with a bus, he crashes into it. He has a bar. Let's ride everything around that. So we just have that. And if I shoot two takes, we double their budget. How about let's shoot one take of everything. I know not everything's going to come out because I'm doing everything myself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'm pulling focus. I might meter it wrong. Who knows? But I don't want to shoot a safety take or it's going to double the budget. We'll go home after I finish shooting the whole movie. I'll see what stuff didn't come out and I'll go just reshoot that. Of course, you get home and you're like, I'm not going to fucking go back to Mexico and reshoot anything.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'll just figure out a way to edit around all the stuff that didn't come out. Not everything came out. But yeah, it was really just following your nose and not knowing if it was going to work. Somebody must have thought to do this already, but no one had ever done that before because it's so counterintuitive. You're told... But that's how movies started.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You know, you think back in the old days, Charlie Chaplin and a guy behind the camera doing this. They didn't have 200 people. It turned into a business just like with comedy. And it turns into a business to where you think that's the art form. That's not the art form. That's the business of the art form. The original art form is you by yourself doing it. This is how by myself I was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was like, you got one guy here now, right? Because you have all these digital cameras. I had one camera, and I had the sound. And I can't do them at the same time because the camera sounds like this. Really noisy. And it sounds like all your money is going away. So I had no slates. I would just go, run. The guy starts running. Stop filming. Cut.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I would just shoot my little pieces like this much. After I would do a whole scene, one take, one take, one take, one take, put the camera down, get the microphone really close to him like that. Okay, see all your lines again. Pick up the glass again. Do all that stuff again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So when they're not, because they're non-actors, a lot of times, like, repeat what you just said. Wait, so you cut it by hand and it would match, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And if it didn't match, I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the other person. That's why it's got a really fast cutting style, which became my cutting style, was just to get them back in sync because I didn't want it to look like a low-budget rubbery lip thing. But if you watch it, you see them in sync. Every time they're on screen, they're in sync.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
If you trust the process, you don't have to worry. And if you question, well, I don't know if... You're an artist. That's what an artist should think. But don't let that cripple you. I call it fear forward. Like you should have some fear going into something. Yes. Like I might screw up, but that's good.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But this is about being resourceful. But it saved me a ton of money doing it that way. And it made it actually interesting to watch. It makes it more interesting to watch. Yeah. Oh, so anyway, so originally, I didn't have any ideas. I was going to make three of these movies before making my serious American independent film. But my first movie, I gave it to an agent in Los Angeles.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And he said, I can get you work off this right now as a writer-director. And I went, writer-director?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
i'm not a writer well i guess i wrote the script i guess that makes me a writer again i didn't know how to own stuff yet so you just got to say you're a writer i still thought well like i'd even written a movie i didn't consider myself a writer that's that's the we do to ourselves right so i said okay so he sent it around all these studios were flying me up it's in the book it's just crazy how fast it happened and they're offering me these deals because they saw that i went and did something that's why you just got to go make something because people are sometimes they're so impressed that you even did anything most people never start and
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And they went, wow. And I thought, well, it's actually a good calling card now. If you like the cinematography, I did that. Hire me as a cameraman. If you like the editing, I did that. Hire me as an editor. But they hired me as a writer-director. And they said, what movie do you want to do? I go, this all happened so fast. I didn't really have a chance to think about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was going to do three of these practice films and then make a real one. But you like Mariachi. Why don't we remake that? And they said, with Antonio Banderas. Okay, okay. But... audience might not like that the girl dies. So we're going to screen this version that you have now to an audience. So we screen it to an audience and they liked it the way it was.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So they said, we're going to take this to some film festivals. I was like, no, don't show this movie. It's my practice movie. Literally, no one's supposed to see this one. They go, no, no, you got something really special. I said, no, dude, I'm telling you, I can do much better than that. Give me $2,000. I'll go reshoot half of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Just knowing that people are going to see it now and do completely differently. And they go, you've got something. They're smart. Mark Kenton there said, you got something really special here. We're going to take it to the festivals. And we won Sundance because I made it for myself. It was a real lesson in that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like if I was trying to think about what all the audience was going to want to see, I would have changed so many things because I knew no one was going to see it. It's probably the only movie in history ever made where people were guaranteed not to see it just by the title. I titled it that way so nobody would see it. I didn't want anybody to see it. I wanted to just throw it away and practice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I figured maybe the third one might be the better one. Like that advice, throw three scripts away and then do a fourth. Well, I'm going to throw three movies away so that by the fourth, I'm so savvy, know how to film and do all these things. This first practice film is not going to be it. That's the one that's going to be it. So commit to a body of work. Throw shit away.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Don't be precious about it. Just go make it. Don't blink when people criticize it. And just keep going. Make a body of work. That's it. That's the secret. And that's the secret to life, too. Just keep trying to make it the best.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's why I accomplished it, by doing those things, which everybody can do. It's not because I'm not that smart. I'm telling you, I'm not that smart. I just follow the instinct like you did. When you follow your instinct, you're letting the universe do all the talking. And I know this sounds wonky, but I just call it that because it is from some other place. And you're just an instrument.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
The soul that gets into your body. And you realize that when you have kids, I don't know if you had that experience. As soon as I had my first kid, I was like, this isn't my kid. You can just tell it's not my kid. I mean, it has physical characteristics. It may even mannerisms in my walk. But there's another soul in here that's from some other place. And each one is so different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I have five kids and I have from nine siblings. They're from different planets. Right. And so you realize that the soul is on a communication level with some of the thing that our human bodies are just very primitive beings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
To do so when we get a voice We can't tell if it's come from the universe if it's for our own mind or if it's just because it all sounds like fucking Morse code Because the brain is so prim. It's a three-pound meat computers why we can't remember It's like we're limited by the body our soul got put into just like we'd be limited if we're putting a fish Because they got even smaller brain.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They you know, I need to only go forward and back That's why a lot of people say you have to learn how to get out of your own way. I Because you think I'm so limited.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, because that's beginning your own way in a different way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's a false – where you think I can do anything because I'm just so cool. No, you can do anything because you're just a pipe. Right. Be that, and then you'll see much more flow happening. You'll see things just falling in your lap.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Yeah, get you out of it. You have to be very humble. It's a very humbling thing. The more humble you are, the more shit happens, not just for you, but everyone around you. Being creative. I figured this out one year. There was a book called The One Thing, a business book called One Thing. Do one thing and just do that well. I thought, okay, that book's not for me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I was doing this talk where they introduced me and said, Robert Rodriguez, writer, director, editor, composer, long list of all the jobs I do. And I went up there like, wow, I get tired just hearing that list. And I keep seeing that book, The One Thing. And I thought, at first I thought, that's not me. But I realized, you know what? I don't just do all those things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
There's one thing I really do that ties all those together. When you think about it, I do one thing, and it's I live a creative life. And if you commit to living a creative life, like literally applying creativity to everything you do, your workout in the morning, how you interact with your kids, the meal you cook, what you're going to do that night, a business call you take, be creative.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I love my business meetings now the most. I make people pizza. I make them my chocolate. We talk about creativity and they want to be in business with you. It's like so good because you're adding creativity. It enriches your life and everyone around you. And that way, anything that touches creativity, whether it's painting, drawing, sculpture, music,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
is available to you because what 90% of that job is just being creative. And if you're doing it all day, you're always going to be in a flow. If you don't embrace that and you go about your daily life and you don't apply creativity, well, when you go home that night to write your novel or something, you're going to be blocked because you're not in a creative flow.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But if you've just been applying creativity all day long to everything, I'm going to do this talk creatively. I'm going to bring some cards. I'm going to go do this. You're applying creativity. You're always in a flow. So when you go back to go do your main job, You've already been doing it. And you're living your best life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because I found I was most successful, happiest, and most fulfilled when I was being creative. So why not just do that 24-7? And it's been a life changer. It's been doing that like 15 years with consciousness. Like consciously say. Because people don't like to say they're creative. Like when I ask, are you creative? And Lexi goes, well... Yeah, you know, like stumbling through.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because people think being an artist means you have to have the mustache and the hat. And it's like, no, artists are regular people. And regular people are flawed. And that's why you relate to something that they do because it's flawed. If you made it perfect, they couldn't relate to it because humans are flawed. And if you think of it that way, you go, well, I can create flawed stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I can do that all day long. And then that gets out of your way because then somebody who comes to you and they go, really love that part where the explosion is. Oh, well, that was an accident because I didn't get what I really wanted. And I had to make this work. And that was an accident. They like those acts. They respond to those accidents in a big way. because they're from another universe.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They're the part that's magic. The part you didn't know and the part you couldn't have predicted. And so if you set up, I purposely make my budgets smaller and my shooting schedules shorter so that more of that stuff happens because that's the stuff people will relate to and it gives you complete creative freedom. Like you have a lot of creative freedom here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I probably the director who's worked with the most outcast, ostracized or people who are considered difficult than any other filmmaker, mainly because I'm independent and I don't have to listen to a studio if they're like, oh, you can't work with that person. So like Mel Gibson. Couldn't get a job back when I hired him on. I was just always a big fan of his.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I always look at creativity first and talent first. Bullshit controversy. Not even distance. It's not even considered. And I get to work with these amazing people. Steven Seagal, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan. And then people who are considered difficult were like Michael Parks. I got this from Quentin. Michael Parks was in... Dustle Dawn, he's the sheriff at the beginning. The Texas Ranger.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Quentin said, man, I love this guy, Michael Parks. He was going to be the next James Dean. He had a show on TV in the 70s called Then Came Bronson. But then he kind of got difficult for people to work with, and so he was relegated to these low-budget grindhouse films. But check him out. He's always really great. I want to put him in Dustle Dawn. But here he's my difficult to work with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
You work with him first. And if he's great to work with... I'll work with him. I was like, all right, sure. So I worked with him. It was a dream. It was amazing. He was really great. No bullshit. Of all the people like that, and then we both kept putting him in movies. Mickey Rourke was considered, he couldn't work, he couldn't get a job. I gave him Once Upon a Time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But once I met him, I was like, oh my God, he's just like Mickey. In the old days, you know, Quentin and I actually wanted him in Dust Till Dawn. We both wanted Mickey Rourke in the lead role. But he'd retired from acting. He was just boxing. He didn't even want to even look at the scripts. We're like, oh, man, we can hire Mickey Rourke, and there's no Mickey Rourke now. We're just so bummed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But then years later, I went back to him, and no one was hiring him. And so I met with him. I said, okay, I'll meet with him. I was like, holy shit, he still has that charm and everything. So I put him in, gave him a small role in Once Upon a Time in Mexico, and I kept writing him more scenes later. He was broke.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I mean, I gave him money to go buy his own suits because he always dressed to the nines in his movies. It's like, look, I'm all out of time costume designing this thing. I'll give you some money. Go buy your own clothes. You're always going to dress. He came with these Billy Martin suits and stuff.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I said, I'm going to put a bullet hole in the back of one digitally just so you can keep, because he wanted to keep the clothes so that you can keep the clothes. Thanks, brother. And then I put him in Sin City and it relaunched his career. But he was always a dream to work with. And I would hear from people later, oh, he's been difficult again. I was like, really? So he'd come back again.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
No, again, 100% of the time, I've never had any difficulty with even the difficult exercise one. So it makes you think. And you know that because you have anybody you want on your show. But... It makes me wonder, what environment are you putting them in that makes them like that? Because somebody once said that about Redger Hauer. It was amazing. Hard to work with. Really? No, it wasn't at all.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's really fun. Fun. Now the making of it might be very painful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Loved him in stuff. Blade Runner, The Hitcher. Bruce Willis, people would tell me it was difficult to work with. I was like, Bruce? I've worked with him four times. Let me tell you, this is what Bruce is like when he walks in the set. Hey, Hefe, what's going on, man? Hefe means boss. Does that sound like somebody who's difficult? That's going to be somebody who's just so happy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
One time I was doing this Kobe Bryant Nike commercial. I was going to be in with Kobe. I was directing it. And I was working out at the gym where Stallone works out, Gunnar Peterson's gym. And Bruce was there. And I was trying to get an actor to do a cameo in this commercial. I was shooting that weekend. I was working out because I was going to be on camera.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But it's a very short amount of pain versus a long-term pain if you're not living your dream. That's the longest. That's the longest time you can spend. That's the longest time in pain. You just rip the Band-Aid off and jump in.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And so then I go to Bruce and I go, hey, what are you up to? And he goes, ah, I'm just looking for a job. And I said, well, are you a basketball fan? Because I'm shooting a Kobe Bryant commercial Saturday. Why don't you come by the set? It's downtown. You play this role. Bring a couple of suits because it's very last minute, but last minute replacement. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'd love to meet him.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Okay, good. So I went back to the Nike people and said, Bruce said he's going to be in it. Well, we'll call his agent. No, no, don't call his agent because he probably didn't tell him. And he said he'll come down. I think he will because he's cool like that. Oh, we think we should call him anyway. So they call the agents. The agents go, Bruce Willis is not going to be in a Nike commercial.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, he talked to Robert. Okay, I guess he is going to be in a Nike commercial. So then we're down there in the set, we're downtown LA, we're filming Kobe, we're filming everything else, and it's like almost time for him to show up. And they're like, are you sure he's gonna come? He said he would, he said he'd bring two suits.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And now I'm thinking how ridiculous that sounds that I told him in the gym and said, come down with a couple of your suits from your own closet, like there's no wardrobe, there's no time to get a wardrobe fitting, and just show up. He shows up, shows up, does it. He said, I'll film you out in an hour, because he knows how we work together. Had a great time, he's great in it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That does not sound like somebody who's difficult. No, it's the environment that you put these people in. Totally the environment you put them in. Because I was watching, like, Dog Whisperer, and it's like, if you have a pit bull, some of these guys can be alpha male pit bull, if you put them in a situation where aggression is needed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Like, if you have a chaotic set, and producers are coming down going, yeah, no, you can't wear that, you can't talk like that, of course you're going to piss these guys off. But if you put them in an environment where they know there's somebody who's the boss, I mean, they show up. It's my studio. I'm operating the camera. I'm the DP. I'm there acting with them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We're shooting it in record time, getting them out of there fast. They're having a ball. Pitbull just wants to follow. He doesn't want to, he doesn't want to fucking take over the show. And so everyone's really, that was my theory on it anyway. I think it's just the environment because they always say, oh, if you have a dog that's misbehaving, it's the owner. It's the owner and the environment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It's not the dog. There's nothing wrong with the animal. The animal is fine. The animal could be very calm and assertive and even submissive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Well, they're also just going to have to protect themselves.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
They have to protect themselves if this environment is fucked up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Those are the guys that are going to drive you up a wall.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We've all encountered those executives. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I talked to Mick because I'd heard, you know, he'd been in trouble and something. So I thought, maybe his head got big in trouble. So I said, well, what was wrong? Everything had to be what Mickey wanted to say, what Mickey wanted to wear, what Mickey wanted to do.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So, okay, well, maybe he's gone back to some... I'm about to work with him again. So he comes. No, he's a dream again. So at the end I go, man, you always bring it, brother. What... you're always bringing it. It's just so great to see.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
Because he remembers I gave him his shot back. So I was like, okay, he didn't give me any shit. Maybe he gives other people shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
yeah hopefully hopefully because it's uh it's been helpful to me to then tell people and then the feedback loop they tell me back something i said but they morphed it into something new like they've added their own thing to it yeah and i go that's not what i told you you know oh we've added to it no but now now i'm taking your advice that came from my advice my kids do that all the time they go it all comes back to what you taught us dad i don't
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
We have to keep reminding ourselves, because we know, and we've got to remind ourselves. Sometimes we forget, and we don't apply it to other areas of life. I'll talk about that. That's when I really found success, was when I took these ideas and moved it to another area.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
What was that? What did I tell you that one time you said, you know, basically like the glass is half full, half empty. Okay. But I didn't tell you all this other stuff. Where'd that come from? Oh, we added to it since I was like, well, shit, that's the cool part. Yeah. Like my son got on a, was a Japanese knife maker, you know, in his teens. He just wanted to get into Japanese life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
This is a guy from another lifetime, you know, different. You obviously knew this was his path. That's when, you know, it's a soul born in there. Didn't get that from me. Making these Japanese-style knives, selling them for like $1,000 a pop. By the time he was 18, he got on that show Forging the Fire and won.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And I was like, how did you... You didn't even know how to use most of the equipment they gave you. You get $10,000? How did you... What was your mindset? He said... I imagined I had won already. Somehow I had won. And so when I'd come up against a challenge that I wasn't sure how I would get by, I just had to remember what I did to get by it rather than trying to be freaked out about it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I was like, whoa, that's some freaking samurai shit. What? I read that you've obviously been in another life before to come in armed with that. You didn't learn that from me. And it's like, well, it's kind of like, no, that's nothing like anything I ever told you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
So the feedback loop when you share with people, I love people coming and telling me, hey, I was really inspired by your book and you said this. I'm like. I don't remember saying that in the book. I think you added to it a lot. It triggered something in you, and we all keep compiling our ideas. Yeah, we all do that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But I tried to figure this out when I was doing that other method, the wrong method, when I was cartooning, because it would be so hard to come up with a cartoon strip each day. But I needed the money. And I had a daily cartoon strip here at UT. We had the biggest comics page in the country. It was really everybody wanted to be the next Burt Bread that he'd come out of there. He did Bloom County.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
That's why I'm more interested in everybody else's perspective because we all have our own relationship to creativity and the universe and all that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
But come be in a brass knuckle film. That sounds like right up reality. Let's do Conan or Frazetta something.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I can already tell you, I got a great part for you where you will knock it out. I will talk. Thank you very much.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It was like lightning in a bottle. And you would see every time I thought something wasn't going my way and I was really bummed about it, within weeks, an upshot beyond. And it really taught you that you just got to follow your instinct. If you have an idea, go. Even if you know no one else has ever done this before. And you'll end up someplace different.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
He was a UT student. His college art was like national stuff. So we all wanted to be him. So I would go like, it's got to be an easier process than sitting here and working it out. I want to come home and develop a process where I sit on my couch and I just picture it first. I picture the comic. I picture the jokes. I picture the drawing. Then I just go draw it, right?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
I'd be there two hours, three hours. My deadline's coming up. Shit, it's not working. So I have to go, fuck, start drawing again. Then be like, okay, this kind of goes with that one. Oh, here it is. And I realized something really profound back at 19. And it's really carried into mariachi, which is when you pick up the pen or the keyboard or the camera and you start drawing,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
It starts doing itself. You realize it's not you. It's coming through you because there's a creative spirit assigned to us that needs hands. And it's not going to reward you if you're doing that because it can do that. But as soon as you pick it up, it takes over. So I realized, oh, I just have to be a conduit or a pipe. And if I just start, I'm going to be like, whoa.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
And you've got to keep your ego out of it because then you go, wow, how did I do that? I wonder if I could do it again. You just shut it. You just shut it right back up because you think it's you and it's not you. And I know this works because I taught it to my kids when they were younger. I thought I got to teach it to my kids.