Robert Rodriguez
speaker
1,180 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard 16 Nov
Robert Rodriguez’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 1.
Appearances
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.
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.
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.
Oh, this is Bruce Willis and the yellow guy.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm like, yeah, whatever.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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