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 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.
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?
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.
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...
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.
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.
No, it's also just.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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?
It makes you see that you don't, it's just sometimes that's just how the balls roll, you know?
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.
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?
So if you're gonna commit to a body of work and not blink, you don't have to worry about that stuff.
Showing 221–240 of 1,180 · page 12 of 59
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