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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 1.
Appearances
But still, compared to what they're doing, you know, when I first met Jim Cameron.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Isn't that hilarious?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's right down there with all the limo.
I believe that. It's just you're stumbling upon these ideas.
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.
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.
Showing 301–320 of 1,180 · page 16 of 59
← Previous
Next →