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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Find your version of it. Not everybody can necessarily work with a kid, but you have an opportunity to do it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Showing 441–460 of 1,180 · page 23 of 59
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