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
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.
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.
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.
So it kind of just broke that fast. I went and I shot it.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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