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
Yeah, the idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player, you know, really what I wanted to do was like Road Warrior. I said, I want a guy with a guitar case full of weapons going from town to town like Road Warrior. But I don't have enough money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie I do. How about we do a Genesis story? How he became that guy.
So let's do Mad Max, basically. How he becomes that guy. So maybe he is a guitar player. So you start writing it out. I'm going to show you my writing method. I write on index cards and I carry one of these, a little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag. And I smile when I run across it because I go, I've made a million dollars with one of these before.
You know, it's like this is the key to your next success. Cards. Because, you know, when you go see a therapist, you're not going to them for the answers. You're going to them for the questions. You've got the answers inside, but you don't have the questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering questions. Like, why am I such a loser? You know, I can think of 10 answers right now.
But if you go... what three things can I do today that'll not just change my life, but everyone around me take steps to that, take out your cards and start writing them down. You won't come up with three. You'll come up with 15. I'm like, wow. Cause you're asking yourself and you'll see him. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player for real.
And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. So right down there, he walks into a bar bar trying to get work.
bartender looks at him we don't hire mario she's get the hell out of here so he leaves after that whole scene explaining who he is and what his story is then the shooter comes in with a guitar case full of weapons he's also dressed in black and he shoots the place up now that was a short film that's how you'd start a short film but this is a feature movie so shit i gotta figure out how to tell a feature i'm gonna need a few more cards before that so i'm gonna need
well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story, this crazy story about a guy who was in jail in Mexico and he was running his drug business from the jail as protection. He could walk out at any time, but it was to have the cops be his enforcers, basically. So introduce that guy. He's in jail making phone calls and someone puts a hit on him. So we have action right away.
There's a hit on him. He kills those guys because it's his operation. He's not in jail. All the cops are working for him. And he tells that guy on the phone, the main bad guy, I'm going to come to town. I'm going to kill all your guys and I'm going to come kill you. So then he gets in his truck and you see them bring him a guitar case full of weapons. He passes the mariachi on the way to town.
And now it's his story. The baton gets turned to mariachi. Mariachi is doing a voiceover. It's easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. You don't have to do sync sound. There was even a scene when he walks into town where we saw these coconuts, a guy cutting coconuts. And we go, oh, let's go film over there. So we filmed the guy giving him a coconut with a straw in it.
And he walks out and went, shit, man, you forgot to pay the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, there's one take. I'll just put in the voiceover that they give away free coconuts in this town. And for years, people in other countries would go, they really give away free coconuts? No, it's because we forgot to show in pain. You know, little happy accidents.
So now, look, you're already building a movie. So it's like, now he goes in the bar. Now he's mixed up. And the bad guy says, find the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. Then he goes and meets the girl. So you just start, your movie, visually you can start seeing your movie. And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff. It's brilliant.
Are you doing this alone usually? Yeah, it's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have Danny. Oh, I know I want his hand shot. He's going to get his hand shot because he's a musician and those ballads are always really tragic. So the girl has to die. The girl has to die because if it's going to be a tragic song for his songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy.
That's going to be over here. You know, now you got the ending. And then your brain starts filling in the rest because you're asking yourself these prompt questions that you already have answers for from a past life, from a vision you had that you don't even know are there. This prompts it.
You just start writing in the ones you do know. Like, okay, I know at some point she's going to betray him. Or he's going to think she does. She betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come.
I can, yeah. But for now, I felt like if I really want, the story's telling me now what it is. I didn't know I was going to make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the road warrior guy, but the road warrior, he lost his family. So really to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So he needs a ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a character.
Well, look, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him like It's not going to drive him like that thing. So it's just, it's just coming to me. So this is my other trick. And this is the main thing you got to learn about. If you take any way, this isn't me doing it.
I totally believe that because when you start doing this, you go, where are these answers coming from? I'm asking the right question, but why, how come the answers just keep coming like this? I believe, because I do so many different jobs, I've learned this over the years.
When I was in 2002, I was like, how is it that I'm the production designer, the composer, which I don't even know how to read or write music, and I'm writing orchestral score, and I'm doing the editing, and I'm doing the cinematography. I haven't been trained for any of these. I never went to school for these specifically. Must be something about creativity. So I went on Amazon. It's 2002.
I look up creative books. Anything that has creativity in the title. I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on creativity. And I was reading them through. One of them was like really speaking to me. Yeah, that's it. That's the process. And then it says gels and mediums. And I'm like, oh, this is a book specifically about painting.
But it applies to music, editing, cinematography, writing. It's all the same. So that's when I realized that. creativity is 90% of any of those jobs. The technical part of setting up the cameras, of writing a script in format, or reading or writing music, that's 10% of that. How many musicians don't read or write music and they're fantastic? It's because 90% What they do is creative.
Showing 641–660 of 1,180 · page 33 of 59
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