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
Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music, could literally jump from job to job creatively and do a superior job than most technicians.
Yeah. Well, you're going on your creativity, which is what is that? That's like an, do you consider yourself a creative person? I think you play guitar. Yeah. Guitar, piano. Yeah. You play piano. Okay. Do you could be, would you call yourself a creative person? Yeah, I think so. Good.
I would just suggest to anybody is just own it and just say, when I do so many different jobs, It sounds crazy when they would introduce me, hey, Robert Rodriguez, he does this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I get tired just hearing that list. But when I think about it, there's really only one thing I do, and I live a creative life.
And when you live a creative life, that means anything that has to do with creativity, whether it's filming or piano or guitar or sculpting, you can do it. You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better director by doing all those jobs. Because when somebody just does one job, they barely know that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity.
This is the main thing I learned was that I'm writing music for an orchestra. I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. Why is that coming up? I don't feel like I'm doing it. I feel like I picked up the pen. I feel like I had the idea to do the cards, but then when everything just starts coming out so quickly, that's how fast I wrote that movie. I really feel like something else has taken over.
This is what my belief is. Because I hear it in different realms. You ask Keith Richards, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't. They're floating around the sky, and I pull them out first. You ask Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar? Those solos. He goes, it's like a radio. Once you get a tune just right, you can't even believe what's coming through.
So I believe, I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us that's creative. that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards. And then when you start getting in the flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing. It's that's that.
And if you can have that mindset, you take your ego out of it and go, all I need to do is be a good conduit for this thing. Be a good pipe and it's going to come through. So you don't ever have to get hung up on that question you had. Well, what happens when you can't come up? It wasn't me to begin with. If it's not coming out, it's because I'm blocking it. And if I were to do this,
And I'm flowing. And if I were to say, wow, I just wrote 10 cards. I don't know if I can write more. How did I do that? You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You just clogged it because it gets pissed off that you think it's you. It's not you. It's like, dude, just open up. Let me through. Pick up the fucking pen. And I learned this when I was 19 when I had a daily cartoon strip.
I had to draw a comic strip every day to get paid. And I would be like, I'd have to draw like one drawing, draw another drawing. Then it's like, okay, these kind of go together. It was a process, you know? And sometimes I just felt like, I wish I could just envision it. Sit back. I'm going to try that method. I went home and I would sit back and just try to get in my sofa, try the sofa method.
I'm just going to try to picture the comic strip. And then as soon as I got one and I think it's funny, then I'll just go draw that, right? Be done in a half hour. Why waste three hours? I'd sit there and sit there and sit there. My deadline would be coming up, got like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh shit, got to go sit and draw it out. And it's like, oh, okay, I got this drawing.
Oh, this kind of goes with that. If I make another drawing, I have my strip. That's the only way to do it. If you don't get up, the creative spirit ain't going to come visit you if you're doing this. It needs your hands. and it's not gonna fucking reward you for sitting there waiting for it. You have to jump in and do it. And people, when they say, oh, well, I'm not ready.
How pissed off is that spirit now? It's waiting for you to feel like you're ready. It's not you. Just start doing the action and it's gonna come through. And the ideas will come and the answers will come because it's not you. And if you can take your ego out of like, you'll be blessed with this never ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it.
and know that if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it, because this thing's got endless ideas.
Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring filmmaker, and I wonder, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say, stop aspiring. Because if you call yourself that, you are that. And you're always going to feel like you're not ready. And you don't, you just jump in before you're ready.
You don't feel like you're ready till, I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi till I was probably in my last few days of filming. You became ready as you went. You didn't know all that stuff. I couldn't have figured all that out in advance.
When my kids worked with me on a project that we did similar, by the end, they realized, they did an interview with my son who, after just two weeks of doing one of those projects, you're a different person. He's suddenly waxing philosophical about the creative process and going, I never knew how my dad did mariachi until we did this project together. And I realized he didn't know either.
He didn't know how he was going to do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge that got thrown at him, he had to figure it out. And that's the biggest lesson. Most people never start. And that's the biggest thing. Don't wait till you're ready or they'll be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. And you don't want to be that guy. Jump in. No, it's not you.
You just got to be the hands. And that relieves a lot of pressure from you because then you don't have to ever have to do anything, really. You just have to be the hands.
That was crazy. That thing's held together with scotch tape and rubber bands because of the camera I borrowed. You directed... You did cinematography. You did the sound. It's better to just say what I didn't do. I didn't act in front of the camera. Everything else I did. Everything else, I was the whole crew.
Showing 661–680 of 1,180 · page 34 of 59
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