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
When I show him the trailer for Grindhouse and he sees the machine gun laying all that, he just goes, whoa!
that's unbridled filmmaking from the id it makes sense only the second you're watching it not a second after but the second you're watching and you believe it yeah he's uh he's really interesting in that he's so prolific i walked into his writing studio and it'd be like on one of the tables like do you have those papers there imagine them that thick that thick that thick all scripts scripts what are these he goes
This is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like, he's just cranking out all this stuff. Like, again, can I take this and go make this, please? But yeah, we bounced off each other because I loved his analytical part of his brain. I'm not that analytical. I'm just kind of like, hey, I'm really creative feeling.
I'm like, woo, I'll go this way and then woo, I'll go that way. And he likes that about me. But I like, I want to be, because I think about things too much. Like, you think about things like, What makes a movie a billion-dollar hit? What are the elements that you need? And I'm going to analyze that, and I'm going to make sure my movie does that.
And he engineers a submarine that can break the world record. He engineers a movie that can break the world record. You know, he's like, he has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rare. So that's very rare. And he's capitalized on both.
He had this submarine model like this big on his desk, the one that he broke the world record for going and just seeing it and knowing he didn't have kids and stuff and wife. And I'm like, weren't you afraid going down there with, you know, something could happen? It's like, no, I wasn't afraid. Like, why not? And he goes, Because I designed the escape vehicle.
Yeah, if it was any other bozo, I'd be afraid. But he designed the escape vehicle. That kind of confidence, that's him. He just knows if some other bozo had designed the escape vehicle, I would be afraid. But total confidence because he did it.
Just to get you excited about how creative this stuff is. So Desperado was the only movie on the Sony lot being edited digitally. Not only was I editing on a computer, I was editing in my house, which in 1994 was just unheard of. So I'm there in my house, and they made me cut in LA, because at first I told the studio, I want to edit Desperado myself, because it's important that I edit it.
And they go, no, you can't. Why not? We've never had a director edit his own movie here. So we don't want to set a precedent. Because they thought it would give you too much power. This is the power of precedent, they said. well, you bought mariachi and I edited that. So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit in LA so we can watch you because we don't think you know what you're doing.
We saw the footage and the shots are really short. It's too short. I was like, shots are too short. Oh, because I was shooting my cuts. You know, like they're used to seeing footage of Antonio walks into the bar and it's going to be a dialogue scene. They expect the whole thing done from a wide shot. I would shoot the wide shot. He walks in, cut, move the camera. Let's get over here.
Cause we went into, cause I'm not going to use it for the rest of the scene. I know we're going to get into coverage cause I've already cut it. So I was like, huh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. If you've ever seen Desperado, the first scene is the best scene. Steve was telling me, he's telling a story. He's talking about the myth of the mariachi. He's doing it. It's crazy.
It's crazy. So then they come over. I say, hey, you come see my first scene. So they come over to my house. They watch it. Okay, you know what you're doing. But I was cutting Desperado in my house that I rented there. And then we shot Dust Till Dawn at the same time. So I was cutting Desperado, Four Rooms, and Dust Till Dawn myself. I'm the editor.
I don't have an editing team other than the ones who imported into the machine. So Del Toro came over. Soderbergh came over. Can I borrow it for Schizophilus? No one had heard of somebody having an Avid in their living room. Jim comes over and he goes, I hear you have an Avid in your living room. And I go, yeah, come check it out. I'm just like, I roll out of bed.
It's like, sounds unremarkable because that's what you do right now. But back in 94, it was unheard of. I'm cutting three movies at the same time myself. I roll out of bed. I come here. I can cut Desperado. I can cut Dust to Love. And he went, that's it. I hate working with editors.
You know, when I was doing Terminator 2, they wouldn't even let me put the Bad to the Bone song in Terminator 2 because they didn't think it would work. And I had to sneak into the edit room at night on the weekend to cut it in and then show them the next day. It's like, that's your own movie. You can't give that kind of power to people. He said, I hate working with editors. I'm going to do this.
I'm going to tear down a wall in my house. I'm going to put it in Avid. I'm going to cut my next movie. Yeah. And he did. He got an Oscar for editing Titanic. He had two other editors, but now no one ever took him for a ride like that again. He edits on every movie. He has other editors, but he can go do his own cuts. When he shows me footage, he's showing me himself on his own machine.
Again, it gives you all those tools to be able to... really find your vision that you're looking for because you can't always explain it to somebody because you don't always know yourself. It's part of... You kind of come up with it as you do the process.
Premiere was still in its early stages then. I think Soderbergh looked at it and it said... Yeah, I can't afford an Avid for this movie. I'm going to go do it. I think he started cutting on Premiere, but I'm sure it's all better now. I just have always used an Avid because I just always rent it back to the same production.
I don't have to buy a new one, but there's lots of good... I've heard about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one.
I have a couple monitors. And then I'm one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene back because the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, if I were to design my own system, I'd probably design it differently. But I'm literally... I've worked on that thing since 94. I still don't know all the shortcuts and all that shit. I still use it like my tape deck. Play, rewind, pause.
Showing 1021–1040 of 1,180 · page 52 of 59
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