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
Except that I had just done one, and I figured out there might be a different approach. That's Sin City. So Sin City and Spy Kids directly came...
from that thing you would call a failure if you if you focused on the failure so go back and look tell everybody go back and look at something that you had a real instinct for that you did and it didn't work and sift through the ashes of it and you're going to find either that you've already had the success from it and you didn't realize it what you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct or you you will find something
That will be the key to your success.
I failed at that. I was going to sell that to the Spanish on video. This is what blew me away about rereading the book. I went, oh, my God, I was so bummed. I finished making that movie. And you see in the book, clearly I'm a penniless, clueless filmmaker. Making this movie, I think by myself, I think it's going to work. I don't know. A borrowed camera. I didn't even know how to use it.
I call a place in Dallas that rents this equipment. I go, I got an Aries 16S, you know, on the phone. It has two motor-looking things. One has one number and one's got many. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. It means, oh, can I do slow motion with it? I was literally learned like that. And then I went and shot the whole movie. And I had to shoot the whole movie in two weeks.
And I couldn't develop the film until I got back. So I shot blind, not knowing if that camera was even working.
Yeah, that was accident. Yeah. Yeah. If you can look at all the compilations, it starts with Desperado because it was an accident. I didn't think, you know, this is what happens on Desperado. In the script, it says he throws some grenades over the side of this building to blow up the bad guys, and him and Salma walk away. It was just supposed to see some body parts fly. It was just a grenade.
It wasn't supposed to be a nuclear explosion. Just some body parts, some shrapnel, and some smoke. But it's two stories up, and we get there, and we're shooting so fast. I went to my poor effects guy who was just so busy just having done a big shootout, and I went... I know you don't have body parts, but do you have anything we can just throw? It's so high up.
Is there anything you can launch up there? He goes, oh, no, I don't have anything. I need something to come up because I wanted some shit to fly up behind him. He goes, I'll give you a fireball. I said, a fireball? Like... It'll go up 60 feet, but it's propane, so it's going to burn off like that. How fast does it burn off? Like that. So, okay, I'll shoot slow motion.
Okay, we'll shoot slow motion. That's all the actors. Just keep walking. Don't turn around because it's supposed to be pretty big, and it might be really hot. I don't want you to singe your eyebrows. Just walk fast. Walk fast and determined, but it's going to feel funny, but when I shoot it in slow motion, it'll look like you're just walking normal speed, and it'll slow down the explosion.
Well, it looks fantastic. See, they're just walking, they don't know. Look at her, she's just so calm. But if you sped that up and played it in normal motion, it goes by like that. It's crazy because that scene has been copied so many times. It became an action staple.
Because it's just like, it's this cool attitude in working with music.
It wasn't an action movie. It was just an accident. Again, the accidents that you stumble upon. There you go.
So that came out in August of 1995. Just six months later, Dust Till Dawn came out. And I made that. I enjoyed it so much.
Oh, thanks. I loved that movie. I showed this explosion shot, you know, the movie to Jim Cameron. He was watching it. I was waiting for his, you know, he was doing movies like Terminator 2, blowing the shit out of everything. So I was wondering if you'd like my little rinky-dink thing. And his hand went up in the air when he saw that moment.
So I thought, yeah, I'm going to do that in Dust Till Dawn. Dust Till Dawn, I had it where the actors come out doing the dialogue, though. And the explosion just keeps going. And they're walking away while having a conversation. So within six months, you saw two versions of that. So people just started doing it. You see it in Man and Fire. I mean, you see, like, whole combinations of it.
But it's an accident. That's got to be weird for you. Like, you're like, bitch, that's mine.
If I had engineered it, yeah, I'd be really smart. But again, like I said, I'm not that smart.
Who knew? What's so fun is... He's in Desperado now. I met him on the film festival circuit. So in 1992, we both had movies with guys in black and violent movies. In fact, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs. I had Mariachi because they put us on a panel together to discuss violence in the movies in the 90s, even though it was only 92. And so we met there and became friends.
And he said, oh, my next movie is Pulp Fiction. And I just thought, this crazy guy, he's so funny. And I said, I'm going to write him into Desperado. It was before he did Pulp Fiction or any of that. So by the time Desperado came out, Pulp Fiction was a phenomenon. And then people cheer when he walks on stage, on set.
Showing 121–140 of 1,180 · page 7 of 59
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