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
But when we were doing that four rooms, here's another thing that came from four rooms. If I hadn't done four rooms, it'd be No Dust Till Dawn. When we're doing Four Rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me. It's on the internet. I put it out. Him reading me the first scene of Kill Bill. This was eight years before he made the movie.
And then he said, my very first script I wrote, and I didn't get paid shit for, like $1,500, was Dust Till Dawn. And now, because of the success of Pulp Fiction, they want to make all my old stuff. And these producers have it. I didn't get paid dick. So I'll do a rewrite and you and I will go in together. You should be the director because it takes place in Mexico and you're Mexican.
So I was like, all right. That's the second time he read me a scene in 2001. There's one video where he's even younger in four rooms reading me a second version of it. So over the years, we had an office next to each other when I was writing Desperado and he was writing Pulp Fiction. So he'd read out scenes. There he is. and I would read out, show him scenes from Desperado.
And we just became friends there. He was originally gonna make Pulp Fiction for TriStar and then they passed on it because they thought, it's weird, it's long. And he went, did it for Miramax. Did he want to be the serial killer? I asked him to because I knew he liked acting and I just knew him as a person. Like a lot of times I'll cast somebody just by meeting them.
I'm going to cast you because you realize you can. There's something about them that captures you that's going to just be magnified when you put a 50 feet on screen. That's why I've discovered a lot of talent that way. So I found Salma. I just knew she was going to be it.
um but he was so so great and i thought this is a really fun character i bet he could he likes that i can get a performance out of him and he'll come in with a take on it so i said i'll do that still dawn uh would you be interested in playing richie because i'd love to play richie okay well so he was the first person we cast and he's fantastic in it he's really great he's really scary got all into character he was terrified kind of had this really cool haircut i showed him a picture of uh
Burt Reynolds in Deliverance said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance. That was really cool. He was like, oh, wow. He just really slipped into it and he was always in character and he was always intense on the set. It was really fun to see him get to do that. He was very believable. He really enjoyed that performance. I said, dude, you're so good in this movie.
Anyone who talks shit, they're just talking shit. Bullshit through gritted teeth. Don't listen to anybody.
Well, when you get a lot of success, people would tend to, you know, connect you with Target. Of course. So they would say stuff about him and being in a way he shouldn't be acting in his movies.
You know, just bullshit like this. Like, dude, this will shut him up. And if it doesn't, it's just bullshit because you're really great in the movie.
How do you get past the noise?
don't don't engage like sometimes people send me things i'm like don't send me that man i don't want to read it i'm not gonna read it anyway yeah friends oh my god they don't know any better or my sister might send me something yeah it's just i just go just leave me out of it i got some really good advice early on i like to share people i'll share this with my actors because they get a lot of shit sometimes um
I was afraid to even do like a bigger movie because I was flying under the radar with, you know, Mariachi and Desperado. And then Spielberg sees Desperado wants to do Zorro with Antonio and me directing, right? So I go, cool, I'm working with Spielberg. And they're like, oh shit, I'm working with Spielberg. You probably remember this time because we're about the same age.
remember the 80s and 90s, people would just throw shit on him all the time. All the time. There was no respect for this guy. They were so jealous. Press, public, everything. He was like, he couldn't catch a break. And he was making like the coolest movie. Ah, that movie sucks. Ah, Jurassic Park sucks. Unbelievable. So I thought, oh shit, that's because he's got his head way up.
maybe I should fly into the radar and not go make, if I can make a movie with him, what chance do I have? I went back and rewatched, you know, like Temple of Doom, which people say, that's not as good as Raiders. I watched it and go, if I can make a movie that's an eighth of that, I'd be lucky. So I called him and said- Bro, you make close encounters. I know, Jesus.
That's a fucking incredible movie. But you get that much success and then people kind of resent it, right?
Yeah, but how do you get past it? I was curious for him, so- I said, hey, man, I just saw Temple of Doom. I don't know how I'm going to make this movie for you. He goes, oh, don't worry about that. Just make a great movie. So then I go to him and I say, I'm afraid that if I make a movie at the bigger level, I'm just going to be a target like him.
I mean, he's the best filmmaker and he's getting shit kicked out of him. I said, how do you do it? How do you do it? You just get rocks thrown at you all day long. He goes, oh, Robert, you just don't blink. I was like, wow, is that like a Clint Eastwood line? Wow, that's how he did it all this time. It's just like, just don't blink. Commit to making a body of work.
I try to tell filmmakers sometimes that they have a success for the first one. They get really afraid of the second one because they think, oh, shit, now I might fail, right? The fear of failure cripples a lot of people. If you commit to just making a body of work, a body of work, Like he did. He just made any movie he wanted. Some hit, some don't. Some overperform, some underperform.
A movie like Mariachi that was not supposed to go anywhere way overperforms. And you can't tell what's going to be the one. So just commit to a body of work. And now no one gives him any shit.
Showing 141–160 of 1,180 · page 8 of 59
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