Lex Fridman Podcast
#465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking
Thu, 17 Apr 2025
Robert Rodriguez is a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita: Battle Angel, The Faculty, and his newest venture Brass Knuckle Films. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep465-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/robert-rodriguez-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback - give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA - submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring - join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other - other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Robert's X: https://x.com/rodriguez Robert's Instagram: https://instagram.com/rodriguez/ Brass Knuckle Films: https://brassknucklefilms.com/ Rebel without a Crew (book): https://amzn.to/3G7gtQJ Rebel without a Crew (audiobook): https://amzn.to/3Ri5wyc SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Invideo AI: AI video generator. Go to https://invideo.io/i/lexpod Brain.fm: Music for focus. Go to https://brain.fm/lex NetSuite: Business management software. Go to http://netsuite.com/lex Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex OUTLINE: (00:00) - Introduction (10:04) - Explosions and having only one take (17:39) - Success and failure (26:28) - Filmmaking on a low budget (38:41) - El Mariachi (50:10) - Creativity (1:12:06) - Limitations (1:18:22) - Handling criticism (1:34:32) - Action films (1:45:53) - Quentin Tarantino (1:55:52) - Desperado (1:56:54) - Salma Hayek (2:01:40) - Danny Trejo (2:06:55) - Filming in Austin (2:13:05) - Editing (2:22:35) - Sound design (2:27:43) - Deadlines (2:31:14) - Alita: Battle Angel (2:39:36) - James Cameron (2:52:39) - Sin City (3:06:48) - Manifesting (3:18:12) - Memories and journaling (3:27:56) - Mortality PODCAST LINKS: - Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast - Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr - Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 - RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ - Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 - Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips
Chapter 1: Who is Robert Rodriguez and what is his filmmaking background?
The following is a conversation with Robert Rodriguez, a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita, Battle Angel, The Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his first film, El Mariachi, that he famously made for just $7,000.
On that film, in many sense, he was not only the director, he was also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects supervisor, sound designer, composer, basically the full stack of filmmaking.
He has shown incredible versatility across genres, including action, horror, family films, and sci-fi, with some epic collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and many other legendary actors and filmmakers. He has often operated at the technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD filmmaking, digital backlots, and 3D tech.
And always, through all of that, he's been a champion of independent filmmaking, running his own studio here in Austin, Texas, which, in many ways, is very far away from Hollywood. He's building a new thing now called Brass Knuckle Films, where he's opening up the filmmaking process so that fans can be a part of it as he creates his next four action films.
I'll probably go hang out at his film studio a bunch as this is all coming to life. His work has inspired a very large number of people, including me, to be more creative in whatever pursuit you take on in life and have fun doing it. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.
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Maybe you will too. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexman.com contact. And now onto the full ad reads. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by InVideo AI, a video generating app that allows you to create full-length videos using just text prompts. Perhaps, obviously, InVideo is the perfect sponsor for this conversation with Robert Rodriguez.
He has been, for decades, the guy willing to use cutting-edge technology. Digital, HD, VR, 3D. And now we're in a time and a space where it's not quite used by the big filmmakers because they're not really sure how to leverage its power. And so I think it's really the role of the independent filmmakers to start playing with video generation.
Start playing five seconds, ten seconds at a time, seeing what you can do in a storytelling art form. I do think it's a skill I've used in video a lot. There's some aspect of it, you have to kind of nudge the system into that direction. I mean, it really is like having two directors. And there's things that humans are really good at, and there's things that AI is really good at.
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Chapter 2: How did Robert Rodriguez manage explosions and one-take shots in his movies?
And the camera guy goes, I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here, he goes, yeah. We have an autofocus on the Steadicam. I mean, we have a focus thing. It just went like this. I felt it go whack all the way out of focus and whack for a second back. Like it just reset itself.
I don't know why it did that, you know, because it's radio controlled and we can't tell because we're shooting film, you know, sort of like, oh shit, let's watch the dailies. Sure enough. Let's see if we can get, maybe I can scratch the film right there. No, it goes completely out of focus and back in focus within a second. Now we got to reshoot it.
So we had to wait until we were back in that location. We rigged it for two more takes just in case. So that thing that was supposed to be the one take is three takes. The other thing that happened was the front of the Dusk Till Dawn bar. That same guy that did those explosions, he packed a bunch of explosives behind the actors.
When the actors come running out of the bar at the end of the movie, and there's an explosion through the door because all the vampires are blowing up, he didn't just... He put like 10 times. It blew out. You see it in the movie. You see this huge fireball going up. And if you watch closely, you see it already start to catch the whole place on fire.
The whole front of that, which is foam, is catching on fire. And I cut just before you see that it's on fire. And that was the first shot at that bar because we weren't going to start shooting the other stuff till night. So the first shot is that and the set's ruined. Burned to a crisp. the neon lights blew up. So we couldn't even shoot.
Cheech goes, well, I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight.
And, but right away, this is what, this is what happens. My first AD, Doug Aronikowski comes over to me and I go over to him. Guys came out with a fire hoses. The fire hoses weren't even adding water. It was like, the thing was just scorching. The whole production design team was in tears because they had just spent weeks building this thing and it was up in smoke and charred.
I said, let's just keep shooting. Let's just keep shooting because it looks really kind of cool like this. Yeah, they're going to have to come repair it and we'll have to come back. But it's all black and charred. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheech and the building's black. We didn't go over there and touch that up. That's real flame that burned.
And it ended up looking great. So then the next week when we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they had repaired it and we shot all the night stuff, which is the majority of the stuff in front of it. So sometimes you got to roll with it and look at the blessing you get because of this mistake. You probably actually got a better take by doing it later with them.
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Chapter 3: What lessons does Robert Rodriguez share about success, failure, and creativity?
Imagine if that had to go into your VCR. for you to even see what it's shooting. And it's this old camera, manual focus, manual iris, and 12 foot cable. And I would start making movies with that. Instead, now I have for $8, I have a two hour erasable tape of sound and picture. So I got into digital basically really early. I was doing, which was really frowned upon back then.
And continued to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before everyone realized, oh, that's the future.
Yeah, that's fascinating because you were a rebel in that way too, using digital.
Yeah, well, because of the means and the democratizing of that. The elite didn't like that. You could just go make a movie like that. But I started practicing. And it's much easier to practice when it doesn't cost any money. Like if you want to be a rock star, right? If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and suddenly be able to play.
You have to practice till your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and cutting them together. And you just can't afford that on film. Nobody can with a two minute roll costing as much as a two hour tape. So I was moving all these, doing all these movies. First, I would cut in camera.
And that VCR, that old VCR had a really great pause button that they stopped making. That when you hit pause, it stopped right there and it stopped with a clean cut. It didn't have all this color bars like the later ones had. So I, that was my, and it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it.
So if I have people talking, I could hit audio dub and add sound effects. So I could have two tracks on the same one. So I, that was my filmmaking kit for a while. until I needed to start doing real editing. And my dad bought a second VCR for his business because I stole his other one. And I found that if I hooked them together, I could play on one and use that pause button on the second.
and this was the limitation, this is what taught me how to edit in my head, is that if I shot a bunch of footage, I needed to shoot very little footage so I could find it. Sometimes you shoot out of order. So when I cut it, I have to cut in linear order because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut, but it only holds for five minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off.
So you got to find your next shot within five minutes
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Chapter 4: How did Robert Rodriguez make 'El Mariachi' on a low budget and what challenges did he face?
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.
It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out. What happens if you get stuck? Like this doesn't make sense. Like some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense.
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.
Yeah, those are all like crossroads for the story, isn't that? Like, how do you know she has to die? Can you change your mind about that?
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Chapter 5: What is Robert Rodriguez's approach to creativity and multiple filmmaking roles?
It comes down to the character. You know, like if you think about what are the best action films? What are your favorite films? Like Die Hard. He's a cop, so he's still capable, but he's not Superman. The fact that he's like in over his head and you're rooting for him, that's a great character.
You know, John Wick, he is Superman, but he's retired and now he's pissed off and he's going back into a job. You know, so it comes down to the character really being very important because the action will then have a character to it. I think Leon the Professional. That's a character. I mean, that's all about character.
Now that, when I say we're going to do action movies, I mean movies that are really action first. Like there's some movies that are more dramas that have action. Where's the boundary? So John Wick is action. That's more action, but it has character in it, but it's action driven. What about like Predator? Predator is a sci-fi action film.
So that's kind of a hybrid, which I like, but sometimes it's hard for the audience to know what they're buying into. Like they focused a lot on the action in the trailer, you know, and then they felt there was some other worldly thing, but you didn't really know, but it's a great movie. So Die Hard is a good example.
It was a good example where I could think of right off where there's a character that really made the difference. And then everyone repeated that, you know, for a while. It was like under siege. I was like a regular guy who's really actually has some training on a ship now. And then on the bus, you got a cop. He's a cop, but he's not super cop. So that's why you root for him.
You know, that became an element that people repeated a lot. What about Taken? That's a great one. That's a great character who is superhuman, who's also retired. There's a superhero type character in an extraordinary circumstance. That's now his daughter's taken. And then there's ordinary people like the Terminator. That's a great character. Not the Terminator. He's a villain.
But Sarah Connor, who is a waitress, doesn't think her life's going anywhere. And she finds out she's the mother of the guy who's going to save the human race. And she's got to train him. You know, suddenly she has to become someone else. Those are cool movies because it's a genesis of a character. And you see a character go from waitress to revolutionary. They step up, yeah.
What about mob movies? I mean, some of them are like Godfather is really not about, it's not action.
Not an action movie.
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