Happy Sad Confused - Robert Rodriguez

Episode Date: February 26, 2014

It’s no exaggeration to say he’s inspired a generation of filmmakers. Enjoy this chat with man behind “El Mariachi,” “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Sin City,” and so much more. It’s Robert Rodriguez! Lots of fun stories about George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino in this one! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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please contact ConX Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Hey guys, it's Josh Horowitz here, and welcome to another episode of Happy Said Confused. I am indeed able to say another episode because we've made it to the coveted second episode in this ongoing series. I'm excited. We got the first one out of the way. It was a fun one with Cape Mara, and today is a really cool one with one of my favorite filmmakers. You know, growing up about 20 years ago, he came out of nowhere and really inspired truly a generation of young filmmakers with his amazing film El Mariachi, and he followed it up with films like Desperado and launched franchises like the Sin City franchise and Spy Kids and Machete. He's done it all. He is, of course,

Robert Rodriguez, and he came by my office the other day to chat about a lot of things, including his early days in terms of getting started in movies and the choices he made the path he went on and the way he really made his own way. He created his own studio working out of Austin and has now risen to such a level that he's actually got his own television channel, which is crazy. How many people can say that outside of Oprah, right? It's called El Ray, and we talk about that, and the fact that it's launching with a really high-profile cool series based on one of his own films, of course, from Dust Till Dawn, which is the film that made George Clooney who he was. And we get into that. We talk about how George became the star

of that one and how it really elevated him. So a lot of cool stories about Clooney, about Quentin Tarantino, Robert's really good friend, about Sin City, future projects, and also just some inspiring words about kind of charting your own path and trusting your instincts and not going the typical Hollywood route in forging a career as a filmmaker. I think it's inspiring stuff for any aspiring filmmaker. He literally wrote the book. If you haven't read Rebel Without a Crew, that's a great read by Robert Rodriguez.

But before you get to the book, why not just listen to the man himself? Robert Rodriguez and me on this episode of Happy, Sad, Confused. And of course, if you like what you hear, tell me what you think on Twitter, Joshua Horowitz, make suggestions, ask me questions,

tell me who you think you want to hear on the show. It's your open invitation to be a part of the process. So without any further ado, here he is a really cool guy, a really great filmmaker, Mr. Robert Rodriguez. I remember we spoke about a year ago in Sundance and it was at the 20th anniversary of El Mariachi

and obviously you're kind of like the king of the DIY, the guy that really literally sold his body to make a movie. And we're now at a point where you're, you have like literally four different franchises at least by my account and you have your own channel it's like you can't go from one more of one extreme than another

does it boggle your mind when you kind of think about where you're at today versus where you started it's pretty crazy but the 20 year mark is actually really really cool because you kind of see what you've been doing for 20 years and where you tend to want to go and to have a network

kind of makes sense of the last 20 years a lot of what work that I had done in making films that had a little more of a diversity in front of people in front of and behind the camera and seeing that there was a need for that on television and a network in particular to have that and be able to do that now for the next 20 years for other people to be able to get other filmmakers and other young voices in there give them an opportunity to have shows on television where they never probably could have got into the regular system because it's just so closed-doored kind of made a lot of sense you know when you

broke it up that way otherwise if you just look at it yeah it's pretty bizarre it's like wait, now you're doing television, but then when you kind of try to connect those dots, it doesn't make some sense. Yeah, that makes some sense, but I didn't know what I was doing when I first signed up for the network. I didn't make that connection until after I got it, because I started this journey about three years ago. Right. And I just thought, well, let me try it and see what happens. And then it kind of lined up with a 20-year thing, and then it kind of lined up in really making a lot of sense.

But at first, sometimes you just got to take a leap of faith when your hand goes up. When they said, do want to try and get this network, my hand went up. And I remember going, well, I want to do that for it? That it makes no sense. I got a film career. Why don't want to suddenly move to television? It does make sense for your career, because that's literally like at every stage. That's sort of how it was done.

You kind of figured it out on the fly and made it work. Figured it out. When I started my own movie studio, we built it in Austin, very different from other studios. And it became really highly innovative because we were always trying something new. Because we were just so far away from Hollywood that we didn't even know we were doing the wrong thing. And it turned into the right thing. You know, coming up with digital 3D, shooting digital, begin with so early green screen movies, like since City shot digitally, I mean, it was really ahead of the curb.

So I thought, let's put a network there and see what happens. I bet we'll probably build it differently. Like, I just showed you how I'm able to watch the set from wherever I am and be a part of those shows. I don't know anybody else who has it. I just kind of made that out. Yeah, so for those that are just listening to the podcast, so Robert really just showed me this.

So he's showing me right now. Basically on his iPhone, he has, I don't know, an app, something you guys have created. Like something I made over the holidays about some equipment and a modem, and I get the A camera and B camera, and sometimes if there's a C camera, feed of what they're actually shooting live on my stages there at Trellamaker so that if I'm here an actor that you know I really wanted to be on the show that I enticed to come down is there and I'm here yeah I can literally watch the performance text in any ideas crazy that's really cool so I'm curious like we're going to cover a lot of stuff including obviously what L Ray's up to and from

dust to dawn but I'm curious like early in the relatively in the early stages like you clearly made a decision early on to like make your home where you where you were and try and build that studio and see how big it could get and how it could grow. Was there, like, I can't even, I'm trying to, I was looking at your filmography, like, it feels like you never even sell out is the wrong term, but, like, you never even tried, like, a studio film. I mean the faculty was the closest to kind of, like, working on their terms a little bit?

The faculty, I remember, that was a, that was a, I worked for the Weinstein, so it was very different from a regular studio. They were really independent. They were out of New York, so they didn't care that I was in Texas. They let me just do my thing. I remember the faculty was one where I just had this crazy idea. I went to Bob Weinstein. He was always trying to get me to do one of his pictures.

If I said, if you green light, four of my, five of my pictures, I'll do one of your choice. And he was like, I'll take that deal. I mean, I was like, yeah, five for me, one for him. So he gave me, so I did that one for him. And it was a good way for me to just start production in Austin and try to get the crews up to speed and built to my studio out there. Yeah. Because the next movie was going to be Spy Kids, so I needed them to have a practice. kind of film. Right. And that's what the fact thing was.

But yeah, as far as studio, big studios, I had so much freedom working independently at the, you know, like a Weinstein company or Miramax, that it was hard to take a studio job. A lot of times you're just the director for hire. And they'd bring you a script, sometimes a great property. It could have been

Superman. It could have been Wild Wild West. They brought me the X-Men once. But the scripts were early in the early days. They needed a lot of work. So you thought, if I'm going to put that much work into fixing something that needs a lot of fixing before it's ready to go, I should be putting that work into something original. Let me go like the George Lucas route.

Instead of getting the rights to flash cord and doing it for a studio, who write Star Wars, something like that. So that's how I created so many franchises because I went that route instead of just directing a big movie. And you kind of circumvented, as you say, kind of that insane, as we know, development process that can get too many chefs in the kitchen and your own boss and you get that kind of immediate gratification. You can be shooting tomorrow if you want to with a friend that's in town.

I mean, it's kind of that simple. I got some directors working on my show on Dustal Don right now who went through that. They made one big movie, and then studios won them, and they're developing stuff, but they haven't directed for two years, waiting for that thing to be ready. So I'm like, hey, while you're waiting, come shoot something for me. Come to my studio. I'll be ready to go.

That's what the network will be for people, where we have a direct pipeline into people's home. So think about that as a filmmaker. You're only creating IP, you're creating product to then take two. a studio or a network to distribute. But if you're your own distributor, nobody really has their own distribution channel where you can go right directly into we're going to be in 40 million homes this year

and try it out in the audience. Instead of me taking it to the executives and say, what do you think? Is it ready for prime time? I give it to the audience and say, is they ready for prime time? You were the guys that matter, actually. They decide. They're the ones who matter. And if they really dig a show, we keep it on. If they don't get the show,

but we're still passionate about it, we keep it on anyway, because we can and sell people. catch up to it you know so it's it's pretty cool that we have that kind of freedom and it's really enticing the filmmakers to come sure make this as a show because we're not going to put them through a whole pilot thing where it might not go or we commit to a series and they can go direct to series so I mean one of the early more key ones obviously is from Dust Till Dawn which is so exciting because I mean like one of your early films that I adore it I love it it's one of those

films that sucks you in it's so let's first I want to talk about like the origins of that film a little bit and then I want to talk about the series we could. So, I mean, it was you and Quentin, obviously, I think it was the first collaboration, right, of what's probably the third already by then. I'd already worked with him in Desperado. We did four rooms. On the set of four rooms, he said, you got to do Dust Till Dawn because it's something that I wrote for some guys, some effects guys, and I was supposed to be, you know, just some couple of brothers go to this bar, it turns into a vampire bar, but I felt so in love with the brothers' characters that I delayed them getting to the bar for about half the movie,

which made it impossible to finance. Nobody wanted to make it because it was two movies in one. They thought it was completely wrong in the script. And that's what makes it, of course. And now they want to make anything that I do. So now suddenly what was a detriment to the script, now everybody looks at it and goes, oh, it's wonderful. It's genius. It's two scripts and one.

So he said, now's the time to make it. And you're Mexican. And it takes place in Mexico, so you should do it. So I thought, well, let's go do it now before, you know, they close the candy store. I mean, we can do it right now. This is the time to do it. So we went and we made it and became kind of like a strange cult film.

Absolutely. And one of the many cool things about it is, I think he would probably agree with. You made Clooney's film career. I mean, Clooney, for the first time when you saw him in that film, he was a movie star. He owned the screen and was so freaking charismatic. It was insane. It was really by design.

We looked at the, for an actor for that, and, you know, you looked at the actor list, and it was just a guy. A lot of guys that were really great, but you'd just seen him do that role so much. I was really like for something fresh, and I had seen George on ER, but it was really kind of hard to see him. They always shot him from really far away, and he's always had his head down. It's like, that guy, maybe that guy, but I can't really tell. Then I saw him on a news interview, and he didn't like the interviewer, and he was sitting, kind of brooding like that. I was like, ah, there's something about that guy. So I called him, he came to meet with me in my house, and he rode up on his Harley, and he was really totally cool.

I said, oh, this guy's like a man's man. I said, okay, you're going to do this movie for me. I'll give you a starring role, and I'm going to shoot you completely different than you've been shot, because you should be shot from the camera low with a lens, and I'm going to have you looking almost right into the lens all the time, so that you really direct to the audience and really overpower the audience, and you won't get a movie role. of this. And he had two movies before that when even came out. I would show it to executives and people around town before the movie came out and he booked Batman. He booked One Fine Day and Peacemaker. And also the races since then. So was that was that a battle at all

to get him for the financiers or whatever to get Clooney considering. I mean, he was hot off of ER, but he hadn't proven himself in film at all. Yeah, the draw was mainly that Quentin had just had Pulp Fiction. So that was, and it was a low-budgeon movie. We made it for like $10 million. So we already had Harvey Cattell. And he was actually the marquee. And he was actually the marquee name. You can tell us the first name on the billing block. So we were kind of cool. In fact, Quentin, we thought about the casting, how different it was.

His idea for the casting would have been Robert Blake, as his brother. So George was actually, you know, much more in the public, you know, consciousness. Sure. Blake was so we were fine that way. And was it, were you cool with Quentin playing that role? Was that part of that? That was my idea, yeah. I had already done desperado with him.

And I said, well, let's do it, but you've got to play Ritchie because I bet I could get something really cool out of me for that. So he was down for that. You know, any actor who has a director that believes in them will go and do it. I don't think he would have, you know, assumed that he would play that role, but because I was into it. And you look at it, he did give an amazing performance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

An opposite, let me, Kluene and Kitell, it's crazy. Okay, so the series is, explain to me. It's kind of an extrapolation, a little bit of the film, right? Well, when he told me to take over the show, I mean, the movie, and, brilliant, my thing, I was looking at it and going, well, it takes place in Mexico, but there's really no reference to Mexico other than the fact that they drive them to Mexico. So if it was set in a bar, there's vampire.

Maybe there's something in Aztec or Mayan mythology where there's something vampire-like. Vampires, even then, had already been played out quite a bit, that can make it different. So I looked, and I found some really cool stuff. I found like this cult that had snakes that worship the sun, and they would sacrifice people to keep the sun coming up every day. The blood is what kept the sun coming up. Sure enough, they would sacrifice the next day the sun would come up, so they kept at it. And so I had Salma come out in a snake dance, and I put this pyramid in the book. back at the end shot just to, because there wasn't a lot of place in the script to put

in anything about that. Right. But I did leave this sort of, you know, Planet the Apes type ending shot where you look and you see this pyramid that really got people's imagination like, oh, it was on top of a temple, and there must have been some other story there, but you didn't know what it was. And I always did want to kind of revisit that. I thought it was cool to explore that more. So when we were doing the network, I thought it wouldn't be a great idea to do a show, a new

show no one's heard of on a network, no one's heard of. Better to do something that would get attention, that people would have to seek it out, and then they would discover the network. And Dustal Dawn was such a popular title with fans. Quentin and I get that all the time. People come in up saying, oh, watch Dustal Dom, and it's on TV. And I thought that's a good one because it also fits the identity of the network. You know, it being almost like a U.S. Hispanic network where it's really entertaining.

But for those who are looking, you can see there's a lot more diversity being offered because it leads you right into Mexico. and explores a lot more of those myths in the mythology. So we almost had to retell the original story in a much more expanded way where if the film was the short story, this is the novel. And you get a lot more new characters, different things happen to the other characters, and you set up that Mesoamerican mythology

because that's what's going to carry the following seasons. You almost had to retell it in a much bigger way. And it's really cool to take it and dissect it. Like in the film, for instance, since there's a scene where George Clooney comes back with some Kahuna Burgers. Right. They were famous in Pulp Fiction. Sure.

So I was like, what happened to him? How did he get, what did he encounter when you went to the Kahuna Burger? What near-death experience happened? Getting the burgers was a big hassle, actually. That's a whole episode, you know, so we get to go on this whole offshoots that add a lot more story to it and just kind of fun stuff. And then it's a lot darker, I'm like crazier. So, yeah, I mean, from the materials I've seen, like, I don't know.

what your boundaries are in terms of me. It looks pretty bloody and pretty intense. It gets there. It really starts off intense and then it ratchets it up. But really what's necessary for the story, it's almost like we can kind of do anything. Every network has its own guidelines. And my guidelines, I wrote them down somewhere. I can't seem to find them.

But we have some guidelines that we follow, I think. But really, it's whatever's on is for the story. We won't just push the envelope up just for the sake of doing it. Because the story is really great. Those characters are amazing. You never have seen Quentin Tarantino characters on TV. We held the rights back from anybody that ever wanted to make the show before. So this is the first time you get anything like them.

Have you, since it was partially his baby, talked to Quentin, about what you're doing with it? Has he had any notes or thoughts? He thought it was, he's like, why did you come up with that? You know, coming someone and I said, man, the whole thing's going to take place from Dust Till Dawn. It's going to be like 10 hours, you know, 10 episodes. And I'm going to do this with a story. and I've just been thinking about it for the past couple of years when I came up with the network

and I wrote the pilot to kind of show how we would take a scene breaking out into a whole episode and then got a writing room together and we cranked out some really amazing scripts every time a script would come in and go now I want to direct that one too and you've been directing a bunch I've directed the eight we've done so far

I've directed four of them so it's funny because it contrasts a little bit like your buddy who I think you count as one of your best friends Quentin right and his approach to filmmaking in Mayway's similar, but he also like, in terms of output, you've got to beat there.

You're working like every week, it seems like on a different project. He's hilarious. He would say, yeah, that I work, you know, too often on stuff. He would say that, you know, I'm not a, you know, I'm not at the racist man. I'm taking my time. I'm like a lot. And he does. He goes to write something for sometimes years and it's flawless.

Yeah. It's just really great. Did he show you that infamous hateful eight script that's been floating around? I've sworn to secrecy. Oh, man. That will be yes. I'm sure it's awesome. He isn't, I mean, he is probably one of the best writers. You know what?

It's so weird to walk around his house and see pieces of, I know what his writing looks like, because he writes it by hand, see pieces of loose paper that have full writing on him. And I'm like, what's this? Oh, that's something I started. And I was like, I'll just go expand this into a show. Speaking of a TV, there was talk that, I don't know if this would be for L. Ray or something else or your involvement, but is Sin City going to be a TV project as well? Dwaynestein's want to make

Evo but they've always talked about wanting to do a TV show It's kind of up to Frank But we want to finish this next film First which comes out in August So I want to ask you a little bit I know you don't want to give the whole Ken and Caboodle away right now

But a couple of things on Sin City A Dame to Kill for, right? Very cool So was it tough getting Mickey back Because Mickey was pretty tough in terms of like the makeup He was always talking like You know the makeup was pretty much

It was I mean He is kind of claustrophobic So to be in the makeup for that long, he was right. He was like, how come they haven't made advances enough to fix this makeup thing? I said, you know what, that's a good thing. We'll tell them, then you're only going to do it if they can get the makeup down at 30 minutes. Yeah, and you did. So I told Greg and Nicotero, you guys must have some way to just get him in and out of it.

And he thought about it, and he figured, you know what, have we pre-painted the thing? They got it down to probably like 45 minutes to an hour. Gotcha. And that was much better. You know, there's no reason to sit in the chair that long for makeup being done over and over, and they figured out a way to do it, especially with Mickey. I'm excited about your choice for your dame because Eva Green is like, she's one of these actresses that in every film, she like, speaking of like Clooney, like pops off the screen. It always is like invariably the best thing in maybe sometimes not a great film.

Like she's the one that kind of like... Oh, that's cool. Yeah, as you noticed, because she really is. I didn't know until I actually worked with her. You don't know. A lot of it's sometimes a leap of faith. I've always a big fan of hers. But then you bring them in and you go, let's see.

It's weird around the green screen. It's the title character. can she do it? And she came in and she was just awesome. You could not take your eyes off of her. Every take, I mean, it's flawless. It's flawless. I never seen anybody like that.

Does it feel, is it going to feel to the Sin City fans of the original film that this is, does it feel like a markedly different kind of storyline and a different kind of approach? Or does it feel very much in line-a-weighted the first thing? It's cool. It feels like part of the other stories because some of the stories intersect with the other ones. But you can tell there's an evolution in the way it looks. I mean, we shot it in digital 3-D. We pushed it even more towards the book, the look of the book, because the movie was kind of halfway between the book and a movie.

I didn't know how far to push it back then. I didn't think audiences would be able to, you know, get the stylization. They just made me be too weird and stylized. But they dug it so we can go first, you know, gave us the permission and go more towards the book. If anything, it looks more like the book. If you really compared the book to the film, you'd see that it was more like a film than the book. So we could go further this time. Cool.

And yeah, bringing in people like Justin Gordon-Levitt and expanded the cast. able to see them come into that world. He'd really love to do his film noir, but they usually just play too nostalgic. But this being so, like, you know, postmodern noir, it really works much better. And for someone like Joe, who I've talked to you many times over the years, and like, this was perfect for his, like, kind of love of the aesthetic.

And, again, like, he's so curious about the technology and how you do it. He must have been, like, it in a candy store on your sets. Yeah, you wanted to see how this whole green screen thing worked. And we moved so fast. I mean, he shot out his, he's in one full story of his own. And we shot him out in four days, and he was like, I've never shot this last before. Because you could do it with the green screen, you could just move the camera.

So, no what, I think in this shot, you're going to be getting up out of a pool of water in the street. The camera's going to be actually underground, scraping the ground because we're on a green screen, you're on a table, it's going to come up underneath you. And that would take forever to set up out if you're out in the street. You know, we just do it like in 10 seconds. I'm curious. You know, I've read up on you, and I think we share, like, at least a couple filmmakers that we both probably grew up on and worshipped, like, people like John Carpenter and stuff like that.

But, like, I mean, are there filmmakers today that, do you still get inspired by the old masters or are there new ones? Are the younger ones? Anyone kind of, like, inspire you in any way today? Both, both. I started this series for the network called The Director's Chair. It's kind of like an inside-the-actor's studio, but for directors.

So either myself or another director will interview another director about the craft. So I just did, like, a three-hour interview with John Carpenter. And when I was talking to him, when you've seen the show, I actually ask him questions from other directors as well. In one segment, I email out friends. Some of them are younger directors

who also want to ask him. So, you know, I love what they do, and they worship John Carverner, too. So it's a nice sharing of ideas. You hear that John likes their work, and it's kind of cool. You know, I think it's going to be a cool series. You know, I'll have different directors

interview each other. And you really get that inside baseball time look at the craft. Yeah, it was funny. I'll start to go ahead. I keep relationship with a lot of young filmmakers who are up and coming, and that I keep track of that I want to work with

and try to guide them through sometimes because that happens. You see somebody make a great first film, like a no mariachi type thing or like a reservoir ducts type thing and then they go to make their big studio movie and they're left in development hell for years and I try to make sure they always know that that could happen and always have a backup plan so they can just go do what they do best

and shoot. When you look back, again kind of circling back to what we were talking about earlier, I mean how much of it was luck and how much of it was having a specific plan of how you wanted to kind of like see your career grown in the first few years. That's a good question. People sometimes say, well, you're really lucky? Of course, there's a lot of luck plays into it,

but you've got to be someone, you've got to put yourself in a position where luck can't happen. I wouldn't have been lucky if I hadn't done the work and gone and actually shoot a film and put it out there. Because if you don't go make the move, you're not, nothing's just going to come sweep you out of the chair. I mean, you've got to move forward. And then it always goes a way that's different from what you ever could have imagined.

And usually always for the better, you just can't beat momentum and movement forward. Even if you fail, you will invariably find that there's several keys to more success in the ashes of that failure. Because you've just made a move that got you someplace, an experience that you never were before, and you figure out the next thing, and you couldn't have gotten to that thing if you didn't go down first, fiery flames. You've luckily avoided the fiery flames. It feels like there was never like a huge, you know. That's some really good ones, but not. And some people, I mean, I remember one person said, okay, you're really positive.

But what do you do when you just wasted a year and a half of your life doing something and you went the wrong way? I said, well, that's a real negative way to look at it. Can you rephrase the question? Right. I learned a good lesson the hard way. That still sucks. You got to be more positive than that. When I made four rooms, Quentin said, do you want to do a movie with me?

It's going to be four directors and it all takes place in one room. And my hand went up right away because I just felt instinctually I should just take that project. Sure. Now, should I have not raised my hand so quickly? Should I have done the research and seen that anthologies never work? In fact, they bombed terribly, no matter, even if it's Scorsese and Coppola and Willie Al. They do not go anywhere. But I said, yeah, anyway.

And so I asked the person, should I have rethought my answer? Should I have done the research first and then given a more thoughtful answer instead of going completely on instinct? And they go, uh, I said, no, it's good to go on instinct because that movie bombed terribly. But if you look at the ashes of that failure, you see that when I was on the set, I noticed that Antonio was dressed so nice in a tuxedo and he had an agent wife and he had two little kids also dressed in tuxed because it's New Year's Eve and I thought what if they were spies and the kids didn't know and they got captured and it was on the set of four rooms that I came up with the Spy Kids franchise there's four of those now and your biggest franchise by far yeah that's one two anthologies never work and after that I thought I always love anthologies but they never worked maybe we just didn't do it the right way I'm going to try it again why would I even try it again after that failure but I figured out how to do it and with the same I know less, Quentin. I did it on Sin City, and that was Sin City. Speaking of anthologies, I don't know if you would term

a grind house that way as well, but I mean, I'm surprised that hasn't borne out. I mean, obviously it gave birth to Machete. I mean, there you go. I mean, you're like, how come that didn't do what it did? But it was, we knew that going in. We go, okay, this is probably way too much movie for somebody. Would you even go see a double feature?

It was even Spielberg and Lucas? Probably not, because it'd be like, that's kind of strange. But we just really felt like doing it. And a lot of things came from that. I mean, you saw that aesthetic of the grindhouse film. It still goes on a day. I mean, everybody just, the commercials even look like. Yeah.

People use that to give something an organic quality now. That visual style just kind of permeated the pop culture for a long time. And Machete was born out of it of, you know, the oddest thing that could happen. You never know. You just never know. So you almost can't make a bad move. You just have to move forward with an instinct. And it might not go the way you want.

But it's usually for the better. And was there one of you, you mentioned this earlier, how, like, sure, they came to you with, like, early incarnations and scripts that needed development of, like, X-Men and Superman and stuff like that. Like, giving your- Mainly, not because I'm, like, was super talented, but because they saw that I was so inexpensive. They go, let's take him the franchise first,

because he knows how to make a movie really inexpensively, really fast, and let's take him these franchises that maybe he can help us fix up. Interesting. So were any of those close to your heart, if you had the autonomy and the ability, to do it the way you wanted to do it that you would have grabbed? Like, was there a comic growing up or one of those that was like, you know, because I know like Red Sonia, for instance, was there for a while,

were others like that that kind of... There were some that were enticing, but then you would look at them closely, and they always came attached with, like, somehow they had some producer on there that had been on there for a long time that was notorious for going over budget and for going big, and you knew you would just be working for somebody. So you kind of, you tried it, you try to get in there and talk about it, And then something in your gut would tell you that's not the way to go. And so you'd back off and go make one of your own things instead.

But they were always really seductive and enticing because you went, is this my move now? Is this the move I should make? You try to feel it out. And then it rarely felt right. There was even one time I was doing a movie with Steven Spielberg. You know, I was doing Zorro with him. And the studios, there were two studios working on it.

And they just weren't aligned in thinking. It was one of those that inherited two studios, which is the last thing you want. One studio is enough. And there's two. And one studio would say, to those guys. They don't know what they're talking about. Don't listen to Spielberg's guys. They don't know what they're talking about. It was ridiculous. So I

got to work with Spielberg all through the pre-production and then he had to go make another movie. So I thought, this is the time to leave. Because I already got to live my experience. Got my stories. That's the whole movies he shot of me and my kid together. I was like, oh my God, he even got a whole movie out of it. Amazing. That's pretty cool.

One aspect of filming, I feel like you enjoy probably all of the aspects where you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like casting is something that you revel in and you've taken some big chances, especially in films like the Machete films. Oh, right, right. And I kind of enjoy, like, I mean, you know,

I feel like, you know, back in the day we call it stunt casting, but when you take a risk on someone like Charlie, Sheen, or Mel Gibson, people that, frankly, have had their image kind of, like, screwed up for a variety of reasons, or even Lady Gaga, who's a much different kind of category. Is it fair to say that, like, you approach casting, you think from a different standpoint than others do, or what do you think? Yeah, it's funny. As you mentioned that, you know, what other people would call stunt casting,

that's just my regular casting. I'm always just casting people that I just are big fans of and that I honestly want to work with. And I think that's why they take on my projects, you know, because they can tell that I'm truly a fan of their work and want to work with them and respect them in that way. So I just think it's about anybody because they know it's not a studio talking or somebody just being weird. It's really a filmmaker who's a big fan of their work, and they know it because they've probably met me over the years. I'm always telling them how much I love their stuff. And that's how I, you know, I kind of pair them up to the project. I really have a list going beforehand.

Okay, I'm just going to figure out how to work with this person. Really, I'm reading the script, and then I see that person somewhere, and I go, oh, that's the person I've always wanted to work with, and they match the character. And I'm going to even enhance the character for them. Is Gaga also in Sin City? She might be. What is, how would you assess her acting?

She's really terrific. She's really terrific. I mean, she comes in and you may have a part that you go, okay, this could be, it's not quite a local, I mean, I could cast a local actor in it, it's not quite something you'd bring someone in on, but we could, but, hmm, Lady Gaga's on tour in Houston. She could come over here and do this and knock it out of the park and knocks it out of the park, and you're like, wow, she's really studied acting and knows how to perform and knows how to make a moment out of something. Yeah. So she's really, you know, shockingly good. So if she wasn't in City, would there have been a give and take? Would she have given notes on the kind of part she wanted to do, or would you have said,

this is what I think you're right? No, I would have said, this is what your part is. I like to play it kind of like this. She loves direction, and she was, I can do that. And how about if I do this and this and this? It's perfect. Let's go shoot it. And then the other actors are like, she's really good.

I mean, she's really good, you know, things like that. Yeah, I think, actually, I think Joe actually confirmed it from me. Yeah, he told me that she was actually really good. Yeah. In our last remaining moments, because I know you're running around talking about El Ray and from Dusto Don. We've got a little grab bag of questions. You want to grab one or choose?

Sure. Dig in. Let's see. We have one from the top. Is it for me to read? Yeah, read or not. We'll do what we got. If we hate it, we'll skip it. The most interesting person in the world is.

Oh, boy. What do you think, Robert? Is this for me to answer? Oh. Yeah, I don't have the answers. The most interesting person in the world is. Oh, hold on saying. I'll come back to that.

Okay. What's your favorite article of clothing? Those are both kind of tough. I don't, I'm talking about somebody who wears the same thing over and over. Right. This jacket, it's cool on the outside. I mean, feel a leather. That's real? But it's even cooler on the inside. Oh, Supermigan's man bed sheets inside. So you turn it inside out and you can, and you sleep on it.

On the plane, it looks, because I do sleep with it inside out on the plane, and it looks like I'm a little kid who got a Superman sheets on the plane. Amazing. Let's do one more. Let's finish strong. Just interesting people in a world. That's a hard one. That is tough. Beard or mustache. God, I got to go with a, I got to go with a magnum PI. These are all really cool. Zombies are vampires. Zombie vampires.

Coming soon to season two, I don't know, Dustal gone. Both. Perfect time to end it. Robert, thanks so much for stopping by. Absolutely. Thanks so much for stopping by. This is a big office. Y'all can't see.

The thing is on and on. Not really. I'm just squatting someone else's office. No, it's fine. Good to see, buddy. Good to see. The Old West is an iconic period of American history, and full of legendary figures

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