Investing Billions - E56: Robert Rodriguez on Hollywood, Artificial Intelligence, & Film Finance

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Robert Rodriguez sits down with David Weisburd to discuss the role of creativity in filmmaking, cost-effective film production, and the influence of technology and AI in film. The discussion also covers Rodriguez's film fund, strategies for creating profitable movies, and the importance of living a creative life. The 10X Capital Podcast is part of the Turpentine podcast network. Learn more: turpentine.co We’re proudly sponsored by Deel. If you’re ready to level up your HR and payroll platform, visit: https://bit.ly/deelx10xcapital  -- SPONSOR Deel Most businesses use up to 16 tools to hire, manage, and pay their workforce, but there's one platform that has replaced them all: that’s Deel. Deel is the all in one HR and payroll platform built for global work. The smartest startups in my portfolio use Deel to integrate HR, payroll, compliance, and everything else in a single product so you can focus on what you do best. Scale your business and let Deel do the rest.  Deel allows you to hire onboard and pay talent in over 150 countries from background checks to built in contracts. You can manage the entire worker life cycle from a single and easy to use interface.  Click here to book a free, no strings attached, demo with Deel today:   https://bit.ly/deelx10xcapital  -- X / Twitter: @Rodriguez (Robert Rodriguez) @dweisburd (David Weisburd) -- LinkedIn: David Weisburd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dweisburd/  -- LINKS: Robert Rodriguez Action Film Fund IR: [e-mail] Robert Rodriguez IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001675/  -- NEWSLETTER: By popular demand, we’ve launched the 10X Capital Podcast newsletter, which offers this week’s venture capital and limited partner news in digestible news bites delivered straight to your email. To subscribe please visit: http://10xcapital.beehiiv.com/  -- Questions or topics you want us to discuss on The 10X Capital Podcast? Email us at [e-mail] -- TIMESTAMPS (0:00) Episode Preview (1:41) Strategy for producing cost-effective films (5:19) Bootstrapping in film (10:05) Sponsor: Deel (10:20) Adoption and impact of technology in film production (13:29) AI in film production (16:18) The Robert Rodriguez Experience (20:10) The power of creativity (22:47) The Film Fund (29:07) Creating profitable movies (30:03) The importance of living a creative life (32:04) Please visit & subscribe to the 10X Capital Podcast YouTube channel

Robert Rodriguez experience. Robert De Niro told me exactly what you just said when he came to do Machete. I said, I'm going to film it out in four days, even though you're going to be throughout the whole movie. You think about that when you're on your next movie and you're there for six months. Super efficient.

And he said, I always heard from my friends, George Clooney, and people that I have to come get the Robert Rodriguez experience. Here I am. In this week's episodes, I got a chance to sit down with robert rodriguez director of hit films including sin city machete spy kids desperado dozens of others and has worked with top actors in the industry including robert de niro bruce willis tom cruise salma hayek and many others we discuss creativity what is it why it's missing in in Hollywood, and how it's made him a significantly better director and entrepreneur. We discuss his views on filming, AI, and his fund, which is one of the most interesting funds I've seen in a while. I hope

you enjoy the episode. Robert, I've been really excited to chat ever since our good friend Electra Stone made the introduction. Welcome to the 10x Capital Podcast. Good to talk to you. I'm glad to have you. I was doing research on all the movies that you did. You've done Sin City, Machete, Spy Kids. You've worked with a crazy roster of celebrities and actors, whether Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Danny Trejo, Salma Hayek, Jessica Alba. I need a drink of water before I could finish everything up. Start with this movie, El Mariachi, that you produced for $7,000 and returned over $2 million. $2 million was just the box office.

Video was huge. I know because I have a huge piece of the video because I financed the film myself. So action films always do well. I had made this originally, though, for the Spanish home video market because I wanted to just practice making a feature film. I had done a bunch of short films before that, which had won some film festivals. But I thought if someone sees one of my short films win an award, they're going to ask me to make a feature. And so I thought, let me make three sellable action films in Spanish for the Spanish market

where they can hide there. That way, if they're terrible, no one will know. And I will, you know, during my new name, I knew I was going to turn a profit because I was going to make them for $5,000. I would then use that money from the profits to then go make my first English language American film. Well, first practice ended up going to when William Sundance and the audience award, I was just trying to see if I could string a movie together.

And the studio was like, no, no, you got something really special here. And I'm so glad, you know, they put it out because it really changed the industry and inspired independent filmmakers to pick up cameras that where they would have thought there wasn't room for them in Hollywood. They didn't have contacts. They didn't have money. And it showed that you could make a film with no money. And that was revolutionary at the time, you know, and it just seemed insane. So the story of the making of the movie itself was also a star and that movie still does really well. And I made two sequels to it, but it's my favorite film because it was the one

that was, it was all me and it was all on me going to be unsuccessful. It was going to be all on me because I did every, every job on it. But it gave me a methodology that I keep to today where I still do a lot of the key jobs because it's fun and it creates efficiencies, gives a real point of view to the film and the wackiness that ends up in the movie because of that people tend to, to like you're using creativity to fill in the gap of money that you don't have. But I want to double click on that because you spent $7,000 to create this film that's gotten critical acclaim. How technically did you do that? I had made a short film that it was winning awards that was eight minutes and it cost $800. It was a little wind up camera. So I shot it silent because it was all voiceover and sound effects. And when I was winning awards, I thought, gosh, I bet I can make a feature in the

same way. No crew, 10 times that. I could do an 80-minute movie for maybe $8,000. But that short film had a lot of action, wall-to-wall. So if I have more dialogue scenes to kind of slow it down, I could probably make it for $6,000. I went over budget and hit $7,000. But it was my money. And so what I did was I had a borrowed film camera, shot on film. I did the sound myself too.

So I was even a smaller crew than a documentary crew. If you ever see a documentary crew, you see that guy with a camera, you see a guy with a sound. I was with those guys. My camera was so noisy. It was not a sound camera. I would edit in the camera. I would just, I would call action. Person would start running. Then I would start filming. And then when I was done, I would stop filming. And then I would say, done. You know, like I would save even like the little beginning and ends, no slates. After we'd finished a scene, everyone doing their dialogue, I would then put the camera away, which was too noisy, take out my sound and have them repeat the scene.

And I would record the sound clean with the mic close, cut it in by hand to sync it. And when it got out of sync, I would cut away to the dog or cut away to the knife. And it created this really fast cutting style that was really just to get me back in sync. But that ended up becoming my style of filmmaking. Basically doing everything myself, which that never happens on a movie because that's not what you're taught in film school. You're taught to do one job because there's supposed to be a hundred people. But if you think back to the beginning of movies, that's just because that's what the movie business turned into. Beginning of movies, it was a guy behind a camera like this and Charlie Chaplin running in front. There weren't 200 people

around. It just turned into a big business over time. People forgot that the purity of making a movie could actually be very small like that and intimate. And I wrote the script around things that I had access to. My friend was from that town in Mexico. So his cousin owned a bus. His brother-in-law had a bar. He had a ranch.

He had a dog. He had a turtle. So I'm like, write the script around all those things. So we didn't have to go pay for anything. That became a big thing for independent filmmakers. Like the very next year, Kevin Smith made Clerks because he went, hey, that's pretty good advice. Actually, I work at this convenience store. Maybe I should just, you know, write the script around this thing. All this production value sometimes you have all around you, you know, right around what

you have. That was my trick back then. I still use those tricks today. We call that bootstrapping and startup venture world. Right. As you talk to people who are starting their companies and it's like the early days are the ones they're most excited about. Same with filmmakers. I asked the filmmaker about their first films. You see their eyes light up because of all the things they had to do to get it done. I tried to keep them in town. Do you feel like the low budget allows you to gain skill instead of just throwing money at problems? Yeah. It's like if you turn on the money hose to wash away your problems, you can't turn that thing off. I'd like to keep my budgets and schedules low. It offers me more freedom because the studios leave you alone because they know they're

getting a big movie for less. But also creatively, it forces you to be more creative, which only makes the movie better. You've wanted to be a filmmaker since you were 12. Tell me about that and tell me about your experience in film school as well. I've been making movies just at home because my dad was a salesman. He sold cookware and he had one of the early VCRs to play sales tapes to a salesman. Those older VCRs came with a camera attached by a cable and you have to be looking at your TV to see what you're even aiming at. Manual focus, manual lighting, iris. But with that 12 foot cable and an extension cord, I could go in the backyard

and make karate movies and stuff. And so from 12 to 18, 17 or 18, I was making a bunch of backyard movies. And then I started making these award 17 or 18, I was making a bunch of backyard movies. And then I started making these award-winning short films on video. Video was such an expensive way to experiment because I tried to do film, but it was just very expensive to buy it, to process it. Didn't have sound, you know, video was crowned upon by the filmmaking community, but I found it as a great way to just practice endlessly. And so when I actually went to the film school, it was to get access to film equipment because film festivals wouldn't allow video, even if I made a really great way to just practice endlessly. And so when I actually went to the film school, it was to get access to film equipment because film festivals wouldn't allow video. Even if I made a really

great short film on video, they wouldn't allow it in a film festival. So there was no chance of me ever winning a contest. So I went to film school to get access to their film equipment only to get there and find they had this old world war II equipment. I could have gotten a plunge out for 50 bucks. And so I left that after the first semester of that. And summer break, I went and made mariachi. So I'd already been making movies and learning my own process and creating my own process. So the film school only made me realize that the method I was using was much more up to date, more cutting edge, and took into consideration all the technical advancements that were coming.

Sometimes entrepreneurs need to go to business school to learn they did not need business school and makes them more confident. Totally. That's my favorite thing actually was growing up, my dad, since he was a salesman, I would go into his office and read Entrepreneur Magazine. He just had stacks of them and I would get so excited by that idea.

I knew that was gonna be my future and that's what I ended up doing through filmmaking. So I spoke to a couple of mutual friends and they said that you're one of the only people that has that consistently makes money on films. And one of the things that we talked about offline is how you actually source the buyer from movie before you even start. Tell me about that. Like I was at Netflix selling them some ideas and projects, and they mentioned that they wanted like a spy kids type thing. So I was like, okay, when a spy kids type thing, I can do that. So I

came up with a very spy kids type thing, but with superheroes, little kids, superheroes called we can be heroes, which is the number six movie of all time on Netflix right now. And it maintains just a really high viewership because kids can't get enough of that stuff. And an action movie, superhero action movie for kids. I write my own movies. It's a very rare one of the few filmmakers who's created or the only one who's created this many original franchises is because I was very inspired by George Lucas. He wanted to make Flash Gordon, but couldn't get the rights. So he wrote his own Flash Gordon, called it Star Wars.

And there he goes. So that's what I want to do. So I go to buyers and I say, order a franchise, like a pizza. What do you want? And so they say, we want a Spy Kids type thing to appeal that audience because Spy Kids always does well on Netflix. Gets in the top 10 again every time we re-license it. So if you can give us a new one like that, and sure enough, that became their biggest hit,

you know, I'd say, what do you want? I'll go make it. I want to make them something that'll be successful. I can go and put it together. I have my own studio. I have a 30 acre studio down here called Troublemaker Studios. So I have all these efficiencies to make a movie look bigger than it costs. And I can, I'd look at it as a creative challenge. If they want a particular type of movie and I'm into that, I'll go make them that. So you've got a buyer already. I like to have these kind of win-win situations where by making the movie for less, it has a better chance to perform. That's why it makes money because I'm not spending the farm on it.

I use creativity to fill the gap and you end up with something that in success, it makes a lot of money for them. And if it's not that successful, it's still make money for them because it didn't cost a lot. So I try to set up a's not that successful, it's still make money for them because it didn't cost a lot. So I try to set up a win-win scenario so that nobody gets hurt. And that's why I've been in the business, you know, this long.

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You've been a very early adopter in technologies in all your films. You were one of the first producers to do digital and to really lean into that. How much is technology a part of your cost-cutting and your ROI strategy? That was the only movie on the Sony lot editing a movie digitally

when I did Desperado 30 years ago. And then first to jump on the digital camera bandwagon with George Lucas in the early 2000s. Nobody wanted to look at that, especially directors of photography. I always embraced technology because I was always trying to move at the speed of thought. That's why we're able to shoot Sin City so efficiently. Back in 2003, that was when I was shooting my first test for that. We made it in 2004. That was really early days to be shooting a movie, all green screen, all digital. You know, it's like now you're in the snow. You just blow wind. And then we had all that digitally.

Now you're in the rain. We just spritz them down and then it's a rainstorm. Actors were like, what is this? They were so excited about this new thing we're doing, which everyone kind of does now. How much did Sin City cost? Sin City was probably about 50 million. I think at the day it was, uh, that was my books. I remember it was more than I knew normally spent. Normally everything was under

40 million and that one was, had a really huge cast and it was all visual effects, but still for today's, I mean, for even that time, it was really, really low. I shot a test first to convince the guy who had the rights, Frank Miller, who created it. I said, let me shoot a test with a couple of actor friends. We'll shoot the opening sequence. Come to my studio. I'll do all the effects on it. I'll edit it together. Just the first two minutes of the movie.

I'll put in the music and we'll watch it and we'll put some fake credits. And if you like what you see, we'll do the rights and we'll make the movie. If you don't want to do it still, keep it as a short film to show your friends. He came down. He was all fired up. So into it. We'd put it together. And in the credits, I put my dream cast. Talk about manifesting is like starring Bruce Willis,

you know, Mickey Rourke and all these names. So then when I went to Bruce Willis, we went to show him, we showed him the book and then we showed him this test. So you could see how it was going to turn into a movie. And so he watches the opening sequence and then he sees his name in the credits and they go, see, you have to be in the movie. His name's already in the credits. Now we could put together a proof of concept very quickly using AI. And then you see there's a name in the credits and they go, see, you have to be in the movie. The name's already in the credits. He goes, I'm in. Now we could put together a proof of concept very quickly using AI. And that would just help you sell a project even faster. That was still pretty fast. This was like a three-week turnaround, you know, to have everything done and me showing it to actors. That's the fastest I'd ever put a movie together. Test shot in January,

showed it around February. We were filming the movie by March. I mean, it was really fast. And that's how we can move when you use technology. Does your iconoclasm come from being born outside of California, outside of Hollywood? Yeah. In fact, I didn't want to move to Hollywood because I knew I didn't know anyone. That's always what you'd heard. You had to know people or have contacts. And so when I made Mariachi literally out of my apartment and I sold it, I went, I don't have to move anywhere. No one will even know I'm here. So I built my studio here and I was just making movies from here and nobody even really knew. I've been mixing my movies, even my sound. I've been mixing myself in my garage for the past 25 years.

Nobody knows. And still like very home homemade because it sounds great. You know, they can't tell I'm using really good equipment. I like that freedom, not having to go anywhere. And then when I finally became friends with George Lucas, he said, it's really smart that you're in Austin. That's why we're in Marin County. Because when you live outside of the box, you think outside of the box automatically. You're going to trip over innovations by being down there

because you're already out of the tradition of Hollywood. And he was right. That's why I was editing digitally. That's why I'm going like, why are we shooting on film? It makes no sense. Let's shoot digitally. And that's why I was adopting all these new technologies because it didn't make sense. But if you lived in that bubble, everyone around you would frown on it and then you wouldn't step outside of that box. You're one of the first producers really using AI aggressively. How are you using AI? I've always been kind of doing this on my own because I was in Photoshop and I would take photographs and manipulate them and just be able to communicate with your crew what it is that you want to do. I just had to shoot a really fast commercial for Nike and using AI, I was able and stock footage and just some shots I pulled from other movies. I could compile

a version of that 60 second spot to show all my crew within a day. You know, I could show them what the locations were, what the lighting would look like, what the everything so they could start prepping it and we could be shooting in record time the very next week. It was really nuts, but it's like that's saved a lot of time. You could still do it without it, but it communicated very quickly. Have you become significantly better as a director, as a writer, as a producer over your career? It all comes down to just creative solving, problem solving, which it does in business too. You know, it's all about here's the problem. How do we creatively solve this? So I subscribe more to just live in a creative life. I apply creativity to literally everything I do, how I'm going to do a business meeting, how I'm going to interact with

my kids in the morning, what I'm going to make for food, how we're going to play. And then you're always in a creative flow. So when it comes time to come up with an idea, you're ready to go. Everything in life is a creative problem solve. What's amplified your creativity and what's stifled your creativity? What's amplified it is just embracing the idea that that's what I'm doing, you know, because I do so many jobs. Like you do we get tired trying to say, well, he's a writer, director, editor, composer. There's one thing that I do under that umbrella and it's I live a creative life. The more you apply creativity all day long from the moment you wake up till you go to sleep, the more you're in a constant flow so that when you need your creativity to solve problems for

you, it's there. Because if you go to work and then you come home and you say, I'm going to write my novel for an hour between 8 and 9 PM, you're going to be blocked because you have been cutting yourself mentally off from creativity all day long. But if you embrace that idea, you're suddenly afraid to anything that you're interested in is available to you. That's why I can write music and I can do photography. And I haven't been training any of these things. It's because I'm applying creativity, which is 90% of any one job, 90% of its creativity. There's only 10'm applying creativity, which is 90% of any one job. 90% of it's creativity. There's only 10% of it.

That's the actual technical part. And you can fudge that. So you can literally jump from job to job and do really well at it. If you're embracing the idea that you're applying creativity, because you know how to do that. That skill doesn't just apply to filmmaking. My business meetings are my favorite. I bring people in for business meetings to my house. I make them pizza in my wood burning oven.

It's a very famous pizza routine that I do. And I make chocolate that they get addicted to. And they already want, and I said, I'll bring you to the next meeting. For a while, if they want to be in business with you, cause they can't stop talking about the pizza and the chocolate and they know they'll get more of that. And it's all about talks about creativity. It opens up their creativity and especially with their executives. They go, this is why I got into the business. It taps into why they originally got into movies because of the creativity and they can feel it's an environment where it'll flourish. That's what my studio does. It's a place where people come in. They can be super creative. That's why they'll take a pay cut to come work on a movie to get that experience. Cause they've

heard about it from other actors and other filmmakers and Robert Rodriguez experience. Robert De Niro, tell me exactly what you just said when he came to do machete, I said, I'm going to film it out in four days. even though you're going to be throughout the whole movie. You think about that when you're on your next movie and you're there for six months. Super efficient. And he said, I just always heard from my friends, you know, like George Clooney and people that I have to come get the Robert Rodriguez experience. So here I am.

You got great reviews for that too in Machete. It was wonderful. Well, you got to work with Elon Musk and Machete Kills. How did that come together? He saved that movie. I always had this title Machete in Space. You know, I wanted a machete to go in space, but how do I show them going to space at the end without using NASA footage and the same stuff? So I went to meet with Elon Musk and he was very gracious, showed me around,

which was why I'm going back then, SpaceX back then. I'm sure now it's even crazier. So he gave me footage to make it look like machete is really going up into space. And I thought, Hey, it'd be great if you can stop by Austin. I think he came to Austin or either that or I shot him in LA. I know I shot him against a green screen. If you could shake Machete's hand just to send him up, just to give it more credence, like this could actually happen. And he did.

So he gets a line in there. I think it says, good luck, Machete. Kick his ass or something like that. You mentioned George Lucas is a friend. Elon Musk, Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis. Mel gets in all these great stars. Do they have anything in common? I identified with them because of some of the first lessons I learned. I think I was 16. I was working in a Photoshop. A friend of mine, my dad's had a

Photoshop. So that's where my summer job was. He gave me a camera. I said, I want you to help me sell the cameras, go take pictures with them. And I took pictures of my siblings, brought them back, real creative kind of photos. And he went, whoa, these are really creative because you're creative, but you have to learn to be technical because technicians always need creative people and creative people always need technicians. You're born with creativity. You just naturally, I can see that in your photos. So you got that part covered, but creative people hate technicalities, but you can learn to be technical. Technical people can't really learn to be creative. You can learn to be technical. And if you're technical and creative, you'll be unstoppable. And I remember thinking at 16,

well, that sounds awesome. So he goes, here, go learn this technical process of taking pictures, the zoning and photography, but apply that to everything later I did. You know, that's why I shot Mariachi by myself. So technically I would learn how to operate the camera, load the film. I had to do all that myself. I knew that that was the way to learn. I didn't want to bring people in because I wanted to learn what's going to be my own film school. That made me very technical and George Lucas, Jim Cameron, all those greats, they're both technical and creative. When you're technical and creative like that, you can be unstoppable. Not only can he come up with these amazing ideas, they know technically how to achieve that. So they can think so forward and even in the technical realm beyond other technicians. So that's, I think what separates them from people like that from the pack is when

they have that know-how with the creativity. Cause you meet a lot of creatives who, oh, the technical power someone else should handle. And they've just disempowered themselves. They just cut off one of their legs and same the other way, or the technicians who go, oh, we'll leave that creative part to the creative people. And they don't even think, try to think creatively. You know, try to think creatively. You know, you got to be both. The first boss told me, that struck me.

I knew that was my future. You'll be unstoppable. That's what I've always strived to do. By having my own studio, having my own process, having my own methodology. It's interesting because Elon is kind of a player coach. People follow him because they know

that he does the work. He's not some figurehead. He's there. He's on the factory floor, sleeping in the middle of the factory floor, working 100 hour weeks. It's a big thing. Did the lead by example like that? I mean, if you're like on the battlefield, that's why I would operate my own steadicam. Even I would have my own steadicam on, which everyone knows is a hard job. So as a director, I'm photographing. Everyone moves much faster when they see that you're all in that thing around

because they know, Oh my God, this guy's doing everything. They're with you. You're not just sitting behind a, you know, a monitor saying, hey, everybody go make my movie. You're in there making it, you're driving it. And so that's why I'm always operating the camera. That's why I'm always out there doing multiple jobs. It inspires everyone else to do more as well, because that's the, that's the climate and you get more from that. You're obviously naturally creative. I'm also naturally creative. Did it just become something that you could do from a technical standpoint? Did you ever get a joy for it?

Tell me about that transition from a half to a passion. It always takes applying yourself. There's still some technical things I don't grasp, but I've used it. I've learned enough of it to get me through. Like I say, you can fudge a lot of that, but as long as you're doing some of it. Musically, I could write a score for a hundred piece orchestra all of a sudden. Using 90% creativity. The technical part of reading and writing music, I didn't know, but I still haven't quite learned. I've been trying to little by little. Now I lost my job to my son because my

son learned it theory and he was already a much better piano player than me. He's been writing my hundred piece orchestra scores now for the past four years. He writes circles around me. And I said, where did you learn theory? No, they didn't teach you that piano class all over the years. And he goes, oh, I learned it off YouTube. Now I see if I had learned that part of the technical, I would be much further. So there is the more you can learn technical, the better. And it's, it's against your nature if you're a creative, but you have to apply yourself. I was recently doing my own mixing on a movie, my last movie and a mixer from one

of the John wick movies was there watching. He came to check it out and he was like, are you mixing? I've never seen a director mix before. Actually, that's what George got George Lewis's attention. He saw that I was mixing my own movie, which he'd never seen before. So yeah, I've been doing it 25 years. And they go, wow. And I said, so I could have more control over the result. Cause I didn't trust when a mixer would be saying, no, that's as good as we can get it. You know? So I was like, there's something else I'm going to have to take over and learn and do it alongside them and get a much better result.

And it's more hands-on. It's more fun. You don't want to just sit back there and watch anyway. You like being on the battlefield. But I didn't realize how unusual that was too until somebody who was a mixer pointed out that in all his career, he'd never seen anyone even touch it, much less do it, much less know what's first when he's had a mix. Why do you still do it?

Not because I felt like I was better. There's better mixers, but they cannot do it in the time that we had because our budgets were so low. I'd go in and we're doing like a movie like Desperado. We only have a couple of days to do that. And all these sound effects just came in. I'm like, can I just sit here and just preview everything? And I'll turn down the ones I don't want and I'll turn up the ones I do want and then we'll fine tune it. And we just whizzed through this really quickly because otherwise we'll be here forever and it will never sound good. So it was really a speed thing. Again, moving at the speed of thought. It's like, I got to manage all these tracks that someone just sent in. The mixers are going to be lost. I know the movie better than any of them. So I'm the one who

cut the thing. I'm the one who shot it. They're just seeing it now and hearing it and they're responding to what they're seeing and hearing. They have no attachment to this movie for that. So it makes no sense why they should be driving it. It seems so inefficient the way it's done. Everyone's in their own compartment. Everyone's making their own movie. And that's why things cost so much. That's why things take so long. That's why Hollywood is so inefficient. And that's why the day of reckoning, they're all like, they need content. They don't know how to make it for price. And so that's where I can step in. My own film fund, my own studio, because I can target movies that'll do well and make them efficiently and not have to be bogged down with this process that's archaic, just doesn't work anymore.

Tell me about the film fund. First, double click a little bit on what the pain is in the industry. Obviously, the industry with Netflix and Hulu and all these big players has transformed. So let's talk about the pain point. And then what is the solution? Everyone needs content and studios, even streamers, they're in chaos. They need content to survive. There's many ways to do it. I mean, like Blumhouse has a great, amazing thing. They know how to make horror type films for a price and sell them to the studios. And then the studios release them and they're big hits because they're done for a price. So huge hits, those guys just make money hand over fist. But my thing is action, constant worldwide appetite for action movies, yet Hollywood

studios are so big and inefficient, you know, they can't make them for a price. My whole idea is that this film client is to creatively focus on action movies, yet Hollywood studios are so big and inefficient, you know, they can't make them for a price. My whole idea is that this film client is to creatively focus on action movies, where we'll be able to create efficiencies in the financing and then the production process, which I have because of my studio. We'll also identify, you know, other opportunities for insolent rate partners to participate in outside of the content itself, like merchandise, gaming, infrastructure, investments, production services, or products and technologies we come up with. The ultimate goal is just to balance the downside protection while striving for making the kinds of movies that turn into franchises. Because that's what I do. That's what you really make the

money is on the franchises. And to create a turnkey financing and production option for other filmmakers and talent, especially action filmmakers and talent. Because they can't go to the studios. Here, there's a clear path to profit because we can make them for a price and they can bet on something that could become the next John Wick or a beekeeper. Consistently, action films are desirable type of film internationally. It's why it's the easiest to pre-sell it. You can sometimes fund the whole movie just off the pre-sales, but because it's most in demand by studios and streamers. So the Hollywood studios and streamers are so inefficient in making them themselves for a price, they're willing to pay premiums to acquire action movies. And then there are national distributors

are always hungry for them. So most of the budget can be covered by them. And there is a small equity slug for partners then to finance with upside for performance against the U S you know, the recent example is Jason Statham made a movie called the beekeeper. And that thing was even working in the higher range of like 50 million that probably had 10 million or less of equity. And it's going to return four to five times. You sell the international rights to cover the costs, and then... Most of the costs. Most of the costs, and then it's an upside. In venture capital, you call that asymmetry. So you for sure could get some kind of return on a portfolio, but if you hit the next Uber, you hit the next Facebook,

you return the fund many times over. How many films would typically go into a fund like this? A fund would probably be for five years and we can make three to four films a year at price range between 15 and 40. And you're recycling the capital back into the fund. It gets recycled back into the fund, but we can do a lot of movies over those five years because you just need one of those hits. Like John Wick was an independent film. So the original investors that bet on that film have been seeing greater than 10X economics on that franchise. You want to self-fund this because you want to be able to execute your vision without a large studio basically coming in and dictating it. I kind of already have that with studios. They give me a lot of freedom. So it's less about that. To make all these movies, I wouldn't have to direct them all.

We'd bring in other filmmakers who want a chance to make something that cuts through the fat, lets you move very fast because we're inversing the process where we build an efficient financing and producing machine that then we feed with projects that fit this action model. So that enables us to move at the speed of thought. Because if you're going to bet on a movie and try and finance a film, this is the way to do it. Because as few people as possible between your money and the filmmakers, because as a filmmaker, I've created more original franchises than any other filmmaker. And that's the secret. Original franchises as opposed to pre-existing IP. And I also have with my studio, all these production efficiencies, no one else has. And now with a financing piece and by targeting action

films, we'll get surefire recoup and highest returns. And I know how to make movies that look bigger than they are that they'll go over budget. And I teach that to my filmmakers so that they can do it too on movies that I'm not directing. But I love directing those because they're fast and they're fun. Anyone interested in checking it out would have to come see my studio. The scene is believing. It's unbelievable. It's 30 acres, largest green screen in Texas. All these vehicles, props, costumes from 20 years of making movies there that really drive the efficiencies going forward into these other films. And this is the way to make them. They're willing to pay premiums to just have someone make them for them because they can't do them. By popular demand, the 10X Capital Podcast has officially launched our newsletter,

powered by Icaria Labs, a full-service content marketing firm that's partnering with us on the newsletter. In our weekly newsletter, we will keep you updated on all things emerging managers and limited partners, including industry trends that are critical to know as an LP, VC, or founder. To subscribe to our totally free newsletter, please visit 10xcapitalpodcast.com. Again, that's 10xcapitalpodcast.com. We thank you for your support. Is there a precedent model for this? Are there other funds like this?

No, I don't think any fund is like this because the independent financing companies are always a mixed bag because they're just middlemen. They're between you and your money and the profits. So those scenarios are different because I'm an actual filmmaker who's also financing. That cuts out the middleman. So our investors have a clear path to profits. And it's easy to attract filmmakers and actors because the studios are in such disarray that it's a clear path for them to make a project. It's like, you make money, you control costs, be successful. And we're only targeting those projects that make money. It's the process in which movies are made that is the bad idea. That's the house of cards. It's unsustainable. Content is king. Content was always needed. If

you can just make content, that's all they want at the end of the day is content. If you can just make it efficiently and be a part of that and participate in that, then that's golden. That's what I'm excited about with this is that the opportunity is just so great right now. And I'll only get better as studios are hurting more and more to keep all that overhead functioning and try to put out movies for price. And those are going to be so expensive. They're never going to return a profit. Things changing. People are like trying to squeeze their budgets down. It's their process that's all overblown. This is the time for me now to get innovative in the financing realm as well, because that's to give that as the other 10% technical part, I wasn't paying that much attention to, that now I realize we can just take that over for them. They need us

just to hand them a movie that solves all their problems. When I did work with a studio before, I worked a lot with Dimension. They would just let me go make any movie I wanted, like Sin City. And I remember when they would come down to watch the movie, they would just be so relieved. They go, oh, it's so much work on our other movies with our other filmmakers. We have to go in there with the screwdrivers and we like just coming down. You just showing us the movie and it works and we can put it out. Basically, they were just my bank. They were just giving me the money.

I didn't need them as a studio. I've always been kind of operating that way. So now I'm just taking it a step further and creating my own financing, but doing it in a smart way. Let's target the things that we know can get pre-sold. And then if we have an equity slug, those investors can make actual money and be parts of things that we're targeting to be franchises. And the success, they're franchises that go on and on like ones I made before. And if they aren't that successful, they still won't make money because we're keeping the cost down. So it's a win-win situation. That's why they can come see

the studio and check it out. It blows your mind that I have this here. I've had it here, Troublemaker Studios here since 2001. It's like the biggest secret people discover when they come down and see it. I can't believe I still even have my entire hundred thousand foot set from Alita leftover. That whole city that she was in is still in my parking lot. You know, two story high, a hundred thousand square feet streets. I've used it all the time for Mexico, for other countries. I keep all my props and my costume, wardrobe, and all the efficiencies we have there. It's just unbelievable. It's a huge asset. It's the largest standing set in the country. This has been fascinating. I'm going to invite myself over to the studio. Maybe I'll take a group of LPs with me. We'll all check it out, a set firsthand. Well, Robert, thanks so much for

taking the time. I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot and I know the audience did as well. What would you like to leave our audience? A little creative life. That's the best life. I think when I purposely started doing that maybe 10, 15 years ago, I realized I was happiest, most fulfilled and most successful when I was being creative. So why not just do that day in and day out every hour of the day? So if you think of it that way, you've just opened up your mind to creativity. I'll leave you with this one thing. I work with my kids too, and they teach me more than I can teach them. My son, he decided to make his own knives, Japanese style knife making. Started getting really good at it. He started selling them for a lot of money. He got on Forged in Fire at 18, that show Forged in Fire. And he won first place, 18 year old kid. And I

was like, how did you win? And he said, I took on the mindset that I had already Yeah. And he won first place, 18 year old kid. And I was like, how did you win? And he said, I took on the mindset that I had already won. And instead of wondering what I was going to do next, each step, the whole time I was trying to remember what I did to win. The feedback loop when you apply creativity to your life and the those around you is unbelievable because it inspires other people to get creative. And when they come back and they give you their version of it, it gets you excited to go take on more things and do more things and realize creativity is the solve to everything. Become an expert at that. The technical part as well. Learn the technical part, but learn it in a creative way and use it in a creative way. And then you're willing to be

unstoppable. Is creativity more about being creative or removing the things that keep you from not being? That's the only surefire thing that's ever worked for me. That's why I do commercials. I'll do music videos. I'll go do anything anyone asks me to do if I'm not trained in it. Cause I know at the end of the day, I'm just going to walk in. And when I hear what the problem is, I'll come up with a creative solution. And that's usually always gets me way past the goal by doing that. And so you have this confidence that of course, I don't know what I'm going to do, but creatively, I'm going to think of some creative solution there. That's going to blow my mind, apply that creativity to it because it comes from somewhere else.

It really takes the pressure off you. You know, you're opening up a channel to just filter in all this creative flow that feels like it's beyond your abilities. And that's where you want to be. You want to be there. Clearly, you're a creative genius. It's been an honor to have you on. And I look forward to sitting down in New York or Austin very soon. Sounds good. Thanks, Robert. Thanks for listening to the audio version of this podcast. Come on over to 10xCaval podcast on YouTube by typing in 10xCaval podcast into youtube.com and clicking the subscribe button. On the YouTube version of this podcast, you could see the graphs, visuals, and key takeaways

that accompany every episode.