The Tim Ferriss Show - #98: The "Wizard" of Hollywood, Robert Rodriguez

Episode Date: August 24, 2015

Robert Rodriguez (@Rodriguez) is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. He is also the founder and chairman of El Rey Network, the new genre-busting English-language cable network. While a student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, Robert Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film while he was a paid subject in a clinical experiment at a drug research facility. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his film. He planned to make the money back by selling the film to the Mexican home video market. The film, “El Mariachi,” went on to win the coveted Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major studio. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew, a perennial guide for the independent filmmaker. Rodriguez went on to write, produce, direct and edit a series of successful films including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller’s Sin City, and Machete. I hope you find listening to this episode as much fun as it was to record. For all links, show notes, resources from this episode, please visit http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. Get 50% off your order at http://Athletic Greens.com/Tim This episode is also sponsored by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. Click this link (http://99designs.com/tim) and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. Enjoy!***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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offering early access to startups, beta testing, special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, ladies and germs, puppies and kittens. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the routines, the habits, the books, the influences, everything that you can use, that you can replicate from their best practices. And this episode is a

real treat. If you loved the Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jon Favreau or Matt Mullenweg episodes, for instance, you are going to love this one. We have a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. His name is Robert Rodriguez. And his story is so good. While he was a student at University of Texas at Austin, he wrote the script to his first feature film when he was sequestered in a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. So he sold his body for science so that he could make art. And that paycheck covered the cost of shooting his film. that the film was El Mariachi, which went on to win the coveted audience award at Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major studio. And he went on then,

of course, to write and produce a lot and direct and edit and so on a lot of films. And he's he's really a jack of all trades master of many because he's had to operate with such low budgets and be so resourceful. But he went on to do films like Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty, The Spy Kids franchise, which was huge, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller's Sin City, and many others. And the show notes, of course, can be found at 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. All of the links, all of the resources, et cetera, just go to 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled links, all the resources, etc. Just go to four hour work week.com all spelled

out forward slash podcast. And one last thing very important. Robert Rodriguez is also the founder and chairman of El Rey network, which is a new genre busting English language cable network. And El Rey is carried probably on whatever you already have. It's carried on Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner, cable, Cox and dish. And I have watched some of my favorite Kung Fu flicks on that channel. I've also seen all sorts of other action films and just these incredible gems that he has sourced and put on his network. So check it out. El Rey network. And without further ado,

please enjoy this conversation with Robert Rodriguez. We dig into so many things. His early days, how he planned for low-resource, high-yield movies and filmmaking, what he's learned from Francis Ford Coppola, Tarantino, etc., dark times, how he's overcome them, his parenting style, his exact journaling style and method, it goes on and on. This was a real blast for me, and I hope it is for you as well. Enjoy. Robert, welcome to the show. Hey, how you doing, man? Great to finally meet you.

Yeah, it's great to finally meet. And as I was doing homework for this and trying to digest everything that is related to you. I checked out a couple of the Director's Chair episodes, and I'd seen clips before, shorter clips, but I hadn't sat down and really taken in three to four hours. And I did that, and I'll tell you. So I've been not having anything to drink for the last two weeks. And I got about halfway through the Francis Ford Coppola episode, and I was like, fuck, this guy's really good at interviewing. And I had to have a glass of wine. I didn't go too crazy. But these episodes are such a fascinating window into the processes

of these masters. And I just wanted to thank you, first of all, for putting them together, because I was planning on going to bed early and I went through three hours straight. Wow, that's amazing. And then I woke up and I also jumped into the Zemeckis episode this morning, which is just fascinating. And what really struck me was how different these approaches can be. I mean, there's so many ways to skin the cat. And before I jump into method questions, though, I wanted to ask you about your journal and journaling, because one of the

constants in all of these interviews is the journal. And it seems like you write a lot down. And I have a compulsive habit of note-taking. I mean, I have shelves of notebooks. So do you have them handwritten? Do you write them actually? How do you keep track of them if you want to access them later? So that's going to be my question for you also. So I have a lot of handwritten notes that I will scan and put into Evernote, which will then allow character recognition to pull things up if I want to search for them. So I just have to keep my handwriting a little clean right but uh you also are really specific in in dates times places how do you use journaling journaling um that's interesting and uh i started you know with the word processing way back you know when i first started filmmaking the first

when i sold del mariachi and columbia hired, the first thing I asked for was an Apple laptop computer, which was the very first one that came out. No one knew what it was. I was the only one on the plane with one. I was writing my screenplays in it, and I would continue my journal, which I had started by handwriting it. It really started, I think in college, my dad gave me a day planner, one of those day planners. And I started using it and you would write the things you're going to do on the left side, and then you would write what you ended up doing that day on the right. And even though I was in college, I tried to push myself pretty hard. I would look and I'd go, wow, I didn't have very much to write about myself

at the end of that day. I'm going to have to give myself more things on the left so I have more to write stuff on the right. It really made you reflect on your day and realize i didn't i didn't do much today and so those got really full and i became a filmmaker right away el mariachi got made and during the process of el mariachi i remember um keeping a really uh dense journal because it was an experiment it was really a test film and that was during all all parts of the process All parts of the process. Because I thought, if I'm going to go take on this endeavor, I know a lot of things aren't going to work out. It's my first feature film. No one's intended to see it. It's really a learning experience. I'm just going to go make it. And I'm going to be able to look back on my journal and see where I

messed up. It was really going to be a document. So I wouldn't make that mistake again. I could go back and track, why did the exposure not work? And I'd be able to go back and go, oh, I didn't do this and I didn't do that. It was really going to be a record of failure rather than a document of success in Hollywood. And I was like, now I really got something to write about. I was writing down all the weird stuff that was happening. Finally, I decided to put out a book on just the making of El Mariachi. And I kept journaling from then on, everything. Which was Rebel Without a Crew? Rebel Without a Crew.

And I would find that you meet the same people over and over again. I wrote down very specifics of people that I would meet casually in Hollywood, knowing we would run into each other again. And they ended up being great collaborators 10 years later, or showing up in things. And I'd be able to go back and read them stuff from the early days, and I would blow them away. So when you write these down, for instance...

I'll go in a computer so I can find them, and I do it in my ear. So do you do it by hand and then input it into a computer? No, I do them all on the computer. So I have a little alarm that goes off at midnight to make sure, because around midnight's usually a good time, and I'll write something down. Because I found that even when I just wrote some items down, I could go back and fill them in later because you would remember.

And what always would shock me and what kept it going is when I would go back and review the journals at how many life-changing things happened within a weekend. Or things that you thought were spread out over two years were actually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that Monday. I mean, so many occurrences happen in chunks that blow you away, things that kind of define you. And do you use Word? Do you use a different application? How do you catch them? I always just used Word because that was the first thing I had on my Apple laptop. There are about 1,000, sometimes 1,000, 2,000 pages per year of journals, a few days or I'm sorry,

a few pages per night on average. Yeah. A few pages per hour. Sometimes some, some hardly anything. Some things are bigger and sometimes I'll clip, sometimes it's a cheek. Sometimes I'll clip like reviews or conversations I had that have been written

down somewhere else and I'll throw them in there too. Everything goes right in the, in the right date. And so I could search by date and I can kind of cross reference stuff, which i just say for anyone who's a parent it's a must it's a must because your children and you forget everything you know within a few years they'll forget things that you think they should remember for the rest of their lives they'll only remember it if it's reinforced and i'm a real family man so i really love every birthday i'll go tell my kids again because they forget by the next year what their first years were like because I'll just read those journal entries.

And it blows them away. Or they'll say, hey, we should go camping again. I go, camping? Oh, yeah. Remember that time we went camping and I put the tent in the backyard and I had electricity going through? We had fans. We're watching Johnny Quest and we're playing. I must have journal on that.

And I must have video. So I would go year by year. I just searched camping, camping, camping. Oh, May 4th, 1999, we went camping. Oh, it's on tape 25 of this particular tape. I'd go find the tape and show it to them. After I'd show them the tape, they didn't have to go camping again. They just relived it.

They relived the entire thing. They relived it and it was better than we even remembered. So encapsulating stuff like that is really, it was just really important. It reminds me of something I don't think I've ever talked about, but my mom, when I was 15, I spent a year abroad in Japan. It was my first time overseas and I was in a Japanese school. It's the only, you know, where's Waldo American kid in the entire, I think it was 5,000 students school, Japanese family. And of course I assumed at the time I was going to remember everything that happened, but my mom, to her credit, every time we had a phone call, we'd get off the phone and write

down what I had said. And so she has this record of my experience in Japan that I have no record of. And of course I don't remember any of it without that kind of queuing. Yeah. Uh, I think part of that came from, I read a diary my mom tried to keep of when we were really little. And it had very few entries, but one of the most defining moments when she pushed me into a pool, because I wouldn't go jump in. She knew I just needed to push, and I felt totally betrayed and totally angry with her. It was in there, but it had her side of the story.

And of course, it was correct. But I wish she had written more. So I thought I'm going to make sure I write. And, uh, and now it's become an addiction and I, and it's just so necessary. I mean, you ask a girlfriend or your wife, what did we do last year on your birthday? They won't remember. A year goes by. You will not remember the details. You go back and you see the journals. It's even better the second time you lived it again and you realize the journals, it's even better the second time. You lived it again and you realize the importance of it. And when you meet someone you think might be a recurring figure in your life or you meet someone who ends up being a teacher of some type, how often do you go back and review the notes?

Or is it really just in time information, not just in case? So when you realize, oh my God, I'm going to be meeting, say, Francis Ford Coppola for the second time, you should probably go back and look at what happened in the first meeting. Or is it something that you proactively review when you were sort of, uh, it's only a need to know because there's so many things you mean you're, you're really, I try to tell myself, I want to be the guy looking through the windshield, not the rear view mirror, but sometimes you can see better through the windshield. If you look through the rear view mirror and look at some of this stuff that's gone on and, and seeing

kind of make sense of where your, uh, relationships are going or what you've learned. And it blows me away. Sometimes I'll just go ahead and look somebody up that I haven't, you know, that I'm about to meet with. Uh, I just met with Jim Cameron. Uh, we hung out, we talked like four hours. We hadn't seen each other in a few years and I was, and I looked up old stuff and I was like, Oh my God,

do you remember when we did this? This guy met him 20 years ago and we'd been friends over the years. And he totally forgot that when I went and showed him desperado for the first time before it came out, just to see what he thought he was watching it in a screening room. And he gave me two little manuscripts here. While I watch your movie, you go read a couple of my treatments.

One of them was for Spider-Man and one of them was for avatar this was in 1994 wow that's how long ago he had that and how much that was going in his head and i thought wow to keep something that was that visionary in your head that long waiting for the technology to come those kind of things made you realize some of these projects i've had for 10 years i should go re-bring them back up i wonder and i have i have since then dusted off something that i'd had 15 years and sold it and now i've just finished a screenplay for it so you mentioned jim cameron uh i had an opportunity to i met him very briefly through the x prize and peter d mandeson those guys and as part of the experience because it was a fundraiser for the X Prize, we all got staff or crew shirts from Avatar.

And the shirt said something along the lines of, hope is not a strategy, failure is not an option, luck is not a factor. And Jim is known for being very demanding, not in a bad way, but I thought that shirt was just, it spoke volumes, I think, in so many different ways about sort of his process, his mentality. How do you keep morale high when you're working with a crew? And maybe, like you said, you're

doing like an exterior shot in Austin and people are just suffering and sweating and pouring and fatigued. Do you have any tricks or approaches that you use over and over again to keep kind of morale high and get the best out of people? I've worked with the same crew, some of them for 20 years. And so they kind of know already the philosophy I tend to have. And I've learned this not through filmmaking, but through other disciplines sometimes, working with painters and with sculptors and musician friends. Because what I found, it's kind of why I do so many different jobs, is because creativity is in job specific.

I mean, if you know how to be creative, you can literally jump from job to job with no training and do them pretty well. Because the technical part of any job is 10%. 90% of that is creativity. And if you already know how to be creative you've kind of got the battle you know half beat which is you don't need to know you don't need to know what note specifically you're going to play when you get on stage and do your solo everybody will go what did you just play and you're gonna go i don't know yes i asked jimmy vann that how do you know what you're playing just now i don't even know what i played i said well it was fantastic did anybody tape it no that's another one that goes off into the air. You know, ask any of the greats, you know, painters.

I studied under a painter, Sebastian Kruger. I went all the way to Germany to watch him paint to figure out his trick. How does he do it? Because I tried to do what he did and it just looked like garbage. He must have a special brush. He must have special paint and a special technique. And I go, no, he's just doing, he starts with a mid-tone, starts knocking in some highlights, a little bit on the chin, then he goes to the eye. And I the eye and how do you know where to go next he goes oh i never know

it's different every time that drives me bonkers what do you mean so how come i can't do that and i go sit down and suddenly i could do it it blows you away so i take those lessons back and i teach my actors that i teach my crew that so just that you don't need to know yeah so sorry to pause but this is so fascinating to me. So what clicked? What was the realization when you sat down and said- You get in your own way, thinking that you needed to know something, a trick or a process before it would flow. If you got out of the way, it would just flow.

What gives you permission to let it flow? Sometimes if you take four years of schooling or you study under somebody, then you've suddenly given your permission to let it flow. And I know you're a guy who likes to take a shortcut in. Here's the shortcut. Just get out of your own way. You're just opening up the pipe and that creativity flows through. And as soon as your ego gets in the way and you go, oh, but I don't know if I know what to do next.

You've already put I in front of it and you've already blocked it a little bit. I did it once, but I don't know if I can do it again. It was never you. The best you can be is just to get out of the way so it comes through. So when an actor comes to me or a crew member, he goes, I'm not sure I know how to play this part, or I'm not sure I know. I go, that's beautiful. Because the other half is going to show up when we're there. They say knowing is half the battle. I think the most important part is the other half, not knowing, not knowing what's going to happen. But you trust that it'll be there when you put the brush up to the canvas. It's going to know where to go. And the further you're

out of the way of it, it'll just happen. So the trust comes first. The trust comes first. You have to trust first and then it'll happen. And I always point it out when it does, you know, like I point it out, you'll see it and I'll point it out when it's going to fall on your lap or I'll just call upon you to come up with something and you will. And I'm going to point out, cause that's the magic. You're just going to be open to it it's all attitude there's nothing wrong that could ever happen i remember on from dusk till dawn the film the special effects guys put too much fire in the explosion and the actors come running out of the building and it's in the movie you see the the building blow up the bar at the end and the fireball if you were to

continue but i cut away it just kept going and engulfed the whole set and that was the first shot we still needed lots of other stuff to shoot with it and we're like okay everyone else is freaking out the production designers cry and that was all their work and uh me and my assistant director he came over and he goes you think what i'm thinking oh yeah this it looks good the way it is it's all charred let's just keep shooting and we'll do the repair you know a little repair it looks good the way it is. It's all charred. Let's just keep shooting. And we'll do the repair, you know, a little repair that needs to be done for next week. And we'll shoot that exterior next week. But let's just shoot. Let's just keep shooting. Sometimes you use those gifts because nothing ever goes according to plan. And sometimes when I hear, you know, new filmmakers talk, they talk all down about their film. Oh, well,

nothing worked. And it was a disappointment. It's like, oh, they don't realize it. That's the job. The job is that nothing is going to work at all. And you go, well, how can I turn that in a way to turn it into a positive and I get something much better than if I had all the time and money in the world? And I loved those experiences so much that I would purposely, and I talked to Michael Mann about this in the Michael Mann Director's Chair, because we talked about Manhunter once years ago, and he retelled me the story and he didn't have any money he fired the effects crew it's some of the really cool staccato editing was

really to cover up the fact that they didn't have effects and i didn't know that i always thought it was a stylistic choice he goes no because we didn't have any money or time and i had the i was cutting it in myself and i was throwing ketchup on the guy in between and i didn't edit i was like oh my god i that was a brilliant stylistic choice. No! I said, I'm going to do that for all my movies now. I want all of them to not have enough money, not enough time, so that we're forced to be more creative. Because that's going to give it something, a spark, that you can't manufacture.

And people will tap in or they'll go, I don't know why I like this movie. It's kind of a weird movie, but there's something about it that makes me want to watch it again and again. Because it's got a life to it. Sometimes art should be imperfect in a way. The point you made just a minute ago about creativity transferring from one area to the next to seemingly unrelated skills and areas, I think is really important. And I, I cannot recommend highly enough that people check out the director's chair. Uh, and one of the, one of the terms that jumped out,

which you kind of mentioned in your last example was the gremlins, right? And the gremlins that you kind of turned to you, how do you embrace the gremlins and turn them to your advantage? And the, you know, the example of the ending of back to the future and how like the church tower and all of that was because the studios just refused to finance this

more kind of spectacular ending things that you would think that planned for, for years were created at the last moment. And you, I couldn't believe that myself. That's why I enjoy doing those interviews. I truly want to know these things cause they still blow me away. The creative process blows me away. And it applies to so much that even if you're not a director or a filmmaker,

you watch that and you see people talking about the creativity and creative process and you see how it applies to anything that you do, how you raise your children, how you cook food, how you run a business. Creativity is so much a part of that. And when people say, oh, you do so many things, you're a musician, you're a painter, you edit, you're the composer, you're the cinematographer, you're the editor, you do so many different things. Go, no, I only do one thing. I live a creative life. When you put creativity in everything, everything becomes available to you. Anything that has a creative aspect is suddenly yours to go and do. There's no separation between work and play. I work, quote unquote, in my house. That's why I write

my scripts, come up with my ideas while I'm playing with my kids, while I'm cooking them a meal, which is a creative exercise art you can eat in itself. And then you go upstairs and do some editing. You edit a scene you can already hear the kind of music for. I'll walk over to this room and I'll do music for it. And then you go, I'm not sure how much character I'm going to get into this character. Maybe I'll paint him first and kind of see visually what he looks like or musically what he sounds like. And you can work completely nonlinear that way because you realize I can do anything I want because everything can be creative.

Even a business call. Suddenly you go, this is kind of out of my league, but let me add my creativity to it and maybe that'll solve something no one else will be able to solve. And sure enough, you can always rely on creativity to, you know,

sort of win the day in a lot of areas. And with say El Mariachi, I've heard numerous, a couple of different versions of this financing, but I'd love to know how you financed it. Because I've heard experimental medical procedures. I've heard selling your sort of body to science. So how was that financed? Yeah, that's one of the strangest things. The legend kept growing around El Mariachi. And it's one of the few times you'll hear a legend where it was all literally true. I mean, it was as crazy as it sounded.

But back then, you know, I mean, I was from a family of 10 kids. There was no borrowing from mom and dad to go make a movie. That was on me. I was already paying my way through school. And I already had two jobs. I had a job as a cartoonist and I had a job working at the university and barely making rent and tuition. So to go make a movie, even though people would say, oh, 7,000, that's so cheap for a 16 millimeter movie. Oh yeah, you got $7,000 sticking out of your pocket? Who has that? So you had to kind of take down a score. and the only way you could actually go do a big number was to go to this uh it was one of the biggest universities

in the country at the time they had this thing called pharmaco which was a medical research facility and it's only like a fourth stage where it's already been tested many times and this is the final before they get fda you're not replacing they're not they're not like you know mixing a couple things together and giving it to you and saying, okay, let's see if it works. They're really kind of seeing, but they need healthy young specimens between the age of 18 and 24. And so that's college students, and they all need money. So you go in for a weekend and make $500. But you pick up a pig in a cushion.

I would go in there for the longer ones that were like a month where you would be paid for your time rather than your pain. So I now would write scripts while I was in there. And you make $2,000, $3,000 in a month, real money, when you're not having to pay for food and rent and anything. Now you have to eat. Oh, so you were housed there. You're housed there. Yeah, you're housed there and you can't leave.

And you've got to eat and shit and pee at a certain time. Well, I guess that's another benefit, though, right? Because they're covering some of your what would otherwise be expenses. It was a great deal. And so I did a couple of those. And one of them was a drug that's on the market, Lipitor, the cholesterol-lowering drug. That's the one I was on.

So I got to eat bacon and all kinds of stuff. I got to eat a high-cholesterol diet. I used that money to go and make the film because I had an idea we could sell it for at least double of what we made it if we kept the budget really low. I didn't know. So I had to just make it for as little as possible. Most of that money went to just the film stock.

And I really didn't think anyone was going to see it. It was really just a test film. That's why I did it in Spanish. I did it for the Spanish market. I was already had a bunch of award-winning short films, but I needed to practice telling features. So I thought, let me just make a bunch of features for the Spanish market just to get some seasoning, do all the jobs myself because I couldn't afford a crew. And that way I'll learn them all. If I can sell it for twice of what I put in, that's like the best film school. I'll learn every job. I'll do like two or three of these things, cut them all together, take out the best portions and use it on my demo reel and then use the money that I make to go make a real first film, English language, American and independent film.

And the first one got released by columbia pictures and i was shocked now how did that how did that happen and um who took a chance on you or how did you increase the odds of that hip happening because i guess it was sundance is that was that the trigger no it was already bought by sunday it was already bought by sundance so how did that how did that happen i had this crazy idea i'd made this short film by myself it was a wind-up camera it was eight minutes long it was called bedhead it's online and i utilized it to use slow motion and all kinds of things that i couldn't use on a video camera i really wanted to show off what i could do with that little camera as a world world war ii camera

the little wind-up ones i mean a piece of junk but it could do stuff it couldn't do with video shot that put it in festivals and won a bunch of festivals. And I was like, wow, I did that all by myself with $800. It's eight minutes. If I did that times 10, I could do an 80-minute movie for $8,000. Or less, because it would be dialogue scenes. It wouldn't be wall-to-wall action like that short film. I could pad it out.

I could probably do it for $5,000. I felt like I was getting away with something, coming up with this idea, thinking, how come no one's ever done this before? Let me go try it this summer. Let me try it for the Spanish video market, because they make them for like 30 grand. But I'll guarantee no one sees it. I'll call it a mariachi, which is basically, if you're going to the action section, you won't buy a movie or rent a movie called The Guitar Player. That promises no action at all.

But I just thought, you know, I had a sense of humor, and I thought, let me make it kind of, I don't really want people to see it. I just want to be able to test out these ideas and see if it's possible. Shot, shot, shot, cut it, cut it, cut it. Went to sell it in LA because that's where the distributors were for those U.S. distributed Spanish language movies. Because you would just look at the video box and all the companies were like on Wilshire Boulevard. So I drove up here with my friend Carlos. And the in I had was there was going to be a 25th anniversary of the Texas film commission in Austin and a bunch of people from Hollywood that governor Ann Richards

was trying to invite in. And I saw the list of people and one of the agents from ICM called Robert Newman was going to be there. And I thought maybe I can try and slip in my short films. Well, the whole thing got canceled and fell apart. So when I was in LA, I called ICM up cold. I looked them up in the phone book, called them up. This was in 1992 and got an ask for Robert Newman's office. And they put me right through. He was a new agent there. He didn't have any directors yet. I called up his assistant and said, Hey, can I talk to Robert Newman? He was going to, he was going to come down to this 25th anniversary thing. And they said, Oh, I hooked up on the phone with him. He said, yeah, what happened with that? I was all ready to come down and go, wow, I don't know,

but I was going to show you my film and i'm here in town i wanted to drop off my award-winning short film in a trailer for a movie i made for seven thousand dollars okay drop it off i couldn't believe it dropped it off he called me back up the next day hey the machine ate my tape he actually watched it couldn't believe it went made another tape gave it to him waited over the weekend and i got the call and he says i love the short film but i love the trailer the trailer for this movie the mariachi movie it's it's i mean it's like a world-class trailer because i kind of i knew people couldn't watch the whole thing so i was i'm a pretty good editor i cut this really snazzy trailer that just made you want to watch the movie and he said how much

did it cost again i said 7 000 oh that's pretty good most trailers cost 20 or 30 no no the whole film cost 7,000. I said, oh, come on. I said, no, the whole thing. I shot it really low budget, but I'm going to can I come up and talk to you? So he had me come up and I told him, I plan on making two or three of these, like a trilogy of these guy with a guitar case

as just a test. And I'm wondering what else I should put on my demo tape because, you know, my award winning short film has been doing well. I think it was all kind of like a dollar's trilogy. And I can get you work right now off of this. I said, really?

He goes, yeah, I'd send this to the studios. Just put subtitles on it and I'll send it to him. So I subtitled it, send it. And, um,

he got me a two year deal right away. Columbia pictures, not to remake, not to even release Mariachi. Mariachi was just a calling card, but it happened to so quick. I mean, I was really young. I was what, 22, 23.

I really thought I was going to make some test films first and have a chance to come up with what my big idea was. I mean, I was in no rush. I really wanted to be prepared. I really wanted to learn every job and really know what I was doing. So this suddenly caught me by surprise because now they're asking, well, you're a filmmaker now. And he even wrote me down as a writer director.

And I guess a writer director. I guess I wrote the script so yeah i guess i'm a writer director i never really thought of myself that way and i was suddenly this young kid plunged into this world and i suddenly had to come up with a bunch of original ideas because this was my shot i've it was you know too quick yeah i was not prepared so i thought um well look you guys like del mariachi why don't we just remake that? Remake it with Antonio Banderas in Spain, and we'll just cast it up. And they said, okay, that's a good idea. But we want to test screen El Mariachi first to make sure people don't think it's a downer ending when the girl gets killed.

So they made a film print. They tested it. And people liked it the way it was. They decided to take it to festivals. And I completely protested. I was like, this is my practice film. No one was ever supposed to see this. Give me $ dollars this is my debut baton ball don't put this out for the world to see don't put this out if i knew people were gonna see give me two thousand dollars i'll go reshoot half of it just knowing people were gonna

see it as my first film and they said no you don't know what you have here it's very special and they took it out and it went to telluride toronto and the the head of um sundance came to me at toronto and said don't show it at any more festivals and you can bring it to sundance and put it in competition because you know he knew it would do really well there and it won so i was already bought by columbia so i was one of the few films usually that's already had a distributor and we took it and um i had a great little talk i would do before to set it up because i had to disclaim why it was the way it was. And I'd say, well, when you see the Columbia logo come on in the front,

that logo probably costs more than the whole movie. So everything you watch after that, just know how I did it. I wanted people to know how I did it. I really wanted to deconstruct how it was done because I would have wanted to know that. As a film student who felt, coming from a family of 10 kids living in Texas,

people constantly saying, you want to be a filmmaker? Oh, you need to la that you could stay where you are and come up with something that could be sold i wanted others i just wanted to get on top of a mountain tell everybody so that's why i put out a book and that's why even before each screening i would explain how it was even possible because i knew they would be wondering because nobody had really ever done it it wasn't that it was impossible just nobody had done it before one ever thought that way. People kind of forgot that that's how movies really started. It was always like a couple of guys with a windup camera and Buster Keaton in front. It wasn't a business yet. When it became a business, suddenly everyone had a job and you

needed 200 people because it was now an industry. That's not what the art form was originally. It was just the manipulation of moving images. And you can do that with two people, one person. That was a breakthrough idea. And so Bayam would tell them, I just took stock in what I had. My friend Carlos, he's got a ranch in Mexico. Okay, that'll be where the bad guy's at. His cousin owns a bar. The bar's where it's going to be the first initial shootouts,

where it's going to be all the bad guys hang out. His other cousin owns a bus line. Okay, there'll be an action scene with a bus at some point. There's a big action scene in the middle of the movie with a bus. He's got a pit bull. Okay, he's in the movie. His other scene with a bus at some point. There's a big action scene in the middle of the movie with a bus. He's got a pit bull. Okay, he's in the movie. His other friend had a turtle he found. Okay, the turtle's in the movie because people will think we had an animal wrangler.

And that'll suddenly raise production value. So I wrote everything around what we had. So you never had to go search. And you never had to spend anything on the movie. The movie cost really nothing. It was really just the fact that I wanted to shoot it film um instead of video so that it would look more expensive and try and tell people you know made it for 70 000 try to sell it for like 70 000 instead it ended up going to columbia getting released and that story really um when we won sundance the audience award uh my acceptance

speech said you're gonna get a lot more entries next year when people find out that this is the one that won, a movie made with no money, no crew, everyone's going to pick up a camera and start making their own movies. And it's been flooded with entries since then. It was really a real change in the paradigm. And it was only out of necessity. It wasn't my big idea that it could be done. I really just thought, I don't want to take anyone with me. Even my best friend wanted to come help on my movie shoot for El Mari i said no because i gotta go to mexico and this camera i borrowed

you know it's probably gonna break down the first day i don't want to do it i'll jinx it if i start bringing too many people down and i don't mind failing i just don't like failing at a bunch of other in front of a bunch of other people so where they go back and they say robert tried to make a movie for no money idiot he got stranded idiot. He got stranded in Mexico. So I really didn't think it would work. And I was surprised. And that's the best I tell people is just be naive. Stay naive.

Throw it away. Don't overthink it. I didn't overthink it at all because I would have treated it completely differently had I thought I would ever even show it to anybody. Had I thought it would go to a festival and I would have submitted, I would have spent times as much i would have gone and borrowed money and done all instead it was like one take one take one to everything was one take even if it didn't work because i had the film so expensive so i would go and it was a noisy camera and it was a soundless camera i mean it would make so much noise you couldn't record sound so i had to record sound the way you're doing right now so i would shoot a take put the camera away get the sound out put the mic So for those people, yeah, we have two mics attached to a little recording device.

I would put the mic as close as you have it. So I got great sound, but it was out of sync. But you kind of talk in your own rhythm. So if you say, hi, my name is Robert, you put the camera away. Okay, now do the audio. Hi, my name is Robert. You can pretty much get it to sync. I don't like rubbery lips.

If you look at mariachi, it's all in sync, except where it started to get out of sync i cut away to the dog or i cut away to a close-up and it created this really turtle snappy uh editing style but it was really just to get it back in sync because i couldn't stand that but that was the whole idea you know it's like let me just try and do all these things myself and see if we can put it together it reminds me of um jack ma mean, it's very consistent among these people who seem to come out of nowhere and build something very big. Of course, there are exceptions, but Jack Ma of Alibaba, he said, you know, we had a couple of advantages when we started. We had no experience, no money, and no plan. And so every dollar we spent, we had to consider very, very,

very carefully. Well, my plan was, I had a really good plan. This was the plan was, I'm going to go shoot one take of everything because a film is the most expensive item. If I just shoot two takes, you know, one just in case, I've just doubled my budget. So one take, I'll cut it together. The stuff that I need to come reshoot, we'll only reshoot that. We'll only get those shots. You never come back and reshoot. By the time you get back up there, back to Austin, you figure out a way to cut around things that were not done right or a little slow. And I never came back and reshot anything. You end up just working with what you got. But it got me off the hook from being too precious is by knowing I had that safety net, which I never ended up using. So if you can do that for yourself in any area that you're in,

try to just go free with abandon. And sometimes they say that for yourself, you know, in any area that you're in, try to just go free with abandoned. And sometimes, you know, they say that for writing a book or writing a script, just write, don't, don't keep rereading each page and going, Oh, it's not good enough. And then tear it up and throw it in the trash can. You'll never get anywhere. You got to just have, get momentum and keep going and come back later with fresh eyes and look at it again. Now that you have access to so many resources, how do you, what are practices you have or principles for maintaining that scrappy creative mindset, right? Because if you, you don't have to have many constraints if you don't want to at this point. So

are there ways that you try to simulate that? There's a couple of things with that. This is freedom of limitations. You know, there's almost more freeing to know i gotta use only these items turtle bar ranch you're almost completely free within that you know you almost can do not anything because that would be almost too many options but you're you're you're just put into a box it's one of my favorite movies i did with quentin was called four rooms where they said we're all doing short films we all have the same criteria has to be set in one room has to be new year's eve and you have to use the bellhop the freedom of limitations was enormous i mean you watch that short and it goes all over the room and by the end we burn down the room i mean it's it's it almost was some more exciting to know that you were in a box and you could be creative within that box.

So now that so many things are available to you, you want to limit yourself in a way. So I try to limit time. I try to limit money so that we can really get still keep that essence of creativity and deliver on the screen something that just looks much bigger so that you can retain your freedom, creative freedom. Because if you start spending more money suddenly the financiers rightfully so the studios or you know the executives will be over your shoulder constantly questioning every move you make because they want their money back but if you keep the budget low it's a win-win situation if the money the movie does great it's a great success if the movie doesn't do great it's still a success because it didn't cost very much and it'll make back its money over time. That's kind of where I've kind of lived and breathed.

I'm about to jump out of the box a little bit more and do some things that are a little bigger just to learn more because you just learn more when you go and do other kind of assignments, but where it's really the most fun. And that's why you asked, how do you keep the morale high?

The morale is always high on the set because they know we're just being creative. That's the name of the game. It's not looking for a result. It's like, how can we just keep ourselves jazzed about this? If you were to go back and rewrite Rebel Without a Crew at this point, what would you change? What would you add? What would you remove?

You know, I haven't read it since I wrote it, actually. It's really funny that you say that because people come up to me a lot with copies ready for me to sign it. A lot of people have read it. And they say that it helped them, even if they weren't a filmmaker. You know, it helped me open my own business. It helped me do this. And they would mention a quote. And I'm thinking, I don't remember ever saying

that. I got to go reread it. I was smart back then. What happened? I said some really good stuff. They'd say, give me these quotes that sounded like I got to follow that. I need to go reread it just so I can go follow what I used to tell myself. Cause there's something that happens. And you know, when you go to lecture, when you go to teach, it's kind of like you're opening up that pipe. You know, you, you go to talk with the intention and it's all intention based of giving people who are looking for answers and looking for strategies, uh, something they can use and out of your mouth will come things that you are then going and cribbing and writing down yourself going, well, that's pretty good advice. Where'd that come from? You know, that's cause it's,

you're letting it flow. It's not you, you know, you've gotten out of the way at that point. So that book was a very much like that. You know, there's a lot of things in there that even I'm surprised popped out that seemed right at the time that were very knowing without me knowing anything, you know? So, um, I, I really do like that about it. I wouldn't think I would rewrite that book, but I've been trying to figure out is how to write the ones after,

because so much happened after that. And the diaries are so dense that it's almost hard to know how to focus. I think I figured out how to do it by doing a creativity-based book where any time some of these events happen to do particularly with creativity or the process, then those things like hanging out with Jim that time or doing this with this person, would fit into it. And then you could get some of those journal entries in a way that was organic to the whole creative process.

That seems to be mostly what I'm about now, not specifically film-related. Because if film died tomorrow, I would be sculpting, or painting, or doing music, or something else that involved creativity. So really what I am is someone who lives a creative or someone who lives a creative life, not even just in work, but it's also in, in when he's not working. And you,

you mentioned earlier, you had two jobs, uh, in, in college. One of them was cartooning and was that loose hooligans? Yes. Okay.

So you had loose hooligans, which then became later the, the name of the, of your company, which was changed. So I have kind of two questions one is how did cart how has cartooning helped you in your various creative endeavors but maybe specifically film and you know did you use your kind of uh drawing ability for say el mariachi

or any of these others uh and then the second question which we can get to but is why you changed the name to troublemaker studios um let me answer the first one first los hooligans yeah it was was a name that these little troublemakers it's about these little kids based on my family in the in the comic strip and uh los hooligans was to show that they were hispanic you know um it was with a few hispanic strips and that for that paper was a very big paper and we had a big comics page it was very popular very famous people came out of there berkeley brother came out of there chris, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, has amazing books out. Most of that, a lot of that first early work he did was from his college work. I mean, he's just bonkers great and made everyone around him good.

That's the other thing is if you surround yourself with masters, which is I still try to do. That's the main trick. Even when we're filming, I'll have master painters and master sculptors and master come visit so the artists can just get off on what they're doing and apply it to their area because it's like your mind explodes and you want to always be training and always be learning and um and that's kind of what that page was for me the cartooning made me realize a lot about the creative process i remember remember I used to come home and I'd have to do a strip a day and it would take sometimes three, four hours. And I would sometimes just not feel like facing the blank page. So I would go lay down and go, I'm trying to figure

out if I can create this method where I can just come lay down and stare at the ceiling and it'll just appear fully formed. Then I can go and draw it. And I never could get that to work. I'd be running out of time. I'd run back to the table and I'd realize the only way to do it was by just drawing. You'd have to draw and draw and draw. And then one drawing would kind of be kind of funny or cool. That one's kind of neat. This one kind of goes with that. And then you draw a couple of filler ups.

And that's how it would be created. You had to actually move. And I applied that to all my other work, filmmaking and everything. Even if I didn't know what to do, you just had to begin. And a lot of people, that's the part that keeps them back the most it's like well i don't have an idea so i can't start it's like no you you only get the idea once you start it's this totally reverse thing you have to act first before inspirational hit you don't wait for inspiration and then act or you're never going to act because you're never going to have the inspiration not consistently so

you can consistently perform and act and get there and sit and draw till it comes out and it comes out and if you trust it and you get out of your way and that started teaching me that too you don't have to ever sit there and go well i don't have any ideas i don't know if i can draw one today get your ego out of it it's not you anyway if you sooner you shut up the sooner it'll come through get out of the way let the pen glide where it needs to go and it'll be there and you'll be amazed and you And you'll be going, how did I do that? And the creative spirit will be like, bastard taking credit for it again. But that applied to that, to everything that I do. And sometimes it helped to be able to draw to show somebody really quickly.

This is the shot I have in mind. Let's go get this. And I'd be able to sketch it out. So that would help. But mostly it was really just the process, what I learned about the creative process that early. I was like 18, 19 at the time. I'll show you some of the strips. I look back at them, and I'm like, oh, my God.

I drew better then than I do now. What happened? Because I was practicing every day. And that was the other thing. It showed you mastery. You spent four hours a day on anything, you're going freaking good even if you have zero talent i mean one of the cartoons that chris ware came to me one day he goes oh my god my teacher told me this your drawings have jumped in leaps and bounds within a day it's not a gradual up it's like suddenly from one day to the next and i just

saw that in yours i had done a strip that was really different from anything I did, and it went to that level. So I apply that a lot to people. Don't get frustrated. Keep going. Keep practicing. Keep at it. Put in the hours, and it'll come to you. And then at one point, suddenly you'll be... And it happened everywhere, in sculpting and music and filmmaking,

where suddenly it just jumps. You just hit this inflection point. It just jumps, yeah. It jumps by a lot, and it blows you away. And you're like, what's different? Nothing's different. I just kept applying myself, and it blows you away. And you're like, what's different? Nothing's different. I just kept applying myself, and it finally clicked.

Troublemaker Studios came from, I had this studio. I didn't know what to call my production company. I was an independent filmmaker who was getting to put his company in the front of the credits. So I had to come up with a company. I didn't have one, so I just used Los Hooligans so people would know it was the same guy who was making cartoons. But the sentiment was kind of cool. I hadn't have one, so I just used Los Hooligans so people would know it was the same guy who was making cartoons. But the sentiment was kind of cool. I hadn't quite figured it out. And then one year, it was in 1997, I was going to go to Europe to do

some publicity, and I went into this place where Stevie Ray Vaughan used to get his cowboy hats, to get a cowboy hat. And I walked into their place, and I said, I need a cowboy hat, because I'm going to Europe. And every time I go to Europe, they always ask, you're from Texas, where's your cowboy hat? So I'm going to go in there this time with a cowboy hat. It's the guy said, what do you got right now? And the guy ran to the back and he looked at me,

they kind of size you up in the Texas hatters and they fit something to your head. And he goes, this is called a troublemaker. It's a troublemaker. Wow. That's a cool name for a hat. Shit. I'm going to call my studio, the troublemaker studios. It's kind of the same as Los Fulgans, but done in a, in a, cooler way so yeah my my thing of wearing a cowboy hat and the name my studio was born that one day i love it i've uh when i've made companies like llcs or whatever and i'll be on the phone with a lawyer and they'll say well what do you want to do if such and such name isn't available and i'll just look around where i happen to be sitting, kind of like the Kobayashi moment in The Usual Suspects. And I'll be like, it's pillow serious.

You know, just tagging things together. And I'll be like, try that. No one's going to have... One of my favorite LLCs, and this is the sentiment that sometimes why you go, and you probably can relate to this, sometimes when you try to get help from people and they don't quite see the vision and there's a negativity involved one of my companies is called never mind i'll do it myself productions and it always motivates people when you say hey can you bring me this or bring me that and they go like well i don't know if that i go never mind i'll do it myself productions like okay okay i'll go do it they don't want to be labeled that but it's like a great motor later i love it uh so speaking of troublemaker um and just

being say rabble rouser one of the things that i wrote down from your conversation with francis ford coppola who by the way he so he owns a bunch of uh obviously he's he's spends a lot of time in north cal he's got the theery, he also has some restaurants. And so for about a year, I was writing, and I just went to his restaurants, hoping that he would walk in. Which restaurant? It was in North Beach.

It was right at the corner. I think he owns the entire building. But the restaurant that I went into most was actually in Palo Alto. And I'm blanking on the name. I want to say Blanco Eroso. I thought it was like white and red. But I was going out sitting there just in the off chance that he would walk in.

It never ended up happening. But I never gave up hope. And that's where I wrote, actually. I probably edited half of the four-hour work week in that restaurant. Wow. I drank way too much coffee. But one of the things he said was, you know, failure is not durable. And the segue or the next thing he said was the things that they fire you for when you're young are the same things they give you lifetime achievement awards for when you're old.

Yeah. And so I wanted to know, like, what did you get and how did you get yourself in trouble in the early days? Were there ways that you got yourself sort of created friction or conflict in ways that you don't regret or that you do regret? Yeah. in ways that you don't regret or that you do regret. Yeah, anytime you step out of line like that, it wasn't that you get in trouble, but you would just have people not understand exactly what you were going to do and with good intentions not want you to go down the wrong path. So I remember one of my teachers who became a great friend of mine,

he asked me, what are you doing this summer? I go, I'm going to go make a movie. It was all mariachi. What are you going to do? I'm going to go make a movie. Oh, yeah? Who's going to be your DP? Well, I'm going to be the movie. It was so mariachi. What are you gonna do? I'm gonna go make a movie. Oh, yeah Who's gonna be your DP? Well, I'm gonna be the DP. Oh, no, the actors will hate you

You'll be there setting up the lights the whole time, you know Anyway, so I tell me all the disadvantages to try to do something yourself And so I just like I'm not gonna tell anybody what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna go do it because I have a feeling it'll work and if it doesn't work no one will know And it worked when I came back and I showed him he felt very embarrassed Well. He goes, well, you know, you hate to see these kids go out there and, you know, with good intentions, but you know, anytime you just did something that was against the grain, because you just go, I don't know, I have a, I have a feeling I should just go this way. You should just go and try it. And, um, it's just, it's good not to follow the herd,

you know, go the other way. If everyone's going that way, you go this other way. Yeah. You're going to stumble. You're going to stumble, but you're also going to stumble upon. You're going to stumble upon an idea. No one came up with. This is my favorite quotes.

I say, that's going to be my book. I do that in talks. People get all excited. Cause it's like, you're going to stumble, but you're going to stumble upon something. No one ever else came up with because the freaking lined with gold over there.

No one goes that way. It hasn't been picked clean yet. And you're going to stumble upon something and you'll stumble a few times, but then you're going to consistently stumble upon an idea no one's come up with by going that way. And so I tend to just kind of always been that way. I was like, if everyone's going that way, like they know what they're doing with purpose, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to go this other way. That way, at least it's a new frontier. And I always found success that way. I always found success by just going the opposite way.

If there was too much competition over there, if everyone's trying to get through that one little door, you're in the wrong place. And I hate saying that. Sometimes at a film festival, people say, how do we break in? Well, the problem is you're at a film festival. What is wrong with film festival? But everyone else here is trying to get through that same door.

And there's not all going to fit. so you've got to think bigger than that there's less competition up there so instead of everyone i always wanted to get into tv but instead of going and competing with everyone else trying to get on 7 p.m on nbc on a friday night own a network you know how many other people are trying to own a network? Nobody. You're competing with no one. And you're competing with, you know, literally. When that network that I got was up for grabs because of this LRA, there was 100 other applicants. Now, that sounds like a lot. But out of the whole country, 100?

Really? How many actually had probably a solid business plan and an actual vision of something that could be implemented? Probably five. So you're competing with the top five instead of the top 20,000 trying to get in on NBC Friday night, on Saturday night.

So I always say, try to just look bigger than that. And I feel failure. That's what I talk a lot about in Director's Chair, why I was bringing that up with Francis. I like talking about mistakes and failure a lot with these directors because people tend to think they just make no mistakes ever and think that that's bad

because I used to think the same way when I went. That's why I did Mariachi by myself. I didn't want to see people make me make mistakes. I didn't want them to see me make mistakes because I thought it was a bad thing, but it's not. You learn so much no matter what. Even if I didn't sell Mariachi, I would have learned so much by doing that project. That was the

idea. I'm there to learn. I'm not there to to win i'm there to learn because then i'll win eventually you don't have to win right now you just have to know i'm gonna go to follow my heart go that way and sometimes it'll work for you sometimes it'll be the godfather sometimes it'll be one from the heart sometimes it'll be you know apocalypse now sometimes it'll be jack you don't know but you got to keep going that way and that's kind of what he was saying you know sometimes failure if you have that attitude well maybe in 10 years this will be a success it helps a lot to have that kind of history you know when i'm to make a movie if it didn't do well i would go hey maybe it's the thing you know john carpentier made the

thing and it bombed everyone thought it was terrible they called it pornography they thought it was he went buried his head in the sand for 10 years until 10 years later they announced that it was a classic and it was a masterpiece. Of course, he was wallowing in despair for 10 years. Thanks, but it came late. But eventually it would come. And if it doesn't, you're already

on to better things. So as long as you always think it's not a bad thing, I try to always look at failure as a good thing. Failure, Winston Churchill quote I like, success is moving from one failure to the next with great enthusiasm. it's not a bad thing. I try to always look at failure as a good thing. It's in Churchill's quote, success is moving from one failure to the next with great enthusiasm. You should just be willing to go fail. That means you're going out that way

that's different. You're going into uncharted territory. And that's where you'll find eventually. As long as you're learning something. You learn something. And sometimes the only way to get across that river is by slipping on that first rock. That's the way there. And when you get to the other side, you look back, and sure enough, I could only have gotten here had I done those things.

And people sometimes say, I remember when I was giving a talk like that, and a gal, she holds up her hand, and she goes, Okay, well, you're real positive, but what do I do? What do I tell myself when I just wasted a year and a half of my life on something that didn't work? I said, well, it's a real negative way to put it. Can you rephrase that for me? I learned something the hard way. I learned something good the hard way. That still sucks. You know, you've got to be able to look at your

failures and know that there's a key to success in every failure. If you look through the ashes long enough, you'll find something. I'll give you one. And I did Four Rooms. Quentin asked me, do you want find something. I'll give you one. And I did four rooms. Quentin asked me, you want to do one of these movies, one of these short films called Four Rooms? The one with the bellhop, the one in a hotel room. My hand went up right away, instinctually. Yeah, I want to do that. It's an experimental film. I'm there. Now, should I have

answered so quick? Should I have been a little more studied? Should I have gone back and researched and realized anthology movies never work? Even when it's Scorsese and Woody Allen and Coppola, they bomb miserably. They never work. Should I have researched, come back, given a different answer? No one can answer that. I go, no, I would still go with my instinct. The movie bombed.

In the ashes of that failure, I can find at least two keys of success if I look back on it. On the set when I was doing it, at Castantoniaio banderas as the dad and had this cool little mexican kid as a son they looked really close together and then i found the best actions i could find was this little you know half asian girl she was amazing so i needed an asian mom i really wanted them to look like a family and i got this great little family and it's new year's eve because i was dictated by the script so they're all dressed

in tuxedos and i was looking looking at Antonio and his Asian wife and going, wow, they look like this really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies? And these two little kids who can barely tie their shoes didn't know they were spies. They get captured. They have to go save them. I thought of that on the set of Four Rooms. There's four of those now in a TV series

coming. So that one. The other one was, after it failed, I thought, I still love short films. Anthologies never work. We shouldn't have had four stories. It should have been three stories, because that's probably three acts. And it should just be the same director instead of different directors, because we didn't know what each person was doing. I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try

it again if I knew that they don't work? Because you figured something out when you're doing it the first time. And that was Sin City. So Spy Kids and Sin City came out of that. So you can always look back. If you have a positive attitude, you can look back at what you're... That's why what Francis is saying is correct.

Failure isn't always durable. You can go back and you can look at it and go, oh, that wasn't a failure. That was a key moment in my development that I needed to take. And I can trust my instinct. I really can. Because what is success?

It's not necessarily measured in dollars. It could be measured in knowledge. What did I learn that I can now use later? And it may take me 10 years to figure it out, but it'll be there when I need it. And then I'll be able to look back and check a journal and go, oh, yeah, this and that equal together.

I'm going to keep following my gut. And Zemeckis said the same thing he should not have even hired eric stoltz he knew it was supposed to be michael j fox except your intellect tries to tell you different your intellect tries to tell you you can make anything work but your gut is harder to explain to people because it's just a feeling you can't always go to a studio and say i know but i just have a feeling they'll be like what does that mean that's the dilemma of being artists, which is why I've always kind of chosen low, low budget movies. So people don't have to ask me those questions.

I'm in charge. So I can just go, you know what, if it feels good, it is good. And that's what we're going to do. What books or book do you most frequently gift to other people? I'm not surprised that recently it's been some years, but for a while when that book, uh, start with why start with why I liked that one a lot because i've seen the little talk on ted talk simon simon cynic did and um and i would send that to people and go look at this is this is so important you know i realized better what i was doing when i when i read that book and i gave it to people to show them how to clarify what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong and it was a very simple approach that they should kind of take every day. Like if you go to an actor and say, hey, I'm a filmmaker,

and I'm making a low-budget movie, and I kind of need your name as a marquee to kind of help sell it, I can't pay you very much, and it's going to be probably a lot of work. But if you want to be in it, you're thinking about all of yourself. He's like, no, get the hell out of here. All you're talking about is what you do and how you do it, which is I make a little budget movies. Yeah, so what? It means you've got no money.

Instead, I always start with a why. I go to them. I love what you do. I've always been a big fan. I've got a part that you never would get. I believe in creative freedom. I don't work with the studios. I work independently.

I'm the boss there. It's just me and my crew. It's very creative. Ask any of your actor friends. They'll say go have that experience. You're just gonna feel so invigorated I shoot very quickly so you'll be out Robert De Niro in machete in four days I'm gonna shoot you out in four days While you'll be on your next movie for six months, you know my movie for four days It's gonna be the most fun you've ever had and probably you'll get probably great reviews your performance

It's gonna be just really free because I'm going to give you that freedom. That's why I do it. How do I do it? Well, I work very independently. I have very few people in my crew. We all do multiple jobs. We do it with less money so that we have more freedom. What is it that we do?

I'm an independent filmmaker. Do you want to come make this movie? They're like, yes, because it's all about what they can do, what they can bring to it, how it's going to fulfill them. You don't have to mention, oh, and by the way, I need your name as the way i need your name as a movie because really you really are interested in their talent and it does bring uh you know a level to the to the picture you really got to think about why why is it that i'm even doing what i'm doing one of the my favorite things that i i read and i hadn't realized this backstory but was your experience with sin City and Frank Miller and the, well, maybe battle's too strong a word,

but the decision to insist on the co-directing. Right. And could you just elaborate on that for folks? Because as context, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I have about 10,000 comic books at home, all polybagged. So I was a comic book addict for decades, and I wanted to be a comic book penciler. So I was actually an illustrator in college

for one of the satire magazines, but I wanted to be a comic book penciler for a very, very long time. Could you give a little bit of the context around Sin City? Let's give a little context in the battles that you normally have with, with, uh, when you try and step out of line, like, how do you get in trouble?

Like you're asked, how do you get in trouble all the time? It's never intentional. It's just, sometimes you're just ahead of people's time. So when Quentin and I were making these movies, like for, um, even after Del Mariachi, I went and did, you know, some other films and, and, uh, I didn't know if I need, I wanted to join something like the director's guilt. And it's nothing I dislike more than organizations. Cause they're usually the most disorganized organization.

You already know. Okay. They have other things in mind. That's probably doesn't involve me. And it's suddenly I'm in a box and I want to be in a box. And George Lucas isn't in the director's guild and neither is Quinn. So, um,

I'm just staying out of the director's guilt. And then they'd come after you after a little while and go it's embarrassing that you're out making films and and you're not in the guild um so i said okay well i can't i can't really join because um i want to do low budget movies y'all don't have low budget agreements you know this is kind of my lifeblood this is i can just kind of go do whatever i want and so we're putting some paperwork in then we're putting some new rules that allows that and so i did a film and they made me you know join so i joined and the very first film i go and make under it was four rooms which already didn't fall under their guidelines i already had to quit again which already cost me like five grand to get into the damn organization so it's like okay so

i'm in i'm already get out all right i'm out i'll just stay out i knew it and it's not gonna fit me so we go in and make movies for years and years. And they let me go. They let me go because it was like, all right, really, how long is this guy's career going to last? And then like four or five films later, they come back because it's becoming embarrassing that I'm working and no longer in the guild. And, you know, it's all about their faith. And I'm an Hispanic filmmaker, which they had very few. And I'm not in the guild.

So they, you know, coaxed me back in. I said, but I'm only going filmmaker, which they had very few. And I'm not in the guild. So they coaxed me back in. I said, but I'm only going to go back in. And I said, if you don't go back in, we're going to make it harder for you to get a job with the other ones. So I was like, ooh, so it's going to get to that. OK, well, I ain't freaking paying again. So you guys are going to have to pay me in. Because you're all welshed on your deal.

So I went back in. And I was always getting in trouble. Because I would be like, these organizations don't like hyphenphenates so if you're like a writer and a director and editor they like having their name more prominent than the other so the writers guild would be upset at directors guild of me as a writer wasn't more prominent than i mean this stuff that you just don't care about at all you know you're just trying to make your movie and so i remember i had to leave like the writers guild actually after Kids, because they demanded all kinds of stuff. And then the Directors Guild,

again, was giving me hassle over having a credit that said, shot, chop, scored and directed by Robert Rodriguez. And once upon a time, Mexico's fine. I just had to separate the two. I didn't want my name to come up 20 times, because I was doing a bunch of jobs, but each guild makes you put your name in there.

So I tried to combine them. You didn't want 12 consecutive screens with your name on them. And they kept wanting me to separate it so my name would keep coming back up, but it just looked really egotistical. And I was like, no, no, no, no. So here.

And plus, I did the movie so fast. I didn't really... I'm not the cinematographer. Man, I just shot it. I wasn't thoughtfully editing. Man, I chopped it. And I did the music. I can barely play. And it's an orchestra but i scored it and music composed by robert jr you

know so i cut out all the lofty things they didn't like that so i was always having to go in front of the board for something and um and then when sin city came around that was like the final straw because um i thought and it was happened very organically i went to frank miller and i showed him this test that i did for sin city and i said i know what it's like to create original characters and not to trust hollywood but this isn't hollywood this is something totally different i made this on my own and i'm going to offer you a deal how about i'll write the screenplay it'll be unremarkable because i'm going to copy it right out of your books it's in november i'll have the screenplay by december we'll go shoot a test in January.

We'll shoot the opening scene. And I'll have some actor friends come down. We'll shoot it. I'll cut it. You'll be there. You'll direct with me. I'll do the effects. I'll do the score.

I'll do the title sequence, fake title sequence with all the actors we want to be in it. And a lot of those ended up being in it. Like we put Bruce Willis, you know, Mickey Rourke. Started putting names in the fake titles. And if you like what you see, we'll make a deal for the rights, and then we'll make the movie. If you don't like it, you keep it as a short film you can show your friends. So we did it, and he went for it.

And I said, you're an amazing director, but you're using a pen instead of a camera. I mean, the performances you get out of your paper actors, I would love to have you there. In fact, do you want to direct one of them? And he said, I've always wanted to do Big Fat Kill. I said, man, you should be there for the whole thing. You and me, we should direct it together.

I'm really just copying your thing right out of the book. I really want that just to move. So we should direct this together, because I used to be a cartoonist. I know it's the same freaking thing. It's the same thing. You're telling stories visually. You're already doing it.

When you go to Hollywood, they think of you less because you're come from the comic world they don't realize you're telling stories visually better than a lot of them so i want to put you where you belong you're at that same level you walk in and you're already going to be directing at the same level as another director i'm telling you that's what it is because i know i jump around all these jobs they're all the same creatively they're all the same so he came and did it and we're getting ready to go and like a week before production director's guild calls oh here i go i'm in trouble again i don't even know why i don't even know why and then they said big time they call and they say you're very aware of our rules what rules they have a world book

like this thick like i sit there and read this thing it's like a phone book like this thick. Like, I sit there and read this thing. It's like a phone book. What rule is that, that you can't have two directors? How's that? I see two directors all the time. The Wachowski brothers, you know, the Coen brothers, you know, the Hughes brothers. No, they were a team before they joined the guild. What? What does that mean? Well, one of you can't direct this movie, and one of you has to produce.

And the next movie you do together, you can direct together, because then you would have already established a working relationship. You have to be what's called a bona fide team. Really? I mean, I don't think that's going to fly. I mean, why do I even go into the guild? You're already just going to tell me what to do. I think they thought I was doing it on purpose.

I really didn't know that was a rule. How could you know? It's just so convoluted. It seems like so selective. I said, I don't think anyone will know that we, me and him have never worked together. And couldn't you qualify it somehow and say, well, if you're also the writer, director, editor, composer, you can also do this. So I, and they, it was their suggestion that I should leave because I think they thought I was a troublemaker. So they said, we think you should, you should leave the guild if you're going to do

that because we would not allow you to do it we'd have to shut down the movie right so i was like well let me go ask frank because i know we don't want to shut down the way frank what how about you just be the director i mean they don't care if i direct i can direct i just can't be a name a director they don't care i mean some movies like you know uh peter jackson does the lord of the ream movies five directors but only one person they only want one person credited right you know because he can't be in all the sets he has to have other directors out there um with actors you know but they want the illusion that there's only one director which isn't always the case i just is interesting. I just realized, is that why when someone guest directs a certain scene in a movie,

that's why you only see one name in the credits? Yeah. But people don't know that. The audience doesn't know or care about their stupid rules. So I said, no one's going to know. But anyway, okay, whatever. So I asked Frank, how about I just produce and you direct?

By name. I'll be there, we'll direct like always. They don't really care that we both direct. They even said, you can both direct if you want, but only one of you is going to be credited. And I just don't like people giving you rules that are just made up in a box somewhere. I just always rub against that. I just don't like that. It just breaks down the freedom and the spirit of what you're doing.

And they don't understand. And they're just usually behind the times. Like when we did that Four Rooms movie. They didn't know low-budget movies were going to come in like a storm like that. And they weren't understand. And they're just usually behind the times. Like when we did that Four Rooms movie. They didn't know low-budget movies were going to come in like a storm like that, and they weren't prepared. Eventually they came around, but they weren't readied in, so you just have to leave until they can get their shit together. So this was another case like that.

They came back many times begging. It turned out very bad for them. They got so much bad press. So anyway, they said, you know, hey, you should just leave. I said, okay, Frank, what do you think? How about I produce, you direct? got so much bad press so anyway they said um you know hey you should just leave i said okay frank what do you think how about i produce you direct and he goes well that doesn't seem fair so what should i do and frank said well on my my tombstone it'll say does not play well with other kids and i said me too oh yeah i'm just gonna quit i call them all right i'm out of here i'm quitting

i'm gonna stick by the artists we're gonna do this together. But we don't have to tell anybody. We'll just keep it under the radar. I'll just leave quietly. I was always out of there several times. I didn't make any noise. They leaked it to the press. They leaked it to the Hollywood Reporter. They were like, my production.

I guess to screw up my production. They did, because I didn't tell them. I'm not in Hollywood. How else would they know unless they went in leaky faucets and told everybody? And it flipped on them. It turned really bad suddenly everybody wanted to be involved in this movie that was a renegade where the director was you know supporting the artist's vision so much that he gave up residuals every chance of getting an award you know you just give up so much by leaving the guild um and and they got beat up in the press for for years about

that that um for the same reason you said yeah you left it became such a badge of honor to have left and, and they got beat up in the press for, for years about that, that, um, for the same reason you said, yeah, you left, it became such a badge of honor to have left for the sake of this other artist. And when I'd go to get actors,

I would show them that opening scene and the fake credits. Um, like Bruce Willis, his name was already in the credits, you know, but he's still a Toro. And they would go, I gotta be in this movie.

I'm already in the credits. And then plus what's going on with a Gill and Frank's's really co-directing i mean it sounded so exciting you know actors get so into something that's pure and passionate and about the product only in the business damn the business and all i can go to hell oh man they just jump on that train so fast and so we had so many great actors jumping aboard and it was was a big, oh, so then this is the big joke. Here's the topper. Now I can do anything I want with the credits. So not only is it directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez,

I had Quentin come direct one scene. Special guest director, Quentin. Now that looks like an official title. So now these guys are like, oh, their whole illusion of a single director has just been squashed by a big movie called Sin City because they wouldn't play freaking ball. So now people think that's a genuine title. But wait a minute. Is the special guest director a real choice?

No, I made that up. That's my creation. Because it went to Quentin, of all people, because he wasn't in the guild either. So they turn into this really funny thing. So for years, they would come back and say, you really should rejoin. I haven't had to rejoin since. What they don't want, and this makes sense, is they don't want some producer to go to a director and say, well, I'm going to be your co-director. I won't finance the movie.

You see how somebody could abuse that. That could be turned around. But that's clearly not what this was. But that's why their rules were so strict. And that's why they didn't want to bend the rules. And they thought, you know, I was such a troublemaker. Better to let him leave. And I thought so, too. Why fit me in that box? I don't belong in that box. I'm always going to bend the rules. And they thought, you know, I was such a troublemaker, better to let him leave. And I thought so too.

Why fit me in that box? I don't belong in that box. I'm always going to be doing something weird you won't like. Just let me go, you know, fly free. So that's really, you know, why that happened. But again, you'll run into resistance. If you're going to go that way, everyone else is trying to get in the yield.

You're actually trying not to get in the yield. You end up on the island of misfit toys along with George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino. I remember Jim Cameron came over to the table while I was sitting with George Lucas talking about, like, I'm out of the guild. I'm like, George.

George left the guild long ago because they were bashing him for credits and things that he was doing in the Star Wars movies that were really cutting edge that they all ended up changing their roles to later. But back then, he was just so pissed he left. It's just not a fit for everybody. It's not a fit for everybody especially if you're uh really odd

you should just be um allowed to go out because it is odd to do that many different jobs but that's kind of how i started um even when i went to do desperado i remember telling him i want to edit this movie as well and they said no we've never had a director edit his own movie. Just not done. And I said, well, I edited mariachi and you bought that. And they're like, okay, you can edit it, but you have to edit it here in LA so we can watch these. We don't think you know what you're doing. And it's up, up, up the precedent. And they showed, I showed them the first scene to cut and they were like, okay, okay, you

know what you're doing. You can cut it. So they were really supportive after that. But at first it was, um, anytime you do something new, you kind of have're doing. You can cut it. So they were really supportive after that. But at first, it was anytime you do something new, you kind of have to break a precedent in order to. And once you got that precedent set, then you can do whatever you want. So now you go into a studio and they go, oh, that's that guy. He shoots

his own movies. He edits his own movies. He scores his own movies. That's just how he works. It would be harder later in life to be an established director and say, suddenly I want to edit my own film and write it. And they'd be like, no, no, no, no that you're gonna have to set that precedence that's what was it really was the great thing about al mariachi is that it set a precedent for me doing every job if i wanted to so all those became available to me later yeah i'm known as uh

i could say affectionately but i don't think it's terribly affectionate uh i'm known as a problem author in publishing because i uh have uh i've i've sketched out and then hired my own uh artists and designers to do the covers for instance i mean it's like one of several dozen examples but you kind of have to start fighting early uh and uh then even though they might not accept your terms all of your terms uh the expectation is set so it's not the resistance is not futile but it kind of lessens over time it seems uh yeah i've done all i've done all my posters since desperado because on desperado the same thing they send a and it's not like the studio was doing it they send an agency down anyway right it's not like it's their guys agency shows up antonio was

sick that day and they're like oh we're only here only one day so we'll just we'll put his outfit on one of the other crew members and then we'll paste his head on later like that's not gonna look right nobody moves like him oh geez this is gonna be awful so we shot our own poster on the set of him the famous one of him with a gun yeah decide because i saw him doing that one day on the set and i thought well that's kind of a cool but i went took a little snapshot and that's kind of a that would be a great poster right there and when we went to go show the studio the posters they put up they look like dvd covers the ones the other guys did and i put mine up there too and um lisa henson president of columbia looked at all of them and she looked at the one that i

had there and she went with that we like that one and i go that one's mine and then she looks suddenly like oh shit had i known it was yours i wouldn't have said that just really oh uh we didn't know i'm like i'm glad i just put it up there along with the others didn't say anything and then that set a precedent from then on i could go to every studio and go i do my own posters too yeah so you guys can go ahead and try and make one but we'll try and make one and the key is also to do it early do it like while you're still shooting first impression is everything i'll cut a trailer while i'm still shooting and send it to the studio they'll go and try and make their own over and over and they can't get that first thing they saw out of the head they're still not as good as the

one we saw right you've already already stuck it in there it's jammed in there and it's never going to be right and it's happened consistently again and again that way that you put in that first you know it has to be a good idea first if it's a good idea if it's terrible they'll do better than it even you'll agree you just thought about who's winning you just don't want to be stuck with a bad poster so at least you have something that you really like in case with all their team they don't come up with something and that's always kind of been the case with us because you're just coming from it from a point of view that's different i mean i'm shooting the poster while i'm shooting the movie i have a setup on the side so if we have robert de niro there only for four days we're not going

to get him later to do a poster that's what they all do that's why they don't look anything like they do in the movie in the posters because they haven't thought of that concept yet they do that much later interesting i do it right then on the set i'll pull him over the green screen shoot amazing photos of him like in in character with all my actors and i have him so when i go to make the posters for like he's not in the middle of another movie it's like from the moment of they were filming and it's like they're in character and it's and it's perfect it's really great and you couldn't get a better performance out of them they're not trying to remember later where they were so um that's been a big plus is just having my own production studios in austin

where i can just have it a studio that just makes sense. It's just streamlined and it's outside of the business. So it's really you question everything that doesn't work, come up with a new way that works better for today's times. And that's kind of how we've been able to pioneer a lot of things like digital photography way before anyone was shooting digital. First digital 3D movie was spike it's doing like full-on green screen movies like spike is three years since city was really uh we pioneered a lot of that down there when i was uh reading reading up on your bio uh a couple of times in in a few different sort of versions of your bio it said and then he took two years off or then like a few paragraphs down and then he took three years off and came back with x uh were you actually taking time off and i don't think so yeah if so just what what's what

takes place what do you do in between big projects sometimes um some some years are more active than others i remember one year i did a shot um once upon a Time in Mexico, Spy Kids 2, Spy Kids 3, and then Once Upon a Time in Mexico came out. I had shot all these movies that were all sitting there at the same time because they weren't due yet. Some of them have release dates that are later. So even though I shot Once Upon a Time in Mexico in 2001, it wasn't released until 2003. So sometimes it'll look like there's an activity. When you're actually working on something and then sometimes the movie's done and it sits there and then it's, you know, they, they think the release dates better six months later than that pushes it. So, um, sometimes it'll look like there's a bigger gas,

but usually consistently I'll shoot between one and two movies a year. Got it. That is very consistent. I can't eke out books at any faster than like one per three or four years. I just don't have the stamina. Uh, what, this is a question I'm, I'm, I'm stealing from your interviews in the director's chair, but what scene have you taken the most takes of or shot scene? I'm going to take the most takes of yeah. Takes, excuse me. Yeah. You know, it's different. I don't, I don't shoot. Um, I shoot very differently because, uh, I've always thought as an editor, because I started that way. In fact, that's why they didn't want me to cut Desperado.

They saw the footage and it didn't look like daily footage they normally got. Where usually someone walks in the room, they come and sit down, they do the whole scene, then you cut. Me, I would only shoot him walking in the room, then I would cut. Because I knew that in a wide shot, that's all I was going to use. Because I was already seeing how I was going to edit it. And so it almost couldn't be edited by anybody else because i kind of only shot it one way so um and that's just because that's how i learned i mean i used to cut in the camera on el mariachi the camera was so loud we make it sound like that it sounded like all your money was going away so i would call action the guy would start running

then i would start filming so because the first startup i'm not going to use action he starts running cut so i wouldn't i wouldn't shoot through the action and cut i would just shoot the little portion i had so i was literally shooting my edits so i don't i'm not as extreme now but i won't i won't ever do more than a certain number of takes because as an editor i'm already seeing what i'll use um where sometimes somebody will shoot thinking i gotta make sure the editor has enough to work with right and so you're covering you're way over covering it where i'm getting only specifically what i need i can move so much faster because i don't i don't need that let's say it's a problematic shot like the the one that quentin brought up that was 34 takes or whatever it was he was trying to get like the

blood in the chinese condom to like pop up over the shoulder. Oh yeah. Sword fight. It was very old school. He wants to try to do as much in camera and no CG where I would just do a CG fix. Got it.

So like when I showed him, uh, Sin City first time, um, and he sees, uh, Miho, she cuts the guy's head off and the blood sprays her face and her eyes don't blink.

He goes, that's an impossible shot. And I go, and I said, I know, but I shot it twice. I shot her once with her eyes open, no blood on her face. And then I had her close her eyes and we sprayed her with blood. Of course, she flinches. He goes, she didn't flinch at all. She goes, well, she flinched, but I cut that out. And I left her eyes open from the take from a few seconds previously.

I said, but that's impossible. I said, well, it's impossible, but not for her. She can do it. A normal person can't help but flinch when they get something thrown in her face. But that character can. The actress can't, but the character can. And I said, see, that's what I'm talking about. We can actually be more now you know more

true to the character using the technology because you're trying to tell a particular story and give a story point across that if you don't sometimes embracing technology is good but he likes trying to get it old school i would never have done that i would have been like one take all right we got here go ahead and spray the blood so we have a real reference of what it looks like and i can either combine it or it's a really seeks i don't want it to look like cg let's shoot it the real blood so we can see what it would look like in this light and then we'll you know you just don't have to have all the components simultaneously right right got it and that's why i sometimes even with a squib you put a squib on somebody what's a squib a squib is an explosive

that makes it look like a bullet hole and um you never get that timing right especially if you show emotion or something because by the time the actor reacts to the fact that he just got shot and then does the body movement it's delayed so you never see it on camera because you when you're editing you'll cut to the point where it's going back so you have to put that in digitally anyway right or something you know so i anything my crew already knows robert doesn't like anything that requires a countdown you have to to go like, all right, everybody ready? Three, two, one, pop. That means it's some kind of an explosive or some kind of a squib or some kind of gag that's probably not going to work.

Having to rewire it, do it, that's why he was there so long. Because then once you're just going and going, now it's like point and no return. We might as well keep going. We're committed now. And then, no, no no i just can't i don't have that kind of money what um actually let me let me let me pause on that question so one of the things i really enjoyed reading about or reading this is just my reference i read so much uh watching and hearing about in the quentin uh in the tarantino interview i think it might

have been part one was talking about how he in the novels that he enjoyed like the elmer leonard i think it was uh they were non-sequential right right and that you would start into you have something like reservoir dogs they uh that starts in media rest they would say in uh in writing like right in the action which is something i do a lot and in my, in my own writing. And then, uh, you know, seeing how he would sort of take the best elements of a novel and create a cinematic version of that. I was just so happy to see the way you did Sin City. I mean, just like, I love graphic novels and they're so, like you said, I mean, so, uh, so beautiful in some cases from a sort of cinematic standpoint, even though they're on the static page.

Bold, bold shots that I never would have thought of as a filmmaker. Like, wow, I never would have put the camera there. You know how to shoot too. You know, I would give them that credit. But with Sin City, why did you gravitate to that so much so that you would do the test and approach Frank, who's very well known for not wanting his stuff to be adapted? Right. Why did that, what was it that got you so determined to make that? It was a book that I would buy over and over again. It was one of those things that that's when you know something means something to you.

And it's like, i'm really that dumb you know i really was buying the book over and over for like 10 years before i realized wait a minute i should be making a movie out of this i keep i'm gravitating this for a reason because that style in particular that black and white style and i'd wanted to do uh film noir for a while but it felt like it'd be too nostalgic this felt so modern post-modern film noir and the style of it just was so stunning in black and white. The absence of information, you know, seeing less was so captivating. It's like there's hardly anything there. And it's amazing how little you need to recognize a human face or a window.

And I love the basic quality of it. And I thought that would be so amazing as a movie. And I know they're going to screw it up. Someday they'll try and make a movie of Sin City because they're captivated and they won't realize it's because of the visual. And they'll go shoot it like a regular movie. And they'll wonder why it sits there and doesn't have the life that it did in the book. Because they're not going to shoot it like that. And after I did Spy Kids 3 on the green screen, I went back looking like I usually do for my next project.

I looked at all my stuff that I have. And I looked at the Sin City again. I go, whoa, I know how to do this now. If I shot this on green screen, I could make it look, I bet I could make it look just like, oh, let me test it. And I'm real protective of my test stage. Not even my crew knew what I was even shooting. Because I have my own stages. And I had a green screen.

So I just went and asked a few crew members to come. And I didn't even show them what I was filming out of. I was filming out of the book. And I staged a few shots, took them back, did them in Photoshop, kind of applied it in 3D. And it worked. It looked like you're looking at a static image of his and suddenly it moved. And so I took it to show him and he flipped out and I said, this is how we're going to do it. We're going to do it exactly like your book.

We're going to make your book move instead of taking your book and, and adapting that to film. We're going to take film and adapt it to your, to your book. So we're going to switch it and we're not going to change it. Cause everyone who gives you, you hand them that book and they say, oh, well, now it has to be adapted into a screenplay, and this is fine for a graphic novel, but it's not the same as a movie. They're wrong. Visual storytelling is visual storytelling.

I don't see why this should not work if it's just on the screen, and we're going to prove it. And that was what I was so excited about. And everybody who got involved in it was so excited about it. It just felt new and different and fresh and vital. And it got got you so jazzed and i didn't think it would even be successful because you didn't care you're like you know i don't i can attract big stars to this because it's going to be so pure and yeah it's probably it's going to look so weird black and white anthology all voiceovers are three things you're supposed to not do probably no one will

get it when they see the first trailer they'll go go to RC or too weird, but maybe they'll catch it later, you know, on DVD or whatever. I'm fine with that. Let it be the thing. You know, John Gardner is the thing. It let it be 10 years from now.

People figured I just really need to make it. And then it was successful the first time, but that might not have happened. Yeah. You know, it easily could have used easily could have gone the other way. People just think it's too weird and that's it. You know,

it was just, it was such a vindication for me to finally see it done right. I remember when the first Punisher movie got made and announced. And I fought my parents tooth and nail to not go to summer camp because I wanted to see this movie so badly. And I was such a petulant pain in the ass because then I got to summer camp and I knew the movie was coming out. I wouldn't see it. We were required to send these daily letters or either daily or weekly letters home to our parents to tell them about summer camp. And I was just bitching and moaning in every letter because I was still not going to see the Punisher movie.

But then it came out and they didn't preserve the integrity, the beautiful aspect of what drew me to the comic in the first place so anyway i mean kudos to you i was just so thrilled to see that it was exciting especially after all that it went but it felt like that kind of a thing it felt like it was the one it was the fastest movie ever got going i literally had the idea to go show frank that test as soon as i saw it i literally met him in november i gave him the script in december we shot the test in january um showed it to a few actors like bruce willis and that and we're shooting the real film by march that's the fastest any hollywood movie's ever taken off by far because it was already written in the book and we weren't going to adapt it you know really right and the drawings were

already done so um and i and you would only cast per episode. So I would shoot the first episode with Mickey Rourke. And if I didn't have another actor, like the bad guy, Rutger Hauer, it's like, it's okay. I'll shoot it with me and replace me later because it's green screen shot him eight months later. Wow. And him and Mickey, you swear they had a scene together. He goes up and even kills the guy, puts his hands on his face and crushes him. And they never met, you know, things like that.

You can do, you were just so excited about all the things that you could do all the possibilities all the people you could put in the movie and i would shut down for a week after each short story cast the next one quickly they would come down we'd shoot their part shut down again cast the next one they'd show up so you just do it like in three segments it was fantastic that's amazing it was the most fun shoot what is uh your when we were talking about starting with Hawaii, and you mentioned kind of starting your day, what does the first 60 minutes of your day look like? Do you have any particular?

It kind of changes. If I don't go through my list of things I want to do for the next day, the night before, which I try to do, and I have long lists of things to do. This is in your phone? It's on my phone. And I use notes, the notes that comes with it, because it's faster. If I have to open another program, like an Evernote or anything, and it's got a load, that's too late.

The idea is out of my head already. I need a scratch pad that's really fast. So here, this one's called Bullet List 2015. Wow, you have a whole list for the year. No, this is just the year. Oh, I see. You just add to it. I just keep adding to it. Now, that's the top portion

of another list called Hit List, which has three parts. Hit List 1, 2, and 3. This is an offshoot of an offshoot of an offshoot. Every once in a while while I'll go through. But usually I'll put at the very top, and then I'll put some X's under it,

stuff I need to do that day. Like things that I know I need to do. And the other ones are just, yeah, the top priority thing. Like that was like make a show and tell for Ferris. Because I knew I was going to see you. So tell Ferris one time. Learn this guitar lick that I always wanted. I'm going to drop that one down eventually,

but at least it goes on the top right now. But I'll check my list to make sure I'm not supposed to be doing something that I'm not supposed to do. And in the morning, I'm like half waking up. Usually what I like to do is try to work out in the morning because it's just... When do you usually wake up?

I just finished night shooting, so I'm all thrown off. You're all thrown off. Yeah, usually I don't go to sleep now until 6 in the morning. I'm trying to knock it back. Usually I go to sleep 2 or 3 in the morning, sometimes 4 in the morning. I'll get up around like 11. Got it.

10, 30, 11, no matter what. I just kind of wake up. And I'll go start. If I can get a nap later in the day, then I will. But I'll go down and get some breakfast, which is, you know, I'm allergic to eggs, egg whites. So that went out the door. So I like those plant fusion protein shakes that are plant. They're so tasty.

It's like 25 grams of protein or something in one scoop. Oh, my God. So I drink two scoops of that. And then I'll either have beans, because I love your bean diet, because I'm Mexican. So shit. Yeah, that's easy. I make fresh beans that are awesome for like last week a whole week and i use instead of rice i used to love

beans and rice um i i do cauliflower rice you just make rice out of the cauliflower with kale in it and i season it the same way i do spanish rice man you can't tell it tastes so good you eat that all day i can eat that and then i'll have a you know some other protein if i need to and then and then uh that'll get me going um i'll either work out or if i have some other protein if I need to. And then that'll get me going. I'll either work out or if I have meetings or sometimes if I just have to write or do something, I'll go attack. Try and knock out some things that I have. And I always have something to write. I'm writing like four scripts right now.

So it's like usually something's more pressing. And I'll try and knock it out during the day, if not later on during the day. And I try and limit meetings and things to a couple of days so that I can really have blocks of time to get some of these things done. Right, a hundred blocks of time. Because now that I own a television network, these things keep popping up. So your list is never going to be accurate. Because later that day, oh, I've got to look at episode 207 for the new season of From Dusk Till Dawn. And I've got to go put eyes on it.

If it's not completely 100%, I'm going to have to go edit it myself, do some editing on it. So I got to block out time for that. And then I'll have some other ideas for things. My other episode, I got to be editing on. I got to start looking at that already and thinking about music and stuff and score ideas.

So that's going to take up its own time. So I got to really jam when I start the day. Even if I think I got a full day that's going to be dedicated to whatever i have on my list five or six other things are going to pop up you know that are just as important that i can't get away from yeah so um it's really just uh chipping away at everything and always trying to make um i learned this and i remember where i learned this from but i love to take on a lot of different things. I like to take on many different projects. I'll give you a list of the projects I have on right now.

There's a lot, but if you just chip away at each one, you gain momentum on all of them, and then you're living your dream. By the end of the week, you're living your dream. You're doing everything that you want to do. You're not doing it all day, maybe 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there, but it's chipping away, and it's gaining momentum, and it's gaining momentum and it's not, you know, just falling by the wayside. What is the,

what are the hit lists? So I just call it, it used to be called to do list and then I needed to make another one to differentiate it. I just call hit list. So like, like things I have to do right now. Okay.

And then, so those two, then the main, it's just kind of like everything I got to do. I was just like recent, more recent things that I needed to do or the most important from the to-do list went to the hit list. And then as that just grew and became unwieldy, I just took the top section of that and moved it to a new one.

And then the top section of that and moved that to a new one. It's like pouring into a pyramid of champagne glasses. It just keeps pouring and spilling over to the next level. And I try to keep a separate one for my kids because I pride myself most on being a great father. I have five kids and applying all this to being a father. So I'll keep a whole list just for them of things that I want to tell them or talk to them about or show them or do. And it's jam-packed. So when they come over on the weekends, we go through the list, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,

and everything that I've thought of over the week, I've had a place to dump it, and we get it all done. So you get this really concise, dense experience. Dense experience, more than if it was just spread out here and there. You really get to feel like you've spent really quality time with them and none of the ideas that you've had that you want to share with them fly away. So really capturing these ideas is the most important thing. And then as you go through, you realize, okay, this one I'll never do, this one I'll never do with your to-do list and stuff. Or it's already taken care of itself some other way.

I don't fret too much about stuff that I'm not getting done. Somehow they always end up figuring themselves out. So I tend to not stress at all. But it does wake me up at night sometimes and I realize, I've got to write that down or I'll forget it. I will forget. And then I'll be stressed knowing that I've forgotten something. I don't know specifically what it is.

But it's just why I know it's all captured and I can get through. And with your network, what is the best way for people to check out the content on the network? Oh, man. Well, right now, we're just now in 40 million homes, which is amazing after a year. We're on all the big carriers. A lot of people don't even realize they have us because it wasn't something they had to buy extra. So they should just look for it. So if they're on Comcast or whoever.

Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner, Cox, Dish. look for it because you're one of the star whoever comcast direct tv time warner cox um dish we're on sling tv now we're one of the few channels in that offering where you can just buy a subscription and you can get like 20 networks or something like that i'll raise one of them and that's doing really well for a lot of people a lot more people have gotten that than we thought um and then individual programs like we have what's like when you have a new network you don't really create new shows for like five years or six years you just show old programming like amc didn't make an original show for 20 years you know it was just really just old licensed programming american movie classics and we had four new shows first year because we

had to kind of make our mark and show people the only way people were going to find the network is if they heard of these shows oh director's chair where's that oh it's on the lra network what's that oh dust till dawn a tv series where's that again lra what's lra and they'd have to go look for lra and find it so the only way to really draw people is by having programming that only exists there and we only do stuff that we can do like no one could get the rights to from dust till dawn they wanted it, but Quinn and I controlled it. Well, he let me do it for my own network because he was like, oh, your network is like my network. And he loves the network. He loves all this stuff.

We show, it's all curated content. That's what's so cool. If you've got to use licensed programming, well, man, what's my favorite movies? Kung Fu, genre films, action film, Brass knuckle mondays creature feature fridays you know just license the best the coolest stuff to show people kind of here these are the great ones these are the ones that you should know and this is why we curate them like that so it's a real curated experience and then there's premiere programming and it's so fun as having a network sometimes you'll stumble upon an idea like i was gonna have five john carpenter movies

in the may last year and i thought i know john i'll go film him introducing each one of those films little intro so it'll be a little original piece of content to go with it well shit while i'm there you know sitting just setting up the mics and the camera i'll just shoot the shit from about directing i'll call the director's chair try to do an episode of that maybe that would be a show kind of like and let's just see it but john isn't very forthcoming he's very he talks his stuff down a lot and he's always like yeah this is anybody can do it and he's he came he in most interviews you read about him they're not at all like the show i did so i thought it'd be a good test i did the show with him and he was so profound and so professorial and so open that I thought,

Oh my God, if this is John talking like this, imagine the other directors who are already like that. Um, friends of mine called and said, the new John, I've never seen him talk like that before. And I've known him 20 years, you know? So there was something about a director talking to another director that was going to spark a different, very disarming, a different level of conversation. And now that's one of my favorite things to shoot. And it's so quick, you know, I'll research for about a week, week and a half, sometimes get to rewatch all their films, come in with like 30

pages of notes and, and, and ask them these great questions that I've always wanted to know. And the best stuff comes out just did a Michael Mann one and a George Miller one. Those are really good. What would have been some of most uh surprising answers that you've received or uh captivating answers just you just never know i mean sameka saying he thought he was making the worst movie ever in forrest gump you know those moments of darkness where you're just like questioning everything or that he was so punch punchy you know in Back to the Future. He almost cut the Johnny B. Goode sequence because he was like, well, it doesn't really fit. I was going to cut it even before we even preview it.

That's when his editor was like, just leave it in for the screen. He said, we couldn't peel people off the ceiling. You never know. It shows that you don't know. And I want people to hear those stories. Because when you feel like, I don't know if I'm doing it right. These other guys seem to know. No, they don't know.

None of them know. That's the beauty of it is that you don't have to know. You just got to keep moving forward. You have to go sit down and put pen to paper. It's not going to come to you if you just sit there waiting for it to happen. You have to act. And then as soon as you step forward, even a little bit, it starts sweeping you away, doesn't it? This flow.

And you're like, how am I doing this? Like, it starts sweeping you away doesn't it this flow and you're like how am i doing this like it's not you but you had to start if you don't start it doesn't come yeah it only comes if you start so that's the main thing you just got to start when you think of the word successful who's the first person who comes to mind for you well that's a good one successful Wow, that's a good one. Successful. So many different ways to define the success. Yeah, that's... I mean, I always thought my dad was successful because he was an entrepreneur in that he had 10 kids and he sold cookware door-to-door. And the beauty of that was he'd come home and my mom

would say to the kids need braces. He could calculate how many, how many sets of cookware he had to sell in order to pay that. And he'd go sell it. He wouldn't see, knew he had a target. If he worked at a job where he got just the same amount of money, no matter what, he'd be screwed. But because he could go sell harder, sell somebody on something. It's really strange, but I have five brothers. None of them work for anyone. They're all entrepreneurs. They all have their own businesses. My brother has his own pharmacies. He's already got two pharmacies. One of my other brothers sells life insurance, and he's like the top salesman in the country. My other brother sells real estate.

No one wanted to work for anyone else. Partly, I think it's just part of in the DNA that you just don't want to be under someone else's thumb. It's kind of why, you know, if I come up against guild rules, I just like suddenly get abrasive. I don't know why. But it's just because it's in the DNA. You just can't work for somebody else. And I noticed that in my kids, too. You're never going to be able to work for somebody else.

I'm trying to teach them early how to innovate their own jobs because they're going to get more satisfaction out of writing their own ticket. As busy as I am, it's kind of fun to go back and look and go, wow, I created every job that I have right now. I have my own problem. I have all this work to do because I created every job. No one's asking me for this. I'm asking myself to deliver this stuff because I've put that responsibility on myself. That's a great freedom. That feels like a great success to be able to live the life you want, be able to carve out so much time for your family and relationships. And people can still come and say, you're the busiest person I know. And you go, wow, I'm not really.

I'm really finding a way to put it all together. I really learned that from my father. So I think immediately people that I knew, I used to go read his little entrepreneur magazines he had and thought, that sounds so cool. Wow, some guy put video games, machines in the back of a truck and drove it around to the malls

and made money doing that. I mean, I was always inspired by these entrepreneurial stories of people finding another way to go instead of following everybody else and finding success and happiness. So successful people to me are those who kind of put it all together because you can have business success and job security and be miserable in your personal life or have that always falling apart or some crisis always happening and i'm you know i'm eating it up i'm loving it you know and i got

that from my father we had such great relationships in the family and it spilled over my kids now are getting older and i love when they call me and text me and say dad can we talk and they want advice and you get to go be dad and you give them all the strategies you've learned. And now they make sense to them, even though you've told them as they grow up now, they can apply it. And you're just like, wow, this, I wish I learned this when I was their age. And I look how far I got, not knowing it. Imagine how far they could go. And it's really being able to give that gift back to people and your children and the next generation that's been the most fulfilling

the most exciting the most stuff i journal is about that you know like wow really really profound stuff it's like shit i just learned last week i'm getting to apply to them and they're getting to learn and they're like jumping ahead like 10 steps it's like wow if you could have a billboard anywhere uh could have text visuals whatever where would you put it and what would it say? These are the kind of questions when I would do interviews, I would ask the same question over and over and you get so bored with them. But then somebody gives you an original question, you're stumped because you're like, I'm not used to answering an original question. Hey, let's go back to the easy ones. What's the

best answer you've heard for that? Oh, what's the best answer I've heard for that? Let's see. I might be conflating the two answers. I interviewed generally, uh, general Stan McChrystal recently, four-star general used to run JSOC. So basically all the special forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Uh uh and it might have been his favorite quote i might be confusing the two answers but he said the the uh the purpose of life is life with purpose i was quite a big fan of that uh brian johnson also started a company called brain tree and sold it for 800 million dollars million in cash to eBay. I had a good answer to this, and I'm blanking on it at the moment. But what are your thoughts?

That was one that I said earlier. You said, oh, I like that quote. That's one that I say a lot to people is don't follow the herd. And it's easier when people are visually conceived, but I'm pointing in one direction. And I say that even when you hear me talking about the network and the network sizzle i'll say if everyone's going that way you know like to the left we're going to go this way to the right because that's how you stumble upon new things by just going the down the unbeaten path you know and it's uh it's always rewarding any anything in any way you choose not just business and life in general and everything you just go that way and

you follow your and really cultivate your instincts, cultivating that instinct so that you can always rely on that. Cause if you always have to rely on the advice of other people, which is all good when they're not there, you're screwed. You know, you gotta be able to follow that, that inner,

that inner voice and cultivate that and know when it serves you. And when it doesn't serve you, trust that it's not serving you just at the moment that it's over the long haul. It's actually in your best interest. And if you have that kind of faith, then you're never stressed. You're never worried about anything.

One of the things I was teaching my son was very upset about something. I was saying, I'm going to tell you some secret life. You never have to be upset about anything. Everything is for a purpose. You just failed your driver's test and you're all pissed off. I couldn't be happier. I'd rather you fail with a teacher and take it a hundred more times than to

go fail in front of a cop or turn the wrong make that same mistake and hit somebody now you're 10 days in jail right you know i can't even think of a negative reason why you you failing that test is a bad thing you see how you just it's really how you look at it and you the way you look at it is so important and you can have a positive attitude and look at it well let me see what i can learn from this why would you ever get upset about anything and he's like wow like so much sense i'm so excited about that damn i gotta make sure i apply that myself though because i'm sure i'm gonna still get upset about something and there's no reason why upset why something didn't go according to plan it might be for a good reason let's take that let's make something out of that you know let's take it let's take the good out of that i've always i still try

to apply that all the time never worry when a friend of mine came and visited me on the set we're shooting it's a television season finale for dustle dawn it's huge i mean i had them add more and more stuff to it i wanted it to be be big, bonkers, more stunts than ever, really deliver. And he couldn't believe that I'm sitting behind the monitor playing guitar, which I do on the set. I play the guitar because it keeps me from pacing and it keeps me from getting riled up or stressed. And I'm also writing score at the same time, subliminally. Sometimes it ends up being the score. People go, what are you playing? I like that. Oh, I don't know't know maybe it's the theme let me record it real quick and um i would be so stressed you know doing this if i was like no there's no reason to be stressed why well something might go wrong so if it goes wrong you figure out how to make it right it's really i mean you're being stressed isn't going to make it any better in fact you want to be cool breeze otherwise you're not going to be able to think of very well why not enjoy the shoot why you might be a maniac and i realized how it's totally the opposite of what you would expect on something that fast where you have to shoot that quick and every dollar counts that you would be playing the guitar kind of softly in between soothing

everybody and keeping the creativity flowing in between takes that's why i have my actors paint i teach my actors how to paint um in between takes because That's why I have my actors paint. I teach my actors how to paint in between takes. Sometimes I say, I don't know how to paint. They're like, no, that's bullshit. You're creative already. You can paint just as easily as you can act or do anything. I'm going to show you. Here, pick any colors.

I'll show you different ways you can apply it. You can apply it any way you want. Then I'm going to take a photograph of you in character and we're going to transfer a line drawing. Mostly your painting will come through in the face. Maybe we'll smoke out the eyes or something. It'll be done. It'll be a wrap present. Us co-creating a character of you in character and we're going to transfer a line drawing. Mostly your painting will come through in the face. Maybe we'll smoke out the eyes or something. It'll be done.

It'll be a wrap present. Us co-creating a character of yours. I'll have to show them to you. That's amazing. They'll blow you away. I'd love to see them. And they're blown away because, and they just trust it now because they've seen the other ones.

Lady Gaga's Bruce Willis. They go like, obviously this guy knows what he's talking about. So, and they're free and it's easier now. Everybody already knows they can do it because they see everyone else does it, and you don't have to train as much. It's really cool.

People don't have to unlearn anything, and you teach them a new thing like that. It's a relief to know that you don't have to be hesitant. And then you want them to bring that back to the set because usually you call cut, they have to go to their trailer, they sit, they're not being creative, they're on the phone or whatever. Then you have them come back to the set and Because usually you call cut, they have to go to their trailer, they sit, they're not being creative, they're on the phone or whatever. Then you're having them come back to the set and suddenly be creative again. This keeps them in a creative flow.

So whether they're thinking of solving problems with a different side of their creative brain that they're not even utilizing while acting, it's amazing. It's a whole other side. So when they come back to the set, you can tell. There's a problem here with the table.

The cards slide all the way across and it's not going to work you figure it out in two seconds because you've already been solving creative problems in the other room much more like what color to use and how much breaststroke to use so that this like oh well this is simple here just toss them anywhere you want and we'll erase it there and make a land where we want we'll put them in the place and they'll be fine i love it it's like no that's really smart that's very clever i want to be respectful of your time i'm having so much fun i could lose track of time but i would love to ask some questions from fans who have submitted things so how did you do that you uh did you how did you get the questions so i gathered the questions by polling them on twitter

and facebook but you you sent out an announcement on Twitter and Facebook saying Robert's coming and then they answered it? I said if you could ask anything. I usually phrase it one of two ways. I'll say either if you could ask, you know, at Rodriguez anything, what would you like to ask him, for instance? I might phrase it that way. And I think that might have been what I put out.

And then I will get answers back on both Twitter and Facebook. The beauty of Facebook, and I've also done this via something called Google Moderator, which is going to get shut down, but people on Facebook can upvote the questions they like. So you basically get to see the top five most popular. So this question is from Mike Elias. What do most people not realize about filmmaking until they become filmmakers. How much work it is. I put out a book called Rebel Without a Crew to demystify the process, but also to say, here is a 10 minute film school. All you need to know is in 10 minutes, it's not true, but it is true in a way. It said, you just got to start. I didn't put in there

the mind numbing work that goes into it. The soul crushing lows that you'll experience trying to realize your vision. Cause I know you'll figure that out on the way. And I know that it'll really will separate those from who are going to be doers and where those are donors. You know, you're going to either figure out this is for me or this isn't for me. It's good. Cause it's really,

I remember my short film bedhead and short films, eight minutes, the credits are going and finally finished the credits. I was tears in my eyes. I was so spent. And it was a little short film. So you can imagine how, how much it takes out of you to birth something, you know, from originally from your gut, you know, it really takes a lot.

You can never explain that. So I don't try. I just kind of say, send people on their way, inspire them, let them go and they'll figure it out. They'll come back with this look in their eye, like what the hell did I just go through? And they'll either be invigorated by that in some way or inspired by that, or they'll just know that's not for them. And that's kind of what will separate them. I wouldn't want to tell people, this is too much for you. Let them decide that, you know, this is really tough to go on. This could really, you could spend a lot of time and money on something that's never going to go

off the ground. I'd let them figure that out in there. They'll figure that out pretty quick. This is from Kira's sin. What do you have in common with the main characters in your movies? Anything from family structure to outfit, et cetera. Yeah. The movies always when you write an original character very much is a reflection of who you are in a lot of ways and i'm a lot of the characters i'm the girls i'm the men um there's there's pieces of me and all of them you know there's pieces of yourself that kind of it's kind of why i sometimes i like to do movies

that i didn't write just to get out of yourself for a while because then you'll tend to write similar characters they're always kind of rule breakers they're always kind of doing their own thing um and they always have sort of loner type type attitude but they're they've they realize the greater cause and what they can bring to it from machete to the desperado to even the spike is the spike is probably the closest to my family i really wanted to make a movie based on my family the experience of growing up with 10 kids so my uncle was uh gregorio rodriguez he was a special agent for the um for the uh fbi brought down two uh top 10 criminals and um he uh by based gregorio cortez played by antonio banderas on him and my brother and my sister's

names are in there as the two brothers and sisters my uncle felix my uncle uh it's like my whole family is told in the spykin movie so that was very satisfying to kind of be able to tell your family story hidden in a spy film but it's really how i got along with my siblings and that whole dynamic and my family uh done in a way sometimes it's very it's very you know obvious like that and other times it's kind of just hidden just you know like everybody from the johnny depp character where you know he rigs the games constantly so he wins my kids say that's me all the time that line he says hey it's not cheating it's creative sportsmanship that's what my kids always say when i when dad's not cheating it's just creative sportsmanship when i beat him at a game because i bent some rule in

my favor they're entertained by that they're not they don't feel bad they actually look forward to the how i'm gonna bend the rules uh this is from lawrence favreau i think rot sounds like john favreau he was on this podcast as well really fun guy he contributed some questions to you he's a great guy yeah great guy uh what are you geeking out on right now what do you think is fucking cool what am i geeking out on right now gosh i think a good answer is so many different little things like i just figured out that all these other sounds were available all these other patches were available to me that I never noticed before on the amp settings on my Pro Tools setting

for an amp function that I didn't like at first because it replaced one that didn't get upgraded with a new system, and I was just pissed. I was trying to record some music and get a sound that I was looking for, and this thing seemed really limited. And then suddenly I found a button I didn't know existed because I had never read the instructions. And this whole menu of things that are locked,

I have to go unlock them or I have to go pay some price. But it's just so tantalizing to go, oh my God, what sounds are going to be there that I can go? So I'm geeking out over something that, I guess to summarize, when I first started, I would take two VCRs and hook them together and edit my movies that way. And I would use every function, milk it for everything that it could do.

And people would be shocked at what I was able to get these machines to do. Because I would take any little function that was a positive and I would use it in a way in my movies. Now it's completely the opposite. You're only scratching the surface of every one of these applications. You could go down the wormhole and stay down there for quite a while, just trying to figure out all the things that each one of these programs is capable of. It's mind boggling. And you're never going to take full advantage of them. It's the complete opposite of how I grew up, where I was milking everything for what it was worth. And now, no matter how deep I go into it, it can do so much more. And it drives you crazy. I mean,

there's just not enough hours in the day. There's just not enough hours in the day. There's just not enough hours in the day to geek out over things. Stuff with my kids, just the gaming world. We love playing games together. Any favorite game to play together? Right now, we're still kind of playing some of the old games again and again. We're looking forward to playing actually all the old Halos again, because they grew up.

A lot of the stuff we do is the nostalgic stuff, because they come over to the house, and they want to relive the old days. And they love that some of our favorite old games are now available, like even Mario 64, which they all grew up on, is now available, better quality HD. Same with all the Halos. We can go back and play all the Halo levels

from one on that they learned on with me. Really clear and crystal and big screen. So that's been fun. What are filmmakers, do you feel, getting better at and what are they getting worse at? We can narrow that a little bit. Let's just not say the people who are out there at the prime of their career,

but people who are just starting out. What are they getting better at and what are they getting worse at? What I think is great about what filmmakers are doing today is utilizing just how quickly they utilize new technology and new ways of communication. You know, how you broke in the industry when I started is so much different than how you do it now. One of the guys from Ecuador came and worked on Dust Till Dawn.

He said, yeah, there was no production down there. I read your book, and I went and made a little short film, and I put it on the Internet, and within a day, it went viral. And the studios were flying me up, and he got to make the Evil Dead movies, and it was Fede Alvarez, the remake, and I got him to direct one of my episodes. And he was like, wow, yeah, I was inspired by it, that you just did it with nothing, and I got him to direct one of my episodes and he was like wow yeah i was inspired by that you just did it with nothing and i was able to go do it in ecuador and make there was no film industry down there and we just did it and and i was shocked that

i could just put it on the internet and they get noticed by hollywood i mean it's just no no film festival and i cut cut all that it actually just from from another country send something in spreads everywhere gets them noticed you know i've seen a lot of people do that now where they shoot proofs of concepts of whole things and then they put them out for everyone to see and they can make a deal that way with a studio who goes this guy knows what he's doing i mean just really clever ways i think that's that's really great um how's it gotten worse gosh i don't know or skills are getting lost oh skills well i mean i was lucky in that i got to cut on film i got to see all the the limitations of the old system at least the kids today they just learned the new system so they're off and running but i saw the old system um and saw just how much

better the new systems were. I mean, I was the only guy cutting digitally on the Sony lot when I did Desperado. All the other editors were afraid of it. They were just afraid it was going to replace them. The same with digital photography. I was the first to start shooting digitally. DPs were afraid that was going to be the end of their job. They don't realize it's just another tool.

It's not the job. Isn't the old technology, the technology is not the art form. Right. The manipulation of moving images can happen on a machine or it can happen by cutting film. It's not the technology that is the art form. And people don't realize that. I think kids today, it's a good thing, is that they know that. You know, they just know.

They just accept any new thing, a new tool, and they'll use it. They're not a slave to tradition the way the old generation was, that held stuff back. Because you would see people shooting digital cameras way before they shot digital cameras in Hollywood. People were 10 years ahead of Hollywood, always. It's so slow.

That's why I don't live there. That's why we're much more cutting edge in Austin. Just because we're not, have any tradition around us saying no you're not supposed to do it that way we just rethink it we're just like why why are we even doing it that way that doesn't make any sense this new way makes sense so i really um i think of anything people uh what people do wrong is when they don't embrace a new technology early enough like in the dps you know directors of photography were wrong not to try to embrace digital photography early enough so they can get in there and help try and define what the look of

it would be how the systems would be built now it's too late now they're all switching over and complaining about it but it's too late now because it's been adopted and you weren't anywhere near you wouldn't stuck your head in the sand you wouldn't stuck your head in the sand while everybody else was using that and developing it and now you just got stuck with it you could have developed a whole new way of photographing movies and you went stuck your head in the sand for 10 years makes zero sense so instead i was the guy telling them and that's why i was a hot dog holder next to it because that was important to me uh what advice last last two uh, what advice would you give to your 30 year old self? Wow.

30 year old self. See, did I have anything figured out by 30? God, you know, any of the advice that I've been giving my kids, I wish I had heard at 30, 35, 40, um, 18. I mean, I, um, I always learn new, new techniques, new things, new ways to do things better. And I always try to apply them. And I always wish I just knew more back then, being just more self-aware. But then again, sometimes you look back and you go, being naive and not knowing was probably the best gift.

Sometimes you know too much. You know too much and then you stop doing things. It's better not to know you know i try to i always try to be you know there's just that example of you know you ask a bunch of little kids who can do anything who can be the president who can write an opera who can paint who can be a filmmaker and they all raise their hand because they don't know they all just believe they can he has the same kids in 10 years and the hands start going down no life experience they just start stop believing i always try to be that kid who has his hand up in the air it's like can you write a score to a movie with a hundred piece orchestra even though you

don't read or write music sure i still do and you do it and you're like how the fuck did i do that well because you're being creative the technical part of that was just 10 you can fudge that some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music you can fudge all that stuff if you know how to be creative if you keep your hand up can you do this can you do that yeah yeah who is it how do i know i can't until i try it okay maybe i'm not that good at it but i can still do it and i can probably learn to be better and if i surround myself by masters i'll get better a lot faster um so um yeah i guess i would just go back and follow my own good advice more than anything sometimes i have i think we all inherently know what we're supposed to do we just don't always do it um so i think uh if we were just to open our mouths

in a way to go teach somebody we would end up giving some very profound advice that we would be writing down going i need to go make sure i'm doing that or someone said to me i might have read this you know wisdom is taking your own advice it is it totally is because sometimes you give advice but that but that's why because the advice doesn't really come from you you know, wisdom is taking your own advice. It is. It totally is. Cause sometimes you give advice, but that's, but that's why, cause the advice doesn't really come from you. You know, when you go to open your mouth and you move forward in a positive way to enlighten someone, the enlightenment comes and it's not from you. It's just coming through you.

So you need to write that down cause it's as much for you as it is for them. That's why I love teaching because I know I'll learn more teaching than, than, um, than from my students because it's not coming from me yeah the ask i would like you to if you could make one ask or request of people listening to this what would it be if i can make one ask well besides look for the ra network and any of the programming that's on there, I would ask that you

just try and live as creatively as possible, because that's the unknown. That's the gift you can bring to the table that could change everything, even if you don't think you're creative. Everyone inherently is creative, and there's people who block themselves immediately by saying, oh, well, I'm not creative.

And, well, of, I'm not creative. And, well, of course you're not going to be creative if that's your belief in who you so far. Apply creativity and you'll see into everything. And you'll see you'll just become more creative because you're applying it to everything. Everything is an opportunity to be creative. I'm creative all day. There's nothing I do that doesn't involve creativity. From making a meal to satisfying my kids in a nutritious way. It's creative right right there i'm gonna figure out a rice dish that's not going to be rice it's going to be tasty that

they're going to crave that's going to be good for them that's creativity in itself and it's nutrition you're going to really apply creativity to everything just the games we play when we're stuck at the airport you're being creative you know how you journal things how you cross reference how you present things to them how you um inspire your crew, how you inspire your other people around you, how you inspire yourself. It's all creative. And if you say you're not creative, look how much you're missing out on just because you've told yourself that.

So I think creativity is one of the greatest gifts that we're born with that some people don't cultivate, that they don't realize could be applied to literally everything in their life. I found that I'm the most fulfilled, happiest, most productive when I'm creative. And that's when I set my bet. So I try to do that 24 hours a day, 24-7. Be creative. Take everything creatively.

This is an opportunity to be here, sit down, and be creative with you. Be creative in how we presented ideas, how we got these ideas out to the audience. And this was a full exercise in creativity. So, um, I'm about to go meet with my goddaughter and go try to be creative and figure out how she can learn some skills she needs to learn. And she's a little behind and you go, this is an opportunity to creatively kind of inspire her and do stuff. You know, you constantly are using creativity all the time.

I, um, I love what you do uh people should also check out your texas barbecue recipe and video instruction it's fantastic oh yeah the sin city breakfast tacos did you ever see that i saw the sin city breakfast tacos as well where you show the time on them on the screen when you're still cutting it's like 4 36 a.m i love what you put out in the world so everybody stay naive keep a journal be creative because whether you whatever you're doing in your life uh you have that opportunity and where can people find you online find more about what you're doing i'm on twitter i'm on at rodriguez on twitter um i'm on lra network.com we're about to start a whole digital arm of that where this segment called the people's network people will be able to send in their own films

short films ways to participate with the network become part of the network and create content in a really cool way sometimes they come all the way to troublemaker studios and we just had three creators there getting to use all the sets, all the actors, all while we were shooting Dusk. And it gets so inspired because their list of things that they have access to

suddenly jumped. They're running like a thousand. A little Rodriguez list of what they used to have suddenly jumped. And they were able to, it was a cool experiment. We're going to do that a lot more.

And a lot of things, really the digital side of El Rey Network, now that we have the brand, is really going to be where people can participate in ways that they don't get to in a traditional network and leverage that. That we're in 40 million homes is going to be pretty awesome. So we're excited about that. Oh, and next year, I'm going to be doing another $7,000 movie with no crew. Amazing. And there's other people who are going to do it too for that same thing.

We'll have an announcement about that later. Awesome. All right. Well, whenever it's ready, I will share that as well. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. For show notes, links to everything, El Rey Network, everything that we discussed in the show, just go to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast.

And until next time, thank you for listening. I want to add, and you can cut it in there somewhere. I just also want to just thank you for what you do, because demystifying the process so that others could jumpstart their lives in ways that they thought, you know, didn't have access to was something that I just always loved doing. I've done consistently

through the book, through my DVD commentary, through my special 10-minute film schools, just constantly doing it. When I saw you doing that in this realm and in all areas, in so many areas, I always wanted to meet you because I thought there was a real kinship in what you do, which is a real gift that you give people by putting yourself out there and giving them. People would always say, why are you giving away all the secrets? I go, well, because you'll come up with more secrets when you give those away. And it's because I would have wanted to know that. You know, me as a student, as a film lover and someone who felt like i was outside of the

industry not being able to ever get in would have wanted to know there was a door there was a method or there was something that i and i would have appreciated that someone telling me that so that's why i do it and i'm sure you're the same way you just constantly looking for that juice and wanting how can i get it? And then you go and you give that gift to people. So I think that's wonderful what you do. That's why people are here listening. Thanks, man. It really means a lot. So well, maybe we'll do round two sometime. Thanks, man. All right. Thanks. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one,

this is five bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So

if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.