Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking

00:00:00.000 | I write the script in December, January, Josh Arnett, Marlee Shelton, come down, fly Frank in,

00:00:05.240 | shooting for 10 hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence.

00:00:08.420 | Incredible opening sequence. And the visual look, we've never seen that. I want to just take this

00:00:13.080 | and make it move. I just want the comic to move. Any other studio would just go make it look like

00:00:17.460 | any gritty crime movie and they would miss the point that the visual is half of it. I want it

00:00:23.520 | to look just like this because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen because that's how

00:00:26.920 | it reads when I read the book. It's like, if this was moving, it would be the most phenomenal movie.

00:00:30.360 | Just by being around him and working with him, you get, by osmosis, you learn stuff.

00:00:36.260 | And it just ups your game because they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that.

00:00:42.480 | So like when I first met him, I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know,

00:00:45.500 | because I was such a big fan. I was about to go do Desperado and I went, hey,

00:00:48.200 | I just took a three-day Steadicam course because I can't afford a Steadicam operator. So I'm going

00:00:52.660 | to operate Steadicam myself on Desperado. Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, oh,

00:00:57.220 | I did the same thing and I'm going to do the same thing. That would be like hanging out with somebody

00:01:01.160 | of your ilk, but you don't, you want somebody who's above that. Do you know what he said? He goes,

00:01:04.740 | I bought a Steadicam, but not to operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one.

00:01:10.820 | Us mere mortals trying to learn how to operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy

00:01:17.860 | you want to hang out with. Not someone who's doing what you're doing. We put so much of the world

00:01:21.900 | around them. Like when you see the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the

00:01:25.980 | city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town, we built the real set. So everything was very

00:01:31.340 | tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was

00:01:38.300 | all done in CG, well, then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment,

00:01:42.640 | that's a real challenge. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this

00:01:47.060 | thing blow up. You watch this thing not work. Everything just falls apart in front of your

00:01:51.400 | face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves and creatively figure out a way around it. And by

00:01:56.440 | the end, you have a result that's better than what you sought out. Sift through the ashes of your

00:02:01.100 | failure and you'll find the key to your next success is in there. But if you're not looking for it,

00:02:05.140 | you don't find it. The following is a conversation with Robert Rodriguez, a legendary filmmaker and creator

00:02:13.260 | of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita, Battle Angel,

00:02:20.600 | The Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his

00:02:27.780 | first film, El Mariachi, that he famously made for just $7,000. On that film, and many since,

00:02:35.880 | he was not only the director, he was also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects

00:02:42.800 | supervisor, sound designer, composer, basically the full stack of filmmaking. He has shown incredible

00:02:50.800 | versatility across genres, including action, horror, family films, and sci-fi. With some epic collaborations

00:02:58.160 | with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and many other legendary actors and filmmakers. He has often operated at the

00:03:06.400 | technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD filmmaking, digital backlots, and 3D tech. And always, through all of that,

00:03:14.880 | he's been a champion of independent filmmaking, running his own studio here in Austin, Texas, which, in many ways, is very far away

00:03:23.340 | from Hollywood. He's building a new thing now, called Brass Knuckle Films, where he's opening up the filmmaking

00:03:31.440 | process so that fans can be a part of it, as he creates his next four action films. I'll probably go hang out at his

00:03:39.680 | film studio a bunch, as this is all coming to life. His work has inspired a very large number of people, including

00:03:47.340 | me, to be more creative in whatever pursuit you take on in life, and have fun doing it.

00:03:54.300 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support

00:03:57.440 | it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now,

00:04:01.220 | dear friends, here's Robert Rodriguez.

00:04:05.020 | Has there been a

00:04:07.520 | time when there was like one take, and you only have one take to get it

00:04:11.520 | right? Oh, all the time, where you're just like, or just you know how long it'll

00:04:15.360 | take to reset, and you're just, but then you know what you, you, you gotta just work

00:04:19.620 | with what you got, you know, you gotta look with, work with your results.

00:04:22.160 | You get nervous, or no, in that moment?

00:04:24.220 | Oh, yeah, you're, you're nervous going like, just, I hope it goes off, because then, to fix

00:04:29.020 | it, I'll have to go do a bunch of other steps, which we don't have time for. But a lot of times,

00:04:32.980 | you know, I've just learned that if something happens, it's just meant to be that way.

00:04:36.800 | And, uh, and I got used to doing things in one take, and just living with it, it didn't bother

00:04:41.400 | me. One movie, it was even a low-budget movie, they had, um, rigged a car to implode, because

00:04:48.180 | I was going to throw a guy at it. So we needed a car to implode, and then we're going to throw

00:04:51.040 | them and marry it together, right? And, um, the stunt, and the, the car guy goes, yeah, we're

00:04:57.100 | going to have three cars rigged. Three cars? Why are you not, well, in case one doesn't

00:05:01.480 | work, and then we have a second one, I have to throw them. We said, we don't have all night

00:05:03.700 | to go shoot take after take. We're doing just, just get one car, and if it doesn't work, we'll

00:05:07.760 | figure it out. You know, because you don't have time to do it again sometimes. It's such a long

00:05:11.800 | setup. So I'll go, no, I'm, I'm good with just going, what, in a grindhouse movie, they only had

00:05:16.320 | one take, so that'll make it more authentic. When it all goes to shit, when it fails, you just,

00:05:22.220 | what's the next thought? So I'll tell you, two things happen on Just Till Done. First was,

00:05:26.980 | okay, you know how those explosions, when somebody walks away in slow motion from an explosion,

00:05:31.560 | that's become kind of, you know, that started with Desperado? Desperado's the first. If you

00:05:35.980 | look at all the montages, Desperado's the first. That's right. That is the meme. Because it was an

00:05:39.700 | accident, it was just supposed to be, it was just two grenades, not a nuclear bomb. He throws them

00:05:43.880 | over the side, and I just wanted, like, some body parts or, you know, something to fly up, some

00:05:46.860 | shrapnel. It literally says shrapnel, and my effects guy was so ragged, running so ragged, we get to

00:05:51.920 | there, and I go, do you have any body parts of stuff we can throw up, or something you can shoot up?

00:05:56.920 | Pat, I didn't realize it's so high to get past that second floor. He's like, no, I don't. I can give

00:06:01.460 | you a fireball. I can give you a nice, you know, fireball with propane, but it burns away really

00:06:06.660 | quick. Like, how fast? Like that, but it'll be big and orange. Okay, we'll shoot it in slow motion,

00:06:11.720 | so it lasts a little longer, because it just goes poof. So I told the actors, I know how big this

00:06:16.680 | fireball is going to be, but just walk really fast, and just look real determined, and then just keep

00:06:21.740 | walking. Don't stop and turn around, because you might get your eyebrows singed. So they take off,

00:06:26.360 | and boom, it goes, and in slow motion, it looks great, right? I remember showing it Jim Cameron

00:06:31.440 | before it came out, and his hand went up, like, you've never seen that before, you know. Six months

00:06:36.080 | later, Dust Till Dawn came out. So I liked how much it looked so much that in Dust Till Dawn,

00:06:41.080 | I did it again. So those movies came out within six months of each other. That's why it turned into a

00:06:46.020 | thing, because people saw it. And so I thought, how about for the opening of George Clooney and Quentin

00:06:52.220 | walking out of the gas station, that we have the whole place just blowing up, and they just keep

00:06:58.140 | talking like it's not happening. You know, like, take it another step further, so I'm not just doing

00:07:01.580 | the same thing. Okay, that one, it's like, okay, you're going to walk out, and it's all in one take.

00:07:07.060 | So we're only going to do one take. We're going to blow the thing up. We're going to start with just,

00:07:11.380 | you know, some smaller explosions, and then when they're further away, and it's safer, then we'll do

00:07:14.440 | the big fireballs. So we're going, and you're nervous, because like, if one of them trips up a

00:07:20.140 | line, and you know, the pressure's on them, it's not just you that's nervous. You're nervous for them.

00:07:23.760 | They're the ones who got to walk out, do that whole speech, get in the car, and drive away. What if the

00:07:29.480 | car doesn't start? What do you know? There's a lot of things that could happen. Well, guess what happens?

00:07:33.700 | The thing you would not expect, they go in, they come out, they start talking, shoot it. It's

00:07:41.720 | perfect. Great. We can move on. And the camera guy goes, I don't know what happened, but just like

00:07:46.220 | you had a little snafu here, he goes, we have an autofocus on the steadicam. I mean, we have a focus

00:07:52.420 | thing. It just went like this. I felt it go whack all the way out of focus, and whack for a second

00:07:58.920 | back. Like, it just reset itself. I don't know why it did that, you know, because it's radio

00:08:02.880 | controlled. And we can't tell because we're shooting film, you know, sort of like, oh,

00:08:06.740 | shit, let's watch the dailies, sure enough. Let's see if we can get, maybe I can scratch

00:08:10.600 | the film right there. No, it goes completely out of focus and back in focus within a second.

00:08:14.980 | Now we got to reshoot it. So we had to wait till we're back in that location. We rigged

00:08:20.980 | it for two more takes, just in case. So that thing that was supposed to be the one take is

00:08:24.820 | three takes. The other thing that happened was the front of the Dust Till Dawn bar was

00:08:31.600 | that same guy that did those explosions. He packed a bunch of explosives behind the actors.

00:08:37.500 | When the actors come running out of the, of the bar at the end of the movie, and there's

00:08:43.500 | an explosion through the door because all the vampires are blowing up. He didn't just, he

00:08:48.040 | put like 10 times. So it blew out. You see it in the movie. You see this huge fireball

00:08:53.180 | going up. And if you watch closely, you see it already start to catch the whole place on

00:08:56.780 | fire. The whole front of that, which is foam catching on fire. And I cut just before you

00:09:02.700 | see that it's on fire. And we, that was the first shot at that bar. Cause we weren't going

00:09:08.340 | to start shooting the other stuff till night. So the first shot is that, and the sets ruined

00:09:14.100 | burned or crisp. The neon lights blew up. So we couldn't even shoot. Cheech goes, well,

00:09:21.920 | I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight. And, but right away, this is what, this is what happens.

00:09:27.140 | My first AD, Doug Arnachowski comes over to me and I go over to him. The guys came out with

00:09:33.860 | the fire hoses, the fire hoses weren't even adding water. It was like, the thing was just

00:09:37.680 | scorching. The whole production design team was in tears because they had just spent weeks building

00:09:42.400 | this thing and it was up in smoke and charred. I said, let's just keep shooting. Let's just keep

00:09:48.200 | shooting because it looks really kind of cool like this. Yeah. They're going to have to come repair

00:09:52.920 | it and we'll have to come back, but it's all black and charred. That's why that whole scene with

00:09:57.000 | George Clooney and Cheech and that the building's black. We didn't go over there and touch that up.

00:10:00.860 | That's real flame that burned and it ended up looking great. So then the next week when

00:10:05.820 | we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they had repaired it and we

00:10:10.520 | shot all the night stuff, which is the majority of the stuff in front of it. So sometimes you got to

00:10:15.600 | roll with it and then, and look, look at the blessing you get because of this mistake. You probably

00:10:20.000 | actually got a better take by doing it later with them. And then you had this incredible look for the

00:10:24.920 | end of the movie that looked apocalyptic. If it had looked just clean, you would have actually seen

00:10:29.460 | that it was kind of a foam set. This made it look better. So I kind of let the universe push you

00:10:34.260 | where you're supposed to go. Just roll with it. You got to roll with it because you don't know what

00:10:37.240 | the grand plan is. You have your plan. Just know it's probably all going to fall apart.

00:10:40.960 | It's just like the movies. You come up with your plan of what you want to accomplish. That's like

00:10:45.060 | your script. Then you go scout your location and figure out what your project's going to be,

00:10:50.080 | you know, and you go try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Then you go to do your project.

00:10:53.920 | And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up. You watch this thing

00:10:58.360 | not work. Everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves

00:11:03.700 | and creatively figure out a way around it. You turn chicken shit into chicken salad. And by the end,

00:11:09.140 | you have a result that's better than what you sought out. But that's the process and that's life.

00:11:13.540 | And that's wash, rinse, repeat. The rest of your life, that's what everything's going to be like.

00:11:17.140 | It's just like a movie. Because when you think about it, you're writing a story for a film.

00:11:23.200 | And you're also writing the story of your life at the same time. Like how are you going to react to

00:11:27.200 | things? Well, how do you make your character react to things? You make him kind of superhuman. Why

00:11:30.820 | don't you just make yourself that way? You're writing your own story. And you start really seeing the more

00:11:35.020 | you get into storytelling that life imitates art and art limitates life, but the process is also the same.

00:11:40.980 | So you write the story, the script, and then you have it collide with the chaos of reality. And in that

00:11:47.200 | moment, when you said you see the chicken shit, like you have to be able to keep your eyes open.

00:11:52.720 | You have to do that.

00:11:54.020 | You have to do that.

00:11:55.420 | Wait a minute. Okay. Stuff changed.

00:11:56.780 | Discipline.

00:11:57.360 | Where's the, not to be cliche about it, but where's the silver lining of this? Where's the path to

00:12:01.780 | actually make something good out of this? And that's a skill, right?

00:12:04.400 | I call it, and it's one of my favorite stories. I was doing one of these talks and they said,

00:12:09.260 | come talk about creativity. I go, I understand. Cause a lot of people read my book,

00:12:12.600 | rebels had a crew and told me, Oh, it made me be a filmmaker. But a lot of people said it helped me

00:12:16.760 | start my own business because they just see how you can go be entrepreneurial like that and go

00:12:21.040 | where no one else is going. And I'm giving all this talk about this kind of positive stuff.

00:12:24.900 | And this one woman goes, you're real positive, but what do I tell myself when I just wasted a year

00:12:29.520 | and a half of my life doing something that didn't work? And I was like, that's a real negative way to

00:12:34.500 | ask that. Can you just rephrase the question a little more positively before I even attempt to answer it?

00:12:38.240 | Because already her point of view is, is exactly what you're saying. She's not looking at all.

00:12:42.500 | She's just concentrating on what, what didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else

00:12:48.960 | that's there. So she goes very reluctant. So perfect. I wish we had filmed it. She goes,

00:12:54.720 | I learned a good lesson the hard way. And I said, that still sucks. And I say, when you follow your

00:13:01.580 | instinct, like if you follow your own instinct to go start a business or go make this movie or that,

00:13:05.580 | it wasn't someone saying go over there and you'll make a million dollars. You know,

00:13:08.520 | it was your instinct and you fail. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first

00:13:13.340 | two rocks. You fail. You have to really sift through. It's like the silver lining, but I call it

00:13:19.340 | sift through the ashes of your failure and you'll find the key to your next success is in there.

00:13:24.080 | But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it. I'm going to tell you one. And I tell them

00:13:27.060 | the four room story. I said, I made a movie called four rooms. I didn't make any money. Right. When

00:13:34.900 | Quentin asked me, Hey, would you want to make a movie with me and two other filmmakers? It's an

00:13:39.200 | anthology. It's on new year's Eve. It's in a hotel. You have to use the bill hop. We're not going to know

00:13:43.820 | what each other's making. And we make it, we put it together. My hand went up right away. Just

00:13:47.820 | instinctually. That sounds, yeah, I'll do that. I'll go make that with you. Now, should I ask the

00:13:53.360 | audience? I like to throw it to the audience and her. Should I have not raised my hand that quick?

00:13:58.520 | Shouldn't I have done a little studying first or should I just go blind instinct or should you do

00:14:03.500 | instinct with some studying? Okay. Well, I could have gone and studied and I would have found that

00:14:09.560 | anthologies never work. Like even when it's Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen, they bomb because people

00:14:15.000 | can't quite rip their hand. What is this? Twilight Zone? I don't want to go see that.

00:14:18.420 | But that's not, I still said, yeah, I think I should still go by instinct. So my instinct was

00:14:22.920 | to raise my hand. Will you go make that movie? Because I love short films. I made like bedhead

00:14:28.380 | in short films and I thought, oh, here's a way. If this works, I can make short films in anthologies

00:14:32.440 | and I can have the best of both worlds. And by the way, anthologies is when there's multiple.

00:14:36.300 | More than multiple one story. In one movie. Yeah, one movie.

00:14:38.960 | So if you did the research, you would know that very few people ever got that to work.

00:14:44.460 | Yeah. The audience can't quite wrap their hand and it feels like the movie starting three times,

00:14:48.180 | you know? So I make that movie. It bombs. Now I could feel real bad about that, but if you really

00:14:56.060 | think about it, you go, well, why did I sign up for it? Did I raise my hand because I thought it was

00:15:00.880 | going to go be this big financial success? No, I did it to work with my friends, to do something

00:15:04.760 | creative, to try something, but that's still not good enough. I need to really sift through the ashes.

00:15:09.260 | And if I looked into the ashes of that failure, I find two keys to my biggest successes in there.

00:15:14.800 | While I was on the set, they said it has to be New Year's. So I thought, I'm just going to do like

00:15:20.880 | bedhead. I'm going to have two little kids that are running around in this room and we have to use the

00:15:25.220 | bellhop as a babysitter. Well, it's New Year's. Let's dress everybody in tuxedos because it's New

00:15:29.020 | Year's. They're all going to go out, but the parents leave without him. When I saw Antonio and his wife,

00:15:34.060 | I thought, wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were

00:15:38.560 | spies? And these two little kids, one of them keeps falling asleep on the set. He's so young.

00:15:42.140 | They barely tie their shoes. They don't know parents are spies. They have to go save them. Okay. There's

00:15:46.040 | five of those movies now, right? The other one was I really love making short films. I really want

00:15:53.520 | this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories, like a three extra, not four, same director,

00:15:59.340 | not four different directors. I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again? Well,

00:16:04.840 | because I'd already done one and figured out how I could do it better. And that's Sin City. Those are

00:16:09.320 | by far two of my biggest successes that came directly from that failure. So I always say,

00:16:14.080 | follow your instinct. If it doesn't work, just go. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip

00:16:20.280 | on the first two rocks. So what is, where's the key in that, in the ashes of the failure? Because if I had

00:16:25.400 | an instinct, that means I was on the right track. I didn't get the result I want. That's because the

00:16:29.520 | result might be something way bigger that I don't have the vision for, and the universe is pushing

00:16:33.960 | me that way. By the way, a lot of people that look back to four rooms see a lot of creative genius in

00:16:38.660 | there. So you say it flopped. It flopped financially. Financially. But there's so many ways to measure

00:16:45.400 | success. Totally. But like I said, I would say, well, it was successful because even Roger Ubert said,

00:16:51.120 | hey, you furnished my favorite room. I was like, yeah, that's, I could take that. But now that I

00:16:55.020 | think there's something else still there. I keep sifting in this, like, oh yeah, two big successes

00:16:59.260 | came from that. It's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about failure.

00:17:05.160 | Think of like The Thing by John Carpenter. You put that movie out the same weekend as E.T.

00:17:09.380 | That thing bombed. Critics were calling it pornography, you know, because of all the weird special

00:17:15.540 | effects and audiences didn't go either. And he thought he made a great movie. So, you know,

00:17:20.540 | it makes you question your instincts. Well, 10 years later, turns out, oh, it's a classic. So

00:17:26.200 | sometimes it takes the audience a while. So if you have some kind of failure on something, you don't

00:17:31.820 | let it knock you down. Just go, maybe in 10 years, they'll think it's great. I'm just going to commit

00:17:36.340 | to making a body of work, a body of work. Some will succeed, some will overperform,

00:17:42.400 | some will underperform. It's not your job. You just want to be a creative person.

00:17:46.220 | Just create, I tell you, just create, stop thinking about movie per movie and worrying so much about

00:17:51.640 | each one or project to project. If you're a business person, just commit to making a body of

00:17:56.780 | work like an artist would do. And you don't, you don't know what the masterpieces are going to be or

00:18:01.240 | which, you know, someone's going to come and say, oh, that, that one that bombed. I, there is some

00:18:05.340 | really creative stuff in there and it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.

00:18:09.540 | And sometimes I think it takes some time to process the failure to make sense of it.

00:18:14.220 | Like, uh, uh, at least for me, don't rush making sense of what didn't work. What lessons do I

00:18:21.780 | take from it? How do I sift through the ashes? As you said, like it takes time. You have to sleep

00:18:27.600 | on it. Sometimes it's right there. And then sometimes you come back, revisit it, you know,

00:18:32.720 | later. Cause you might not have had some information you have now that makes you look

00:18:36.520 | at it a lot differently. Like when I did, I just, uh, did the audio book for rebel without a crew.

00:18:42.260 | Thank you for that. By the way, I hadn't read it since I wrote it. So I didn't remember a lot

00:18:46.540 | of the details and you actually it's voiced by you. I voiced it. So I was reading it real time.

00:18:51.640 | Yeah. I highly recommend people. Cause you comment, you add additional comments to it. It's great.

00:18:55.960 | Most of the time I'm laughing because I can't believe how crazy that story is. I forgot a lot

00:19:00.000 | of details. And when you're younger, you know, when you're 21, 22, six months feels like six years. I

00:19:04.920 | didn't realize how short that window was until I reread it and how impossible most that is. But you see

00:19:10.180 | some places where a setup falls in my lap and then pays off immediately in a big way, like magic over

00:19:16.000 | and over again. It's clear. I don't know what I'm doing. It's clear. The universe is just pushing you

00:19:20.040 | places. So you can't fight it because I remember I was really disappointed. And it says in the,

00:19:24.820 | in the diary, I'm really bummed that I go home that Christmas, not having sold it

00:19:28.780 | to the Spanish home video market, which was my goal. I walked home penniless and I was like,

00:19:34.620 | Merry Christmas. I feel like a frigging failure. Good thing. I didn't sell it then. No, you know,

00:19:40.400 | with time you look back and you go, wow, I got an agent the next month. He wasn't even going to help

00:19:45.180 | me sell it. He said, Oh, if you can get 20,000 for it, take it. I chased those people down for those

00:19:50.120 | contracts to Spanish market for months. And they never answered me back. And then Columbia ended up

00:19:57.460 | buying it for like 10 times as much. And we made it re we released it and did a sequel and did another

00:20:02.480 | sequel. If you look back in time, good thing. I didn't get my way. My way had had this for a vision

00:20:09.080 | and it needed to do that, which you would never know. You know, you don't know that going through.

00:20:14.340 | So just if you don't have the answer right away, or even in 10 years ago, maybe it's coming in 20

00:20:18.780 | years. Don't let anything slow you down. Just keep plowing forward, committing to making your thing

00:20:24.200 | happen. Don't, don't get shook up by something that you might not have an answer for. Yeah. Every

00:20:29.620 | aspect of your journey is super inspiring. We'll talk about it. Let's go to the beginning. There's

00:20:33.560 | a few technical things that are fascinating about your beginning. So you started making films when you're

00:20:38.400 | very young with an old super eight camera and you were editing on a VCR. You see, I've met a lot of

00:20:44.920 | filmmakers who, you know, they start a certain way, but then they finish another way. They get to be

00:20:49.800 | big filmmakers and all that. I still do it that way. Like I still, I like doing things that way.

00:20:54.820 | I have a new company called brass knuckle films where the audience can actually participate by

00:21:00.140 | investing in this movie and investors in these movies that are done the same way. They're action films

00:21:04.480 | like we did with Mariachi, but 10 to 30 million. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a billion

00:21:10.100 | dollar franchise. You know, like John Wick only cost 20 million. The first one, second one was 40.

00:21:14.860 | Third one was 80. Fourth one was a hundred because the audience kept growing and growing.

00:21:19.000 | By the way, you say, you know, 20 million, like it's not in a lot of money. We should mention

00:21:23.240 | an action film. Yeah, that's right. But also we should say that El Mariachi, the, the, the film on

00:21:28.760 | which the book rebel without a crew is $7,000 movie. So let's put it all in context.

00:21:34.000 | But you know, you know, you're going to hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor, like

00:21:37.220 | Tiana Reeves for a $20 million movie. You know, I asked Jim, I said, Jim Cameron, I said, you know,

00:21:42.520 | like Terminator costs 5 million. And he goes, I wish we had that much. He had less than 5 million for

00:21:47.140 | that. So you can start a billion dollar franchise using these methods. And, uh, and with the audience

00:21:53.540 | investing, they get to make money on them. And this is what I'm going to say now about how I started.

00:21:58.600 | You see that DNA of how I give out, you know, I want people to know how I did things with rebel

00:22:03.660 | without a crew or with these methods that I started with. You see, that's how we kept going. Hollywood

00:22:08.220 | spends way too much. And when you can make stuff for less, your profit margin is much better.

00:22:13.820 | So when I first started, I didn't have any money. So I still play like I don't have money.

00:22:18.400 | So I had super eight, my dad had a super eight camera, but I couldn't afford it.

00:22:22.780 | I shot two rolls that you had to get to, you had to buy the film, shoot two minutes. I shot two

00:22:29.940 | rolls of that. It's another same amount of money that it costs to buy it, whatever that was, 12 bucks

00:22:34.480 | or whatever to develop it. You get it. There's no sound. Most of the shit's out of focus, you know,

00:22:40.600 | but then my dad who sold cookware had a VCR, one of the first VCRs, home VCRs for the market that he

00:22:46.700 | would play his sales tapes to his salesman. And it came with a camera attached like this

00:22:52.020 | cable you got coming out. Imagine if that had to go into your VCR for you to even see what it's

00:22:57.220 | shooting. And this is old camera, manual focus, manual iris and 12 foot cable. And I would start

00:23:03.600 | making movies with that instead. Now I have for $8, I have a two hour erasable tape of sound and

00:23:09.200 | picture. So I got into digital basically really early. I was doing, which was really frowned upon back

00:23:15.800 | then and continued to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before

00:23:21.380 | everyone realized, oh, that's the future. Yeah. That's fascinating. Cause you were

00:23:24.420 | rebel in that way too, using digital. Yeah. Well, cause of the means and the democratizing of that,

00:23:30.120 | the elite didn't like that. You could just go make a movie like that, but I started practicing

00:23:35.900 | and it's much easier to practice when it doesn't cost any money. Like if you want to be a rock star,

00:23:41.480 | right? If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and

00:23:44.900 | suddenly go to play. You have to practice to your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies,

00:23:48.360 | you got to keep telling stories and cutting them together. And you just can't afford that on film.

00:23:51.800 | Nobody can with two minute roll costing as much as a two hour tape. So I was moving all these,

00:23:57.160 | doing all these movies. First, I would cut in camera and that VCR, that old VCR had a really great

00:24:02.200 | pause button that they stopped making that when you hit pause, it stopped right there. And it stopped

00:24:06.960 | with a clean cut. It didn't have all this color bars like the later ones had. So I, that was my,

00:24:12.680 | and it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it.

00:24:17.380 | So if I have people talking, I could hit audio dub and add sound effects. So I could have two tracks on

00:24:23.220 | the same one. So I, that was my filmmaking kit for a while until I needed to start doing real editing.

00:24:30.140 | And my dad bought a second VCR for his business. Cause I stole his other one and I found that if I hooked

00:24:36.560 | them together, I could play on one and use that pause button on the second. And this was the limitation.

00:24:43.360 | This would taught me how to edit in my head is that if I shot a bunch of footage, I needed to shoot very

00:24:49.120 | little footage so I could find it. Cause sometimes you shoot out of order. So when I cut it, I have to cut

00:24:53.540 | in linear order because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut, but only, it only holds for five

00:24:58.520 | minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off. So you got to find your next shot within

00:25:03.120 | five minutes and do that. Otherwise, if you have to start the machine over, it added all these color

00:25:08.300 | bars and it would be all screwed up. So I'd have to sit there and not move for like all day while I cut

00:25:14.360 | knowing what the next shot was. And once I had it cut, I would then add some sound effects to it.

00:25:21.760 | Remember, cause I have the audio dub function, but now if I want to add music, I take that tape,

00:25:26.340 | which has two tracks now into the first deck and put it into the VCR again, one generation of loss,

00:25:32.820 | but I have a little cassette tape player with the music and I do a Y splitter so I can add the music

00:25:38.840 | yeah. Right. Just like that. That's like being resourceful with what you have. And I made a

00:25:45.420 | award winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video, not

00:25:49.820 | many, but they would always win. And there were always funny as, uh, I stumbled upon spy kids that

00:25:56.840 | way. Like I wanted to make these action movies in my backyard, but when you're a teenager, you don't

00:26:01.420 | know anybody who can come be your action star. And if you just bring your high school buddies, well,

00:26:05.600 | they just look like high school kids. So I use my little brothers and sisters cause I'm one of 10

00:26:10.800 | third oldest. They're just sitting around watching cartoons anyway. And I made them the action stars

00:26:15.640 | just to like learn. And I found those things would be a winning formula. They'd win every festival I'd

00:26:20.800 | send them to. So bedhead was my first time using a film camera. It was a windup film camera. I got in

00:26:27.800 | film school. I went to film school for one semester and realized I already knew more than the film

00:26:32.680 | students. Cause they, they taught you a whole other outdated way of doing it. So I thought,

00:26:36.620 | I'm just going to use that film camera camera to make a, a low budget movie, a definitive film

00:26:42.480 | version that I can send to all film festivals of these action kids, which is a precursor to spy kids.

00:26:47.500 | Bedhead is a precursor to spy kids. And we should say that bedhead was an award winning short film.

00:26:52.060 | That was probably a big sort of leap for you that probably opened the door to you to then make all

00:26:57.880 | your, your, your brain, especially because those video festivals, I would win like a trip to New

00:27:03.860 | York and a director's chair with a video shorts that I would put in festivals, but I knew the film

00:27:08.340 | festival, if I could get into film festivals, I could send that all over the world. So I made that little

00:27:12.960 | short film, sent it and it was winning all the festivals. And I thought, wow, I made that with a

00:27:17.820 | wind up camera, film camera filming, just one take each shot, just no slates. Cause I'm the editor and

00:27:28.960 | that cost 800 bucks. And it was eight minutes. I bet I can make an 80 minute movie for $8,000 if I'd

00:27:38.000 | use the same method. So that movie I did six months later, I was making mariachi because it opened up my

00:27:43.560 | mind to that. I could try it in a feature. Can we actually pause on that? Because I think

00:27:47.380 | a bad head has a really great, really unique story shot in a really unique way. I think what I'm trying

00:27:52.960 | to say is like, it's very important to write, write the right script, write the right story.

00:28:00.040 | So let me tell you the trick to that. And mariachi is the same way. And this really helped people.

00:28:05.360 | Like even Kevin Smith from clerk said, wow, Robert said when mariachi was success, I talked about how I

00:28:11.560 | did it. And I said, I, I, I looked at everything I had. What do I have? We have a pit bull. We have a

00:28:16.960 | turtle. We've got a bus that Carlos's cousin owns. His cousin is a brother has a brother-in-law has a

00:28:23.000 | bar and he owns a ranch. So the bad guy lives at the ranch. The fight scene is going to be in the bar.

00:28:28.540 | He's going to hit a bus at one point. He's going to, the girl's going to have a dog and a turtle is

00:28:33.120 | going to cross the road. It gives you all this production value. So you write backwards. So for bedhead,

00:28:38.360 | I even did that with a camera. So I've been shooting video all this time. And one thing I

00:28:41.740 | wished I could do on video, I never could with slow motion or stop motion even. So when I got that

00:28:46.880 | crappy world war two camera, they gave us in film school, I mean, I was so pissed. Like this is the

00:28:52.140 | camera I've been trying to get my hands. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a bond shop, old

00:28:55.700 | Bill and how wind up. You couldn't even see through the lens. You were seeing through an approximation of the

00:29:01.240 | lens, but you could shoot slow motion. I could do reverse photography. If I filmed upside down,

00:29:07.900 | I could do, cause if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focus in. Right. So I started

00:29:13.560 | with it in focus, went back, pulled backwards on a chair and then reversed it, flipped it. And that

00:29:20.920 | looks like it stops on a dime and focus.

00:29:22.800 | Yes. The number of times I've seen you shoot backwards is incredible. Like to achieve a certain

00:29:27.300 | feeling, a certain experience, a certain, uh, certain effect, sometimes shooting in reverse,

00:29:33.800 | plus the sound effect layer, you can create this reality that's surreal. Yeah. That then results in

00:29:42.440 | the story that you wanted. Like you have, you have to be functioning some kind of different space,

00:29:47.480 | time continuum. Start putting it together. Right. So I've got this different camera. Well,

00:29:52.820 | what now I go like, oh, no, I don't want to shoot the same kind of movie. If I got a camera now that

00:29:57.120 | can do that, I can do stop motion. So that's why there's an animated title sequence at the beginning.

00:30:01.280 | Cause I go, wow, I I'm a cartoonist. If I set the camera up here, I can slow it down enough. It's not,

00:30:07.640 | it's not a frame by frame, but if I get it down like two frames a second, I can just tap it and it'll

00:30:13.400 | maybe get one frame off. So I did 300 drawings by hand for that opening title sequence. Holy shit.

00:30:19.320 | That was, that was you doing it by hand. Yeah. So you watch that and this is a throwaway title

00:30:25.400 | sequence, but I really want to, this thing to win awards. Okay. Hold on a second. How long did that

00:30:29.700 | take to draw that? That's a lot. That's a lot of work. I drew it. I drew it over. Well, I was a daily

00:30:35.260 | cartoonist by then, so I was pretty fast, but still it's, that's why it's only penciled. It's not inked,

00:30:39.260 | but it looks great. I mean, it's the cameras going around and all kinds of crazy stuff,

00:30:43.260 | but it's just all fake by paper. I took me all night to shoot it. Cause I remember I walked into

00:30:48.700 | the film school the next day, you know, like all sleeping. And I told one of the fellow students,

00:30:54.140 | you know, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence. And he went,

00:30:57.240 | why are you putting so much work in this? They're not going to, they're not going to grade you any

00:31:00.620 | differently. And I was like, grades, get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town.

00:31:06.120 | I'm not doing this for fucking grades. I got, I want people to see what I can do now.

00:31:11.160 | And I want to see what I can do now with this. So a lot of the story came from the limitations or

00:31:17.820 | actually the freedoms of that camera. I couldn't have done that story on video. So when I saw,

00:31:22.200 | wow, okay, I can do reverse photography. I can do stop motion. She has to have special powers

00:31:28.240 | because if she has special powers and I can utilize, I can really milk this camera for all it can get.

00:31:33.520 | There's one of my shots. I love the most is where she's standing there and the, and the chair,

00:31:38.920 | she makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face. Now,

00:31:44.320 | if I did it normally, where would I even put the strings for that?

00:31:47.980 | Right. To pull the chair. Yeah.

00:31:50.120 | So I started here with the camera upside down. I have the strings in the back. You're not going

00:31:54.480 | to be looking at the back. And as it goes back, you pull it back. And then when you reverse it,

00:31:59.320 | it goes, and it looks so good. You can't spot the string. If you look close, you see the strings

00:32:04.120 | are in the back, but your eyes don't look. So I did stuff like that. And then just her like getting

00:32:08.660 | the hose. And then I just do stop motion for the hose turning on, you know, the faucet. That's why

00:32:13.520 | I gave her special powers so that, and it made the story better. So sometimes the limitations you have

00:32:19.020 | with equipment or location, you can use it to make, you know, take chicken shit, turn it in chicken

00:32:24.060 | salad. Take this camera that everyone was like, what's this? And I go, I can do so much with this.

00:32:30.080 | But I tell you today, I look at that camera. I can't believe I ever made a movie with that thing.

00:32:34.560 | It's so ridiculously primitive. I was like, how did I even think I could get anything done with this?

00:32:40.280 | And it even exposed and mariachi the same way you have to think about it. I shot mariachi on film

00:32:45.480 | and with a bar 16 millimeter camera, I didn't know how to use it. I called up a place in Dallas that

00:32:51.160 | rented that kind of equipment. And I said, I have an airy 16 S here.

00:32:55.760 | Two motor looking things. One has a 24 on one has a bunch of numbers. Oh, that's a variable speed

00:33:04.020 | motor. That means you can do different speed. I can shoot slow motion with this. Oh, wow. Do you

00:33:08.100 | have a torque motor? I don't know. What is that? Is there something on the side of the magazine?

00:33:11.960 | Like it does. Yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to do it. I was doing

00:33:17.260 | it by phone that way. And then I went and shot the movie right then. Yeah.

00:33:20.600 | And I didn't know if any of it was exposing or if the film camera was working until I finished the

00:33:27.660 | whole movie. So imagine you have to go down to Mexico, shoot for two weeks, come back, send

00:33:32.360 | it off to a lab. You want to talk about being nervous, just hoping something exposed. And

00:33:39.080 | when I saw it come back and the tape, you know, they transferred it to a tape so I could edit

00:33:43.520 | it deck to deck again. I was so relieved. Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around

00:33:48.880 | that. It's like, Oh yeah. Cause I'm doing everything. Like right here, you're doing

00:33:51.840 | everything. Imagine if you forgot to stop down and it's open all the way and one shot is blown out.

00:33:55.960 | You know, I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it.

00:33:58.960 | Wait a minute. You shot, I'm going to actually, the whole thing without knowing if some of the

00:34:04.260 | footage is damaged wrong without any of it. That's why I only did one take. So my idea was this.

00:34:10.940 | How gangster is that? Wow. It was a test film.

00:34:13.940 | Right. Right. I thought it was, I thought it was going to be a test film. Yeah. It's the only movie

00:34:18.660 | in history ever made where the filmmaker did not think anyone would see it and expect it and even

00:34:25.560 | set it up that way. I mean, why would I make an action movie for the Spanish market called basically

00:34:29.620 | the guitar player promises? No action. No one's going to watch it. But I thought if someone actually

00:34:34.400 | picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're going to be surprised. I put a lot of

00:34:37.800 | action. It was just to learn from, I just needed to make it for as little as possible,

00:34:41.360 | see how much I could sell it for. If I could double my money. Great. I can make another one and just

00:34:46.400 | get more practice. It was just, I was so intrigued by this idea because you've heard advice about

00:34:51.600 | screenwriting. I heard advice back then that I thought was ridiculous. It said, it's going to take

00:34:57.080 | you a long time to be a good screenwriter. So write three scripts and throw them away. The fourth script

00:35:02.060 | will be the good one. I was like, it's so hard to write a script. Who's going to write three full

00:35:06.460 | scripts? No one, they throw them away. Wouldn't it be better if you write three scripts and then

00:35:10.840 | shoot each one and be the cameraman, be the sound guy, be everything. Cause that way you're learning,

00:35:15.480 | not just writing, you're learning how to make a movie. So that was my idea. I'm going to make three

00:35:19.880 | of these, hide it on Spanish video, but make money back. That's like my own film school paying me,

00:35:25.180 | paying me to learn. So the first one I thought, let me just shoot it. One take each, because my friend

00:35:32.580 | Carlos lives in Mexico, if we shoot two takes, most of the cost is to film. I've just doubled

00:35:37.560 | my budget. So let me just shoot one take. Some of it's going to not come out, but I'm not going

00:35:42.060 | to know what, I'm not going to shoot a safety one. That doubles my, let me, let me see. Some things

00:35:46.260 | might come out. I expected like 70% of it to maybe be okay, but 30% I might have to come reshoot,

00:35:52.040 | which is fine. I just drive back there. And then I just reshoot just those shots. Right?

00:35:56.540 | So I just went, let's shoot. We stop, we come back. Then I send it off to develop

00:36:02.120 | because we're shooting two weeks consecutively to get film shipped back and forth from Mexico to see

00:36:07.920 | if it came out. You just couldn't do it. I just had to, you know, double down on it, do it one take,

00:36:13.400 | everything. I remember one time I was still an actor, man, I told you to run through that shot.

00:36:17.520 | He goes, oh, let me do it. No, one take, dude. Just think about next time. Do what I say.

00:36:21.540 | I didn't think anyone was going to see it. So you, and because you don't think anyone's going to see

00:36:25.360 | it, you end up doing something remarkable, which is, well, I'm just going to make something for myself.

00:36:29.100 | Because if I was making a movie that was going to go to Sundance, I wouldn't have made that movie.

00:36:33.440 | I would have thought, okay, I got to get serious. But because I made this movie that was just

00:36:37.500 | entertaining myself like bedhead, it entertained audiences. So that naivete is really important when

00:36:44.860 | you're starting out or at any point in your life, be naive about what things are going to,

00:36:48.700 | and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson because I didn't want

00:36:52.720 | anybody to see it. I just thought one take, one take. When I got back home, a bunch of stuff didn't

00:36:58.080 | come out, but I'm like, I'm not going back to Mexico. I'll figure out a way to edit around it

00:37:02.860 | and make the movie shorter. And that's just going to be the movie. And then that's the one that won

00:37:08.240 | Sundance. That was your first feature film. That's the one you made for $7,000. You mentioned

00:37:12.540 | your Frank Carlos as the star of the movie, everything one take. And I highly recommend

00:37:19.200 | people go back and watch that movie. It's just an incredible movie. It's fun. And it's an action

00:37:23.920 | film, moves really fast. The story is really interesting. So the script is really interesting.

00:37:29.040 | All the actors, you could tell, they all kind of stepped up and played their own roles.

00:37:34.140 | They weren't actors.

00:37:35.180 | That's right. They were just friends of ours, which is why, and because, and this was the magic

00:37:40.920 | of not having a crew. They didn't feel like they were making a movie. It's like this, you know,

00:37:46.040 | we're just here. Me with my one camera. In fact, the gal, Carl said, this one girl, I forgot she's in

00:37:54.840 | town. Maybe she would work. Cause we tried to get a soap star and she backed out. So we got this gal

00:37:59.500 | over and she goes, but I don't know how to act. And I said, here, let's watch. I want to show you

00:38:02.120 | some on Mexican TV. A telenovela was on and you see someone, you know, all over, over acting. I said,

00:38:07.820 | that's acting. I don't want you to do that. I want you to just talk like you're talking about it.

00:38:13.120 | Wait, that the love interest, the woman in that, that's what you're talking about. That's what

00:38:17.400 | you're talking about. She's amazing. She's amazing. But cause I got a video of her. I said, I want you

00:38:21.920 | to just do this one line. Pretend like you're just talking to your boyfriend. Yeah. And I showed her,

00:38:26.780 | I showed her the video. That was cool. Cause I couldn't show her the film because we'd have to

00:38:30.940 | develop it. But I showed her a video test of herself doing it. And she saw herself doing it.

00:38:35.340 | She suddenly had the confidence. We went through her closet, this red dress you can wear in that.

00:38:39.300 | And everyone just brought their own clothes. She really had like a sexuality,

00:38:42.860 | a tension, like a romantic tension that was real. That was, it was an issue. It was a,

00:38:46.500 | it was, it was in part a great love story that, I mean, it's as ridiculous as it is to say.

00:38:50.760 | And in part like a dramatic love story. Yeah. The idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar

00:38:56.780 | player, you know, originally what I wanted to do was like road warrior. I said, I want a guy with a

00:39:01.340 | guitar case full of weapons going from town to town, like road warrior, but that don't have enough

00:39:05.460 | money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie I do. How about we do a Genesis story,

00:39:10.600 | how he became that guy. So let's do Mad Max basically how he becomes that guy. So maybe he is a guitar

00:39:16.780 | player so that you start writing it out. I'm going to show you my writing method. I write on, on index

00:39:22.380 | cards and I carry one of these, a little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag and I smile

00:39:29.180 | when I run across it. Cause I go, I've made a million dollars with one of these before. You know,

00:39:33.900 | it's like, this is the key to your next success cards. Cause you know, when you go see a therapist,

00:39:40.440 | you're not going to them for the answers. You're going to them for the questions. You got the answers

00:39:45.120 | inside, which you don't have are the questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering

00:39:48.740 | questions. Like, why am I such a loser? You know, I can think of 10 answers right now,

00:39:52.460 | but if you could, but if you go, what three things can I do today that'll not just change my life,

00:39:57.440 | but everyone around me take steps to that, take out your cards and start writing them down.

00:40:01.860 | You won't come up with three. You'll come up with 15. I'm like, wow. Cause you're asking yourself

00:40:08.040 | and you'll see him. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player for real.

00:40:13.440 | And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. So right down there,

00:40:20.020 | he walks into a bar, bar, trying to get work. Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Maria.

00:40:26.440 | I should just get the hell out of here. So he leaves after that whole scene, explaining who

00:40:31.440 | he is and what his story is. Then the shooter comes in with a guitar case full of weapons.

00:40:35.640 | He's also dressed in black and he shoots the place up. Now that was a short film. That's

00:40:40.520 | how you'd start a short film, but this is a feature movie. So shit, I got to figure out how

00:40:44.760 | to tell a feature. I'm going to need a few more cards before that. So I'm going to need, well,

00:40:51.140 | who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story. It's a crazy story about a guy

00:40:56.260 | who was in jail in Mexico and he was running his drug business from the jail as protection.

00:41:00.080 | He can walk out anytime, but it was to have the cops be his enforcers basically. So introduce

00:41:05.680 | that guy. He's in jail making phone calls and someone puts a hit on him. So we have action

00:41:11.200 | right away. There's a hit on him. He kills those guys cause it's his operation. He's not

00:41:16.980 | in jail. All the cops are working for him. And he tells that guy on the phone, the main bad

00:41:22.880 | guy, I'm going to come to town. I'm going to kill all your guys and I'm going to come

00:41:26.060 | kill you. So then he gets in his truck and you see them bring him a guitar case full of

00:41:31.820 | weapons. He passes the mariachi on the way to town. And now it's his story. The baton gets

00:41:39.840 | turned to mariachi. Mariachi is doing a voiceover. It's easy to shoot. We can do the voice later.

00:41:44.700 | We don't have to sing sound. There was even a scene when he walks into town where we saw these

00:41:50.280 | coconuts, a guy cutting coconuts and we go, Oh, let's go film over there. So we filmed the guy

00:41:54.220 | giving him a coconut with a straw in it. And he walks out and went, shit, man, you forgot to pay

00:41:58.780 | the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, there's one take. I'll just put in the voiceover that they give

00:42:03.620 | away free coconuts in this town. And for years, people in other countries would go, they really

00:42:07.820 | give away free coconuts? No, it's because we forgot to show him paying, you know, little happy

00:42:11.640 | accidents. So now look, you're already building a movie. So it's like, now he goes in the bar.

00:42:15.580 | Now he's mixed up. And the bad guy says, find the guy with a guitar case full of weapons.

00:42:20.240 | Then he goes and meets the girl. So you just start your movie. Visually, you can start seeing your

00:42:26.620 | movie. And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff.

00:42:31.960 | It's brilliant. Are you doing this alone? Usually, are you brainstorming?

00:42:34.880 | It's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have the ending. Oh,

00:42:38.780 | I know I want his hand shot. He's going to get his hand shot because he's a musician and

00:42:43.920 | those ballads are always really tragic. So the girl has to die. The girl has to die because

00:42:49.840 | if it's going to be a tragic song for a songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy. That's

00:42:56.320 | going to be over here. You know, now you got the ending and then your brain starts filling

00:43:00.400 | in the rest because you're asking yourself these prompt questions that you already have answers

00:43:05.460 | for from a past life, from a vision you had that you don't even know are there. This prompts

00:43:10.020 | it. It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out. What happens if you get stuck? Like this

00:43:13.900 | doesn't make sense. Like some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense.

00:43:16.920 | Just leave it all there. You won't. Yeah. You just start, you just start writing in the ones

00:43:21.100 | you do know. Yeah. Like, okay. I know, I know at some point she's going to betray him or he's

00:43:27.320 | going to think she does. She betrays him. Okay. That's in the middle somewhere. Uh, the other

00:43:33.320 | ones will come. Yeah. Those are all like crossroads for the story. Doesn't that like,

00:43:36.880 | how do you know she has to die? Can I, can you change your mind about that?

00:43:40.060 | I can. Yeah. But for now I felt like if I really want the stories telling me now what it is,

00:43:46.000 | I didn't know I was going to make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the road warrior guy,

00:43:49.260 | but the road warrior, he lost his family. So really to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar

00:43:55.240 | case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So he needs a ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a

00:44:02.060 | character. Well, look, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents

00:44:04.820 | have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him. Like it's not going to, it's not

00:44:09.040 | going to drive him like that thing. So it just kept, it's just coming to me. So this is my other trick.

00:44:14.040 | And this is the main thing you got to learn about that. If you take any away, this isn't me doing it.

00:44:19.080 | I totally believe that because when you start doing this, you go, where are these answers coming from?

00:44:25.160 | I'm asking the right question, but why, how come the answers just keep coming like this?

00:44:30.120 | I believe, cause I do so many different jobs. I've learned this over the years. When I was in

00:44:35.340 | 2002, I was like, how is it that I'm the production designer, the composer, which I don't even know

00:44:42.720 | how to read or write music. And I'm writing orchestral score and I'm doing the editing and I'm doing the

00:44:47.700 | cinematography. I haven't been trained for any of these. I never went to school for these specifically.

00:44:53.280 | Must be something about creativity. So I went on Amazon. It's 2002. I look up creative books,

00:45:00.240 | anything that has creativity in the title. I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on

00:45:05.580 | creativity and I was reading them through. One of them was like really speaking to me. Yeah, that's,

00:45:11.060 | that's it. That's the process. And then it says gels and mediums. And I'm like, oh, this is a book

00:45:16.080 | specifically about painting, but it applies to music, editing, cinematography, writing.

00:45:22.520 | It's all the same. So that's when I realized that creativity is 90% of any of those jobs,

00:45:29.640 | the technical part of setting up the cameras of writing a script in format or reading or writing

00:45:36.940 | music. That's 10% of that. How many musicians, you know, don't read or write music and they're

00:45:41.060 | fantastic because 90% what they do is creative. Now I believe that that same person, even if they only

00:45:47.740 | do music could literally jump from job to job creatively and do a superior job than most technicians.

00:45:55.520 | And there's also something to say there about the learning, the technical aspects of an art,

00:46:00.220 | you, you collide with the, uh, uh, with the experts. What, what happens is I've experienced this a lot

00:46:08.960 | with like, with, with using cameras and so on. I don't know shit about cameras and that you roll in

00:46:13.260 | and then there's all the experts almost talking down to you and telling you how things are supposed

00:46:18.440 | to be. Everything is wrong. I talked to somebody about like soundproofing a room and they said,

00:46:23.960 | they gave me prices. They're insane. And like the amount of effort is insane. And this,

00:46:28.700 | the, the, the, the dynamics of this room are all wrong. I'm like, why can't I just fucking hang up

00:46:34.060 | some curtains? Like what? It seems like that kills most of the echo. Like, I don't, I don't understand.

00:46:38.820 | And they're like, no, this is all wrong. There's corn, the corners are going to have some,

00:46:42.780 | and I'm like, fuck it. I'm just going to try and I see what it sounds like a and B. Okay. Here's

00:46:47.420 | audio with curtains. Here's the audio without curtains. It seems like this is fine as a move on to the

00:46:52.040 | next thing. I think that when you say creativity, some of that is being a rebel, like not listening

00:46:59.660 | to the experts. Yeah. Well, you're going on your creativity, which is what is that? That's like an,

00:47:03.620 | do you consider yourself a creative person? I think you play guitar. Yeah. Guitar, piano. Yeah.

00:47:08.040 | You play piano. Okay. Do you could, but would you call yourself a creative person?

00:47:12.400 | Yeah, I think so. Good. I think that's a positive. I would just suggest to anybody is just own it,

00:47:17.920 | own it. And just say, I like when I do so many different jobs, it sounds crazy when they would

00:47:23.740 | introduce me, Hey, Robert, he does this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like,

00:47:26.960 | I get tired of just hearing that list. But when I think about it, there's really only one thing I do

00:47:30.420 | and I live a creative life. And when you live a creative life, I mean, anything that has to do with

00:47:34.480 | creativity, whether it's filming or piano or guitar or sculpting, or you can just, you can do it.

00:47:39.080 | You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better

00:47:43.060 | director by doing all those jobs. Cause when somebody just does one job, they barely know

00:47:47.640 | that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity. And this is the main thing I learned

00:47:52.820 | was that I'm writing music, you know, for an orchestra. I'm like, how did I, I don't even

00:47:58.140 | know what I'm doing. Why is that coming out? I don't feel like I'm doing it. I feel like I picked

00:48:02.720 | up the pen. I feel like I had the idea to do the cards, but then when everything just starts

00:48:08.040 | coming out so quickly, like that's how fast I wrote that movie. I go, I really feel like

00:48:13.920 | something else has taken over. So this is what my belief is. And cause I hear it in different

00:48:18.740 | realms. Like you asked Keith Richards, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't,

00:48:21.440 | I don't. They're floating around the sky and I pull them out first. You know, yes. I asked,

00:48:25.680 | you know, Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar? Those solos. He goes, it's like a radio. You know,

00:48:29.220 | once you get a tune just right, you can't even believe what's coming through. So I believe,

00:48:33.420 | I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us. It's creative

00:48:37.000 | that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards. And then when you start

00:48:43.340 | getting in the flow and you're like, Whoa, it's writing. It's that's that. And if you can have

00:48:48.660 | that mindset, you take your ego out of it and go, all I need to do is to be a good conduit for this

00:48:53.940 | thing, be a good pipe. And it's going to come through. So you don't ever have to get hung up on

00:48:58.700 | that question you had. Well, well, what happens when you can't come up? It wasn't me to begin with.

00:49:02.660 | If it's not coming out, it's because I'm blocking it. And if I were to do this and I'm flowing and if

00:49:09.880 | I were to say, wow, I just wrote 10 cards. I don't know if I can write more. How did I do that? You just

00:49:15.540 | shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You just clogged it because it gets pissed off that you

00:49:20.140 | think it's you. It's not you. It's like, dude, just open up. Let me through, pick up the fucking pen.

00:49:24.520 | And I learned this in, uh, when I was 19, when I had a daily cartoon strip, I had to draw a comic

00:49:30.900 | strip every day to get paid. And I would be like, I'd have to draw like one drawing, draw another

00:49:37.400 | drawing. Then it's like, okay, these kind of go together. It was a process, you know? And sometimes

00:49:42.100 | I just felt like, I wish I could just envision it, sit back. I'm going to try that method. I went home

00:49:47.260 | and I would sit back and just try to get in my sofa, try the sofa method. I'm just going to try a picture

00:49:52.060 | of the comic strip. And then as soon as I got one, I think it's funny. Then I'll just go draw that.

00:49:55.300 | Right. Doesn't be done in a half hour. Why, why, why it's three hours? I'd sit there and sit there and

00:50:00.700 | sit there. My deadline would be coming up. Got like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh shit. Got to go sit and draw

00:50:04.760 | it out. And it's like, oh, okay. I got this drawing. It's kind of, oh, this kind of goes with that. If I

00:50:08.560 | make another drawing, I have my strip. That's the only way to do it. If you don't get up, the creative

00:50:14.120 | spirit ain't going to come visit you if you're doing this. Yeah. It needs your hands and it's not going to

00:50:19.860 | reward you for sitting there, wait for it. You have to jump in and do it. And people, when they

00:50:25.060 | say, oh, well, I'm not ready. How pissed off is that spirit now? It's waiting for you to feel like

00:50:30.980 | you're ready. It's not you just start doing the action and it's going to come through and the ideas

00:50:36.340 | will come and the answers will come because it's not you. And if you can take your ego out of life,

00:50:39.540 | you'll be blessed with this never ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it and know

00:50:45.880 | that you're, if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it because this thing's got

00:50:48.860 | endless ideas. And you give that same advice for making films, which is, you know, don't plan. If you

00:50:55.740 | want to be a filmmaker, don't plan like the movie, don't think about making the movie, just go in and

00:50:59.860 | start. Yeah. I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring

00:51:04.660 | filmmaker and I wonder how, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say, stop aspiring.

00:51:09.460 | Because if you, if you call yourself that you are that, and you're always going to feel like

00:51:14.060 | you're not ready and you don't, you just jump in before you're ready. You don't feel like you're

00:51:18.240 | ready till I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi till I was probably in my last few days of

00:51:22.120 | filming. You became ready as you went. You didn't know all that stuff. I couldn't have figured all

00:51:26.000 | that out in advance. When my kids worked with me on a project that we did similar by the end,

00:51:31.320 | they realized they did an interview with my son who after just two weeks of doing one of those

00:51:35.580 | projects, you're a different person. He's suddenly waxing philosophical about the creative process and

00:51:40.840 | going, I never knew how my dad did mariachi until we did this project together. And I realized he

00:51:44.860 | didn't know either. He didn't know I was going to do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge

00:51:49.420 | that got thrown at him, he had to figure it out. And that's the biggest lesson. Most people never start.

00:51:55.640 | And that's the biggest thing. Don't wait till you're ready or they'll be on your tombstone.

00:51:59.640 | Here lies so-and-so. He was never ready. And you don't want to be that guy. Jump in. No,

00:52:03.860 | it's not you. You just got to be the hands. And that relieves a lot of pressure from you

00:52:09.060 | because then you don't have to ever have to do anything, really. You just have to be the hands.

00:52:13.120 | Can you talk through some of the hats, some of the many hats you wore with the El Mariachi? That's an

00:52:18.640 | interesting case study. And you've done the same thing over and over in completely different,

00:52:22.560 | innovative ways in all the films. But El Mariachi is such a radical leap for you.

00:52:27.880 | That was crazy. That thing's held together with Scotch tape and rubber bands because of the camera I

00:52:32.940 | borrowed. You directed, you did cinematography, you did the sound.

00:52:38.300 | It's better to just say what I didn't do. I didn't act in front of the camera. Everything else I did.

00:52:43.040 | Everything else, I was the whole crew. It's just like you're doing here, except you've got sound

00:52:49.240 | recording right onto the cameras, right? Or do you have it to the system?

00:52:54.680 | Separately, but it's synced. I mean, all the modern technology.

00:52:57.820 | But it's synced, yeah. So I didn't have sync camera.

00:52:58.900 | Yep.

00:52:59.240 | So I had a camera that, it was not a sync camera. And the thing was, it was so loud,

00:53:05.700 | I would have had to blimp the shit out of it, which I didn't have a blimp. And then I would

00:53:09.320 | have needed a sound guy.

00:53:10.260 | Just to be clear, so if people don't understand this, you're shooting basically no sound.

00:53:14.160 | Because the camera sounds like this.

00:53:16.060 | It's like, it sounds like all your money's going away, first of all. So I would go like this.

00:53:22.460 | Action. You'd start running.

00:53:24.460 | Yeah.

00:53:25.060 | And I shoot my edit.

00:53:26.560 | Cut.

00:53:30.200 | Yep.

00:53:31.120 | You know, they're still running, you know, like I'm only using this part. And there's no slates.

00:53:35.020 | There's no, there's, there's guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of rolling. This

00:53:38.660 | is real seven for just a few frames. I know which real it is. And then that 10 minutes of film

00:53:43.660 | is just one shot after another. And I use almost every frame of those shots because I was cutting

00:53:50.260 | in the camera. Now, after I shoot, like, let's say, you know, tell me your name.

00:53:55.040 | Lex.

00:53:55.900 | What's your last name?

00:53:57.140 | Friedman.

00:53:58.020 | Where do you live?

00:53:59.000 | Austin, Texas.

00:54:00.680 | I would do the whole scene. Then I'll get the sound, bring the mic in close like that. Say it again.

00:54:05.320 | Lex.

00:54:07.080 | Friedman, Austin, Texas.

00:54:09.080 | That'll probably sink. Now, if you were going on and on, there's a place where it'd go out

00:54:14.440 | of sync. I hate rubbery lips. So I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the girl. And then

00:54:21.900 | I cut back when you're back in sync. And since these were non-actors, they say everything the

00:54:26.100 | same way each time. They would say their line just like they weren't, they weren't performing it to

00:54:30.740 | where they didn't remember how they performed the thing before. They were just talking in their

00:54:33.080 | own rhythm. So a lot of the times it's the, anytime you see anyone on camera talking,

00:54:36.860 | they're in sync with themselves. And as soon as it cuts away, they're out of sync.

00:54:41.280 | And it created this really fast cutting style that I probably wouldn't have had on such a low budget

00:54:45.900 | movie, but it was the only way to keep things in sync. So when I would shoot two people talking,

00:54:49.340 | I would make sure I'd film a couple of shots of like the dog or a stuffed cat or something,

00:54:54.600 | just so I'd have something to cut away to, to get them back in sync.

00:54:56.840 | That's so brilliant.

00:54:57.620 | And it's, I call it, it's just resourceful. It's just being very resourceful.

00:55:01.860 | And you allow it to get maybe a little bit out of sync sometimes?

00:55:04.480 | I didn't allow it, but I, oh yeah, I would let it, if I just didn't have a way to cut away.

00:55:08.180 | Right.

00:55:08.500 | And I would try to sync it as best I could.

00:55:10.480 | But we as the audience, like, do you understand where the threshold is?

00:55:14.300 | Yeah.

00:55:14.860 | Where we notice something?

00:55:15.920 | Yeah.

00:55:16.220 | It seems like you can get away with a lot.

00:55:17.920 | You can get away with, I just don't, I'm just particular about that.

00:55:21.640 | I just don't like seeing a dub movie where it just feels canned. It makes you not believe in it

00:55:26.740 | anymore. So I just cut away where the lips are just way off. I just didn't want any of that.

00:55:32.320 | I just felt like I wanted it to just be believable and there, they could be really believable if

00:55:38.400 | they were in sync, but I didn't shoot two takes of film or even two takes of audio, but just one

00:55:43.120 | take. We just went to the, and what's cool is that because I just had them go through the whole scene

00:55:47.980 | again. So I would go ahead and record them, like grabbing the bottle or any action they did opening

00:55:52.740 | the suitcase. I have all the sound effects too. I just had to sync it by hand. That's a lot of work

00:55:56.800 | for me, but I got great sound that way. Cause if I had had a sync camera, the mic would have been so

00:56:02.980 | far. We wouldn't have, we would have had to go get new sound effects, but because the camera's off,

00:56:08.520 | I could record everything close up. So there was some blessing to that.

00:56:12.620 | You, uh, and Quentin Tarantino had a great conversation about a lot of topics, but one of

00:56:16.380 | them is how to bring out the best in the actors. Like what in that El Mariachi, how do you bring

00:56:20.520 | out the best in these non-actors? And then maybe what's the thread that connects to your future

00:56:27.060 | work too?

00:56:27.540 | What really helped for those non-actors was that they just look across and it's me filming.

00:56:33.360 | They didn't feel like they're, so they're being so natural. And I think I, who played the bad

00:56:37.100 | guy, I met him in the research hospital where I was sold my body to science. He was my bunkmate.

00:56:41.720 | And I said, dude, you look kind of like Rudger Hauer. And then it's like, we saw another movie,

00:56:45.280 | man, you look like James Spader. Shit. You should be the bad guy in my movie. And it'd be cool to have

00:56:49.440 | you as the bad guy. He goes, but I don't speak Spanish. Well, that's okay. All right. And I'll

00:56:52.760 | teach you phonetically. And you're going to wear sunglasses. And if you look close, he's holding the,

00:56:57.300 | he's holding the lines here. And he's looking at the lines like that and just smiling.

00:57:01.520 | So can't believe he's getting away with this. He's smiling and he's got the sunglasses on.

00:57:06.960 | I read that somewhere in the pool. There's like a scene in the pool.

00:57:08.760 | In the pool. He's like this.

00:57:09.860 | With the sunglasses on. Oh man.

00:57:12.560 | But he was doing it phonetically. And I tell you what, he was so great. That guy, right?

00:57:17.220 | Yeah.

00:57:17.880 | When we do Desperado, I brought him back. Didn't even have to do any dialogue. Watch that movie.

00:57:22.960 | When he shows up in the opening scene, when Desperado, he's playing the guitar and the opening

00:57:27.600 | with the credits to tie it into the first movie, he shows up again. And all he has to do is light a

00:57:32.640 | cigarette. And you see this. He's so nervous because now there's a crew behind me. Now it's

00:57:38.720 | real. Before it was just me and him and it didn't feel like a real movie. So everyone gave a great

00:57:44.100 | performance. So how do you recreate that later on a big movie is just building a report, making a safe

00:57:50.520 | zone for your actors. Quentin once told me, sometimes being, you know, we're talking about

00:57:54.160 | directing is sometimes being a great director, just being a great audience, you know, being a great

00:57:57.760 | audience for them. Cause you're, you're the, you're taking the place of the audience for the

00:58:01.180 | actor. They try something. And if you're enjoying it, they know that the audience is going to enjoy

00:58:05.180 | it. Or if you're, you know, makes you cry, you know, so sometimes you just, you don't have to tell

00:58:10.040 | them a lot sometimes. And if you do have something very specific to tell them, they usually, you know,

00:58:15.080 | go with it. But I always just like to see what they do. And a lot of times they just are in the zone

00:58:20.440 | because again, they're, they're getting that flow too. You create the right environment.

00:58:23.880 | Everyone's getting this inspiration that's all tied together that you never could have directed.

00:58:28.480 | It's just like, you just create that space where we're all going to be open to it and it's going

00:58:33.320 | to drop in our lap. And I'm going to point it out when it does, because you may not feel like you know

00:58:38.160 | how to play this role yet, but I say not knowing is the other half of the battle and the more important

00:58:43.620 | part, that's the part we're going to discover. And when it happens, I'm going to point it out and it's

00:58:47.420 | going to be like magic and we're just going to go, okay, we're accepting it and we do it. And it gets

00:58:50.820 | people in that kind of headspace. And then we're all open to it, to where the character is supposed

00:58:55.440 | to go, what the, what it's supposed to sound like, instead of me being very, you know, manipulative

00:59:00.260 | to get a certain thing. I don't know. It's, it's just whenever it feels good.

00:59:02.980 | Yeah. There's such an intimate connection between the actor and the director. I've seen some of the

00:59:06.460 | behind the scenes footage with you. You are just a fan enjoying the scene when it's done well.

00:59:11.640 | But I think there's an aspect, if I were to put myself in the headspace of the actor,

00:59:15.240 | they want you as the audience, like to earn that happiness, you know, because when a director

00:59:20.380 | approves.

00:59:21.020 | Yeah. Well, you're a performer and you want, and there's no other, you know, it's not like a live

00:59:25.020 | show where you get the approval of the audience and you're like, oh, wow, they, they liked that joke.

00:59:28.380 | Let me do more. You know, really the director is it. And a lot of times the director's way behind a

00:59:32.860 | monitor somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera. Cause when I'm operating the camera,

00:59:36.060 | it's like this, we can have a hundred people here. We wouldn't know because they go away. It's just us.

00:59:41.640 | They just disappear when it's the camera guy is the director. And we're going, let's do that again.

00:59:46.440 | Let's do that again. There's a shot. And, uh, I'm lighting sensitivity myself. There's a bad,

00:59:50.400 | my crew setting lights and I have, uh, this great shot of Clive Owen where he's holding down Benicio's

00:59:55.780 | head in the toilet. You know, Benicio's not there. It's just a closeup of him at this point. And I'm

00:59:59.980 | practicing my shot. I'm zooming in slow in his face and people are still walking behind him on the

01:00:04.340 | green screen setting lights. And I'm like, I'm rolling. We're ready to go. We're getting this. I can already

01:00:08.160 | tell we're already in the moment what you're doing right now. Just keep holding that. Look

01:00:11.440 | now one jolt. Like you're like, he's starting to fight back, but you don't even flinch cut. Okay.

01:00:16.720 | Nevermind. You guys can stop moving. That's true. We already got. Holy shit.

01:00:20.760 | Wow. Yeah. It's like that. Cause you're so lucky. That's a great scene by the way.

01:00:24.400 | Great. Right. And it was, if I wait for these guys, this moment will be gone.

01:00:28.580 | And then another one was Mickey Rourke. You know, he had so much freaking dialogue. He had just done

01:00:33.820 | this whole big dialogue scene. He had another one that said, let's go ahead and start with a wide

01:00:38.260 | shot where the two actors, if I'm the camera, you know, Mickey and Elijah are here, let's get a two

01:00:44.080 | shot and we'll come around on Mickey closeup. We don't, we'll turn Mickey around for the closeup.

01:00:48.820 | Let's start with the wide thing. Get used to the lines. And most of it's going to be sold in a

01:00:52.420 | closeup. We sit down, Mickey starts delivering the take. I'm like, hold on, hold a second. I brought

01:00:56.720 | my camera over, zoom in, just adjust that light real quick. Cause I'm the DP. Cause if I had another

01:01:01.120 | director of photography, they'd be like, oh no, no, we have to relight and all this stuff. It's like,

01:01:04.460 | no, no, let's just do this. This let's go. He's doing it right now. And I go, and that performance is

01:01:09.520 | just right then. And so you can feel that when you're also you're operating and you're the camera guy and

01:01:16.880 | you're the DP it's like high tech guerrilla filmmaking. Yeah. I run a green screen, but it's

01:01:21.240 | like all the crew needs are, you know, marching orders. Just put a light back there, hitting them

01:01:27.520 | harder. Like that's a, this is a 5k, make that a 10k. It's got to be stronger. They don't need to

01:01:31.920 | know that I'm going to make that a lamppost later. They just need it marching orders for the moment.

01:01:35.040 | So I can just kind of tell people do this, do this, do that. And then I know what I can accomplish

01:01:39.760 | with the actor. And then everything else falls into place later. Cause I'm going to put all that in

01:01:43.000 | later. You know, things, once you know how to do a lot of jobs like that, you can just move at the

01:01:47.620 | speed of thought, which is where the actors love being creatively because they, nobody knew what

01:01:53.000 | green screen was back then. They're like, what is this again? So I explained it as well, it's kind

01:01:57.140 | of like doing theater, but instead of a black curtain behind you with a prop, it'll be a green

01:02:01.520 | curtain. And you might just have a cup or just a steering wheel, but it's just you and the other

01:02:07.180 | actors just like this and everything else will be painted in later. We're just talking.

01:02:11.800 | We're locked in. If we stay locked in, we'll look great when there's rain coming down and we're on a

01:02:15.760 | ship later, but it's comes down to this. Right. And the more it was so fun to do those kinds of movies

01:02:21.660 | to this day, you try to be close to the action connected with the actor. That's because it's like

01:02:26.920 | a dance. You end up. That's so like to hear a member on dust till dawn, Michael parks in the opening

01:02:32.840 | scene. He's talking about the two guys that are running around killing people just before he gets

01:02:38.580 | shot. And there's a, I just start doing this slow zoom. I remember it was take eight, start doing the

01:02:43.900 | slow zoom on him. And I'm like, I hope I get all the way up to where it stops zooming when he finishes

01:02:50.040 | that speech. Cause there's no set way. And I don't know how he's going to say it, but you're just locked

01:02:54.960 | almost telepathically. And as he's delivered, there's no edits. He's just going, yeah, they killed four

01:03:00.000 | rangers, two hostages. It's just like, wow. And you're just so pulled in. I'm just like, oh my God.

01:03:07.320 | And then it stopped. It's like, I ran out of zoom, right. As he finished that speech.

01:03:10.360 | So how can a director, cause there's a lot of great directors that stay in the,

01:03:14.700 | in the back of the battlefield. You know, they just trust that whatever they get from their crew,

01:03:18.820 | they just, you accept it. Just like, you know, you would get a take to them.

01:03:21.400 | There's so much. I like, I like that intimate connection because I could not be behind a monitor.

01:03:27.820 | Even if I had communication with my cameraman, okay, now start zooming in. You're not going to

01:03:31.780 | know. You have to feel it. You have to be in there. It's like a dance. It's like trying to do a dance

01:03:35.820 | with a partner and you're across the room. You know, it's like, no, you got to be there up close

01:03:40.140 | feeling the energy. And it's the creative spirits whispering to your both. You know, it's not your

01:03:45.560 | own idea. It's you're capturing a moment. That's magic. And there's true magic that happens on a set.

01:03:50.580 | And that's what brings you back. Cause you know, I didn't direct that and they didn't act that that

01:03:56.600 | came through us. And we just had the cameras rolling and we captured a ghost.

01:04:00.000 | It's like you said, don't you have the pen in hand and you were, you were there.

01:04:03.840 | It's like that. It's crazy.

01:04:05.360 | It's crazy.

01:04:05.880 | All right. Your friendship with Tarantino is just fascinating. And just the whole timeline of the

01:04:10.740 | history of movies and the two of you collided and met is, is just a fascinating part of the story.

01:04:15.720 | You first met him in 1992 at the Toronto Film Festival. Can you just talk about meeting

01:04:21.680 | Tarantino?

01:04:22.220 | We both had films at the same time with first films, guys in black, action, violence. In fact,

01:04:30.720 | I had seen this movie already. My first film festival was a few months before that, the

01:04:34.520 | Telluride Film Festival and Reservoir Dogs was there, but Quentin couldn't be there. He was at

01:04:37.720 | Sundance earlier that year. And the guy who became my agent, he saw it and said, Hey, you're going to

01:04:42.360 | like this guy, Quentin Tarantino. I told him about you. You're going to meet him. He's going to be in

01:04:45.460 | Toronto. Oh, cool. Cool. Okay. And so I went ahead and saw his movie and Telluride. And I was like,

01:04:49.500 | Holy shit, this guy's in black again, just like the mariachis dressed in black and action. And I said,

01:04:55.100 | Oh, we're going to like each other. He's going to like my movie. So then in Toronto, we met and we met

01:04:59.920 | first on a, cause I knew I was going to be doing a panel discussion with him. They asked us to do a

01:05:04.660 | panel discussion about violence and movies in the nineties, even though it was only 92.

01:05:10.200 | So we're on a panel together and that's where I met him. And he's like, Hey, Robert, your agent told me

01:05:14.660 | about you. And I was like, yeah, I saw your movie Reservoir Dogs. And he goes, Oh, you got to come to my

01:05:18.520 | screening and I'm going to come see yours. So he came to mariachi and I videotaped the audience reactions

01:05:24.100 | because they were insane, insane reactions to it. But I have the first screening. He saw mariachi sitting

01:05:31.920 | next to me laughing. He's laughing at everything. He was just the best audience. I have his recording of the

01:05:37.440 | first time he saw mariachi. Oh no, really? Yeah. Cause I taped it. He's so loud. Cause he's right

01:05:42.480 | next to me. Well, just like you, but even probably even more than you. He's a fan. He watches, he just

01:05:49.160 | loves movies. He loves movies. In fact, I, the next time I heard him laugh that way, was it that his own

01:05:55.600 | premiere for Kill Bill? We're watching Kill Bill and he's laughing like it's somebody else's movie. He still

01:06:00.680 | enjoys the movies. It's so he loves, but all the actors did. And it's like, that's the kind of energy

01:06:05.700 | you really love. But I'll tell you what, what, what happened. Um, I'm not a very shy person, you know,

01:06:10.940 | very shy. I'd have to go talk. I'm sure you probably feel like you're not an orator or anything, you know,

01:06:15.480 | just have to go do it. I thought, well, man, I'm gonna have to introduce my film and talk about it

01:06:20.080 | afterwards. I'm afraid of that. What am I going to do? I don't, I've never talked in front of more than five people

01:06:24.320 | before. So I went to see this other movie and it was good. And I was watching and then the director

01:06:31.200 | comes up at the end and goes, yeah, well, that was my movie. And, um, you know, uh, you know,

01:06:36.540 | here's the writer. And it's like, oh man, I don't like the movie anymore. This guy's kind of a dick.

01:06:39.900 | So I cannot do that. I'm going to have to go be who they imagined made that movie. So I wrote out my

01:06:48.360 | whole intro. It was like a 20 minute intro because no one had ever heard of anybody making

01:06:53.100 | a movie for no money, much less without a crew, much less, you know, the way I did it was just

01:06:58.840 | very new. Nobody knew it was possible. So my whole intro is like, you'll see the Columbia logo slapped

01:07:06.440 | in front. It's probably cost more than the whole movie. And then I go through, this is how I made it

01:07:11.080 | with a wheelchair for a dolly, a turtle. You know, I wrote around things I had. I mentioned the turtle,

01:07:16.100 | the pit bull, the bus, the ranch, all that stuff. Right. So then when they see the movie,

01:07:20.620 | in fact, I think my wife was in the audience, she said at Sundance, people were laughing so much at

01:07:25.860 | your intro. They just wanted to hear a story like this so badly. I heard someone next to me say,

01:07:29.740 | I'm going to vote for his movie. They hadn't even seen the movie just because the story was so good.

01:07:34.200 | They wanted that movie to be great. And when they see the turtle, big cheers. When they see the pit

01:07:40.980 | bull, big cheers. When they see the school bus cheers. But then when they see how we use it,

01:07:45.760 | he slams into it and falls in it, they fricking lose their minds because they know how I put it

01:07:50.760 | together. They know that the rubber bands and the popsicle sticks, I already set it up.

01:07:54.840 | And so that's why that audience, I would just hate the reaction. They're so with it.

01:07:59.820 | The context is so key. Like you can watch Mariachi and go, Hey, yeah, this looks like a 7,000 on a movie.

01:08:06.760 | But if you know the story behind it, suddenly I was curious. I hadn't seen it in a long time. I was

01:08:11.260 | watching it for the 20th anniversary. We did a screening and the first few shots come up and I'm

01:08:16.260 | like, Oh yeah, well, it looks like a $7,000 movie. And then it just keeps going. And it's in the,

01:08:20.580 | once we're in the jail cell and the shooting's happening and I realized, Oh my God, we had these

01:08:24.800 | blanks that only fired one shot and it would jam. So I had to show it going, use the sound effect,

01:08:33.700 | cut to the other guy, cut back to have another one go. I had to do these editing tricks to make it look

01:08:38.060 | like, and then repeat a few frames. So it goes, so it looks like a machine gun, all this stuff that

01:08:42.820 | I'm start sweating as I'm watching it going. I can't believe I made this movie with that freaking

01:08:47.100 | camera. I don't know how I did. I couldn't even see. I'm there with this long lens, pulling my own

01:08:52.340 | focus. When I finally had to do a real movie, I was operating the camera in my first real movie with a

01:08:57.900 | crew. And I get the camera and a guy comes over and he focuses for you. That's your job. You focus?

01:09:05.060 | Shit, I had to do my own focusing on the last movie. I didn't, it was so hard. You're trying

01:09:09.280 | to focus on a guy while you're filming, you don't know where you are. And it's just, I was,

01:09:15.120 | couldn't believe how much easier it is when you have a crew.

01:09:17.220 | It's extremely valuable to know that the pain of that, the, the spectrum of creativity that's

01:09:23.300 | allowed within that, even just the focusing, like how focusing fucks up on all the cameras and

01:09:28.840 | newer cameras. What, what are the different artifacts that come up just to know the battlefield in order

01:09:34.220 | to be a great general. You have to know how to be a soldier on the battlefield.

01:09:36.920 | Yeah. Yeah. It's good to know all that stuff, but you know, it's like the end of the day,

01:09:40.700 | you could shoot something on a phone and if you have a great story, no one's going to even notice.

01:09:44.920 | They'll be, Oh, we shot that on a phone. I didn't notice, you know? So sometimes people get cut up on,

01:09:48.680 | what kind of camera should I have? It's like, it's not the camera. That's just the tool. That's just

01:09:52.340 | the pen. That's just like, yeah, you can have different paint brushes, but you can go, I'm going to,

01:09:56.960 | I'm going to limit my palette. I'm only going to use a fan brush and a detail brush and I'm going

01:10:01.780 | to make a painting. Do you think that painting is going to suffer? No, it's going to take on an

01:10:05.320 | identity that you wouldn't have had if you had all the other tools. So sometimes the limitations help

01:10:09.320 | you because when you can do anything, you come, it can be crippling. When I knew I could only use

01:10:14.700 | those things for mariachi, it's like, all right, well, it's very, it's very simple now. Let me show

01:10:18.720 | you how cheapskate I was. Like I did not spend on anything. So when you see him walking around with a guitar

01:10:23.440 | case, it's a shitty cardboard one, you know, like I got from home, I had to get a heavier one to put

01:10:29.440 | the guns in. So we borrowed one, but it had this material ripped off the top. So you could see the

01:10:36.640 | wood. It's just the wood on top. So it didn't match the other one because it wasn't all black. And I was

01:10:40.640 | too cheap to paint it black. I didn't want to spend money on paint. So you see that cardboard case,

01:10:46.760 | he puts it down. And when he goes to open it, I cut to the other one. Once the wood is,

01:10:52.220 | is watch the edits, you'll see it open. Now it's a completely different case for the guns.

01:10:56.520 | And when he goes to cut it, when he close it, it cuts to the other one. And he goes, oh, that's how

01:11:01.360 | I did that whole movie. Again, it was a practice film. I don't want to waste any money on it.

01:11:05.240 | I don't know if it's going to be even, I won't be able to make five bucks from it.

01:11:08.440 | Yeah. But you're one of the, one of the few great directors where both the movie's genius

01:11:15.220 | and the process of making it is creative genius. It's like fun to watch both, to know of both.

01:11:21.000 | You know what I believe, right? It's like, it's not me. I have to say that thing is freaking,

01:11:26.860 | I didn't get in its way. That's basically what helped. And people say that, you know,

01:11:32.160 | don't get in your own way. This is a little bit easier to understand. It's like,

01:11:35.500 | keep the pipe clear. Don't block it with your ego. Don't say you're going to be shocked,

01:11:40.320 | but don't ever say, oh shit, how do I do that? I don't know if I can do that. You didn't do it

01:11:44.220 | to begin with, except that it just came through you and try to get back into that headspace.

01:11:48.180 | Especially when you go to make a second film or a third film or follow up a success. That's when

01:11:53.220 | artists get really crippled because sometimes they start tiptoeing around as an artist going like,

01:11:57.760 | oh shit, now it's my second film. My first one did really well. They might not like my second one so

01:12:02.380 | much. That's not the headspace you were in when you made the first one. You weren't hesitant like that.

01:12:08.000 | So try to keep that very naive. And that's why I say commit to a body of work. Because I know a lot

01:12:13.580 | of filmmakers get stuck on their second one and then go further because they get crippled by the

01:12:17.460 | success of the first one. And they start asking, oh shit, how did I do that? How can I do that again?

01:12:21.640 | And you get deeper and deeper in a hole you can't get out of.

01:12:24.600 | I think you've spoken about that filmmakers, especially early on in their journey,

01:12:28.260 | critics and the audience can destroy them. Meaning like it creates too much of a burden,

01:12:34.100 | too much, just wear them down to where they're almost scared to be creative. Can you just speak

01:12:40.560 | to that, how to ignore the critic? I'll tell you something that my best advice ever got

01:12:44.300 | early on. I was so fortunate from an unlikely place. Because he's such a, he sounded like Clint

01:12:52.780 | Eastwood when he said it. It was funny when you said that. But I got Desperado and Antonio Banderas.

01:12:59.740 | I brought Antonio to be in it from Europe. Big action movie. And so Spielberg saw it and he said,

01:13:06.040 | um, Hey, I want you to do Zorro with Antonio. So we're working on it for a while. I did, I was

01:13:11.840 | working on the pre-production. I got to work with Spielberg doing that. It ended up stalling me as

01:13:15.820 | the, there was like two studios involved and Amblin was moving or it was some weird thing where,

01:13:19.900 | but I got to work with him for about five months, you know? And I started getting really nervous

01:13:25.460 | cause it's like, Oh shit. You start thinking about even movies of his that people would say,

01:13:29.500 | Oh, you know, temple of doom is not as good as Raiders. Have you seen temple of doom?

01:13:32.540 | I'd been killed if I can do that movie. Yeah. If I can make Zorro as good as that one,

01:13:37.460 | the one that people said, it's like, people don't know how good they had it with that guy.

01:13:40.820 | But I started thinking, I even said, man, I just rewatched temple of doom last night. I don't know

01:13:46.460 | how I'm going to do this Zorro movie. Like I've just never done anything like that.

01:13:49.840 | You start getting, you know, afraid cause you go, the second thing he said, all right,

01:13:55.360 | just, just, you're going to do fine. But then I started thinking, this guy at that time,

01:14:01.120 | you don't know the era, but this was like mid nineties. He was making the biggest,

01:14:07.380 | best movies of all. And people would shit all over this guy. They would throw so much. They

01:14:11.320 | were so jealous press audience. Everyone was just like hits at him. Just throwing rocks at him

01:14:17.060 | for everything. Spielberg? Yeah. You can't imagine it now. You had to

01:14:20.640 | been at that time. Now everyone has respect for him, but they made him run a fucking gauntlet

01:14:26.420 | and they were like drastic parm. Yeah. You can't even imagine it now, but you should have seen the

01:14:31.880 | climate. It freaked me out. Cause I'm like, maybe I should just stay under the radar where I've been,

01:14:37.640 | you know, not poke my head out so much. Yeah. Cause this guy has a head out and they're

01:14:42.000 | unwarranted. You can't even fathom it now. Cause you weren't here at that time.

01:14:46.840 | It was crazy. You never even think of him that way. I'm glad it changed because back then it was

01:14:51.700 | just, it made people not want to be successful. And I made me be worried. Like maybe I shouldn't be

01:14:58.000 | go making a movie that has his name on it. That's going to put my head out in a whole different realm

01:15:01.760 | of filming at a studio level. Cause if I make it, even if I make a good movie, if I make a great movie,

01:15:08.100 | he's making great movies and he's getting this dog shit. I don't know if I could take it,

01:15:12.320 | you know? So I asked him cause you don't know how resilient you can be. So I said,

01:15:17.500 | I mean, man, how do you do it? How do you, how do you, what do you do when people just

01:15:22.680 | throw rocks at you all day long? He goes, Oh Robert, you just don't blink.

01:15:29.960 | And I was like, Whoa, now I see how he got through it. Just don't blink. Just like,

01:15:36.260 | you know, it's coming. Don't blink. And to him say it's like a Clint Eastwood line. Right. But it was

01:15:42.580 | like, you could see he was telling the truth and you could see that's how he did it. He just avoided

01:15:49.140 | all criticism by just not blinking. It's like, it's designed to make you blink and you're just

01:15:55.120 | not going to blink. Cause you're committing to a body of work. He just keeps cranking out movies,

01:15:58.840 | whatever he feels like doing. He does. And that was like the most power. And it never bothered me

01:16:03.760 | again. I just like always kept in mind. I tell that to my actors. I tell that people that story has

01:16:08.400 | traveled. Uh, I even had some little actors who were like starting to get up and I said, I remember

01:16:13.160 | tell you a couple of things. Some people have told me you're never as good as people say you are.

01:16:17.800 | And you're never as bad either. That's what you're cleaning. So I remember that. And then the second

01:16:22.740 | one, Spielberg, don't blink, don't blink. But there has to be a kind of vision for yourself

01:16:30.000 | of what, what, what you're reaching for, what you're trying to do again. Yeah. Sort of, sort of like,

01:16:38.000 | I think if you told me what would be my vision for the future, just committing to a body of work,

01:16:42.860 | which I've just kept doing. Like that's, it's about as far as you can see.

01:16:46.020 | Do you have a sense, do you have a vision of the body of work you'll make in the next 20 years?

01:16:51.160 | Like, or is it just this fog? I did, I did. Like I wasn't sure. Because you don't always know what

01:16:55.180 | the, you might not have the vision yet because you don't have the information yet. So if you just commit

01:16:58.700 | to a body of work, you'll start figuring out more reasons to keep doing that body of work.

01:17:02.580 | So when I turned 50, I was like, I guess I could just keep making movies. I mean, I guess that's

01:17:09.340 | been good for me. I guess I could just make more. I kind of

01:17:12.560 | done that already, but it's always fun and it's always new. And I guess I could make,

01:17:17.560 | but it wasn't a lot of drive. Right. It's like, that's not, it's like, well, I guess I could just

01:17:21.620 | keep doing the body. You know, that's not as much as I can't wait to keep doing another season.

01:17:26.240 | But I didn't know how to get to that point. So I thought, you know what? I got to this job so

01:17:31.380 | early. I was in the early twenties. I bet there's some other job out there that exists that I don't

01:17:36.560 | even know about because I don't know other jobs. So I looked up, you don't believe it, but I literally

01:17:40.680 | bought jobs for dummies. Nice.

01:17:43.460 | I was just like, I don't even know what basic jobs are even out there turning the page. Oh yeah. Don't

01:17:48.020 | want that job. Don't want that job. Don't want that job. I'm just going through and it gets to

01:17:51.520 | filmmaker and there's a little icon to tell these job. This icon is a guy like this. Literally you

01:17:57.740 | look it up. It's a, and it says, this is the best job ever. You get to just be creative with your

01:18:02.460 | friends, sit back, watch the money roll in across the desk. And I said, but 99% of film students don't

01:18:10.440 | get this job. So give up that dream. So I was like, I guess I got the best job. But then I started

01:18:15.540 | working with my kids when we did, uh, I had a TV show called rebel without a crew based on that.

01:18:21.520 | Right. I found filmmakers who'd only made a short film. They hadn't made a feature. I picked this

01:18:25.600 | diverse group of filmmakers, gave them $7,000 and we documented them making a feature two weeks.

01:18:31.800 | Like I did. You can bring one person. Like I had Carlos guy out of the producer and star

01:18:35.760 | of Mariachi bring one person. It'd be your cameraman or you can be your sound guy or whatever. But it's

01:18:39.760 | only that for the shoot. And you'd have to do the whole thing. And I saw those guys by the time

01:18:45.100 | they're, they're like, I don't know how we're going to make this movie. By the first week of shooting,

01:18:48.360 | they're already talking about their next feature. They became so confident because their idea of what

01:18:52.520 | impossible is drops really quick when you take it. Yeah. Uh, anyone interested in, uh,

01:18:57.220 | unlocking their creativities, they're not even just filmmaking. I highly recommend that show.

01:19:01.140 | And I highly recommend the kind of the follow on show, which is where you make red 11.

01:19:07.100 | Yeah. So that's the one I did. So then it came time for me to do one. So I made a movie called

01:19:10.900 | red 11 based on my experiences in the medical hospital, but I'll turn it into a sci-fi thriller

01:19:16.420 | just to use that as, so that I can use like somebody getting stabbed in the eye. So I can still

01:19:20.480 | have more elements to show how you can do camera tricks and stuff with no money. And the whole day is

01:19:25.760 | make it for less than $7,000, which I think we're like $5,000, uh, mainly because we had a lot of

01:19:30.800 | actors I wanted to pay. Um, but the movie itself can make it for nothing. But I brought my son aboard

01:19:36.520 | as my number one who hadn't been working with me in a while. I mean, he wrote shark point lava go when

01:19:41.260 | he was seven, but then he hadn't really been at working on my crew. So he didn't know how to operate

01:19:45.280 | the sound equipment, the separate sound system and all that. I didn't show him until the day of filming.

01:19:49.400 | Cause I knew we're documenting it would make a better tutorial. So by getting them working on

01:19:54.400 | the movies together, they came to be super excited. By the end of the day, I thought for sure, oh,

01:19:59.280 | they're going to hate this. Even though it's only two weeks, they've got other interests. They don't

01:20:02.880 | want to be filmmakers. I thought they were going to be like, all right, I'm out of here after one day.

01:20:08.180 | But instead he came to me and his brother who acted in it. And he went, dad,

01:20:13.800 | the actor didn't show up after the first day. The location didn't match the script at all.

01:20:18.660 | We asked you how we're going to solve the problems. And you're like, I don't know,

01:20:22.380 | figure it out. We thought dad stumped for once. Is he stumped finally? But then by the end of the day,

01:20:28.400 | his eyes were all white. We figured it out. I went, oh, they don't realize this is the creative

01:20:33.220 | process. Every day is like that. And in life too, every day, you don't know your machine's going to

01:20:38.860 | not work or you're going to get a flat tire or you get fired that day. So life is very

01:20:44.400 | unpredictable, just like a movie set. So I realized I'm going to make them all work on my movies now

01:20:49.440 | because it's teaching them about life. I'm teaching them very little about the film make. It's about

01:20:55.640 | life lessons, about how you take on something impossible, turn chicken shit to chicken salad

01:20:59.680 | and make it work. And that's the straw and that's life. That's the process of life. So many people say,

01:21:05.200 | well, I'm not ready to make my projects. Like you're not ready for life either. You're like this,

01:21:09.300 | all day you're dodging shit that's going on. How come art has to be perfect? It's like,

01:21:14.100 | it should be the same. Life and art should be the same.

01:21:16.100 | And I think filmmaking in general is full of unpredictable things.

01:21:21.160 | And in a short little microcosm too, within one project, you've got a whole blueprint for

01:21:25.620 | how you're going to solve life because you've just done it on a creative level.

01:21:29.060 | I think of all the art forms of all the art mediums like that, it just has so many different

01:21:33.220 | components, a lot of components to it. And so like, there's so many ways to fuck things up,

01:21:37.420 | to learn from, but any of the disciplines, if you add those to it, like I teach my actors to paint

01:21:43.380 | in between takes, we'll go and we'll, I'll take a picture of them in character. I show them a canvas,

01:21:50.160 | I show them paint. You don't need to know how to paint. This is to show you the brush is going to

01:21:54.460 | know where to go. You just got to pick it up, pick the colors you want. Doesn't matter how crazy they

01:21:58.320 | are, whatever's speaking to you, you lay it down. I'll show you some of the pictures. You're not going to

01:22:02.000 | believe the masterworks these actors did like in a day. They just start doing it. Lady Gaga had her

01:22:07.400 | fingernails in there. You know, Josh Brolin's doing his thing. Then I take a picture of them in

01:22:11.260 | character, do a line drawing of it. We project it on top. And mostly it's the painting coming through,

01:22:14.940 | their line drawing with a little bit of their eyes painted in. You're not going to believe these

01:22:17.640 | things. They couldn't believe it, but it teaches them that, that thing about that, the creativity is

01:22:23.440 | going to come through. So even though they're already acting, they're already being creative,

01:22:26.800 | we're already making a movie. Like you said, that's already a really great creative endeavor.

01:22:29.620 | When we would sneak off and paint, you could tell it's firing a whole other part of their brain.

01:22:35.360 | It was funny. I think Josh Brolin's girlfriend said, Josh said, hey, my girlfriend just said,

01:22:42.980 | she said, his wife now, but at the time, are you guys doing drugs? You leave the set and you come

01:22:50.580 | back and you're all like, no, we're painting, we're painting. But that makes sense that you say that

01:22:55.200 | when you get your creativity firing, it's more powerful than any drug. And we would come back

01:23:00.400 | and he'd be on the set going, is it bad that I'm still thinking about the painting? And I'm like,

01:23:05.220 | no, I think it's good. I think it's all good. But it's, you can tell it's opening a whole other part

01:23:09.260 | of their creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie and the painting is still going to tap.

01:23:14.300 | It shows how much untapped potential your creative brain has. So the more you can do, the more you're

01:23:19.860 | firing off. And it was so cool. Like I remember we did one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was painting.

01:23:24.560 | We came in and the table was like this. And they said, we have a problem. You want them to throw

01:23:28.720 | the cards out, the playing cards out, but it's so slick. They go sliding off the table. And we both

01:23:34.460 | look at it and we both got the solution at the same time. Oh, we just, just, just haven't, just have

01:23:39.320 | them throw them wherever they go. And then we'll place them. And then digitally, it's even better that

01:23:45.880 | he looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark he is. That's, but that's

01:23:50.520 | what we have to do because we're not going to, we can't, we'll be here all day. We're trying to get,

01:23:54.440 | if we're going to worry about where they go, just go bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And then

01:23:58.420 | we'll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up and then we'll marry the two in post.

01:24:04.080 | You know, you're just, you just come up with creative solutions better, easier because you

01:24:07.760 | were just solving crazy creative solutions. And the other one, like what paint medium do I use?

01:24:12.600 | What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking,

01:24:17.060 | you're like, Oh, I can figure this out in two seconds, you know, so it helps you creative problem

01:24:21.280 | solve. So that basically working with my kids made me realize, Oh, now I know exactly what I want to do

01:24:25.680 | for the next 10 years. I only want to make movies with my kids because I'm mentoring them, but they're

01:24:29.780 | teaching me shit. Cause they were the age I was when I made Mariachi and Desperado and their,

01:24:35.040 | their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways. And it's like the greatest parenting

01:24:39.540 | you can do. Cause you're building a project together and in the same boat together, figuring

01:24:44.260 | it out. And it's family time. You're like checking all the boxes. So I thought my filmmaking going

01:24:49.340 | forward is going to be checking all the boxes in life. So I'm not, not spending time with my family.

01:24:53.540 | We're actually giving them lessons that they can go do anything they want in life. Cause they're

01:24:58.280 | going to have different interests, but now it's kind of like going to college. And this college is like

01:25:02.440 | the best college. Cause it pays you to learn. You get to do these crazy skills. Like my son is,

01:25:07.300 | you know, conducting the orchestra, the James Bond orchestra in London for the spy kid score and a

01:25:13.240 | score he wrote. Cause I can't write at his level because he was always our best piano player and

01:25:19.000 | they get, you get the charge out of working with them. And then, and by making a label, there's a,

01:25:25.680 | there's a weird phenomenon that happens. If you guys want to take your game to another level,

01:25:30.280 | I stumbled upon this idea. My son, that was my counterpart on that movie racer. He was my

01:25:36.900 | sound guy. Like I said, came up with shark point lava girl and he's little, he became my writer,

01:25:41.040 | co-writer, co-producer. He had come to me and said, I want to do VR type movie.

01:25:48.840 | And I said, Oh, let me show you as an example of creativity and manifesting. I said, let me show

01:25:53.440 | you how it works. Let's, let's make a company. We'll make a company called double R, double R

01:25:58.840 | productions. Cause we all have a double R names, all the kids. So if anyone ever wants to do anything,

01:26:02.760 | we can use our company. So let's make a logo and I'll make t-shirts and notepads and stuff.

01:26:08.060 | Cause once you have a company, you have now have to make things for that company.

01:26:12.480 | Just like the advice I gave to people, stop aspiring, make a business card that says

01:26:16.000 | writer, director, cinematographer, I did editor. Cause then now you have to conform to that identity.

01:26:20.900 | So now if I create a label like double R, we're going to come up with ideas. We'll call up

01:26:25.900 | VR companies and say, Hey, we have a company, a VR company. Would you like us to make you a film

01:26:30.640 | for your, sell your headsets? Yeah. They gave us a budget. They they they're dying for content.

01:26:36.080 | They gave us a budget. We shot a 20 minute action movie called the limit with Michelle

01:26:40.140 | Rodriguez and Norman Reedus, where you're in an action movie with them. And it was killer. We,

01:26:44.000 | they made us a big double R logo, animated logo. Later that year, we did red 11, same logo.

01:26:50.880 | That movie went to directors, Fortnite and can festivals were paying us to come talk about how

01:26:57.940 | we made that movie. That's when we're doing the cards, throwing the cards out because they

01:27:02.200 | wanted their audiences. They knew they would love that. So we could have had a whole

01:27:05.720 | gig just continuing to get paid to go to the Fed. Usually you pay to go to the Fed. You don't get

01:27:10.140 | paid. That's how, what a success that was. But then we had to make, we can be heroes.

01:27:14.740 | So we had to stop, but we can be heroes was a Netflix movie where they asked me to make a spy kids type

01:27:21.000 | thing. And so I thought, Oh, okay, I'll just do it with superheroes. That's their, I wrote it with my

01:27:26.040 | kids based it on some of their personalities. It's the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix

01:27:32.960 | history. Like nothing in touch. Cause kids just keep watching it over. Cause it's kids with

01:27:36.880 | superpowers. No one's ever done that before. And they can't, they couldn't believe it. Like I'd heard

01:27:41.300 | anecdotally. That's how the spy kids, there were people said, Oh, that kids watch it over and over on

01:27:45.400 | video, but you can't keep track of that. You can't on Netflix because their biggest thing is people

01:27:50.060 | completing the movie. A lot of people don't complete a movie and it still counts as a view.

01:27:52.920 | They may watch five minutes and change the channel. So do you complete a movie? That's really where

01:27:57.640 | they, you know, really value not only to be complete, but rewatched, rewatched, rewatched

01:28:02.780 | per household. That's so many times. That one has a double R logo as well. And my kids are like,

01:28:09.200 | dad, it really worked. I was like, I know better than I thought. I didn't know. I didn't know that

01:28:14.820 | me manifesting that company was going to turn into that. And we've just keep making stuff. So I want

01:28:20.160 | to do that with brass knuckle films now with the audience. Cause it works. So I said, as soon as you

01:28:25.060 | have a logo and a company, your brain starts coming up with all kinds of ideas and it's a filter.

01:28:31.820 | Like, like I said, sometimes the freedom of limitations is all freeing. When I had to do

01:28:38.400 | four rooms and it's like, we have to use one hotel room. Oh, well then there's going to be a dead body.

01:28:42.400 | There's going to be, you can do a lot with limitations. If they said you could use the whole

01:28:46.080 | city would have been harder to come up with something. Well, brass knuckle films has a filter,

01:28:50.680 | only action action movies. Cause that's the stuff that there's always an appetite for.

01:28:55.540 | If you ask Netflix right now, what do you need more of? They'll say action, action, action. We

01:28:59.820 | don't have enough action. The last regime didn't leave us enough action. We need action. They'll

01:29:03.500 | pay a premium for an action film that we can make at a lower cost. A $20 million action film is very

01:29:08.920 | cheap. Studios don't know how to make them that cheap. That's why they'll pay for an independent to

01:29:13.820 | go do it. And right now that's the key is to be independent. Cause a lot of studios that can't even

01:29:17.740 | greenlight anything cause things are so expensive. They don't want to lose their ass, but they need

01:29:21.380 | action films. So let's make something that everybody needs and let's make it at a price.

01:29:26.540 | And we'll make it in my studio because I got my own studio and I can keep all the costs down. Cause we

01:29:29.860 | have all the costumes and props and sets from 25 years of filmmaking to keep the costs down.

01:29:36.260 | And we'll have the audience gets to invest. It's not crowdfunding or Kickstarter. You're actually

01:29:42.640 | an investor. Anyone who puts money in can pitch their idea for an action film to me.

01:29:48.300 | And I'm going to make one of the four films in that slate from one of those ideas. Cause I want

01:29:54.420 | the audience to win. I want the audience to win and be a part of it. Cause the audience is an

01:29:58.060 | afterthought in Hollywood. They make a movie. They show the audience, the movie, go tell your friends

01:30:02.860 | now. So y'all spend money on our movie. Well, where's your cut of that? So I want them to be

01:30:06.600 | successful. So if any of the movies in the slate do well, they make money off that one. And then

01:30:11.380 | sequels or anything, but they're all going to do well because everyone needs an action movie or we're

01:30:16.040 | going to keep the costs down. Can I actually ask you just to focus in on action? You've created a lot

01:30:21.660 | of epic action films. What makes for a great action film? It comes down to the character. You know,

01:30:28.600 | like if you think about what are the best action films, what are your favorite films? Like die hard.

01:30:34.180 | He's a cop. So he's still capable, but he's not Superman. The fact that he's like in over his head

01:30:39.420 | and you're rooting for him. That's a great character. You know, John wick, he is Superman,

01:30:44.880 | but he's retired. And now he's pissed off and he's going back into a job, you know? So the care is

01:30:50.780 | comes down to the character really being very important because the action will then have a

01:30:55.360 | character to it. I think Leon, the professional does what's it. I mean, that's all that when I say

01:31:02.520 | we're going to do action movies. I mean, movies that are really action first. Like there's some

01:31:06.160 | movies that are more dramas that have action.

01:31:07.760 | Where's the boundary? So John wick is action.

01:31:10.640 | That's more action, but it has character in it, but it's action driven.

01:31:13.980 | What about like predator?

01:31:15.640 | Predator is a sci-fi action film. So that's kind of a hybrid, which I like,

01:31:20.140 | but sometimes it's hard for the audience to know what they're buying into.

01:31:23.280 | Like they focused a lot on the action in the trailer, you know, and then they felt there was some

01:31:27.560 | other worldly thing, but you didn't really know, but it's a great movie.

01:31:29.800 | So die hard is a, is a good example.

01:31:32.080 | It was a good example. Right. I think of right off where there's a character that really made

01:31:35.300 | the difference. And then everyone repeated that, you know, for a while it was like under siege. I was

01:31:39.720 | like a regular guy who's really actually has some training on a ship now. And then on the bus,

01:31:45.860 | you've got a cop, he's a cop, but he's not super cop. So that's why you root for him. You know,

01:31:49.680 | that became a, an element that people repeated a lot.

01:31:51.860 | What about taken?

01:31:52.980 | That's a great one. That's a great character who is superhuman.

01:31:56.260 | Yeah.

01:31:56.660 | Who's also retired, you know, so there's like a superhero type character in an extraordinary

01:32:02.940 | circumstance. Like that's now his daughter's taken. Right. And then there's ordinary people

01:32:08.060 | like the Terminator. That's a great character. Not the Terminator. He's a villain, but Sarah Connor,

01:32:11.860 | who is a waitress, doesn't think her life's going anywhere. And she finds out she's the mother of

01:32:17.240 | the guy who's going to save the human race. And she's got to train him. You know, suddenly she has

01:32:22.400 | to become someone else. Those are cool movies. Cause it's a Genesis of a character and you see a

01:32:27.520 | character go from waitress to revolutionary step up. Yeah. What about mob movies? I mean,

01:32:33.720 | some of them are like Godfather is really not about, it's not an action movie drama that has some

01:32:38.060 | action. Right. I mean, John Wick is a mob film in some sense. Goodfellas. I mean, there's a lot

01:32:42.580 | dynamic action, but there's really not action first. That's really a character type piece. Great.

01:32:48.420 | Freaking amazing. And it feels like action by the way he does it. It's just like that. It's like

01:32:52.420 | fast pace, fast talking, fast moving. Like Escape from New York is one of my favorites since I was a

01:32:57.640 | kid. Cause every movie you'll notice this now that I tell you, even like a romantic comedy,

01:33:02.820 | there's a timeline. Every movie has to have like a ticking clock. So the audience knows the stories

01:33:08.480 | are not just going to take over a period of years. So suddenly someone in the movie around 20 or 30

01:33:12.600 | minutes in, we'll say, we've got to go find the groom before the wedding this weekend. You know,

01:33:19.060 | it'll be just like that. Escape from New York has the best example of a ticking time clock. Cause he's

01:33:23.740 | literally got bombs in his neck and he's got a watch that shows him he's constantly clocking it,

01:33:29.120 | how little time he has. And he gets you so like, Oh my God, is he going to make it? Um, that's like

01:33:34.620 | the best use of that. And no one's ever topped that ticking time clock. All the other ones seem

01:33:40.200 | artificial in comparison, you know, aliens, you know, we got to get off this planet now. Cause

01:33:45.740 | this whole thing's going to blow up. You know, they like, there's a timeline and you're, it's

01:33:50.220 | already urgent, but now there's an extra timeline on it. You know, this is what happens as you're

01:33:55.700 | talking. You're just making me fall in love more and more with action films. I, I sometimes you forget

01:34:01.140 | how much you love action. A really good action film. Yeah. In fact, like the Terminator,

01:34:05.100 | the original Terminator just came out in 4k. I've been watching it again. It looks like better than

01:34:09.540 | most movies look today. And that's a $4 million movie. It looks incredible. I mean, you can see

01:34:13.800 | every beat of sweat in this movie. I was watching it again with somebody, a female, and there's always

01:34:19.800 | a point when you're watching that movie where she'll turn and say, I love this movie. You know,

01:34:26.780 | point that is, it's the point where Michael Biehn tells her, I came across time for you, Sarah.

01:34:31.820 | I love you. Which is, you know, I always have. And you're just like, oh my God, there's like a real

01:34:36.540 | emotional love story there that he put into Titanic, that he put into Avatar. He figured out that thing

01:34:44.280 | that makes those movies work. By the way, I should say that. I mean, there is an aspect of, uh,

01:34:50.300 | El Mirachi that is a love story to me. Yeah, it was a rough story. I don't know if you see it that

01:34:54.940 | way, but I got, when I just rewatched it, I was like. It's a tragic love story, but I was like

01:34:59.200 | heartbroken that she's dead. I got heartbroken twice. Let me tell you the second time it happened.

01:35:03.800 | One, you're making that and you go, okay, this is how it has to go. But then now you're invested

01:35:07.480 | in this person. You go, oh man, she has to die. It's going to be really sad. In fact, the studio,

01:35:11.340 | even when they said they were going to remake it, good thing I put that ending on. That's the only

01:35:16.920 | reason they showed it to an audience. We weren't going to remake it. They weren't going to put that

01:35:20.460 | movie out. They showed it, said, we need to show this movie to an audience because they might not like

01:35:26.420 | the fact that we killed a girl before we remake it. All right. They showed it to an audience. The audience

01:35:30.400 | liked it the way it was. So they said, we're going to take this movie to some film festivals. And I was

01:35:35.100 | like, no, not this movie. This is my practice movie. No one's supposed to see this movie. And they go,

01:35:41.500 | no, no, you got something. No, no, dude, if I knew anyone was going to see this, I would have shot it

01:35:45.420 | completely. Give me $2,000. I'll go reshoot half of it. Just knowing people are going to see it. I want

01:35:50.220 | something. And the head of the studio was really smart. He said, you don't know what you have here.

01:35:54.280 | There's something real special. Let's take it to Telluride and see what happened. Telluride, Toronto

01:35:58.240 | did great. And like I said, in one Sundance. So now we had to put it out. But I was like, I would have

01:36:03.760 | said, don't show that movie. But they also questioned the ending and didn't come into play because we

01:36:09.280 | ended up making Desperado. And the girl in Desperado doesn't die. You know, we didn't do that. We didn't kill

01:36:13.160 | Salma. But that's what needed to happen to Mariachi. Quentin called me one time. People

01:36:18.240 | would always say like, oh, Reservoir Dogs. He borrowed from this movie, Hong Kong action film

01:36:22.940 | called City on Fire. It's about these guys. They're all criminals and they kill each other or whatever.

01:36:26.880 | And he said, hey, they're showing a double feature called East Looks West and West Looks East.

01:36:32.000 | They're showing Reservoir Dogs with City on Fire, the one they say I borrowed from. And they're showing

01:36:36.820 | Mariachi with a Hong Kong film called Run, where they ripped off Mariachi. Like they just took the

01:36:42.220 | whole story. It had two Chinese actors in Mexico with the guitar cases. They just followed it beat

01:36:48.580 | by beat. So we were watching it and it was like scene by scene. They just rebate it without even

01:36:53.960 | getting the rights or anything. It was so fun to watch. So we saw Mariachi first, then we watched

01:36:57.500 | that one. And I'm like, what's this big brothel scene though? This is in my movie. Oh, there's this

01:37:04.380 | scene in my movie where the bad guy has two girls in bed with him and they figured that was a

01:37:08.220 | whorehouse, but it was just this apartment. So they got this whorehouse built up and they have

01:37:13.220 | helicopter shots and all kinds of big thing. And the action was awesome. But then, and the girl's

01:37:19.280 | really good. And then midway through the movie, I'm like, oh shit, she's going to die because I killed

01:37:23.580 | her in mine. I don't want her to die. I like this actress. It's really great. And they have a really

01:37:28.020 | great love story. I go, well, I hope they change that part. No, they kill her. So I felt bad twice

01:37:33.240 | because I sealed, I sealed her fate. I sealed her fate because I have a line in Spike Kids 2.

01:37:40.500 | And I started thinking when you create stuff, you start thinking, I wonder if that's how our creator

01:37:47.140 | is. He's like, oh shit, I just kind of threw that in a memo and now that whole town's going to get

01:37:52.620 | wiped out. You know, I didn't even think about the implications of that. Um, cause there's a line

01:37:58.520 | I was making a character that Steve Buscemi plays in Spike Kids 2 and he's a creator.

01:38:03.660 | He just wanted to make a little miniature zoo for kids. And then he thought, well, what if I put

01:38:08.900 | some together like a lizard with a snake and it's a slizzard or you have a spider monkey, which is

01:38:15.440 | like literally spider legs and a monkey top. So he makes that. And then he thought, hey, why don't I

01:38:21.060 | make, make them a little bit bigger for kids that have big hands and it got out of control and they

01:38:26.260 | turn into these huge creatures and now they're trying to eat them. So he's hiding. The kids find

01:38:30.720 | him hiding. And he says this one line that people keep coming. It's on the internet a lot. This meme

01:38:35.920 | about this. Why is this blind, this movie? It's so wild. I thought I wanted Steve to come up to the

01:38:42.680 | camera and like, he's just, he's lost in his own creative world. And he says, I can't even go outside

01:38:49.620 | because my own creations are going to eat me. Then he comes up to the camera and he goes, do you think

01:38:54.640 | God hides in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he created here on earth? It's like really,

01:39:01.380 | just for a moment, this thing. And it's like, cause you feel like that way when you're, when you're

01:39:05.780 | creating stuff, like you're creating something and then now it's taking on a life on its own.

01:39:09.280 | And it's like, oh no, now this character has to die. Oh, I didn't want that. You know,

01:39:11.740 | this, this domino effect of creation. And you start thinking, well, that must be what creation,

01:39:17.440 | maybe he is hiding up there because look at, he didn't expect all this shit to happen,

01:39:21.720 | giving us free will and all that. I mean, this particular context that, uh, you are the creator

01:39:27.580 | of this story. And it for some reason makes me feel good to know that you feel the pain of this

01:39:32.380 | character dying. Yeah, absolutely. Cause like if I'm, I'm writing it, but if it's not coming from me,

01:39:39.000 | I'm as surprised sometimes. And Quentin would say that, you know, he'd say, you just get two characters

01:39:44.080 | talking when I'm writing my script. And then suddenly they're just talking to each other. And I was like,

01:39:48.060 | what does that mean? And now, now I know what that means. It's like, he just gave them life.

01:39:51.940 | And now, now the dialogue's coming through him. Let me just ask you, you're the perfect person to ask

01:39:57.260 | about the genius of Quentin Tarantino. What makes him special as a director, as a creative mind?

01:40:02.260 | What do you see in him? That's beautiful. That's brilliant.

01:40:07.060 | Since I met him, he was just like this brilliant, uh, ball of energy. And, uh, you know, like if you

01:40:17.660 | see him, I walk around his house and I'll see like a few sheets of paper, all handwritten out. I'm like,

01:40:24.500 | what's that? And he goes, oh, that was something I was starting to write. And I, you know, not going

01:40:27.680 | to finish. I'm like, can I take these and go turn it into like a whole trilogy of films? You know,

01:40:34.300 | like what he throws away, all this mortal men would kill for you meet people like that. I tell people,

01:40:39.640 | you know, your parents say, watch out who your peers are. You know, when you're younger,

01:40:44.240 | that means one thing, but once you get older, surround yourself around people who, who swing

01:40:49.240 | much farther than you, you know, that's just like, but that's really true. I mean, just by being around

01:40:55.900 | him and working with him, you get by osmosis, you learn stuff and it just ups your game because

01:41:03.080 | they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that. So like when I first met him,

01:41:08.180 | I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know, cause I was such a big fan. I was about to

01:41:11.180 | go do the Esperado and I went, Hey, I just took a three-day Steadicam course cause I can't afford

01:41:15.580 | a Steadicam operator. So I'm going to operate Steadicam myself on Esperado.

01:41:19.680 | Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, Oh, I did the same thing and I'm going to do the same

01:41:23.500 | thing. That, that would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk, but you don't, you want

01:41:26.840 | somebody who's above that. Do you know what he said? He goes, I bought a Steadicam, but not to

01:41:31.840 | operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one. Us mere mortals trying to learn how to

01:41:38.760 | operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy you want to hang out with. Not someone

01:41:43.480 | who's doing what you're doing. So surround yourself by those kinds of people. And that's when you learn

01:41:48.160 | things like don't blink, you know, like somebody who's like really swinging for the fences and

01:41:53.720 | accomplishing so much. And Quentin was like that. So I met him at the festivals. He saw Mariachi. He

01:41:59.660 | loved it. We came up, we talked and he said, you're going to like my next film I'm writing right now,

01:42:03.400 | Pulp Fiction. So I thought, man, I'm going to put this guy. He's so, he's so fun. I'm going to put

01:42:08.580 | him in, I'm going to write him in my Desperado script, which I was writing. So that was before

01:42:12.000 | Pulp Fiction and all that. When I had cast him, I didn't know he was going to go become such a

01:42:15.640 | household name. I just was drawn to his energy and I'd already written him in and I met Steve

01:42:21.060 | Buscemi there. And I was like, I'm writing a character for Steve Buscemi. But then I went back

01:42:24.860 | to the Sony lot where I was working on Desperado and Quentin and I ended up having offices right next

01:42:29.740 | to each other on the Sony lot by accident. I didn't even know that. I just met him and I go back and he

01:42:34.720 | just, cause originally Pulp Fiction was for TriStar cause Danny DeVito was a producer and he was going to

01:42:39.300 | make it for TriStar. So he was there writing Pulp Fiction and I was writing Desperado. So I'd go show him

01:42:44.280 | like storyboards from Desperado and he'd come act out scenes of Pulp Fiction. And we got to be really

01:42:48.660 | good friends that way. We'd go eat lunch at Versailles across the street, the Sony lot. And then

01:42:54.180 | Sony passed on Pulp Fiction. It's too weird, it's too long, $8 million movie or $7 million. They're

01:43:03.120 | like, eh, we're going to go make the next Pauly Shore movie instead. You know, like we don't

01:43:06.280 | understand this thing. And Miramax got it and they'd just been bought by Disney. So they produced their

01:43:10.700 | first film was Pulp Fiction and then that thing went to Cannes and it was a whole thing. But what I loved

01:43:17.080 | about his story is that when he made Pulp Fiction, he had a director screening. He showed it to some

01:43:24.220 | directors and I wasn't able to go. But anyway, I had dinner with him once and it was in my journal

01:43:28.100 | because I keep a journal. At 2.40 a.m. when after I dropped him off at his house, I said,

01:43:34.440 | oh wait, how did your movie come out? You know, Pulp Fiction, he had just finished it and he went,

01:43:38.180 | nah, it's still, it still feels like a movie Quentin would make. It doesn't feel like a real movie.

01:43:43.160 | And I was like, that's fine. What do you mean? What does it mean? It feels like one of those

01:43:48.300 | movies I would make, like Reservoir Dogs. It doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was trying to be the

01:43:52.580 | supportive friend going, oh man, he was so excited about this movie. Now he's bummed about it.

01:43:56.640 | And I was like, well, it should be different. It should be like, he's like, wouldn't have it.

01:44:02.240 | Drove off. So I thought, I don't know, I guess that wasn't the one. So I went home and I called

01:44:05.700 | some of the directors that were at the screening and they go, yeah, this isn't the one for him.

01:44:09.920 | It's not, they had, none of them saw it. None of them saw it, but that, you know, you're like surprised.

01:44:15.320 | But that happened with George Lucas too, with Star Wars. Everybody saw that movie and was like,

01:44:20.440 | poor George. They showed it to all his director friends. Poor George, what do you just waste all

01:44:24.040 | this time with this for? Only Spielberg was the one who said, it's naive and it's going to do really

01:44:28.480 | good because it's naive and kids will like it. But everyone else was like, what's he doing? We're

01:44:33.440 | artists. We're making art films. What's he doing this garbage for? Because nobody knows. It shows no

01:44:37.880 | one knows anything. Not even the filmmaker. When you're being groundbreaking, you don't know what

01:44:41.640 | groundbreaking is. Not you or anyone around you, except maybe one or two people. So he said,

01:44:45.960 | there's one person like, oh yeah, who is your Spielberg? Goes Catherine Bigelow,

01:44:49.340 | without a doubt. She's the only one who said, there's something here. No one else was seeing,

01:44:53.220 | was saying that. He said, in fact, because he remembered suddenly he'd forgotten the story,

01:44:58.160 | but if it wasn't in my journal, I would have forgot it too. He goes, in fact, one of my friends,

01:45:02.540 | Simon said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with your movie,

01:45:06.180 | but I'll wait till you get back from the Cannes Film Festival. And he goes and he wins the Palme d'Or.

01:45:10.920 | Then his friend's like, oh, what the hell do I know? I've only made one movie myself. So

01:45:14.160 | nevermind. I guess, I guess we're all wrong. So even he didn't expect that at all. So that was a

01:45:19.800 | shock, you know, even to him. So think about that. Yeah. That means, what do you do? Commit to a body

01:45:26.820 | of work. Just do that. You don't know. You don't know what's going to be a Pulp Fiction and what's

01:45:30.140 | going to be a Jackie Brown. What's going to be, you know, you don't know. And you'd like to think

01:45:34.600 | they know, but they don't know either. They feel it. Like I asked Jim Cameron, I said, do you see your

01:45:39.620 | movie really clearly? Like, can you see it like with, with hyper-focus? Cause it seems like that.

01:45:44.000 | And he goes, it's like really far. It's out of focus. And you work on it and you work on it,

01:45:49.040 | it starts coming. I said, okay, good. So that's, that's normal. I thought maybe he had laser vision

01:45:54.640 | or something, but no, even him, he doesn't really know, but he feels that he can make decisions and

01:45:58.920 | he understands what a creative drive is and how to just keep being relentless about it.

01:46:04.960 | But it's not like they have all the, proximity is huge. Proximity will change your life. Did for me,

01:46:14.140 | just being around those guys. They didn't teach me, Hey, I'm going to teach you how to make a movie.

01:46:18.780 | Just being next to them, being in their world, just ups your game. And you just, you're able to do

01:46:25.820 | things you weren't able to do before. You get ideas you didn't get to do before. I did. I'll show you

01:46:29.760 | one of my painting things. You're not going to believe this freaking thing. I had a painter friend

01:46:35.720 | in Germany, Sebastian Kruger. He gives a workshop once a year that I'm going to go there. And I bet

01:46:41.160 | I'll learn more about directing by watching this guy paint than I will by watching another director.

01:46:45.900 | Cause that's just now I know how creativity works. You're going to learn lessons outside of the box

01:46:51.360 | by doing that. And I try to practice before going out there. I was doing a Danny Trejo. I'll show you

01:46:56.240 | the before and after you're not going to freaking believe what you see, but this is, it really tells

01:47:01.960 | a story of how important proximity is. So I'm, I do this painting. It's like, ah, it looks garbage.

01:47:07.680 | I'll show you. It looks like garbage. I'm not used. I can't do paintings that are just like,

01:47:13.380 | see, I, you never should say I can't cause you just cut your leg off, but I couldn't at the time

01:47:17.740 | paint, just paintbrush into paint and then write on the canvas like that without using some kind of

01:47:22.600 | medium, which this guy, Sebastian Kruger would do. So first I did a digital painting of Danny Trejo,

01:47:28.300 | like just to get the framing and all that. And then I created, that's just like, that's like

01:47:32.720 | on a Wacom tablet, but then I did it with paint and it's like, ah, it's all cruddy. And it's too

01:47:37.380 | thick, the pain. And it just looks, it looks, and I just gave up right away. I went, I was trying to

01:47:42.320 | pre-practice. I wouldn't be a total buffoon there because it was going the next week. And I thought

01:47:46.540 | he's using a different brush. Obviously he's using a better paint. The stuff just is clogging up and it's crap.

01:47:52.740 | I'm sure when I get there. So I get there and he's doing a Mick Jagger and he starts with a mid-tone.

01:47:59.540 | He starts blocking in the face with a little tiny drawing of where the face goes.

01:48:03.500 | He starts doing that. He starts adding some highlights. There's the photo, his reference.

01:48:10.220 | And I'm like, why, why are you, why are you concentrating so much on the cheek first? And he's

01:48:15.680 | like, it's different every time. And I go, why do you, what, what paints are you using? And he's like,

01:48:22.480 | it was regular acrylic paint. What brushes do you have? Regular brushes. I'm like, how come mine doesn't

01:48:28.080 | look like yours? Well, let me try what he's doing. I mean, you start with a mid-tone. I'm going to do

01:48:31.600 | that Danny again. Start with a mid-tone. I'll start adding some highlights. And I did that.

01:48:38.020 | And everybody kept coming over going like, did you just do that? And I was like, yeah,

01:48:41.480 | I don't know how, but it's very cartoony still. He's doing a very realistic Mick Jagger.

01:48:46.900 | Look how real that is. And you're just watching and he doesn't teach you anything. So he just starts

01:48:55.600 | painting. So this is the photo he had as a reference, but then this is his painting.

01:48:58.680 | Right. And because I'm there, he's not teaching you how to paint.

01:49:03.860 | Through osmosis, you're like learning some of-

01:49:05.980 | You're seeing that there isn't a trick.

01:49:07.640 | Yeah.

01:49:08.280 | I thought he had a trick and that's why I couldn't get any further. He's using the same brush and the

01:49:13.200 | same paint. Well, how come I can't do that? And you go, you do it. I go, I'm going to try and do

01:49:17.500 | something realistic. I've never done realistic before because I'm a cartoonist and everything, I was

01:49:21.720 | cartoony. And that was just easier for me because I thought I would need too much training. I did

01:49:27.360 | another Trejo. I started doing a realistic. I finished out just one section of his face

01:49:31.680 | and put the pen down because I did that the same day.

01:49:36.040 | Nice.

01:49:37.080 | I got out of my way because seeing him get out of his own way, I think that's why sometimes people

01:49:43.760 | need to go to school for stuff like that. Because then now, well, I just did four years of school.

01:49:48.640 | So now I must know. Now you've given yourself permission, but you could give yourself permission

01:49:52.300 | right away and it's going to come through.

01:49:53.800 | And drawing Danny Trejo of all people, it's like, there's so much going on there. It's like,

01:49:58.000 | he's so expressive.

01:49:58.880 | He's so expressive.

01:49:59.540 | I mean, you've worked with him a lot and you've, I mean, he's one of those bad-ass humans on the

01:50:05.900 | screen. You've created that. Can you just talk about what it's like creating those characters?

01:50:12.020 | What was exciting about Desperados, I went to go make it and there were no Latin actors working in

01:50:16.340 | Hollywood because no one was creating roles for them. So I thought, wow, I got to go create my

01:50:21.360 | own stars. We'll bring Antonio from Europe because they kind of know his name from the Almodovar

01:50:25.460 | movies. And I saw him in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down when I was in the hospital writing mariachi

01:50:30.740 | or watching TV while I was a patient. And there's a scene where he like headbutts Victoria Abril,

01:50:37.220 | you know, he just gave his headbutt, he goes, like that. And I was like, whoa, I bet that guy would

01:50:42.640 | want to be in an action movie. He's got something inside. So I called him when we were doing

01:50:46.180 | Desperado and I said, would you ever consider doing an action? Oh man, I'd love to do action.

01:50:50.300 | So I said, I got a movie for you. I got a movie for you. It was the sequel to mariachi. And so

01:50:56.040 | Salma, I found in Mexico television, you know, doing, she couldn't get work in the U.S. because

01:51:03.040 | the roles in her. Yeah, how did you find her? I mean, this is one of the greatest actors

01:51:06.580 | in the world. It was one of the best stories. I was really determined to hire a real Latin,

01:51:11.060 | especially Hispanic, and then she's Mexican actress to be the Mexican character. That's like as authentic

01:51:17.280 | as you can get. And there was no one who was getting any jobs because no one was creating any. So there

01:51:21.700 | was no one that had any movies under their name because there was no one. It was a whole systemic

01:51:25.660 | problem, right? This was 94, 93. So I was watching a Paul Rodriguez show on Univision

01:51:34.400 | because he, I was trying to practice my Spanish because I was having to do all these Spanish

01:51:38.920 | interviews because mariachi was in Spanish. That was the other part I didn't tell you.

01:51:41.840 | I didn't speak Spanish when I made that movie. We didn't grow up with it. So I never, I left that

01:51:46.460 | part out of the mariachi story because I thought people already didn't believe I made the movie by

01:51:50.580 | myself. They knew I made it in a language I didn't speak. I should have said it because it'd be even

01:51:54.720 | more inspiring. Like now you have no excuse. I would wrote the English subtitles. Basically I

01:52:01.080 | wrote the titles, what became the subtitles. And then we take it to the actors and the actor would

01:52:06.560 | translate it for me. And I was like, I'd be like, holy, I would try to speak Spanish and say,

01:52:13.020 | like, let's record. And they'd be looking at me like, that means let's remember the record doesn't

01:52:19.320 | mean record. Now I know back then I didn't know. So I'm watching Univision.

01:52:24.500 | And then there's Sama as a guest and she's a big soap star down there in Mexico. And she comes out,

01:52:31.460 | she's beautiful, she's funny, everyone's laughing. She's Sama, everyone that we know now. And she

01:52:37.000 | starts talking about, you know, what I gather from what she's saying that she's having trouble finding

01:52:41.340 | any work in the U.S. because of her accent. And then, uh, Parajiga said, well, say something in

01:52:46.080 | English. And then she says, she sounds just like she does now. And he goes, that's great. She goes,

01:52:50.100 | I know, I know. And I went, I think this is the girl. So I called her in my office and I videotaped

01:52:56.040 | our first meeting together. So I have that somewhere.

01:52:58.880 | Oh, that's awesome.

01:52:59.780 | And it's Sama. It's Sama. It's her with her energy, with her passion. It's funny. She became instant

01:53:06.520 | friends with my wife, you know, before they walked over, your wife and I are best friends. She already

01:53:10.580 | was like part of the family. She's a godmother to my kids. Um, and I thought, I'm going to help you.

01:53:17.060 | You're going to help me. I need to have a Mexican actress in this and you're going to be phenomenal.

01:53:21.160 | The studio didn't see it. They were like, what? She hasn't done anything. Why don't you just hire

01:53:25.680 | somebody else who, you know, already has a name? So if we just give her one movie, then she'll be

01:53:32.120 | someone who's in a movie and then you can keep casting. So I made a whole mother movie with her

01:53:35.900 | in English called Road Racers. It was my second film for Showtime. Really cool little rebel without a

01:53:40.520 | cause type movie. Um, and she's, and I gave her a role in that. So we'd have an example of her doing

01:53:45.500 | English and they still were like, we need a screen test. We need to have a screen test with

01:53:51.380 | a bunch of other actresses, you know? So I said, sure, let's do that. So I went over to her house

01:53:56.900 | the night before, before the screen test. And we worked on the scene, which is the best scene

01:54:03.600 | where she's operating on his arm and they've got all this chemistry. And I was just directing her

01:54:07.760 | through it, like completely down to when you pick up the water and you hand him the water,

01:54:12.300 | don't scream. Oh, hot water. Just be like hot water. And while he's spitting it out and it's

01:54:16.480 | going to be a big dramatic action with like a very light delivery. And so we got it down to a science.

01:54:21.860 | The next day we show up, Antonio does a scene with all the girls come in.

01:54:25.820 | He does it with her. Clearly they've got amazing chemistry. She just nails it. He's great. He loves

01:54:35.520 | the studio. And he's like, okay, you can hire. Reluctantly like that, right? But once they saw the footage

01:54:43.280 | come as we're shooting and they saw it on the big screen when they're watching the dailies, then they

01:54:47.880 | were like, oh my God. And then they saw it. Then they saw what I saw when I met her. But sometimes,

01:54:53.360 | like you say, what do you do when people are like, hey, why come you're using these? Just know that not

01:54:58.540 | everyone's going to see it. You may have the only vision. Just keep going. There's an instinct that

01:55:03.880 | tells you to keep going that way. You'll get proved right or wrong, or maybe you're slipping on the

01:55:08.340 | first two rocks or whatever, but follow your instinct because you can, everyone's going to have an

01:55:12.980 | opinion and it's not necessarily the right one. And when you're an independent filmmaker, you can make

01:55:18.120 | those decisions to change people's careers, that changes the world. And that's why you want to remain

01:55:23.800 | independent. That's why what's happening now in the industry is great because I have to make movies

01:55:27.820 | like the way I started, which is what I've always liked to do, which is just doing it where we create

01:55:33.260 | our own destiny. We go, hey, we're going to make a movie. We're going to make it for this budget so we

01:55:36.540 | can make it. And the story is going to be so character driven and cool. We're going to be able to get big

01:55:40.220 | actors to be in it because they're going to want to be in it. So Danny Trejo, you asked me about Danny

01:55:43.800 | Trejo. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. Danny Trejo. We're doing Desperado now. I'm casting all kinds of

01:55:49.020 | people. Now I have this character that I want to have a bunch of knives. He opens up his vest and there's a bunch

01:55:53.280 | of knives. So bring me all the coolest looking, you know, Latin actors we can find. And before he even

01:56:00.160 | walked in, there's a picture of him. He already looked like the guy, but he was younger. He always just

01:56:05.340 | played prison inmates. It was a picture of him as an inmate in a prison. I want to give him a cool role, you

01:56:10.720 | know, just wherever this actor is. He walks in and I see him. It's Danny Trejo. He sits down and I had the prop

01:56:16.480 | knife already made. And I say, you need to have this in your hand and look like you sleep with it.

01:56:22.120 | Like just practice flipping it around your hand. And I gave it to him. You got the role. Just start

01:56:27.040 | practicing with that. And he gets up and walks out. He didn't have to say anything because there's no

01:56:29.900 | dialogue. He walks up. We get to the set and he kept saying, put me in coach. Give me a line. Give

01:56:35.960 | me a line. It's like, no, no, you're such a nice guy. You're going to blow the whole mystique. I want this

01:56:39.280 | guy to feel like the most evil, scary guy of all. And you're such a nice guy. I didn't let him talk

01:56:44.500 | till dusk till dawn. But one thing I noticed was that the town we were shot in, the Mexican town,

01:56:49.980 | which is the same town I shot Mariachi. We went back there because I wanted to pay back the city.

01:56:54.280 | And so we had this big movie there and they didn't really know Antonio because he was in European

01:57:00.280 | movies. Salmo hadn't come to the set yet, but they saw Danny Trejo there in his vest looking like a

01:57:06.360 | Mexican icon. They would go like this. Everyone thought he was the star. And I just know magnetism

01:57:13.940 | when I see it. And I went, this guy's got something. So I went to him and I said, I got a movie we're

01:57:20.160 | going to do someday. This was 94. We didn't make this movie for 15 years. Machete. You're going to be

01:57:26.280 | Machete. I had, I had an idea for Machete then. It wasn't the same story. I had seen a story.

01:57:33.440 | Actually, Mariachi, the guy from March sent me this funny story. He said, Hey, look at this story

01:57:37.220 | that the USDA and FBI sometimes would hire a Mexican federal to come do a job for 25 grand that they

01:57:45.440 | didn't want to get their own guys killed on. I said, that's Machete, the guy that they pay.

01:57:49.740 | But he's not doing it for the money. It turns out he has to get this guy that escaped Mexico. And

01:57:56.020 | that's the twist. So that was the original story I had. I said, we're going to do this someday.

01:57:59.240 | And we talked about it for years and never did it. Never had got around to doing it. So when I did

01:58:04.180 | Spy Kids, I put him in Spy Kids and I said, Hey, let's pay tribute to that character we never got to

01:58:09.280 | make. And you'll be uncle Machete. He's a gadget guy, but he's got a mysterious past. But then a few

01:58:15.020 | years later, Quentin and I were doing Grindhouse and he'd already done Dustal Dahl with me. You know,

01:58:19.720 | I was building my own Latin star system. Salmo showed up in a bunch of my movies. Cheech shows up in

01:58:24.200 | every movie. Danny shows up. I brought Cheech out of retirement and put him in my movie. I needed to

01:58:28.940 | create my own Latin star system because all my scripts, because when you write in your own voice,

01:58:32.400 | you're going to write probably somebody that's Latin, you know, so you need to have a star system

01:58:36.800 | that matches that so that you don't have trouble casting and people are like, well, you can't hire

01:58:40.280 | this person. So I built up my own star system. So Danny was one of my stars. So after we're doing

01:58:45.760 | Grindhouse, we had to do fake trailers for Grindhouse. And I told Quentin, I know what trailer I'm going to do

01:58:53.300 | for the movie I never got to make with Danny called Machete. That'll be so fun. Finally get

01:58:57.500 | that out of our system. And doing a trailer is so fun. It's two days of shooting. Just still being

01:59:02.680 | that resourceful guy. We asked this company that had a digital camera we wanted to use. Can you let us

01:59:07.720 | send it to us for a couple of days screen test? I mean, camera test. Instead of shooting a camera

01:59:11.980 | test, we shot the trailer. So we got a free camera, shot the trailer with him. And it's just the money

01:59:16.460 | shots, him opening his vest full of machetes, you know, him aiming that gun, him in a waterfall with

01:59:21.500 | two gals. And I just came up with this really funny trailer and we shot it. People were screaming at

01:59:28.540 | the premiere. You couldn't even hear it. They just wanted that movie so badly because there was

01:59:33.920 | blaxploitation in the seventies. There was never mexploitation. It felt like this should have

01:59:37.640 | existed, but it didn't. It's Mexican superhero. They just never seen anything like that. You know,

01:59:42.000 | now, you know, but like even his mom calls him a shame. Like he just became this guy. And I've

01:59:47.460 | saw 250 movies that he's been in. Machete is his most famous one. So for five years,

01:59:53.460 | five years, people would come up to us and say, where's Machete? Why aren't you? Where's the,

02:00:01.140 | when's that movie coming out? We're like, it's not a real movie, but when it looks real, we want to see

02:00:05.180 | that movie. So we finally made the movie because people just asked for it. And I used, I wanted to,

02:00:10.980 | I was adamant about being resourceful again. All those shots that are in the trailer are really

02:00:15.320 | great. I got to reverse engineer the trailer into a movie so that I can use that shot that's in the

02:00:20.820 | trailer. Like this girl in the waterfall. Why would this girl be in the waterfall? I don't have a really

02:00:24.720 | clever way that he gets the bad guy. Her hair's kind of, her face is kind of covered by this hair.

02:00:28.560 | We'll cast Lindsay Lohan there or the Senator will switch it out for Robert De Niro. Well, I just

02:00:34.060 | reverse engineered it. So every time there's a shot in the trailer, it's in the movie, but I shot all the

02:00:39.360 | footage around to lead up to it. That's another fun, creative exercise is to reverse engineer

02:00:43.320 | something. You just did like this on the day. You just threw a bunch of cards out basically with

02:00:47.880 | that trailer. And now you got to go make a movie using all those cards. That's like a creative

02:00:52.520 | exercise that I thought so satisfying. So fun. Yeah, that was beautiful. You're, you're actually

02:00:57.800 | known in part, maybe you can correct me, but to do pretty unexpected, surprising, kind of interesting

02:01:03.180 | casting. So Robert De Niro is an example of that. And that's just a great role. The second aspect of

02:01:08.980 | that I heard the story that you can just get an actor in and out in just a few days,

02:01:13.800 | really fast. The, the, the Robert Rodriguez experiences they call it. How do you make that

02:01:18.060 | happen? Like, can you just tell the story? Well, I'm the editor, I'm the cameraman, I'm the DP.

02:01:22.220 | And so when I call him and say, I've got you as the villain in this whole movie, but I'm going to,

02:01:30.500 | I swear, I'm going to shoot you on four days. You come down four days. Like there's a scene where

02:01:34.780 | he's in the hospital. He's just smiling. He's having such a good time. Cause he couldn't believe it. I said,

02:01:38.640 | guess what? When you wake up from your hotel room at the Stephen F. Austin, you just crossed the

02:01:42.960 | hallway. That's the set. The room, the room next to yours, we turned into the hospital set. So you're

02:01:47.860 | just going to come laying there in your pajamas. Really? That's what you did? Well, yeah, we had

02:01:51.200 | to save time. We only have four days. So everything had to be very thought out to be like, boom,

02:01:55.800 | boom, boom, let's shoot the money, get him out of this. We don't have to spend a lot of money on him.

02:01:58.560 | Book a room in a hotel set up to look like a hospital room.

02:02:01.620 | Yeah. That's our set. And it's real. You don't have to dress it. And it's just right there.

02:02:05.120 | All you do is put like a little tube there, you know, like a, for his IV. And then you have a

02:02:09.660 | couple of nurses and it looks like. Just genius. It was Robert De Niro. Resourceful, resourceful.

02:02:14.640 | Next door. But, uh, I said, you're going to think about me when you're on your next

02:02:17.880 | meet the Fockers movie and you're on there for six months where they have you sitting in a trailer.

02:02:22.080 | I don't like to do that. So, you know, I gave Lady Gaga her first two movies

02:02:26.200 | because, um, after Machete, she said publicly, she said, I saw Machete and my song Americano should

02:02:33.880 | have been in Machete. I thought she saw Machete. So I called her up and I said, Hey, I'm making a

02:02:38.600 | sequel and I would certainly use your music. But have you ever thought about acting? Cause you're

02:02:42.120 | an amazing performer. I think you'd be, I've worked with a lot of actors who are also musicians and

02:02:45.660 | they're always great. Cause I already know how to be a persona, be on stage, be in front of a bunch

02:02:49.080 | of people, which most actors can't do. And she said, actually, I studied acting before I became a

02:02:53.400 | singer. So, well, you'll never be able to be in a movie because you know what? They don't

02:02:57.020 | know how to shoot people out. They want six months of your time and you've got, and you're always on

02:03:02.180 | tour, but if you come be here, I have a part for you. I can shoot you out in half a day, this whole

02:03:08.240 | section of a movie and I'll shoot your movie poster. She's like, okay. So she shows up. I had all the

02:03:12.820 | sets, like a conveyor belt right next to each other. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. She's in the car.

02:03:17.000 | That's why she had me do her music video for rain on me later. She said, we should just go to

02:03:21.280 | Austin. Robert put me on a grease. I was throughout that whole movie. I don't know how we did that.

02:03:25.560 | It was half a day. She was there half a day. I did the same for Sin City too. I was like, I have a set

02:03:30.840 | here waiting for you. If you're on tour in Houston, just drive into Austin. I'll shoot you out in half

02:03:35.280 | a day. You could be in a scene with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Sure. She came down.

02:03:38.040 | So wait, how do you take Robert De Niro? How do you take Lady Gaga and like solve the puzzle of all

02:03:43.420 | the scenes that have to be in? How do we shoot them quickly, efficiently, conveniently?

02:03:48.900 | You have to edit your own movie. I have this analogy, a food analogy that works really well.

02:03:54.460 | Script is like your grocery list. Filming is like grocery shopping, getting the best performances,

02:04:01.040 | getting the best beat, getting the best ingredients, right? Editing is like the cooking. Too much of

02:04:08.600 | this and not enough of that. You fuck the whole thing up. So there's so many filmmakers do not edit.

02:04:12.900 | And they give it to some other guy who might look at all your ingredients and go, well, this is all

02:04:17.740 | great, but I'm going to go make a fucking souffle. And he makes something else. So by doing that job,

02:04:24.240 | I mean, like I've worked on some big stuff and I realized finally after many years, because I've

02:04:28.080 | always edited, I realized this is why movies cost so much. There could be 150, 200 people on the crew.

02:04:34.780 | And I swear not one of them knows how to edit, not one. So they're getting the wrong stuff. They're

02:04:39.880 | having to reshoot shit. The editor is in a room somewhere useless calling after the fact. We still

02:04:45.560 | need to get this closeup, but you got to reshoot that because it doesn't match because no one knows

02:04:49.540 | editing. So if you just know that you're already miles ahead of 99% of Hollywood, but that's just how

02:04:58.140 | I learned by accident. So I kind of stumbled upon it. But, um, and I realized that's what the problem

02:05:03.440 | is because across the board, I'm watching them going, that's not going to match. You guys are

02:05:07.940 | just spending money, sending crews out, shooting stuff for this. It's just, it's a clusterfuck.

02:05:12.800 | Let me show you. And that's how it's in city. Bruce Willis, nine days. Well,

02:05:17.940 | Brittany Murphy's in all three stories, one day, Benicio Latoro, three days. It's just like,

02:05:23.420 | you're just shooting this stuff. Mickey Rourke is in a sequence with Rudger Hauer. We shot eight

02:05:28.140 | months apart. I didn't have Rudger Hauer until I was doing Sharkboy and Lavagirl. So I just shot

02:05:33.100 | Mickey acting with me and then I shot Rudger acting with me and I just cut them together.

02:05:36.020 | What's weird is like editing exercises or like I used to do these editing exercises where I would

02:05:40.960 | do my VCRs together and I would cut my movies, but sometimes I would just cut a music video and I

02:05:45.260 | cut a music video once because I was a big fan of Rudger Hauer and a big fan of Mickey Rourke.

02:05:49.180 | So I said, I want to make it look like they're in a movie together. So I cut this music video

02:05:52.700 | together. But, and so it shows like lightning on Rudger and the hitcher and then lightning on

02:05:57.700 | Mickey from Rumblefish, but Rumblefish is black and white. So I made the whole thing black and

02:06:02.900 | white. I was like 19, I was 19 years old when I did that. And then years later, I'm making Sin City.

02:06:07.940 | I shot Mickey not knowing who the other actor was going to be until I cast him eight months later and

02:06:12.100 | it was Rudger. I'm cutting them together to look like they're in the same movie and it's in black and

02:06:15.940 | white. And I'm like, I've done this before. Oh my God. I found that old video. It's like,

02:06:22.180 | oh my God, I already made a movie with him in black and white. That's some weird shit, right?

02:06:25.540 | That's the magic of creativity. It's like sometimes when you have a vision, it's not clear, but it's

02:06:31.940 | coming to you from the future. So you got to just follow the voice. No matter what anyone says about

02:06:37.180 | your curtains, just follow the voice you got in your head because you don't know and you're not smart

02:06:42.560 | enough to know. And you don't need to know. You just need to do, you just need to be the hands.

02:06:47.900 | So this is like what you can do with no time or money. When you know all those jobs, it's the

02:06:54.400 | benefit of knowing those jobs. Like I said, the more, you know, those jobs, the more, you know,

02:06:58.500 | your main job, which is being creative, but on the day thinking on your feet. So I'm going to show you

02:07:04.180 | this, um, this test. Okay. So for Nestled on the TV series, I would always shoot the first episode

02:07:10.160 | in the last episode of like a seven or eight episode season. There's three seasons.

02:07:14.460 | By the time we got to the third season, I was doing Alita, so I couldn't do the big finale episode.

02:07:21.160 | And my actor who plays the George Clooney character, DJ Catrona, he's somebody who fucking wanted to be a

02:07:26.700 | writer, was writing. He's wrote Fight and Flight. This is a movie that's going to come out with Josh

02:07:30.720 | Arnett. That's his, he wrote it. And after doing this, he was like, man, hearing you talk, you know

02:07:35.560 | what I got, this is what I love about you inspire people. The feedback loop inspires you back. He

02:07:40.640 | said, man, hearing your talk for red 11 and the cards and, uh, I've got a script that's partially

02:07:45.340 | written. I'm just going to go, I'm going to go crank it out in 3d. I'm going to cut off the phone

02:07:49.760 | in 3d. I'm going to finish that thing in three fucking days. And he came back and he said, I

02:07:53.560 | finished the script and I read it and I go, when you read it in three days and go, well, I wrote

02:07:57.940 | something before, but I just kept thinking I wasn't ready. And then you told me the thing about not

02:08:02.660 | being ready. And you said that it really resonated. I went and I finished it in three days. I go,

02:08:05.900 | man, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go do the DJ method. I call the DJ method. I have a bunch of

02:08:10.000 | half-baked ideas that I'm just going to go turn off the phone and finish the thing in three days and

02:08:14.480 | I'll fix it later. But the three days, there's going to be pure pipe. It's just going to be coming

02:08:19.720 | through. Cause you're just going to be picking up the pen. So anyway, he went, he came to me with

02:08:23.380 | this idea. He said, Oh man, I was hoping you'd do the last episode of just till dawn. Cause I had

02:08:27.740 | this great idea for a scene. We're in a zombie town, Western town. We have those ones, those guns

02:08:32.080 | where you have to pull the trigger, you know, the hammer back before you can fire. So I thought,

02:08:36.480 | what if I have a gun that's empty and I got bullets in the other hand and I bump into a zombie,

02:08:40.860 | the bullets go flying. I jump and I catch all the bullets and shoot the guy before I hit the ground.

02:08:45.440 | Okay. That's kind of like a real cool, like desperado type thing, but dude,

02:08:49.400 | this is a seven day shoot for these episodes. Every one of the crew will have a different idea

02:08:56.200 | on how to do that. Stunt guy will put you on wires cause you have to do all that action or

02:09:01.380 | the DP isn't even operating the camera. It's a camera guy. The director doesn't know how to shoot.

02:09:07.040 | He's not operating the camera. Your editors in a room somewhere, VFX guys aren't there. You're not

02:09:14.460 | going to be able to ask them how to do it. But I, in my own VFX, I came up with how we did all the

02:09:19.080 | shots and Sid City and all those spiking movies. We need one guy to come do it. I'll come do it for

02:09:24.880 | you. I'll come do it. Cause I'm already going to be there. Cause I have to shoot a second unit fight

02:09:29.120 | scene for the other actor who wanted a cool fight scene. So I was already doing that.

02:09:31.980 | When it comes to your scene, we'll switch places because it's got to be done quick. Cause you've

02:09:36.060 | got, you got to shoot it in 20 minutes. Cause you've got a ton of other shit. You got to shoot

02:09:39.480 | and you'll just never get it. You won't even get it in a film schedule, you know,

02:09:43.440 | in a regular movie schedule. It's just too crazy. You need somebody with a vision to do the whole

02:09:48.760 | scene. So this is what it would look like if you're on the set. I'm going to show you the

02:09:52.440 | footage and I'm going to show you the scene. I have to show it to you a couple of times.

02:09:55.500 | Cause you're not going to believe what you're about to see. So if you were on the set, this

02:10:00.300 | is what it would look like. So I get there, they said, we're ready for that scene. So I get over

02:10:03.920 | there to the set and I go, okay, where, where are you coming out of this building? Where are you

02:10:09.500 | getting the bullets from that body? Okay. Bring that body closer. Okay. Stunt guy, bring a pad

02:10:14.520 | over. I want to see you just jump and start to twist as if you're turning. I just want to see

02:10:19.120 | how much airtime you can get to get any action before you hit the pad. He starts to jump. He's

02:10:23.980 | barely starts jumping. He's already hitting the pad. So I was like, okay, that ain't going to work.

02:10:26.460 | You get out of here, DJ, you're going to do it. I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I hadn't

02:10:30.720 | thought about it before, but now you're there. So awesome. And now the options are very limited.

02:10:34.560 | You're very limited. Look at the sun. You're going to see the sun not move. You see, that's the

02:10:37.660 | point where the sun starts getting lost. I have to shoot this in 20 minutes. You're going to do

02:10:42.360 | three jumps and I'm going to cut it to look like one jump. All the bullets are going to miss. The

02:10:46.660 | only one's going to go in. So here, just follow what I'm saying. We don't have time. What cameras

02:10:51.660 | do we have? What's on the A camera? A long lens. Oh yeah, that's my camera. I'll operate that. What's

02:10:55.720 | on the B camera? Steadicam. Leave it on steadicam. No chance, no time to convert it. At one point,

02:11:01.240 | I want to lower it. So just flip it upside down. We'll flop it later. Give me the main camera. Okay,

02:11:06.800 | DJ, start running towards that bullets and grab it and pretend like it gets shot out of your hand.

02:11:11.540 | I shoot it in slow motion, but I'm showing you how it would look on the set. Okay. Now the bullets are

02:11:15.400 | flying. I'm going to add those digitally and I'm going to hold the bullets up to the light

02:11:18.360 | in each angle so that they know what it's supposed to look like so they can match that. Otherwise,

02:11:22.440 | it'll look phony. Now, first jump. I just want you to commit to just jumping out and just look at the

02:11:30.700 | barrel. Just look at the barrel on your hands when you're jumping because that'll look like you're

02:11:34.900 | looking at the bullets. And just don't even think about that you're going to catch a bullet. Don't think

02:11:39.780 | about that you're going to start turning. Just stretch your body out. Get a really

02:11:43.460 | graphic. Look at how cool that looks. And then the side view, it's shot this at the same time.

02:11:48.320 | You can already tell it's going to look like bullets are missing, right?

02:11:53.600 | Okay. Now I need this part though. I need the part where he's catching the bullet. This little window

02:12:01.180 | there. How am I going to do that? With a lens that long, it's going to be all out of focus. It's not

02:12:07.400 | going to be slow motion enough. He even knows me and he's like, what the hell am I doing? So I just lay

02:12:11.180 | on the pad and rock up and down. And as you're coming down, that'll look like you're falling as I'm

02:12:17.320 | zooming in because I'm operating the camera and I'm cutting this in my head. Yeah. And I'm saying,

02:12:21.980 | just do it again. He's like, what is it? Rock up. And then as you go down, it's going to look like

02:12:26.260 | you're falling. Well done bullets. Okay. Well done. You've caught a bullet. One went in now. Second

02:12:31.740 | jump. When you do the next jump as if we just passed those other moments, you've caught a bullet

02:12:37.260 | already. So now you're going to snap it close and start your turn. It's all you'll get before you hit the

02:12:42.080 | pad. Snap turn. Right. So like, okay, this is, I want the cameras to feel like they're dropping

02:12:48.820 | with them. That'll give you more of the sensation. So let's actually lower that steady cam shot,

02:12:53.580 | flip it upside down and get a low angle. So yeah, look at the sun's right there. Hasn't gone behind

02:12:57.280 | the building yet. That. And then my camera, I lowered my camera down and I got that. Right. Okay. Now

02:13:04.200 | last jump. I bury a thin, I said, just bury me, bring me a thin mattress. Cause I want him to do

02:13:10.200 | all the stuns. I don't want a stunt guy. Cause he does this himself. He just did it in three

02:13:14.960 | jumps with the audience. No, they'll just be like, we believe that this guy can do anything.

02:13:18.460 | I want you just to finish by turning and cocking the hammer back and firing before you hit the

02:13:25.760 | ground. I'll give you two takes for that. Almost gets it there. Then we do a second take. Boom.

02:13:32.060 | Now that other one was probably a little better, even though you don't really see it.

02:13:34.900 | I've got to go do everything now. I got to cut it. I got to add the sound effects myself. I got to put

02:13:39.380 | the music in myself because music guys would just end up filling it with music and ruin it.

02:13:42.580 | Sound effects guys would just fill it full of sound effects and ruin it. I want all the sound to drop

02:13:46.360 | out. So as he's jumping, all you hear is the wind. I mean, his jacket, the clinking of the bullets as

02:13:53.000 | they're bouncing off. So you have this breathless moment, no music, cut the music. And that moment you

02:13:58.720 | cut it so that you're like, I wonder if he's going to make it. Right. So I go home, I cut it before I

02:14:04.920 | even have the visual effects. And I just cut it that night because I cut my own sound effects.

02:14:09.500 | I cut my sound effects in. You can already tell it's going to work. You can already see when the

02:14:13.960 | bullets, not there, you can tell by the sound where they're going to be. It's going to work.

02:14:18.240 | I call them up and say, dude, this is going to work great. So then I go to the effects guys and I go,

02:14:22.040 | okay, there's bullet in this frame. And the next frame is here. Cause I used to animate in the next

02:14:26.680 | frame. It's there. Then it hits the barrel and then it starts bouncing this way. I want it that clear

02:14:30.820 | so we can follow that a bullet was supposed to go in and that it bounced way over there. And then this

02:14:35.480 | bullet bounced way over there. And then they send it back and a bunch of bullets come down. No guys,

02:14:40.040 | listen to what I say. I'm going to show you again. I'm going to draw it to you again. Just the sound

02:14:44.880 | will play. Like there's multiple bullets flying. I don't need to see all those bullets or the eye's

02:14:48.740 | not going to know where to go. So then they got it right. Brilliant. And then check this out. I'm

02:14:53.880 | going to show it to you twice. Cause you're not going to believe it changes direction. Wow.

02:15:17.700 | Wow. Well done. You don't even see that in a feature film, much less a TV show.

02:15:22.820 | Well done. Just as a director. Well done.

02:15:25.140 | Oh, thank you. Here just one more time and I'll show you something you didn't notice both times.

02:15:45.320 | That's amazing. Just those decisions coming together perfectly.

02:15:52.120 | Coming together. And like this, you got, you got minutes just, uh, moving the camera. Like you

02:15:58.040 | decided to do really work really well. The balancing of the mattress, whatever. And it's not like you

02:16:01.940 | have this whole plan figured out ahead. You're literally in the moment you're, it's coming through

02:16:05.780 | you. But you're seeing it though, right? I'm seeing it because I've done it enough. That's why

02:16:09.140 | you really want to learn all those jobs because it comes, it comes to a moment like this when the

02:16:13.320 | shit's fucking hitting the fan. You got to know how to pull it out. You could have gotten all those

02:16:17.580 | people together and they never would have figured that out. You had one person had to see it all the

02:16:20.800 | way through. You're seeing the bullet, how it's going to go in the, in the result. I've done enough

02:16:24.520 | times to know that if you don't do it just right, you're going to, you're going to lose the image. You're

02:16:28.740 | not going to know where to follow and you'll miss the point. And also, yeah, I love that you're

02:16:32.240 | thinking about where the eyes of the audience will go. And that's like, I feel like too many people

02:16:39.180 | might think about some more general concept of a scene versus like the audience, where's their eyes?

02:16:46.640 | Where's their eyes? Well, you're drawing, you're drawing it through sound, through picture. I'm going to

02:16:49.880 | show you. If you notice without the sound, you don't really see him clip that thing back.

02:16:55.540 | The sound is so central here. Watch this. You, you, you don't really. Right. I thought I saw it. You

02:17:00.900 | think you saw it, but you hear it. And so you feel like see, but watch it's actually, he's already

02:17:05.380 | finished. You don't really see him do it, you know, but you swear you saw it in a closeup because the

02:17:10.260 | sound is in a closeup. I put the sound in a closeup. Now here's another thing you didn't notice. He

02:17:14.420 | hits this ground in the first shot. Watch one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You

02:17:21.780 | didn't even notice it because I didn't play the sound there. So if you don't hear

02:17:25.460 | it, you don't see it. And if you don't see it, but you play a sound, you hear it, then you see it in

02:17:30.580 | your mind. Right. So check that out now with the sound on, and you'll see both those parts play

02:17:35.940 | completely different. Right. Now you hear it. See, I know you can get away with that because I know

02:17:50.420 | editing and I'm like, if I don't play a sound, I can go ahead and milk that shot as long as I want. I'll make

02:17:54.420 | him be in the air longer, even though he's actually touching the ground by not playing

02:17:58.100 | the sound. And that comes from, you said directing, but it's not directing. Like people can direct and

02:18:03.140 | say, this is what I want, but to actually execute it, you need to be a craftsman. And to be a craftsman,

02:18:09.140 | you have to learn all those crafts. And not just with the visuals, but with the sound.

02:18:12.900 | The sound too. Sound is so important. Sound is half the picture. Sound. And if you cut sound,

02:18:18.740 | you realize how important sound is. I would learn so much by doing those movies, like Desperado action

02:18:23.940 | movies where you go, wow, the sound, I can add an extra sound effect of an extra punch. He didn't

02:18:28.100 | even throw. And it sounds like he's beating the shit out of this guy. And you only need to see one or two

02:18:33.060 | hits and you can hear five, you know, you know, you know where you can push your limits because you've

02:18:36.580 | done it. You've done it and you've got the experience. It's so amazing that you can use

02:18:40.180 | sound to make a person believe they saw something that wasn't actually there on the screen. Yeah.

02:18:45.780 | Your brain fills it in. That's crazy. And that's why that's so important because if you don't know

02:18:50.100 | that you'll be on the set shooting 10 takes of that because you're like, no, he didn't, you know,

02:18:54.180 | I didn't see him click it back. He didn't see, I didn't see him click it back. That's really needed.

02:18:58.500 | I can do that with sound. Let's just go. Let's just keep moving.

02:19:01.380 | When you say sound close up, what does that mean?

02:19:03.380 | The sound, all the other sound dropped away and all you hear is like the sound,

02:19:07.060 | like the mic's right on that thing so that you hear it so big in your ear that you swear it was

02:19:13.940 | in closeup too, but just the sound was close. How do you, uh, sorry, just to give an insight into

02:19:18.340 | like that process of sound design, what are you, uh, like listening to the sound and just like

02:19:25.220 | experiencing the feeling that creates. And then you're like, that's just right.

02:19:29.460 | Lane and post a lot. So I have a whole library of sound effects from all my movies.

02:19:33.940 | So I can pull up like the gun sound we created for Bruce Willis and Sensity and use that and mix it

02:19:38.500 | with Antonio's gun from Desperado. You know, I remember in four rooms, there's a scene where

02:19:43.860 | the bellhop goes into the hotel room, jams his key into it and clicks it. And I used all gun

02:19:50.260 | sounds for the sounds of the key instead of key sounds. Cause it wasn't sound close up enough.

02:19:54.420 | So if you listen to it, you hear like, uh, all these sounds from gun to do the key is it's like,

02:20:00.340 | that conveys the sound better. You know, I'll use different kinds of sounds that just have impact

02:20:04.340 | and put it somewhere like when he hits the ground or, so I like playing with all that

02:20:08.500 | in posts when I'm editing, because it makes my editing job easier. Sometimes it's like, oh,

02:20:13.780 | the sound is covering me. I don't, I don't need to keep trying to massage this. The sound is actually

02:20:18.420 | selling it. And so I keep those sound effects into the final movie. So it's just all part of

02:20:23.140 | necessary. It's like, it's like being a chef. You're there cooking and you're going like,

02:20:26.340 | I know the recipe says this, but I think it really could use jalapenos and some extra

02:20:30.900 | pepper and maybe a little more salt. And then it needs an acid of some kind. So I'm going to add

02:20:34.260 | some lemon juice. Yeah. You made me realize, I'm not sure where I saw that, but you were,

02:20:37.700 | you were talking about making sort of almost like home films for fun. And I think you mentioned how

02:20:44.100 | exciting you can make a very mundane scene by just adding sound.

02:20:48.020 | Yeah. There was, I think there was like a little kid for this car. Yeah. One of those little

02:20:52.260 | and, but I added a motor sound to it. And it's like, wow, it sounds realistic somehow. Like,

02:20:57.780 | I don't understand what my brain is doing. And then we're playing with these little cars,

02:21:00.820 | filming ourselves playing with the cars, but then I replaced it with real car sounds.

02:21:05.860 | And it just, your brain links the reality of the real thing. It's crazy.

02:21:11.940 | And you realize how unimportant the visual is and how important the sound is actually.

02:21:16.260 | Sound is everything. That's what I was really lucky in Mariachi that my camera didn't work

02:21:20.580 | for sound. Cause then I got really good sound that I would have gotten with a shitty mic out of frame,

02:21:25.540 | because that's the first telltale sign of a low budget movie is bad sound,

02:21:28.820 | bad sound right away. You can already hear all this hiss and all this mic was too far. And you're like,

02:21:34.100 | low budget movie before your eyes even tell you the sound gives it away. Isn't that amazing?

02:21:38.740 | The audio is first. Sound is first really, even though it's a visual medium. That's so crazy.

02:21:45.380 | Uh, just on the, what's the plan with the, with the four action films? Like what, what, what are the next

02:21:53.220 | steps? I'll probably direct more than one. Cause there's already several that I want to do, but I was,

02:21:57.140 | I'm going to direct at least one, but I'm producing all three, all four there at my studio.

02:22:00.980 | It does draw you in. It draws you in and it makes you go now think of ideas you never would have

02:22:05.780 | thought of for mainly because it has a filter. Well, now I don't have to think of all these ideas.

02:22:11.460 | I can only, I actually have like that, like me on that set, there's only very few things I can actually

02:22:16.100 | come up with that are just action driven. First, when I have a great character, you'll get to it a lot

02:22:20.500 | faster with a filter. That's the beauty of a filter is that now you've just shrunk your, your target.

02:22:26.900 | And now you can hit that target and people are coming up with ideas because now they've got

02:22:30.820 | proximity and they've got a reason to come up with the idea. And they've got a deadline, which is the

02:22:35.220 | best thing you can do is have a deadline because when you have a deadline, you can freaking move

02:22:40.260 | mountains. You know, I had a spy kids in the theater every year, three years in a row, not being pre-planned

02:22:46.740 | every year. There was a spy kids. Now the third one was the biggest one, biggest cast, mostly green

02:22:52.340 | screen, video game, and the first digital 3d movie ever. So getting visual effects companies

02:22:58.180 | to make that, we realized, oh, I shot it with two cameras. That means each effect shot has to be done

02:23:03.380 | twice from a different angle. So I went to the studio midway through that and said, there's not going to

02:23:09.460 | be a movie in the theaters in time. You're going to have to push the date back. And they said, okay,

02:23:14.580 | we've never heard you panic. We'll push the date back for you. They called back 10 minutes later.

02:23:19.860 | I was like, oh, thank God, because it's really complicated. I didn't know it was going to be

02:23:22.500 | this complicated, but I wanted a challenge. And they said, McDonald's will sue us for $20

02:23:27.620 | million if you move the date. You have to have a movie in the theater. We started shooting that movie

02:23:32.500 | in January of 2003. It was in 3d in theaters by July. That's the fastest any effects movie has ever

02:23:41.700 | been done because you had no choice. So deadline makes you do things and make decisions really quick.

02:23:48.900 | And it was the biggest of the three. Deadlines are good. And it's hard for us to self-impose a

02:23:54.340 | deadline sometimes because we know it's a bullshit deadline and your brain knows it's a bullshit.

02:23:58.100 | But why do deadlines work? Because when the deadline's coming up, what do you do?

02:24:02.660 | You start to put the pen to the paper and it starts just flowing, right?

02:24:09.700 | You have no choice. You have to get out of the way and open the pipe and it just comes out and you're

02:24:15.860 | shocked. You're like, oh my God, I should do everything at the last minute. Well, no,

02:24:18.580 | you don't have to. But if you just learn how to open that pipe earlier, you wouldn't be in a rush,

02:24:23.700 | but you had to get out of your way because your deadline was up and you had to come up with it.

02:24:28.020 | So many people are going to come up with all these extra great ideas at the last minute.

02:24:31.860 | But it looks like everyone who's already signing on, because it's cool they don't know when the

02:24:38.100 | deadline is. They keep writing in saying, when is the deadline for this? And we say, well, when we

02:24:42.340 | close the funding in May. But we didn't say when still. So I think that gives them a sense of a

02:24:47.860 | deadline like, shit, it might be May 1st or maybe May 2nd, so we better get my idea going. So I think

02:24:52.660 | it works in your favor because then you come up with stuff. And you're going to feel so enriched by

02:24:56.980 | doing the idea that you're not going to care if it gets picked or not. You're going to love this idea

02:25:01.140 | so much. It could turn into 10 other things you never even thought about. That's the beauty of

02:25:05.780 | doing a project. Nothing ever goes to waste. So many ideas that were sitting around that I'd come up

02:25:10.500 | with and put a lot of time in are now like, oh, I can do these now. I have, I know how to finish it now.

02:25:16.180 | I have to ask you about Alita. So you've done so many incredibly innovative projects. This is one of

02:25:22.020 | them. It turned out to be this visual masterpiece. There's a bunch of complexity,

02:25:26.660 | beautiful complexity about it in that it started out as a film that James Cameron was supposed to

02:25:31.300 | make. And then you started to collaborate with him on it. And these two, I would say brilliant

02:25:36.820 | directors, but with different styles, like you were talking about. And so, plus there's the complexity of,

02:25:42.420 | for people who haven't seen it, you're putting this artificial creation, this beautiful,

02:25:48.900 | photorealistic, artificial creation of a human being into a real world. So you have to capture

02:25:56.500 | the performance, not just the motion, but the performance of this actor, put them into this,

02:26:02.180 | with the power of technology, into the real world to convey all the emotion, the richness of the human

02:26:07.700 | face. Can you just speak to the process of bringing that world to life?

02:26:10.900 | Sure. I mean, why not? I never would have attempted if it wasn't Jim, because Jim has

02:26:14.900 | figured all this out. So just to get you, again, remember, like I said, hey Jim, I'm operating a study

02:26:20.340 | can. What do you think of that? Well, I'm designing a new system. That's always how it is between him and I.

02:26:24.100 | So when I went to show him Desperado and it was done, he said, you might not want to sit through,

02:26:29.780 | if you don't want to sit through it while I'm watching it, it's fine. Do you want to read

02:26:32.260 | any of my scriptments, my treatment scripts, you know, called scriptments? I said, sure. He goes,

02:26:37.300 | I have Spider-Man and I got Avatar. So this was in '95, he was showing me the scriptment for Avatar,

02:26:44.900 | which there was no technology for that. He was already doing stuff that didn't exist.

02:26:51.860 | Yeah.

02:26:52.740 | And I was reading it going like, it's a great story. And he's like, I don't know how the

02:26:56.100 | fuck he's going to do this. It's impossible. It's not even, he'd just done, you know,

02:27:00.100 | Terminator 2 a few years before. It's like, that was the thing of the art.

02:27:04.180 | So Alita was going to be the movie he did first to prepare for Avatar. And so he had already done

02:27:11.060 | some prep work on it. It was based on a manga. But before they did that, they just started doing

02:27:17.140 | some tests for Avatar. And then as they got deeper into the test for Avatar to prepare for Alita,

02:27:22.100 | they went, I guess we're making Avatar first. So Alita got kind of pushed to the side and they

02:27:27.780 | ended up doing it, which ended up becoming such a journey to make that movie, to get the technology,

02:27:32.020 | to build it, to make it. Because I remember visiting him on the set. I mean, I've known him so long.

02:27:36.260 | I was on the set of Titanic. That's how long I've been around this guy. I was on the set of Titanic.

02:27:40.500 | I was on the set with Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Furlong for the 3D

02:27:45.460 | ride he made for Universal a few years later. So, I mean, I feel like I've been around him

02:27:51.700 | a lot of his career. And to be able to visit the set, you know, of Avatar and remember him

02:27:57.380 | showing me, like, artwork they did. Very photorealistic. And he goes, "I'm curious to

02:28:03.620 | see how photoreal it'll be when we're finally done with this process." Because you don't get to see it

02:28:08.420 | until it's almost done. And I was like, "Wow, he's just shooting blind. He's really..." Talk about me

02:28:14.100 | shooting mariachi, not seeing the footage. He's making this whole movie not even knowing what the end

02:28:18.100 | result's going to look like at all. Because you're not going to know till you get there. And when you

02:28:22.740 | get there, if you don't like it, there's not a lot you can do. So, just seeing him do that and have

02:28:28.180 | that success really made it easier for me to do Alita. Because then it's like, "Okay, we don't know."

02:28:32.740 | Again, we don't need to know. We know we'll get there, but we don't know how we're going to do it.

02:28:37.780 | We're going to start. And anything that I would come up with on this movie and his team, because he had

02:28:43.060 | all his weather people working on it, he had them all working on it too. I'd do a fast version of his

02:28:48.900 | process because it's a lot of live action. Avatar's mostly CG. I have live action sets. You have to come

02:28:55.300 | to my studio because I still have the whole Alita city in my back lot.

02:28:58.420 | Well, here at the Troublemaker studio?

02:29:00.180 | Yeah.

02:29:00.740 | That's where it was...

02:29:01.540 | Yeah, it was shot here. So, when you go see my city, I built it very resourceful.

02:29:06.260 | This is weird. It looks just like The Town for Mariachi, but it's in my backyard. I'm like,

02:29:11.060 | "It looks better than The Town for Mariachi."

02:29:12.660 | Yeah.

02:29:13.220 | 90,000. It's the largest standing set in the country because sets are always mowed down for

02:29:18.100 | the next movie, but I just kept it there. So, we used to shoot it all the time for Mexico or South

02:29:22.100 | America or Europe or whatever. It's seven streets and we add it digitally above it. The ceilings are

02:29:28.740 | 20 feet high. You got to come see. You don't believe that it's here. It's unbelievable.

02:29:33.220 | Where is it north of Austin?

02:29:34.580 | It's where the old airport was. So, it's on 51st Street. It's really close to town.

02:29:39.300 | I would love to visit.

02:29:40.100 | You got to come see. You're not going to believe it. All my props, all my stuff from all my movies.

02:29:44.100 | So, people who are investing in brass knuckle, that's why they say it's like a Willy Wonka movie

02:29:49.140 | because they're going to get to come check out all that stuff and be in proximity and see,

02:29:54.260 | Oh, like me with that painter. It's not a trick. He's just doing it. Then you realize you can do it too.

02:30:00.500 | But, um, we thought let's shoot mostly live action and we'll just replace her, but we still have to

02:30:06.820 | figure her out. You have to cast the right actress. And when I saw Rosa Salazar, she was just amazing.

02:30:11.860 | She made me cry in audition for the first time. I was like, Oh my God, this person has some, if we can

02:30:16.020 | capture even a, a fourth of her facial expression, it'll bring so much life. And they got it one-to-one

02:30:23.860 | and, uh, it really helped Jim on the next Avatar and Weta because they got to try out a bunch of

02:30:30.340 | things. That's why Avatar, the second Avatar way of water looks so much more refined than the first

02:30:36.100 | Avatar because of that middle step of doing Alita. It was training ground for them.

02:30:39.940 | Can you actually educate me on the Weta process? Is this like a, a performance capture technology?

02:30:44.740 | Yeah, we have her in a suit for capturing her body movements, but also facial capture. It's a

02:30:50.820 | performance capture of all her performance, all her emoting. And we have witness cameras around

02:30:56.020 | everywhere to pick up where she is and everything else is real. And we're just replacing her,

02:31:00.660 | but with someone even smaller in size. So you have to erase everything behind her.

02:31:04.580 | There's like a bunch of technical things you do, but the idea is to whatever performance she gives,

02:31:08.660 | she's such a great actress is to capture all of that. Cause then this character that doesn't even exist

02:31:14.420 | will feel very emotional. And you have to, you have to be tied to it. You have to feel its heart.

02:31:20.180 | She was the heartbeat of it.

02:31:21.220 | So she's acting with all this, acting with all that, but it just disappeared. You know,

02:31:24.340 | she's not even, it's like, it's not even there. Like we don't notice that this is here. It's like

02:31:27.940 | that she can just perform through it. What was some interesting, unique, challenging things about

02:31:32.580 | you directing her performance in this, in this kind of world?

02:31:37.460 | I just, I just knew she had to be her. It was going to be just so easy with her. She's just so great.

02:31:42.020 | She, everything was just so real and everything was just like, she's that character. She becomes that

02:31:46.660 | character who's seen this world for the first time. No special effects going to help you with that.

02:31:51.380 | If the performance isn't there. So it was all about getting the performance and casting the right

02:31:55.780 | actors. That's why you get Christoph Waltz there and you get Jennifer Connelly, you know, these masters

02:32:02.420 | are all in the set. Mahershala Ali, you know, you've got an amazing cast of people and that's really the

02:32:09.700 | heart, the heart of it so that the technology kind of goes away. How hard is it to get the actors to act

02:32:17.220 | when like the full world is not around you? We put so much of the world around them. Like when you see

02:32:22.820 | the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the

02:32:28.020 | sets there, the town, we built the real set. So everything was very tangible and real.

02:32:32.500 | And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was all done in CG,

02:32:39.060 | well then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge.

02:32:43.780 | And that really helps them on Avatar because that whole place has created an Avatar. You could get away

02:32:47.460 | with a lot, but they wanted to commit to that kind of detail. And on the next Avatar, that's why it just

02:32:52.420 | feels like you're really there. It's just stunning. And you get there by having something to work on

02:32:58.340 | like this to take the technology to the next level. So it was cool to be able to help, you know,

02:33:03.220 | knowing that you're being helpful to him in his process and not just distracting him. But then also

02:33:07.940 | he liked that his artists had something else to work on besides just Avatar to just work on something,

02:33:14.900 | you know, different to freshen up their perspective on things and methodology. And so,

02:33:19.300 | yeah, that was a really exciting movie to work on.

02:33:21.700 | And then we got to shoot it here, a Jim Cameron movie here in Austin. That was the best having

02:33:25.540 | him here. And that my whole crew who's worked with me 25, 30 years, everyone had an extra spring in

02:33:31.060 | their step because they're like, wow, we're working on a Jim Cameron movie. I mean, that's just like a

02:33:35.380 | high bar of achievement for everybody, you know, working on it.

02:33:38.580 | Since we talked about a few other directors, can you speak to the genius of James Cameron? Like what,

02:33:42.660 | what makes him special? You talked about some of the difference in your approach in his,

02:33:48.260 | he's created some of the most special movies ever also. What's behind that? What would you

02:33:53.060 | say is interesting about the way his creative mind works?

02:33:55.780 | I think any of those guys, George Lucas, you know, him, you know, John Lasseter when he did Pixar,

02:34:01.060 | it's a mix of, and this was, I got really lucky. My first job was a Photoshop because my dad had a

02:34:07.540 | friend who owned a Photoshop. And he said, your summer job when I was 16, go work for my friend,

02:34:11.540 | Mario. So I go to Mario's Photoshop and I'm, you know, developing pictures or, you know,

02:34:16.500 | think you develop photos from film. And he said, here, take this camera home. Give me one of his cameras,

02:34:22.740 | take this camera home and some film. I need you to learn how to use the camera so you can help me

02:34:26.260 | sell the cameras. Yeah.

02:34:27.380 | So I went home and I, you know, I have a bunch of siblings. So like, well, the stars are bedhead,

02:34:30.900 | taking all these pictures of everybody. I take it back and he looks at the pictures when he develops,

02:34:35.060 | he's like, whoa, these are really creative. You're a creative person. So when sometimes people tell you

02:34:41.700 | something that you don't, you can't unhear and he goes, that's a gift, which you need to know now,

02:34:48.420 | now you need to become technical because most creative people need technicians and technicians

02:34:52.740 | always need creative people because they're not usually the same. You're born with creativity.

02:34:56.980 | It's against your nature to be technical, but you can learn if you apply yourself. And if you're both

02:35:02.660 | technical and creative, you'll be unstoppable. And I was like, stop. Wow. So here, I want you to learn

02:35:10.340 | zone photography. I want you to learn this, the technical part of it. So that's why I didn't take

02:35:15.700 | a crew of Mariachi because I knew if I'm just a creative person and I need a crew to go actually

02:35:21.780 | technically make the movie, I'll always need something. And when you want to really change

02:35:26.900 | your life, you want to get your, I need list down to as little as possible. Because if you're like,

02:35:34.340 | well, I want to shoot my movie, but I need a cameraman and I need somebody who knows how to light it.

02:35:38.180 | Your, your, I need list keeps growing. That's further and further and further. You will be

02:35:43.060 | from what you need to accomplish. So I kind of went down there without any help. So that remember

02:35:48.340 | that script analogy where the guy said, throw away three scripts. I said, no, I'm going to

02:35:52.340 | write three scripts and then shoot each one. So I get better at each one of those jobs. So I can learn

02:35:57.060 | to be technical. My technical compatibility was so little. Like I'm literally calling the guy on the

02:36:02.260 | phone. How do I use this camera? You know, that's how little I knew about it, but I knew by doing

02:36:07.140 | the job I would learn by being both. That's really the key. So Jim Cameron is like that. Jim Cameron,

02:36:13.380 | when you think of those guys, George Lucas, very technical and very creative. John Lasseter,

02:36:17.140 | very technical, but very creative Pixar. Jim Cameron, very technical, very creative. Putting

02:36:23.140 | those two things together is really what sets you apart from other technicians and other creative

02:36:27.940 | people. And it's very, very powerful. And a lot of creative people, again, it's against their nature to

02:36:32.020 | be technical. They don't want to do it, make yourself do it, read the manuals, take the lessons.

02:36:37.380 | It frees you up because then you can go do like, you know, I just showed you in that demo. You're

02:36:42.180 | able to now be a technical person and creative, and then you're unstoppable. He's one of the best at it.

02:36:47.380 | And he just knows how to craft a story. He's very analytical as well. Like we, we bounce off each

02:36:53.940 | other in a funny way. He goes, man, he came down to visit my studio before he did Alita. And he went,

02:37:00.740 | you only surround yourself with people for like you, like you exude creativity, you know,

02:37:05.940 | from every pore. And so does everyone at your studio. And I go, yeah, and everything, I didn't

02:37:10.340 | hire them that way on purpose, but I think if you're not that way, you kind of know, you don't belong

02:37:13.700 | there and you kind of leave. And then I went to his studio and there are a bunch of Jim Camerons there.

02:37:19.060 | They're like, oh my God, they're all very technical. You can't get all kind of fuzzy with the,

02:37:24.900 | with the logic or the, you can't get, you can't get really creative with a physics or anything.

02:37:29.540 | They're like, no, that's not how it would work. It would be like, and they're just,

02:37:32.420 | wow, super great at what they do. Bar is sky high. And they're all like that. Cause yeah,

02:37:40.500 | if you're not part of it, if you're not like that, you can't hang with those guys.

02:37:44.020 | You can't hang with him very long. I heard a story where the guitar case being a rocket launcher,

02:37:49.780 | where to you, you create this real world where everything is possible. The magic feels real.

02:37:54.340 | And for James Cameron, he has to know how a guitar case would work. That would actually be able to

02:37:58.340 | double as a rocket launcher.

02:37:59.540 | When I show him the trailer for greenhouse and he sees the machine gun leg and all that,

02:38:02.500 | he just goes, whoa, that's unbridled filmmaking from the id. It makes sense only the second you're

02:38:08.660 | watching it, not a second after, but the second you're watching and you believe it.

02:38:12.100 | But he's a, he's really interesting in that he's so prolific. I walked into his writing studio

02:38:18.580 | and it'd be like on one of the tables. Like, do you have those papers there? Imagine them that thick,

02:38:25.380 | that thick, that thick, all scripts, scripts, scripts. What are these? He goes,

02:38:27.860 | this is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like,

02:38:33.620 | he's just cranking out all this stuff. Like again, can I take this and go make this, please?

02:38:38.420 | Yeah. We bounced off each other because I loved his, his analytical part of his brain. I'm not

02:38:42.980 | that analytical. I'm just kind of like, Hey, I'm really creative feeling. I'm like,

02:38:46.180 | like, woo, I'll go this way. And then we will go that way. And he likes that about me. But I like,

02:38:50.660 | I, I, I want to be, I think about things too much. Like you think about things like

02:38:55.620 | what makes a movie a billion dollar hit? What are the elements that you need?

02:39:01.060 | And I'm going to analyze that. And I'm going to make sure my movie does that. And he engineers

02:39:06.900 | a submarine that can break the world record. He engineers a movie that can break the world record.

02:39:12.740 | You know, he's like, he has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rare.

02:39:17.300 | So that's very rare. And he's capitalized on both. He had this submarine model, like this big on his

02:39:22.820 | desk, the one that he broke the world record for going and just seeing it and knowing him have kids

02:39:28.660 | and stuff and wife. And I'm like, weren't you afraid going down there with, you know, something

02:39:34.740 | could happen. It's like, no, I wasn't afraid. Like, why not? Because I designed the escape vehicle.

02:39:42.180 | Yeah. If it was any other Bozo, I'd be afraid, but he designed the escape, that kind of confidence.

02:39:46.180 | That's him. He just knows if some other Bozo had designed the escape vehicle, I would be afraid,

02:39:51.700 | but total confidence because he did it. The confidence of extreme competence is brilliant.

02:39:56.820 | Just to get you like excited about how creative this stuff is. So Desperado was the only movie

02:40:02.420 | on the Sony lot being edited digitally. Not only was I editing on a computer, I was editing in my house,

02:40:09.700 | which in 1994 was just unheard of. So I'm there in my house and they made me cut in LA

02:40:13.700 | because they were, because at first I told the studio, I want to edit Desperado myself because

02:40:17.620 | it's important that I edit it. And they go, no, you can't. Why not? We've never had a director

02:40:22.820 | edit his own movie here. So we don't want to set a precedent. Okay. So I thought it would give you too

02:40:28.900 | much power. This is the power of precedent. I said, well, you bought mariachi and I edited that.

02:40:36.820 | So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit in LA so we can watch because we don't think you

02:40:41.220 | know what you're doing. We saw the footage and the shots are really short. It's too short.

02:40:45.140 | I was like, shots are too short. Oh, cause I was shooting my cuts.

02:40:48.340 | You know, like they're used to seeing footage of Antonio walks into the bar and it's going to be

02:40:53.140 | a dialogue scene. They expect the whole thing done from a wide shot. I would shoot the wide shot. He

02:40:56.580 | walks in, cut, move the camera. Let's get over here. Cause we went into, cause I'm not going to use it

02:41:00.420 | for the rest of the scene. I know we're going to get into coverage because I've already cut it.

02:41:03.540 | So I was like, huh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. Have you ever seen Desperado?

02:41:06.820 | The first scene is the best scene. Steve Buscemi is telling the story. He's talking about the

02:41:09.620 | myth of the mariachi. He's doing all this crazy.

02:41:11.140 | It's crazy. It's crazy. So then they come over. I say, you come see my first scene. So they come

02:41:15.700 | over to my house. They watch it. Okay. You know what you're doing. But I was cutting Desperado in

02:41:21.780 | my house that I rented there. And then we shot Dusk Till Dawn at the same time. So I was cutting

02:41:25.300 | Desperado four rooms and Dusk Till Dawn myself. I'm the editor. I don't have an editing team other than

02:41:29.620 | the ones who import it into the machine. So Del Toro came over. Soderbergh came over. Can I borrow it

02:41:35.620 | for Schizophilus? No one had heard of somebody having an Avid in their living room.

02:41:40.180 | Jim comes over and he goes, I hear you have an Avid in your living room.

02:41:44.500 | And then I go, yeah, come check it out. I'm just like, I roll out of bed. It's like

02:41:48.580 | sounds unremarkable because that's what you do right now. But back in 94, it was unheard of.

02:41:54.260 | I'm cutting three movies at the same time myself. I roll out of bed. I come here. I can cut

02:41:59.220 | Desperado. I can cut Dusk Till Dawn. He went, that's it. I hate working with editors. You know,

02:42:03.460 | when I was doing Terminator 2, they wouldn't even let me put the bad to the bone song in Terminator 2,

02:42:08.660 | because they didn't think it would work. And I had to sneak into the edit room at night

02:42:12.100 | on the weekend to cut it in and then show them the next day. It's like, that's your own movie.

02:42:15.860 | You can't give that kind of power to people. He said, I hate working with editors. I'm going to

02:42:20.420 | do this. I'm going to tear down a wall in my house. I'm going to put it in Avid. I'm going to cut my

02:42:23.700 | next movie. And he did. He got an Oscar for editing Titanic. He had two other editors,

02:42:27.540 | but now no one ever took him for a ride like that again. He edits on every movie. He has other editors,

02:42:32.500 | but he can go do his own cuts. When he shows me like footage, he's showing me himself on his own

02:42:37.300 | machine. And it's like, again, it gives you all those tools to be able to really find your vision

02:42:44.260 | that you're looking for, because you can't always explain it to somebody because you don't always

02:42:47.460 | know yourself. It's part of, you kind of come up with it as you do the process.

02:42:50.660 | Just a small tangent about the different software and the technologies involved. So you mentioned

02:42:54.420 | Avid as Premiere Pro.

02:42:56.340 | Premiere was still in its early stages then. I think Soderbergh looked at it and he said,

02:43:00.180 | yeah, I can't afford an Avid for this movie. I'm going to go do it. I think he started cutting on

02:43:04.180 | Premiere, but I'm sure it's all better now. I just have always used an Avid because I just always

02:43:08.900 | ran it back to the same production. I think I've just, I don't have to buy a new one, but there's

02:43:13.140 | lots of good, I've heard about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one.

02:43:15.940 | I guess that's the question I have for you. It's just interesting for people. It's very

02:43:19.860 | interesting to me, just the details. Use Avid. What do you like? Multiple monitors, one monitor.

02:43:24.980 | I have a couple of monitors and then one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene

02:43:29.380 | back because the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, if I were to design my own system,

02:43:33.060 | I'd probably design it differently, but I'm literally, I've worked on that thing since 94.

02:43:38.340 | I still don't know all the shortcuts and all that shit. I still use it like my tape deck,

02:43:42.100 | play, rewind, pause, and I can cut so fast with that. I don't use the mouse for shortcuts. I'm just like,

02:43:47.540 | like, so you found your way, preferred way, the workflow of using it. And now you can

02:43:53.460 | sort of let go of the technical and then be creative.

02:43:56.820 | Yeah. Just be creative. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. And it's like,

02:43:59.620 | it doesn't matter which system it is. It's like, if you can get it to work for you, great. Like,

02:44:03.460 | there's a lot of problems I have with it that I would, I know are probably fixed on another system,

02:44:07.380 | but that they'll have a whole other set of problems. So it's like, well, why bother with that?

02:44:11.300 | You know, there's limitations. I think that it has that would need to be fixed, but not for what I'm doing.

02:44:15.620 | I mean, I can still do what I need.

02:44:17.220 | It feels like part of the artistry is every system has limitations and you learn how to work around those limitations.

02:44:23.700 | I mean, my first VCRs, like those things, those things were, I was always known for taking what

02:44:31.300 | little basic equipment and milking the shit out of it, what it could, pushing the boundaries of what

02:44:36.180 | it can do. And now it's flipped. Now you're working on a program and you can spend 10 years on this thing

02:44:41.540 | and you're scratching the surface of what it's capable of. It's totally flipped the other way. I'm not milking

02:44:46.580 | anything anymore. I'm, I'm barely getting, you know, the smallest capability of it. Cause I would

02:44:53.060 | have to spend a lot of time to figure out all the stuff that it can possibly do. And I'm sure it's,

02:44:57.060 | it's all great, fantastic stuff, but what a different world than when I grew up where it was like, okay,

02:45:01.380 | let me splice these two sound things together. And it was so hard to get it to do, but people would be

02:45:07.140 | like, you got that movie out of that equipment where now it's the other way around. You know, it's like,

02:45:12.020 | all this equipment is great. So when people come to me and say, I've got, well,

02:45:15.300 | I've only got this camera. I was like, the camera's 10 times better than anything I had

02:45:19.140 | for my first 15 years of filmmaking. So you have no complaints. This is like,

02:45:24.340 | you can just start now and just start making stuff.

02:45:26.340 | Uh, I have a lot of friends who are huge fans of your, uh, movies. So one of them asked me that

02:45:31.300 | I'm absolutely must ask you, do you know if there's a sequel of Alita coming?

02:45:34.580 | Oh, we're working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it,

02:45:38.660 | but it's usually when we meet, we talk about it. Um, I gave him something to read,

02:45:43.860 | you know, he's a little busy with his avatar movie, but I'm going to get,

02:45:47.700 | I'm going to see him again soon and we'll see where it's at, but we would love to make another

02:45:51.140 | one. We have ideas on how to do it. Cause it was always built to be a trilogy.

02:45:53.940 | And, uh, he sees that there's a lot of love for it. It was just weird. Cause it was Fox movie

02:45:59.780 | and they got bought by Disney, you know, and then, so they weren't really making Fox movies

02:46:04.420 | because they had enough, had enough work with their Disney movies, but now they started to make some

02:46:08.420 | Fox movies. Like they did Deadpool and some Fox movies are starting to get made. So

02:46:12.980 | time might be right for us to come back and do an Alita.

02:46:17.060 | No, I hope you do soon. It's a, but it is, I mean, you do so many different kinds of movies.

02:46:23.300 | That's a whole different kind of puzzle, right?

02:46:25.220 | Yeah. No, but it's not a bad one. It's a good one. It's a cool. It's one of the few,

02:46:29.300 | like usually I made kids, family kids, kids movies or R rated action horror movies. And that was the

02:46:34.660 | first time I got to do a PG 13 movie, which was kind of like, it had a lot of action, but it was for

02:46:38.820 | families could watch it too. And it's kind of like the best of all worlds.

02:46:41.460 | Have to ask you about Sin City. One of my favorite films of all time. It was a visually stunning world.

02:46:47.940 | What are some maybe interesting detailed aspects about you creating that world?

02:46:54.740 | This is why you just got to follow your nose and go do something, you know,

02:46:57.380 | Jim and I were both into 3d early on. Like I visited his set for the Terminator 3d ride.

02:47:02.020 | Just till dawn, I wanted to be 3d. Actually, when they got to the bar,

02:47:05.380 | if you watched from that point on and everything's kind of set up for three,

02:47:09.140 | everything was shooting into the camera and all this, but the cameras they had for 3d and film

02:47:13.220 | was those old shitty ones that were so bad that I went, okay, we can't do it. But I really wanted

02:47:18.100 | people to have to put on glasses when they got into the bar and it was going to turn into a 3d different

02:47:22.820 | movie. I got to do that on spike. It's 3d. So when I did spike, it's 3d. I thought, oh, if I get

02:47:29.460 | Jim's cameras that he's done for these underwater 3d, you know, documentaries, I can make the first digital

02:47:36.340 | 3d film for theaters. And so I did. And it seemed like the easiest way was to utilize that when you

02:47:43.540 | put on the glasses, when you go into a game world. So there's a green screen and we shot all the actors

02:47:47.860 | on green screen for all the game stuff. And we can do a lot of 3d stuff coming at kids faces when they're

02:47:52.420 | reaching my 3d is, is not like the kind they have in theaters where it's very polite. Mine's like

02:47:57.700 | theme park 3d where kids are doing like that, trying to grab. That's why it was such a big hit.

02:48:02.660 | Nobody does 3d like that, but I wanted that. I want shit falling in people's laps, you know?

02:48:07.540 | So you remember, so you would go, okay, this is why I'm wearing the glasses and I'm wondering why.

02:48:12.180 | And when I went to go make my next movie, so this is how crazy is what we shot.

02:48:15.300 | Spike is three. Remember actually how fast they came out. That was in the summer of 2003.

02:48:20.820 | few months later, once upon a time, Mexico came out to number one movies. Both were finishing

02:48:26.500 | trilogies of mine. And each one starred Antonio, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin. When I was editing those

02:48:34.100 | at the same time, you'd be like, whoa, they're killing people. The other ones are like with the

02:48:37.380 | kids going like, Hey family. So it was really, you know, fun. It was fun to, it's easier to do

02:48:42.420 | very different things than to do like two action movies or two family movies at the same time.

02:48:45.700 | But I was like, okay, what's my next movie going to be? Oh shit. How crazy is this? Okay.

02:48:50.340 | So Antonio is on the set. I'm going to shoot him out in half a day

02:48:53.620 | for Spike is 3d. Cause he's only in the last scenes on the green screen, shoot him to lunch.

02:49:00.420 | Okay. Now go away, put on your desperado outfit. Cause we owed some shots for once upon a time,

02:49:03.940 | Mexico on the green screen. He finished two trilogies in the same day. That's gotta be a

02:49:08.180 | first. If ever, no one's ever finished two trilogies in the same day. And it's just kismet,

02:49:13.540 | you know, it's just how it happened to happen that day was just luck or the universe or whatever,

02:49:19.060 | but I needed to get something new now. So I was looking through my bookshelves of inspiration

02:49:25.140 | and I picked up my sin city books, which I've had. I used to be a cartoonist and I always loved how he

02:49:29.460 | drew that. Every time I'd see a different edition, I'd buy it, go home and go, Oh, I already have this.

02:49:33.700 | I got like three copies of this already. And it would just always grab me by the throat. And I liked that

02:49:38.340 | he was a writer director in a way, cause he would not just wrote the comic, but he drew it too.

02:49:42.900 | A lot of times it's a different writer or different comic artists. He's like a real,

02:49:45.860 | like a kinship, you know, this is someone who writes and directs his own thing. But I was looking at it

02:49:51.380 | and I went, Oh shit, I know how to do this now. I just did it on the green screen. If I shoot this

02:49:55.060 | on green screen, the actors on green screen, I can make the backgrounds look just like this. And I can

02:49:59.620 | contrast up the actors and I could get this very graphic look, which sometimes for a window, it's just a

02:50:05.300 | white box. So it's even got a sliding scale for budget. If I run out of money, just put the actors

02:50:11.460 | in black and white, just put like a white dot behind him for a streetlight. And that looks just like the

02:50:15.380 | book. So I'm going to bring the book to life. So I'll show you how fast we go from development

02:50:21.780 | at troublemaker. It was October. Once upon a time, Mexico would come out.

02:50:27.700 | I was like, Oh shit, I know how to do this now since city. I'm going to do a test. I went to my green

02:50:33.540 | screen here in my studio. You'll see my green screen where I shot all these movies

02:50:36.740 | and I shot, you know, uh, my sister, myself, put it black and white.

02:50:41.620 | Looks just like the comic, but it's moving. So I, I call a, uh, comic book artist friend of mine,

02:50:48.340 | Mike Allred. And I said, uh, do you have Frank Miller's number? And he goes, yeah, I do. Okay.

02:50:52.740 | I'm going to call him up. So I called Frank Miller. Hey, it's Robert Rodriguez. I have a test. I'm

02:50:57.300 | going to show you for Sin City. I'm going to be in New York tomorrow. He's like tomorrow. Okay. Yeah,

02:51:01.300 | sure. Come by. Meet me at this bar. Okay. Book a flight for New York. I fly up there. I have my

02:51:06.900 | laptop just like this. I go to the bar, I show him what looks like an image from his comic and it starts

02:51:14.180 | moving. And he's like, wow, how did you do that? I said, I got my own studio and all this. And then

02:51:20.100 | I started telling him, man, let's make this movie. Cause no one had the rights to it. He never gave

02:51:25.300 | the rights to a studio. A lot of comics. Oh, one of your brothers bought this a while back,

02:51:28.740 | you know, or then you got to go through the studio. He still owned his own rights. In fact,

02:51:33.140 | he'd gotten burned by Hollywood so many times as a screenwriter that he said, fuck it. I'm going to

02:51:37.220 | go back and draw a comic. That's so raw that can never be made into a movie. So of course I call

02:51:42.020 | him, Hey, let's make a great movie. I show him how we can do it. And I go, I know you don't know me

02:51:47.780 | and you're not going to, you're going to have to earn, I have to earn your trust for you to give me

02:51:51.540 | your baby. Uh, but we can make this right away. And he's like, uh, he's all excited for about two

02:51:58.420 | seconds. And then he goes, Oh no, then we got to write a script. And then the studio is going to have

02:52:03.620 | notes. All that shit he's been through before. And it's not like that. I have a whole different

02:52:07.620 | setup. I got my own studio in Austin. This is how it's going to be. If you like this idea, I'm going to,

02:52:12.660 | you're not going to have to take any risk. Let me take all the risk.

02:52:17.140 | I'm going to go write the script myself next month. It's going to be unremarkable because

02:52:20.180 | I'm going to write it right out of your book. I'm going to just go to, I'm going to edit three

02:52:22.500 | of the stories down. I'm going to just take stuff out. Really. It might add a few things to connect

02:52:25.700 | it, but I'll write the script in December myself. No money involved. Then we'll call some actor

02:52:30.900 | friends of mine. We'll have them come to my green screen. We'll shoot the opening scene

02:52:34.100 | as a test, but it's also the opening scene. I'll do the effects myself. I'll do the sound,

02:52:40.900 | do the music. I'll do fake credits. We'll watch it together. If you like what you see,

02:52:46.500 | we'll make the movie. You give me the rights. Then if you don't like it, keep it. It's a short

02:52:50.980 | film to show your friends. Let's be really cool. He's like, all right. There's nothing on him to do.

02:52:56.820 | It's all in me. I write the script in December, January, Josh Arnett, Marlee Shelton, come down,

02:53:02.260 | fly Frank in shooting for 10 hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence.

02:53:07.140 | Incredible opening sequence. Record his voiceover right then in my little voiceover booth.

02:53:11.780 | Marlee Shelton comes up. Why did I hire him to kill me? I don't know. Let's go ask Frank. He's right

02:53:17.540 | here. Let's go ask Frank. I want to know myself. He tells her and he's like, I want to do this movie.

02:53:22.740 | He's already, as I tell you, Frank, I used to be cartoonist. It's the same thing. You're already

02:53:27.700 | a director. You're just using a pen instead of a camera. The performances you get out of your paper

02:53:32.740 | actors are phenomenal. The shots you do are like beyond any DP has ever done. And the visual look,

02:53:38.180 | we've never seen that. I want to just take this and make it move. I just want the comic to move.

02:53:42.580 | Any other studio would just go make it look like any gritty crime movie and they would,

02:53:47.060 | they would miss the point that it's the visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this

02:53:51.300 | because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen. Cause that's how it reads. When I read the

02:53:54.740 | book, it's like, if this was moving, it would be the most phenomenal movie.

02:53:57.300 | In fact, I asked him, do you ever feel like directing any, any of these short ones? I thought

02:54:03.460 | about directing the big fat kill, maybe as a short films. You should come direct that one.

02:54:06.900 | Shit. You should direct all of them with me. Cause I'm really copying it right out of a book. You

02:54:09.780 | should direct it with me. All right, let's go. So then, uh, January. Okay. So remember I met him

02:54:15.140 | in November. I wrote it in December, January. We shoot the test. Took me a couple of weeks to do

02:54:19.620 | the effects. He loves it. I make a meeting with Bruce Willis, show it to Bruce Willis. What's so cool

02:54:25.380 | about doing that opening scene is that any actor I show it to now, I show him the book, which is awesome.

02:54:30.580 | You'd be playing this character, but look at this test. Let me show you the book. What it looked like

02:54:35.300 | before I turned this test into a test watches it. Josh Arnett voiceover music titles. Come on.

02:54:42.820 | First name on the screen, Bruce Willis. And I go, Hey, look, you're in the credits. You have to do it

02:54:48.260 | now. Manifesting it. Right. He's like, shit, man, this is great. I'm in. He's in, go get everyone

02:54:55.220 | else from that. It was just easy to get. And we were filming the movie. So February,

02:55:00.740 | right. Building the few little sets we had, like the bar. I told Frank, we don't need to build a bar,

02:55:07.140 | but I'm going to go ahead and build a bar. So we have a place to go have script meetings.

02:55:09.460 | Everything else will be green screen. We'll build fake steps and things out of green.

02:55:13.380 | So we're doing that. And I'm casting the first one. We're shooting the movie by March,

02:55:17.060 | beginning of March. And I remember because my son was born March 3rd. And I was in LA for his birth

02:55:25.140 | because I was also recording the orchestra for the score I wrote somehow in the past few months for

02:55:31.140 | Kill Bill 2. That's how much stuff was going on. That's like when you just let it flow,

02:55:40.260 | you're just riding the wave. You're not doing any of that. So that's what's by staying in that

02:55:46.660 | like urgent, there's always the deadlines are just pushing you to create stuff. And we shot the movie

02:55:52.020 | so fast in record time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year. I shot

02:55:56.580 | The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lava Girl with kids that came out two months after Sin City the next year,

02:56:01.500 | within less than a year, Sin City was out. You're shooting that in parallel with Sin City. That's

02:56:05.060 | hilarious. Is that great? Yeah. Like sometimes we'd be shooting with the kids and then the afternoon

02:56:08.340 | Rudger Howard would come and some of the Sin City girls to finish, you know, shooting stuff that we

02:56:11.780 | needed to film. It was just insane how fast we had to move. I was doing it in my head. I was editing.

02:56:17.540 | I just edited it. And then I would scan the artwork into the computer and I would edit the storyboards

02:56:26.180 | with the sound effects and I would do the voiceover. I would imitate Mickey and I would imitate Bruce

02:56:30.580 | and lay out how fast it was going to move. And you were like, wow. So now we have a template

02:56:35.780 | with the real drawings and the lighting on how we're going to do it. It was funny because I

02:56:39.380 | could do pretty good in Bruce Willis because I know in his career so long, if you're doing his voiceover

02:56:43.380 | and he would hear my guide voice for the timing, he'd be like, is that me or is that you? Can't tell.

02:56:49.220 | It's like, oh, that one was me, but just do that. It's like, oh man, it sounds like me.

02:56:54.420 | First of all, why haven't films like that been made?

02:56:58.260 | Well, it's a very specific look because it went into that comic. The first piece of music I wrote for that

02:57:02.980 | was the main title and I called it descent. I wanted the notes to descend because it felt

02:57:06.580 | like you were descending into this dark world and you don't come out to the end of the movie.

02:57:10.020 | You're just like in this world where all these layers of unreality, like water doesn't photograph

02:57:15.700 | that way, snow doesn't photograph, but it's there and you're seeing and you're seeing the actors.

02:57:19.140 | So you're just really, it's like a dream world.

02:57:21.140 | Yeah.

02:57:21.700 | So I was really into it and I did tests for the most difficult shots first. Like,

02:57:26.260 | how do I get his tape to glow in the dark, like in the comics, so it's still in the shadow. And I

02:57:31.860 | realized, oh, use fluorescent tape and a fluorescent light. That way I can keep it. We can still key it.

02:57:37.140 | Like I started just doing my own visual effects like that early on because I knew technology was

02:57:42.980 | changing so fast that I would need to just know how to do it. Like I'm like a magician shooting

02:57:48.260 | digital. Nobody wanted to touch digital back then. DPs were all afraid of digital. They didn't want to

02:57:52.820 | have to learn something new. So I had to DP it. So be photographing it. I'm like, it's so fun to cut

02:57:58.580 | because I mean, to, to light, like you have to have that light out of frame right now, but I could bring

02:58:03.620 | the lights in right here. As long as it was, they're not crossing it. I'm just going to take

02:58:08.100 | it out of the green anyway. So I could have the coolest light on everybody, cool edge lights. You

02:58:12.420 | can have an edge light back here, an edge light back here, a fill light here, but you don't erase

02:58:16.660 | them. I just take him out. Can you educate me and people curious about this? Oh, like what is the power

02:58:21.700 | of light when you're telling a story, when you're creating a feeling and experience, like what's the

02:58:27.380 | artistry of that? Well, if you look at the drawings too, sometimes it's the absence of light. Like you would see

02:58:33.300 | this face, but then this would be completely black, but you would still see my eye, which is

02:58:37.140 | like impossible. Right. But you believe it when you see it. Cause it's there. So things like that were

02:58:42.100 | a lot of the tricks I tried first. Cause I liked that about it. It's like, you have a guy completely

02:58:46.180 | backlit. So there's no light on his face, but yet his glasses are glowing white. So we'd put fluorescent

02:58:51.380 | tape in there, hit that with a light. Then we could turn it white later. The black and white really helps.

02:58:55.460 | And then just upping the contrast. But I mean, it's just something that you have a feeling for,

02:59:00.500 | but you're able to try it. In fact, when I took it to George

02:59:02.980 | Lucas who George Lucas said this to me early on, cause I was, we're the only guy shooting digital.

02:59:08.100 | He said, man, it's so good. You live in Austin. That's why I'm in Marin County.

02:59:12.980 | Cause when you live outside of this box of LA, Hollywood, you think outside of the box automatically,

02:59:18.900 | you're just going to stumble upon innovations. And he was right. It was like, well, yeah,

02:59:22.580 | what's this? Why, why aren't we shooting digital? Let's shoot digital. Why are we shooting digital 3d?

02:59:25.540 | Let's do that. Why don't we just use green screen for the background? You just start innovating

02:59:28.900 | because you're away from anyone saying, Hey, you can't do it that way, which they would say if I was

02:59:33.460 | in LA. So we just came up with a whole other method. So I took him since city to check out

02:59:38.020 | the first thing I was going to show at Comic-Con. He said, um, now this will really show people

02:59:43.700 | what digital is capable of. This really shows how avant-garde you can get with that.

02:59:49.380 | that you can never have done that on film, you know? And so by me versing myself in that technology

02:59:55.220 | early, I was able to make a movie like that. And then everyone had to play catch up, you know? So

02:59:59.460 | you should always just follow your, that's why people say, don't use those curtains as I'm going

03:00:04.260 | to work. Just blow past those guys, go innovate your own thing. Cause sometimes not knowing is better,

03:00:11.220 | you know, being too naive to like, don't you know, you shouldn't have been able to make that movie that

03:00:16.020 | way. People would, people would say like, how did you make my marriage for $7,000? Just,

03:00:20.660 | you know, it's impossible. It's like, why do you keep using that word? Cause it can't be impossible

03:00:25.380 | if I did it. Cause I'm not that smart. And it's like saying, how did you get to the top of Mount

03:00:29.860 | Everest? It's impossible. Well, I just kept walking. I didn't realize it was kind of at a slope. I didn't

03:00:35.460 | really realize it was going up that high. Yeah. You you've talked about like a big part of your

03:00:39.620 | approach to filmmaking to life is manifesting, manifesting the reality you want. In fact, I should

03:00:45.860 | sort of comment and I'd love to ask you about manifesting. You asked me at the beginning of

03:00:52.020 | this conversation, do you consider yourself a creative person? I should sort of reflect on

03:00:56.580 | that because I was very uncomfortable answering that. Yeah. I noticed a little bit and I was like,

03:01:00.660 | I'm going to, I'm going to free you up so that you're never uncomfortable again.

03:01:03.460 | It's scary just to say that about, about yourself.

03:01:06.260 | Cause you think there's a lot of, there's a lot of people who go, well, you're not an artist,

03:01:09.300 | you're not a creative, but you're not saying I'm an artist. I'm saying I'm a creative

03:01:12.260 | person, but that's an artist too, isn't it? No, artist isn't necessarily a guy

03:01:15.700 | with a French mustache and the funny ad. That's not necessarily what an artist, artists are regular

03:01:19.780 | people. Yeah. And regular people relate to art that's imperfect. If you can make art that's

03:01:24.260 | perfect, don't want to relate to it. So when you think about it like that, you go, well,

03:01:28.100 | I can make imperfect art. So yeah, I'm an artist. And if you have doubt, you're an artist. That's an

03:01:33.620 | artist. Real artists always wonder if they're good enough. So you are an artist. Just by the fact that

03:01:38.020 | you had uncomfortable saying it, you're a real artist. Yeah. And there's some degree,

03:01:42.900 | I don't know if you could speak to this, but, um, you know, there's a fear of creating

03:01:47.220 | shitty things. You know, I've, I've created a lot of really shitty things in my life and it always

03:01:53.620 | feels like that's really important to do. Okay. But you're judging something that, that you have no

03:01:59.540 | business judging, right? Like I have so many people. That's why I like making movies on purpose that have

03:02:05.540 | less money and less time on purpose. Like the biggest movie I said at all time on Netflix is

03:02:11.380 | we can be heroes. I told them, I don't want to spend more than $50 million. I know you all want to give

03:02:15.220 | me 80, but I want to be a hero and come into 50 because one, it'll make it better. And then two,

03:02:19.620 | you'll, you'll make three of them instead of just one. I don't want to just go spend the farm. And

03:02:23.380 | how many filmmakers will do that? Don't try to get as much money as they can, but when you're spending

03:02:27.220 | less, it's a win-win situation and you have more creative freedom. It's going to leave you alone. You can do whatever you want.

03:02:33.060 | So I, I like the creative limitations that come from less money. That's why I like brass knuckle films.

03:02:37.780 | Like we're going to make them for less so that they are better, not because they're not to make them

03:02:42.740 | shitty. So many people have come up to me and said, um, you know what part I love in your movie? They'll

03:02:48.340 | tell me some scene. And I'm like, oh, well that's because we ran out of sun and we had to like do that

03:02:53.540 | jump with just him jumping on a pad three times or whatever it is. It's something that you fumbled

03:02:58.820 | together. And that's what they're drawn to. They're drawn to that imperfect thing. And so I wouldn't judge it

03:03:04.820 | because somebody's, you know, if you called your movie shitty, that's like John Carpenter saying, yeah, nobody liked the

03:03:10.420 | thing and it's a shitty movie and everyone hated it. So it must not be good. And then 10 years later, it's a masterpiece.

03:03:17.540 | Don't judge it. Cause if you, words we use on ourselves are very powerful. So if you say,

03:03:24.020 | well, you know, I'm kind of an artist sometimes I make a lot of shitty stuff. Well, that's going to,

03:03:29.220 | that's going to be your lot in life. You know, I I'm pretty good shape for a director. It's not

03:03:34.420 | because I'm operating the camera because I work out. Right. But I always hated working out. I was not

03:03:39.700 | into sports. I was a filmmaker. I was a cartoonist in high school. I was really tall. They would say,

03:03:46.660 | come work, come be in our team. We need, it's a small school. We need you. And I'm like,

03:03:50.260 | I don't know how to play any of these things. I'm an artist. There's a line in the faculty. That's

03:03:54.100 | was my line to my coaches. When they would say, you got to come run with everybody. I would say,

03:03:57.540 | I don't think a person should run unless he's being chased. I get that to the Elijah Wood character,

03:04:02.580 | because that's the guy I identified with. He's there with this camera and that was me.

03:04:05.940 | So I hated it. And then because I had, I was a cartoonist, you know, drawing like this for hours,

03:04:11.300 | four hours, my back would go out like out for a month. It would just go out from being so

03:04:15.780 | so tall and crunched over. And then when I started making movies, operating the camera,

03:04:18.980 | doing steady cam, every year would go out to where I would need cortisone shots to get

03:04:23.700 | up again if I'm filming or just be out for a month. And on Spy Kids 2, Ricardo Montalban had bad back

03:04:30.980 | surgery that went wrong and he was in a wheelchair. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm in a walker. And he's

03:04:36.820 | like, I'm 84. What's your excuse? And I was like, I don't know. I just was operating steady. He goes,

03:04:43.700 | you have to work out, Robert. You have to work out. And I was like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I know. I know.

03:04:47.700 | And so then I thought, okay, next year I'm working with Stallone. I'll ask Stallone, that's Stallone.

03:04:52.100 | How do you get in shape? Because I need to get in shape. My back's always going out. He goes,

03:04:56.740 | get the trainer. Anyone who ever saw in Hollywood got in shape, they had a trainer. I say, even you,

03:05:02.180 | anybody, oh, I need a trainer. He has a trainer. I said, oh, no, I need a trainer. I can't train.

03:05:06.100 | It's like, well, shit, if you can't even train on your own, then what do us mortal men have? So I got

03:05:11.380 | a trainer and guess what happened? Hated it. I would feel sick when he's coming over because I hate working

03:05:16.500 | it. And then some years of doing that, I just, I can't stand it. But I know it's good for my health.

03:05:23.060 | So the desire's there. So if you can't accomplish something in your life, it's not a lack of desire.

03:05:27.540 | Like if you want to be more creative, it's not a lack of desire. It's a lack of identity. Like

03:05:32.260 | you're like the fact that you went, you were comfortable about saying creative. It's because

03:05:36.500 | there's a lack of identity there. You have lots of desire. You got to get the identity up and then

03:05:41.940 | suddenly you're, you're making, you're making shit. So I, a friend of mine from Mexico, she comes over,

03:05:46.660 | I have to stop smoking. My doctor said I have to stop smoking for my health. So I have to,

03:05:50.340 | so I'm not smoking right now. So I've been smoking since I was eight years old.

03:05:54.100 | He said, well, you're going to go back to smoking. Cause you just told me your identity is a smoker.

03:05:58.740 | So right now you're a smoker. Who's not smoking. What's going to happen? Eventually you have to say,

03:06:05.060 | I'm a non-smoker. You know, like just that, that lesson I had forgotten. You have to say,

03:06:09.540 | I'm a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker. It's what does a non-smoker do? If you believe you're a non-smoker,

03:06:13.460 | you hate smoke, start choking at the smell of smoke. Okay. I'll try that. She walks off.

03:06:18.420 | I go, shit. I forgot about my own. I wonder where in my life I could apply that.

03:06:22.500 | Working out. Of course, my God, I hate working out. No wonder I am so miserable. I'll tell my

03:06:28.900 | trainer and anyone who will listen, I can't stand working out. I don't understand sports. So that day

03:06:33.940 | I said, I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. That's the last thing I would ever call myself all through

03:06:41.060 | my entire life. This was 2012. I'm an athlete. By the next day, not only did my life completely change

03:06:48.180 | and it's easier if it's opposite day. Like if you're just doing it by degrees, that's bullshit.

03:06:54.900 | You got to go complete opposite. Cause if there's like a donut, you know, if you say, well, I'm going to

03:06:59.460 | only half of it, you got to go, no, I'm going to get an apple. Opposite is much easier. Not only did

03:07:06.020 | I change my life working out, I didn't ever needed a trainer. I have not had a trainer since all those

03:07:10.340 | years. Cause I'm an athlete. I'll just do it. What does an athlete do? An athlete loves working out.

03:07:15.860 | An athlete will make time to work out and they'll eat right. I was, I would never be the person that

03:07:22.180 | would call themselves an athlete, but that's how much it can change your life by changing your identity.

03:07:26.820 | So if you want to be more creative, you've, you've already got that in your, that desire.

03:07:32.100 | You've got enough of that. You don't need more desire. You need more identity. So you got to say,

03:07:36.340 | I'm a creative person with a straight face. So when I say, Hey, are you going to be a,

03:07:42.100 | are you a creative person? You go, yeah. Cause then if you say that, what do you do? You're going to do

03:07:46.180 | more creative stuff. Cause that's what a creative person does. It doesn't make sense to me how

03:07:49.780 | manifesting works, but it does seem to work like basically visualizing, visualizing a path towards

03:07:55.540 | a certain kind of future. I guess everything around you, everything within you kind of makes way for

03:08:01.300 | that makes way for the possibility of that. It's weird. It's weird, but it kind of, it's a kind of a

03:08:06.500 | nice to know that you can do that, but you have to just have that conviction and just say,

03:08:11.300 | start with a label. Yeah. The double R or the label you just gave yourself. Like I changed my

03:08:17.300 | label. My label was, I hate working out. I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. I'm not a non-athlete

03:08:22.580 | anymore. I'm changing my label and you get so inspired because now you know what to do because

03:08:26.980 | you can't help but conform to your identity. You're always going to conform to your identity. So just

03:08:30.980 | change your identity and you'll change your life. But, and it's not that hard. I didn't have to go get

03:08:35.620 | hypnotized or anything. It was literally, I just told myself, if I could do that, go from a guy who doesn't

03:08:40.580 | want to work out. Hates it. Hates it. I had the desire. I was already hiring the guy.

03:08:45.940 | I lacked the identity. As soon as I changed my identity, boom.

03:08:49.220 | Well, one of the things for me like that is probably music, just playing guitar.

03:08:53.060 | Are you a musician? Yeah, I'm a musician.

03:08:56.500 | I would definitely not. I mean, I'm, I'm going along with it now, but if we're honestly,

03:09:01.460 | if we're just- You wouldn't have said that. I wouldn't have said that.

03:09:03.300 | But I heard you rip on fucking guitar.

03:09:05.540 | And I've heard you play kind of amazing in all different kinds of contexts.

03:09:08.980 | Oh, but I, I should be like,

03:09:10.380 | freaking Santana by now because I've had a guitar in my hand since I was a kid. But

03:09:13.580 | since I'm not a full-time musician,

03:09:15.740 | I don't get to play it that often. So I'm not as good as I should be. But, you know,

03:09:22.700 | when you apply yourself to just rehearse for, you know, a couple of shows, you book some shows.

03:09:26.940 | Look at this. This is me just like playing our first arena show opening for George Lopez.

03:09:32.300 | That was crazy to be on the stages where you're heroes that you saw them. Now you're seeing what

03:09:37.580 | their point of view was. It blows your mind. You need to just get on stage. You get on stage once and

03:09:41.580 | you'll see that it's not as bad as you think.

03:09:43.740 | You're not, you're not like terrified because you're playing pretty complicated things. I've

03:09:47.580 | seen you play live.

03:09:48.460 | Yeah. And I messed up a bunch of times, but you don't want to focus on that. And you just go like,

03:09:52.220 | okay, I got it through it. Cause when you're up there, it's not that you're like screaming nervous,

03:09:56.140 | but your hands will just won't work anymore. Something will happen, but that happens to everybody.

03:09:59.980 | If you really watch even the best in their live performances, watch really close and you see,

03:10:04.860 | they screw up a couple of things, but you just want to notice they just go right through it.

03:10:07.740 | It's like, it's about the live performance and that's why you know it's real. So I think if you

03:10:12.860 | can really just lean into it more, change, really work on the identity part, cause you've got the

03:10:18.940 | desire, you want to play guitar. But as soon as you say, yeah, but I can't play live. You just chopped

03:10:25.580 | off your leg at the start of the race. If you say, I, I don't know, you just chopped off your, you're

03:10:32.140 | doing this to yourself. You're literally doing this to yourself. I mean, just you, I mean,

03:10:35.740 | anybody who, who pauses, who hesitates, you don't have to have doubts. Why would you have a doubt?

03:10:41.820 | Cause you know, the process now it's like, if I don't know how to do something, I know how to figure

03:10:46.620 | it out. Like, I didn't know how I was going to do that scene with him jumping and flipping. I didn't

03:10:50.780 | know that, but do I have doubt that I'm going to go in there and be able to do it? If you, if you say

03:10:56.140 | that you do you, now you're a doubtful person. That's how powerful that is. But if you say, no,

03:11:01.180 | I don't have any doubt because I know I'm going to figure it out when I get there.

03:11:03.900 | somehow it'll fall in my lap. I trust the process. You don't have to, you don't have to know. So if

03:11:10.220 | you trust the process that you'll figure it out. But here's the thing, like sometimes you fail and

03:11:15.580 | there's audience. Yeah. Then you get four rooms. Yeah. Yeah. And then what happens? And then what

03:11:19.660 | happens? Right. Don't blink. Don't blink. And then you go sift through the failure. Yeah, exactly.

03:11:23.420 | You go, wait a minute. What did I get out of that? Yeah. I've done that a bunch. It's great.

03:11:27.580 | Look, what's the worst that can happen? You go on a stage and you bomb. It's not going to be the first

03:11:32.460 | stage. And it's one of those you can talk about so that when you do the next one and it all,

03:11:36.940 | sometimes they all go right. I've had a couple of shows. We did, we did a couple of shows where we had

03:11:42.060 | video cameras set up for the second day. Let's say, let's not film the first day because we're going to

03:11:45.660 | be fucking just finding our feet. Let's film the second day. First day was fucking flawless.

03:11:50.940 | Flawless because no cameras. It's like you just go. Second day, we weren't as into it as we had just

03:11:58.380 | done it. It felt like the second take, you know, it just didn't have the magic. And that's the one

03:12:03.100 | that's recorded. And we're like, oh, kicking ourselves. We didn't film both nights. We should

03:12:08.060 | have filmed both nights. I love how much of a mess this human existence life is. Yeah.

03:12:15.020 | You've talked about the importance of journaling because living is reliving. I love that phrase.

03:12:21.180 | I came up with that. Cause it's like, wow, I see so many people who get after you for like filming

03:12:25.900 | a concert and they go live in the moment. I'm like, dude, counterintuitive. The moment goes by like

03:12:31.660 | this. Yeah. We're not going to remember any of this. The fact that we taped it, thank God,

03:12:36.140 | because later on it's going to be a file photo of me remembering you three pound me computer. All I'm

03:12:40.940 | going to have is a file photo. You may be in a suit and you picturing me and maybe a black t-shirt

03:12:46.060 | and the metadata narrative is going to say, had a great talk about if we remember creativity,

03:12:52.460 | you know, like their brain doesn't remember. But when I pull up old home movies, I can show my kids

03:12:58.140 | that I just found and they're like, they don't remember it. I don't remember filming it. And it's

03:13:03.260 | like new adventures of it becomes iconic and it sticks in our head. And all our jokes are based on old

03:13:08.780 | things that we used to do and say. So reliving, living is reliving. So keeping a journal is very

03:13:13.500 | important because I found that anything that passed 15 years on, it's like I'm reading someone else's

03:13:17.260 | journal. I'm like, I didn't even know that's where I got that guitar. I thought I bought that

03:13:21.020 | guitar. It was given to me. It's like a $10,000 Santana. It was given to me my birthday by the studio

03:13:26.940 | that I made that movie. How did I not remember that? It's like crazy what you don't remember. And it's,

03:13:31.420 | the brain is very, it's not a, it's not a very reliable computer. It's, it's made out of

03:13:36.620 | frigging butter. That's a really profound idea that so much of our life

03:13:40.060 | is lived through replaying our memories. And then watching stuff is a, one of the ways to sort of

03:13:47.420 | refresh, give some more, you know, texture and details. Makes it iconic. It makes it iconic in

03:13:53.820 | your life and part of your life. Otherwise it just went by, it went by. Like I'll ask people like,

03:13:59.100 | we just had a really, what did we do last week? What did we do last Wednesday? And they're like,

03:14:01.980 | I can tell you because I wrote it down, but I'm going to remember. And then when you see,

03:14:06.780 | when you go through your journal, like I go back and I find, wow, life-changing

03:14:13.180 | thing happened Friday, another life-changing thing. I didn't know at the time until now. I know that

03:14:17.900 | that really set me on him happened Saturday and another big freaking thing happened on Sunday. Like

03:14:23.260 | they come in threes. Sometimes you start being able to predict the future a little bit. Cause you,

03:14:27.660 | you see the patterns and it's pretty wild to do that. And I've, I've talked to people,

03:14:33.500 | big group of people, 500 people. How many people here journal?

03:14:36.860 | Two hands, three hands. I couldn't believe it. It's like, man, you guys, if there's anything I'm

03:14:42.620 | going to part on you is journal, your life is way more interesting than you think, because it's not

03:14:46.620 | going to feel like anything while it's going by. But in retrospect, you look back, like I can just go

03:14:51.260 | through, I keep a journal one file per year. So I started a new one in 2025. If I'm going to look up,

03:14:58.940 | like I'm going to do a director's chair episode. I look up Michael Mann, Michael Mann, Michael Mann,

03:15:03.740 | all the conversations we had since 94 that I wrote down that I felt. And it's like, oh my God,

03:15:08.460 | I can't believe we said that. That's how I knew about that thing with Quentin. I had forgotten about

03:15:11.660 | that story with Quentin saying, ah, Pulp Fiction. I had forgotten that because from the moment I asked

03:15:17.260 | him that question to the success at Cannes was very quick. So it was a lost moment in time where I had

03:15:22.700 | it recorded down to the time, down to the hour. When I asked him that question, he thought it wasn't,

03:15:27.660 | he didn't think that was the one for him.

03:15:29.180 | Yeah. And there's a, I don't know when it, when it's private journaling,

03:15:33.420 | there's an honesty, there's an innocence that about like the dreams you have about the future,

03:15:38.860 | the conceptions you have about the future. I mean, that's what this thing is journal is a journal.

03:15:42.620 | It's just a journal. It's like,

03:15:44.220 | but the profundity like comes out of it.

03:15:46.300 | It's crazy. Yeah. You didn't. And so much I figured out then I was,

03:15:49.420 | I'm talking like a professor by the end of that. Like people come up to me and they're asking me all

03:15:53.740 | these questions about stuff I wrote in there. And I'm like, I wrote that in that book.

03:15:57.900 | Shit. I was smart back then. What happened? I don't remember half of that,

03:16:01.900 | but I think that it's the same thing. When you go to teach someone,

03:16:04.220 | your mouth opens and stuff comes out. I'm always taping myself. Like when I go to give a talk,

03:16:10.620 | cause that's also the pipe working. Someone else is talking to you sometimes. So the act of sharing,

03:16:17.980 | that's why I've always liked to share information. Cause the feedback loop is insane. Like me inspiring

03:16:23.100 | Daisy DJ to go, right. He writes the script in three days, comes back, tells me now I'm doing that

03:16:27.660 | method. And it's like, wow. People come back with their version. And I love telling my kids

03:16:32.460 | stuff that I learned that I wish I could tell myself, but I can't take a time machine. Closest thing is

03:16:39.020 | telling your kid. Cause then they can take that information and process. So many times they've

03:16:42.460 | come back and said, wow, dad, that lesson you taught us about this is really,

03:16:46.060 | it's really become big in our minds. Yeah. What was that? And they tell me, I'm like,

03:16:50.060 | I never told you that. They said, yeah, you told us, well, I told you maybe 10% of that.

03:16:55.100 | All the rest you added. Oh yeah. Well, we embellished it over. Like they turned it into

03:16:59.340 | something else. And it's like, wow, that's so cool. But yeah, that thing about reliving,

03:17:05.100 | like that was a, but one of my favorite was just, yeah, my mom turning 75 and not wanting to do

03:17:10.540 | anything for her 75th birthday. I said, why not? She goes, the whole family's going to,

03:17:14.780 | you have 10 kids. They're all going to want to do something for your 75th birthday.

03:17:17.100 | Nothing can top my 65th. I was like, what are we doing on your 65th? I didn't even remember even.

03:17:22.300 | I'm the one who orchestrated it all. She goes, oh, you flew everyone in from all over the country.

03:17:26.860 | You gave me a car. I gotta have a journal of that. So I'm sure I have video. I go back 10 years.

03:17:34.140 | I see what tape I had it on, find the tape, pop the tape in, forgot about all this stuff. So

03:17:39.820 | I cut together a 10 minute version of it, showed it at her 75th birthday.

03:17:44.060 | Just watching the old one, everybody was like, oh my God, look how young everybody was. Like

03:17:49.980 | how small the nieces and nephews were. She starts bawling as soon as she gets the key,

03:17:55.020 | the gift of the key in the video, because she realizes now what it's going to mean that she's

03:17:59.020 | going to get this car. And so it's like, wow, let's just play the old tapes. We don't even have

03:18:04.300 | to do anything anymore. We banked so much amazing stuff that we've all forgotten,

03:18:09.100 | that my kids just love watching their old home movies. They hardly remember any of it, but

03:18:16.380 | even a VHS to them is virtual reality because compared to our memories, it is virtual reality.

03:18:24.220 | They're like leaning into the screen to see what's around the corner and they're remembering the place

03:18:28.540 | and the sounds. And they say, oh, we left the, we left the living room. It's like, we're there. It's

03:18:34.620 | like, wow. I was always afraid they would see this old footage and go, ah, that's a dog shit. What kind of

03:18:39.820 | camera was that? This is the limitations of, you know, you put up one of those files on your screen.

03:18:43.740 | It's like this big on your laptop. That's how low res shit was back then, but that didn't matter. It's

03:18:49.100 | like compared to our memories, that stuff, living is reliving, like pull up that, shoot as much as you

03:18:54.460 | can, take as many pictures, but write the journal. Cause you'll have a picture. You swear, you're not

03:18:58.220 | going to know what it's from. Even 10 years from now, you want to know what that picture's from.

03:19:01.100 | You read the diary. Oh, that's what that is. Oh my God. You can piece together all these things that

03:19:06.940 | are important to you or that become more important with time actually. And, uh, you know, what's

03:19:11.740 | important later compared to what's happening at the time to add on top of that. So journaling is the kind

03:19:16.060 | of raw or like home films is a raw projection of what's going on in the moment. I think it's also

03:19:21.980 | really powerful because I've done that is to do a high effort description of where your life is

03:19:28.140 | for your, just for yourself. So sometimes journaling is like low effort.

03:19:31.340 | Yeah. Sometimes it's just, I just want to mark that, you know, we had this conversation. I had

03:19:34.940 | to go do something at five. I did that, met somebody that I know last night I met somebody that's going

03:19:39.340 | to be life changing. I'm going to write a little bit more on that. Cause I could just, now I know,

03:19:42.460 | but I'm going to just record it. So later if I look it up.

03:19:45.580 | So one of the cool things you could do is, you know, like, uh, for example, somebody, um, uh,

03:19:49.820 | Jamie, Mr. Beast does, does these videos, which are great. I think it's a great exercise

03:19:54.620 | to do for yourself, which is a video he records, uh, for himself that he doesn't look at to be

03:20:00.300 | published 20 years from now. This is a message to myself 20 years from now. Here's where I hope

03:20:05.340 | you end up. You're, you're basically a younger version of yourself speaking to an older version.

03:20:10.220 | Yeah. And then you get, you know, time flies and like, you get to a point where it's like,

03:20:14.540 | holy shit, it has been 10 years. It has been 20 years. You get to listen to a younger version of

03:20:18.620 | yourself. Like you, it would have been hilarious if you shot videos like that to yourself. Cause

03:20:25.420 | it was just like the incredible journey of your career has been on. And just to think about that,

03:20:29.660 | like the Delta, the difference between what your dreams were, where you ended up, usually you outdo

03:20:36.700 | yourself in many ways. Sometimes you, your life goes in a totally different trajectory. That's,

03:20:41.340 | it's, um, and the result is kind of funny. It's a, it's a, it's a nice,

03:20:46.220 | it's a nice illustration of the nonlinearity of life.

03:20:51.180 | I would film stuff like that with my kids. I couldn't do it. I would film my kids saying,

03:20:54.780 | hey, turn to the camera now and say, hey rebel, it's me rebel rebel in the future.

03:20:59.820 | Yeah. So you have shots like that.

03:21:01.820 | Yeah. And then they show them like, cool, like that 10 years later. And they, they're like, whoa,

03:21:05.820 | just to see it talking to them and saying, yeah. And, um, I would do this thing where

03:21:11.420 | I would film them watching it and then pan off. So that 10 years later I could get,

03:21:18.860 | hey rebel, him reacting, pan off to the new rebel watching it. It's just like keeps going. So I have

03:21:24.620 | one like that where it just keeps panning and they're watching themselves within the movie,

03:21:27.900 | within the movie, within the movie. It's like an ongoing project. You know, it's just so fun to just

03:21:31.900 | play with memory and make you realize how fast time moves and to go, they go like,

03:21:40.140 | I kind of remember that, but I don't remember being that tiny when I had that memory. It's like

03:21:46.140 | wild how time moves and it makes them feel much more precious about how quick time moves and how

03:21:53.500 | important every little moment is because you see the fragility of it too. You know,

03:21:57.340 | does it make you sad, break your heart that, you know, the number of memories we get to create is

03:22:02.700 | finite, that this life ends. Eventually the story is over.

03:22:07.900 | I had this theory, I'm going to put this in a movie. I don't think I've ever seen this before,

03:22:12.060 | because I was woke up from a dream and it was like, trying to remember it. You know, you're like, God,

03:22:16.300 | it's so, so real. If you don't write it down right away, right? It kind of fades away. But you,

03:22:21.980 | while you're dreaming it, it's really real. And it's like, you can almost see the walls.

03:22:27.500 | By the time I went to go tell somebody, it's like, "Shit, I forgot most of it." But I wonder if that's what it's

03:22:32.540 | like when you wake up in your consciousness after you die. You wake up in your next consciousness,

03:22:38.140 | getting ready to move into whatever your next body is. And you're like, "Wow, I was a filmmaker,

03:22:42.140 | had five kids? And, oh, well, I'm going to be a fish now." It's like a dream. It's like that gone

03:22:52.060 | that way. And it's like, that's what past lives are. They're like distant memories, like a dream that's

03:22:56.620 | faded away. That's why you barely feel remnants of it. Do I feel sad about it? When I tell people,

03:23:01.980 | they flip out when I tell them that. I want a character to be like that. He's dying. He's like,

03:23:07.020 | "I don't want to forget this dream. I don't want to forget. Don't let me wake up. Don't let me wake up."

03:23:11.820 | But you forget, especially the moment you try to tell somebody. You tell the next fish over.

03:23:15.900 | Yeah, the next fish, there'll be a fish next. But yeah, it feels like I'm a little sad about it,

03:23:23.100 | but then it just makes you even more double down to be precious about the life you're in now.

03:23:27.020 | What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing of life? Why are we here?

03:23:31.820 | I mean, I really feel like my kids and I were just talking about this last night. We were just

03:23:41.260 | blown away. We did this Asterian astrology thing. It was the oldest form of astrology. It just nails

03:23:47.500 | each person. And it's like, yeah, because when you have a kid, you realize right away, this isn't my

03:23:54.620 | kid. This is not my, I'm just in charge of him. It's a completely different soul. He's a different soul

03:23:59.260 | that ended up in my hands. It's not, there's physical characteristics that get passed on

03:24:03.420 | because of just how biology works. Even sometimes posture and movement is the same,

03:24:08.780 | but the actual person is somebody else. And all the kids, I have five kids and I had nine brothers

03:24:12.940 | and sisters. They're all different. And you realize we made a pact in the past life

03:24:19.020 | to gather together. Cause every time it's like, so good. You were born in this family

03:24:25.740 | because you were given free reign to go find who you're really supposed to be. And you, and you find

03:24:29.820 | out everyone's is doing what they were supposed to be doing. But what's cool, almost like this clarity

03:24:35.420 | you get by just saying it, they now know that they were always supposed to be like this creative person

03:24:41.740 | or that. And now they can double down on it. Cause they know that's who they were supposed to be.

03:24:44.700 | They don't have to have any doubt anymore. They don't have to wonder, well, am I supposed to be

03:24:48.540 | more business minded or can I be creative? Isn't that some kind of frivolous? Is that a real job?

03:24:52.780 | Can I do that? Now they realize, no, you're supposed to be doing that for these, these, these reasons.

03:24:57.980 | And now they can double down. You can skip all that and just decide, I feel like I want to be that

03:25:02.860 | person. So I'm just going to declare I am that person. And as soon as you say it, you are that.

03:25:08.700 | And tomorrow your, your activities will conform to that. That's how powerful that decision is.

03:25:16.700 | So when you walk out of here, it's going to be with a complete commitment. I'm a technical and

03:25:22.700 | creative person. Like my first boss, I'm unstoppable. Cause my boss told me that and

03:25:28.380 | he was right. I became technical and creative and you're just unstoppable. You can just keep going

03:25:33.500 | and just go, I'm unstoppable. That's me. You're going to do, you know, use your powers for bad,

03:25:37.420 | but you've just changed your life by just declaring that. And I'm also a creative person who lives his

03:25:43.660 | life creatively. I'm going to find creative ways to use that technology. If somebody says you're not the

03:25:49.900 | same kind of artist I was expecting, that's their own opinion. Don't blink, just keep going. You know,

03:25:55.660 | all these things that you've learned that people were supposed to tell you along the way,

03:25:59.500 | they're telling you for a reason. Anytime you got pushed, like if you go back to your life at your

03:26:05.020 | really critical moments in your life where you went that way, instead of that way, there was probably

03:26:10.620 | somebody there who said something to you that kind of pushed you. I, there was a, there was one guy

03:26:17.500 | when I was in high school, it was like senior year. I wrote a paper and I wasn't a great writer at all.

03:26:23.260 | I wrote a paper for a Latin American studies class, gave it to the teacher. And, uh, he said, wow, you,

03:26:29.420 | you're going to be rich and famous in four years. It's based on what I read.

03:26:35.260 | He was like, really flight home like 17 or 18, four years later, I've done mariachi. And I went to him

03:26:42.540 | later at a reunion and I said, you called it. You said I was going to be, why did you say that? And

03:26:47.100 | he's like, I said, it looked like he would never say that to somebody. You'd think he would own it

03:26:51.900 | and say, Oh yeah, I knew. And I told you, no, he was like, he'd look like he didn't even know who

03:26:55.660 | that was asking. I feel like he never would have said that in a million years. So again,

03:27:00.460 | sometimes things come out of our mouth. That's not us. It comes through us. So if you think of it that

03:27:04.540 | way, why are we here? We're here for a reason. We're going to get nudged along, listen to the signs,

03:27:09.820 | own who you're supposed to be. Cause you're, you are that person. Don't let your human doubt get in the

03:27:15.100 | way. That's like the guy closing the pipe. Oh, I don't know if I'm really creative. I don't know if I'm

03:27:19.260 | really a businessman and you're just closing the pipe. You're not going to let it flow.

03:27:23.100 | Just be a good pipe. Just say, I just want to be a, I just want to be a good pipe, clean open.

03:27:29.020 | And then that's when the magic happens. And no matter what, don't blink, don't blink.

03:27:33.500 | No matter how many that dude was getting so much shit thrown at him. I wish you

03:27:37.740 | knew that time period. Cause then you wouldn't, you would go like, yeah, that's right. It's incredible.

03:27:41.180 | It was unbelievable. I can't even convey. There was no internet and stuff back then. This was like

03:27:45.420 | literal press reviews public. It was like, why are they targeting this guy? You know,

03:27:52.620 | they just did not like, he just had unprecedented success and was a really great guy and was making

03:27:59.020 | amazing shit. So it was the, the triple threat of make people jealous. Well, he's one of the great

03:28:06.060 | artists of all time. So are you. It's a huge honor to talk to you. Thank you for everything you're

03:28:11.660 | doing in the world, for creating the world and for inspiring millions of people to also be creators

03:28:16.700 | in the world and for your new project that's bringing people in. Robert, I'm, as I told you,

03:28:21.180 | I'm a huge fan. I appreciate that. It's a huge honor to talk to you, brother.

03:28:23.500 | So great talking with you. Great questions. You're going to change your life.

03:28:26.060 | Thank you, brother. Million dollars. Yeah. Right there.

03:28:29.420 | Thank you for listening to this conversation with Robert Rodriguez.

03:28:33.500 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

03:28:37.340 | And now let me leave you with some words from Alfred Hitchcock.

03:28:41.020 | Thank you. In feature films, the director is God. In documentary films, God is the director.

03:28:49.660 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

03:28:53.500 | Thank you.

Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking | Lex Fridman Podcast #465

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