Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking | Lex Fridman Podcast #465

I write the script in December, January. Josh Hartnett, Marley Shelton come down, fly Frank in shooting for 10 hours on my green screen, we shoot that opening sequence, incredible opening sequence and the visual look, we've never seen that. I want to just take this and make it move. I just want the comic to move. Any other studio would just go make it look like any gritty crime movie and they would, they would miss the point that it's the visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen because that's how it reads. When I read the book it's like if this was moving, it would be the most phenomenal movie. Just by being around him and working with him, you get by osmosis. You learn stuff and it just ups your game because they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that. So like when I first met him I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know, cause I was such a big fan. I was about to go do Desperado and I went, hey, I just took a three day Steadicam course cause I can't afford Steadicam operator so I'm going to operate Steadicam myself on Desperado. Now if he was just my peer he'd say oh I did the same thing and I'm do the same thing. That would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk. But you want somebody who's above that. You know what he said? He goes, I bought a Steadicam but not to operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one. It's like us mere mortals trying to learn how to operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy you want to hang out with, not someone who's doing what you're doing. We put so much of the world around them. Like when you see the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town, we built the real sets that so everything was very tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was all done in cg, well then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up, you watch this thing not work, everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves and creatively figure out a way around it, and by the end, you have a result that's better than what you sought out. Sift through the ashes of your failure and you'll find the key to your next success is in there. But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it.

The following is a conversation with Robert Rodriguez, a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita, Battle angel, the Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his first film, El Mariachi the that he famously made for just $7,000. On that film and many since, he was not only the director, he was also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects supervisor, sound designer, composer. Basically the full stack of filmmaking. He has shown incredible versatility across genres including action, horror, family films and sci fi, with some epic collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and many legendary actors and filmmakers. He has often operated at the technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD filmmaking, digital backlots and 3D tech. And always through all of that, he's been a champion of independent filmmaking, running his own studio here in Austin, Texas, which in many ways is very far away from Hollywood. He's building a new thing now called Brass Knuckle Films, where he's opening up the filmmaking process so that fans can be a part of it as he creates his next four action films. I'll probably go hang out at his film studio a bunch as this is all coming to life. His work has inspired a very large number of people, including me, to be more creative in whatever pursuit you take on in life and have fun doing it. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Robert Rodriguez.

Has there been a time when there was like one take and you only have one take to get it right?

Oh, all the time where you're just like. Or just, you know how long it'll take to reset and you're just. But then, you know what? You, you, you gotta just work with what you got, you know, you gotta look, work with your results.

You get nervous or. No, in that moment.

Oh yeah, you're, you're nervous going like, just. I hope it goes off. Cause then to fix it, I'll have to go do a bunch of other steps which we don't have time for. But a lot of times, you know, I've just learned that if something happens, it's just meant to be that way. And, and I got used to doing things in one take and, and just living with it. It didn't bother me. One movie, it was even a low budget movie. They had rigged a car to implode because I was going to throw a guy at it. So we needed a car to implode and then we're going to throw him and marry it together, right? And the stunt and the car guy goes, yeah, we're going to have three cars rigged. Three cars. Why are you going to have to. Well, in case one doesn't work and then we have a second way after we say we don't have all night to go shoot take after take. We're doing just, just get one car and if it doesn't work, we'll figure it out because you don't have time to do it again. Sometimes it's such a long setup. So I go, no, I'm good with just going. In a grindhouse movie, they only had one take. So that'll make it more authentic.

When it all goes to shit. When it fails you just. What's the next thought?

So I'll tell you, two things happened on Dustel Dawn. First was, okay, you know how those explosions, when somebody walks away in slow motion from an explosion that's become kind of, you know, that started with Desperado. Desperado is the first. If you look at all the montages. Desperado first. That's right.

That is the meme.

Because it was an accident. It was just supposed to be. It was just two grenades, not a nuclear bomb. It throws them over the side. And I just wanted like some body parts or, you know, something to fly up. Some shrapnel literally says shrapnel. And my effects guy was so ragged, running so ragged, we get to there and I go, do you have any body parts and stuff we can throw up or something? You can shoot up, 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 you a fireball. I can give you a nice, you know, fireball with propane. But it burns away really quick. Like how fast? Like that. But it'll be big and orange. Okay, we'll shoot it in slow motion so it lasts a little longer because it just goes poof. So I told the actors, I know how big this fireball is going to be, but just walk really fast and just look real determined and then just keep walking. Don't stop and turn around because you might get Your eyebrows singed, so they take off and boom, it goes. And in slow motion. It looks great, right? I remember showing it Jim Cameron before it came out and his hand went up like you've never seen that before, you know? Six months later, Dust Till dawn came out. So I, I, I liked how much it looked so much that in Dust Till Dawn I did it again. So those movies came out within six months of each other. That's why it turned into a thing, because people saw it. And so I thought, how about for the opening of George Clooney and Quentin walking out of the gas station? That we have the whole place just blowing up and they just keep talking like it's not happening, you know, like, take it another step further. So I'm not just doing the same thing. Okay, that one, it's like, okay, you're going to walk out and it's all in one take. So we're only going to do one take. We're going to blow the thing up. We're going to start with just, you know, some smaller explosions. Then when they're further away and it's safer, then we'll do the big fireballs. So we're going and you're nervous because, like, if one of them trips up a line and you know the pressure's on them. It's not just you that's nervous. You're nervous for them. They're the ones who got to walk out, do that whole speech, get in the car and drive away. What if the car doesn't start? What do you know? There's a lot of things that could happen. Well, guess what happens? The thing you would not expect, they go in, they come out, they start talking. Shoot it. It's perfect, great. We can move on. And the camera guy comes. I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here. We have an autofocus on the Steadicam, you know, we have a focus thing. It just went like this. No, I felt it go whack all the way out of focus and whack for a second back. Like it just reset itself. I don't know why it did that, you know, because it's radio controlled and we can't tell because we're shooting film, you know, so we're like, oh, shit, let's watch the dailies. Sure enough, let's see if we can get. Maybe I can scratch the film right there. No, it goes completely out of focus. Back in focus within a second. Now we gotta reshoot it. So we had to Wait till we're back in that location. We rigged it for two more takes, just in case. So that thing that was supposed to be the one take is three takes. The other thing that happened was the front of the Dust Till dawn bar. That same guy that did those explosions, he packed a bunch of explosives behind the actors. When the actors come running out of the. Of the bar at the end of the movie and there's an explosion through the door because all the vampires are blowing up, he didn't just. He put like 10 times the amount of stuff it blew out. You see it in the movie. You see this huge fireball going up. And if you watch closely, you see it already start to catch the whole place on fire. The whole front of that, which is foam catching on fire. And I cut just before you see that it's on fire. And that was the first shot at that bar. Cause we weren't going to start shooting the other stuff till night. So the first shot is that. And the set's ruined. Burned to a crisp. The neon lights blew up, so we couldn't even shoot. Cheech goes, well, I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight. And. But right away, this is what happens. My first ad, Doug Arnachowski comes over to me, and I go over to him. Guys came out with the fire hoses. The fire hoses weren't even adding water. Like, the thing was just scorching. The whole production design team was in tears because they had just spent weeks building this thing. And it was up in smoke and charred. I said, let's just keep shooting. Let's just keep shooting because it looks really kind of cool like this. Yeah, they're going to have to come repair it, and we'll have to come back. But it's all black and charred. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheech and that. The building's black. We didn't go there and touch that up. That's real flame that burned. And it ended up looking great. So then the next week, when we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they had repaired it. And we shot all the night stuff, which is the majority of the stuff in front of it. So sometimes you gotta roll with it. And then look at the blessing you get because of this mistake. You probably actually got a better take by doing it later with them. And then you had this incredible look for the end of the movie that looked apocalyptic. If it had looked just clean, you would have actually seen that. It was kind of a foam set. This made it look better. So I kind of let the universe push you where you're supposed to go.

Just roll with it.

You got to roll with it because you don't know what the grand plan is. You have your plan. Just know it's probably all going to fall apart. It's just like the movies. You come up with your plan of what you want to accomplish. That's like your script. Then you go scout your location and figure out what your project's going to be, and you go try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Then you go to do your project, and just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up. You watch this thing not work. Everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves and creatively figure out a way around it. You turn chicken shit into chicken salad, and by the end, you have a result that's better than what you saw it out. But that's the process, and that's life. And that's wash, rinse, repeat the rest of your life. That's what everything's going to be like. It's just like a movie. Because when you think about it, you're writing a story for a film, and you're also writing the story of your life at the same time. Like, how. How are you going to react to things? Well, how do you make your character react to things? You make him kind of superhuman. Why don't you just make yourself that way? You're writing your own story, and you start really seeing the more you get into storytelling, that life imitates art and art imitates life. But the process is also the same.

So you write the story, the script, and then you have it collide with the chaos of reality.

And in that moment when you said, you see the chicken, like, you have to be able to keep your eyes open.

You have to notice. You have to do that.

Wait a minute.

Okay.

Stuff changed.

Discipline.

Where's the. Not to be cliche about it, but where's the silver lining of this? Where's the path to actually make something good out of this?

And that's a skill, right?

I call it. And it's one of my favorite stories. I was doing one of these talks, and I said, come talk about creativity. I go, I understand. Because a lot of people read my book, Rebels had a crew, and told me, oh, it made me be a filmmaker. But a lot of people said it helped me start my own business because they just see how you can go be entrepreneurial like that and go where no one else is going. And I'm giving all this talk about this kind of positive stuff, and this one woman goes, you're real positive. But what do I tell myself when I just wasted a year and a half of my life doing something that didn't work? I was like, that's a real negative way to ask that. Can you just rephrase the question a little more positively before I even attempt to answer it? Because already her point of view is exactly what you're saying. She's not looking at all. She's just concentrating on what didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else that's there. So she goes, very reluctant. It was so perfect. I wish we had filmed it. She goes, I learned a good lesson the hard way. And I said, that still sucks. I say, when you follow your instinct, like if you follow your own instinct to go start a business or go make this movie or. It wasn't someone saying, go over there and you'll make a million dollars. You know, it was your instinct. And you fail. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. You fail, you have to really sift through. It's like the silver lining, but I call it. Sift through the ashes of your failure, and you'll find the key to your next success is in there. But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it. I'm going to tell you one, and I tell him the Four Room story. I said, I made a movie called Four Rooms. I didn't make any money, Right. When Quentin asked me, hey, would you want to make a movie with me and two other filmmakers? It's an 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 what each other's making. And we make it. We put it together. My hand went up right away, just instinctually. Okay, that sounds. Yeah, I'll do that. I'll go make that with you. Now, should I ask the audience? I like to throw it to the audience and her. Should I have not raised my hand that quick? Shouldn't I have done a little studying first? Or should I just go blind? Instinct. Or should you do instinct with some studying? Okay, well, I could have gone and studied, and I would have found that anthologies never work. Like, even when it's Coppola, Scorsese, Woody Allen, they bomb because people can't quite rip the hand. What is this? Twilight Zone? I want to go see that. But that's not. I still said, yeah, I. I think I should still go by instinct. So my instinct was to raise my hand, we go make that movie. Because I love short films. I made, like, Bedhead and short films. And I thought, oh, here's a way. If this works, I can make short films in anthologies and I can have the best of both worlds.

And by the way, anthologies is when.

There'S more than multiple. One story in one movie. Yeah. One movie.

So if you did the research, you would know that very few people ever.

Got that to work. Yeah. The audience can't quite rep the render, and then it feels like the movie's starting three times, you know? So I make that movie, it bombs. Now, I could feel real bad about that, but if we really think about it, you go, well, why did I sign up for it? Did I raise my hand because I thought it was going to go be this big financial success? No. I did it to work with my friends, to do something creative, to try something, but that's still not good enough. I need to really sift through the ashes. And if I look through the ashes of that failure, I find two keys to my biggest successes in there. 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, bed. I'm going to have two little kids that are running around in this room, and we have to use the bellhop as a babysitter. Well, it's New Year's. Let's dress everybody in tuxedos because it's New Year's. They're all going to go out, but the parents leave without them. When I saw Antonio and his wife, I thought, wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies? And these two little kids, one of them keeps falling asleep on the set. He's so young, they barely tie their shoes. They don't know parents are spies. They have to go save them. Okay, there's five of those movies now, Right. The other one was, I really love making short films. I really want this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories? Like a three extra, not four. Same director. Not four different directors. I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again? Well, because I had already done one and figured out how I could do it better, and that's Sin City. Those are, by far two of my biggest successes that came directly from that failure. So I always say, follow your instinct. If it doesn't work, just go. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. So what is. Where's the key in that? In the ashes of the failure. Because if I had an instinct, that means I was on the right track. I didn't get the result I want. That's because the result might be something way bigger that I don't have the vision for. And the universe is pushing me that way.

By the way, a lot of people that look back to four rooms see a lot of creative genius in there. So you say it flopped.

It flopped financially. Financially.

But, you know, there's so many ways to measure success.

But like I said, like. Like I would say, well, it was successful because, you know, even Roger said, hey, you furnished my favorite room. You know, I was like, hey, that's. I could take that. But now that I think there's something else still there, I keep sifting and it's like, oh, yeah, two big successes came from that. That's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about failure. Think of, like, the Thing by John Carpenter. You put that movie out the same weekend as E.T. that thing bombed. Critics were calling it pornography, you know, because of all the. All the weird special effects. And audiences didn't go either. And he thought he made a great movie. So, you know, it makes you question your instincts. Well, ten years later, turns out, oh, it's a classic. So sometimes it takes the audience a while. So if you have some kind of failure on something, you don't let it knock you down. Just go, maybe in 10 years they'll think it's great. I'm just going to commit to making a body of work. A body of work. Some will succeed, some will overperform, some will underperform. It's not your job. You just want to be a creative person. Just create. I tell. If you just create, stop thinking about movie per movie and worrying so much about each one or project to project. If you're a business person, just commit to making a body of work like an artist would do. And you don't. You don't know what the masterpieces are going to be or which. You know, someone's going to come and say, oh, that. That one that bombed. There is some really creative stuff in there, and it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.

And sometimes I think it takes some time to process the failure to make sense of it. Like, at least for me, don't rush making sense of what didn't work. What lessons do I take from it? How do I sift through the ashes? As you said, it takes time. You have to sleep on it.

Sometimes it's right there, and then sometimes you come back and revisit it, you know, later because you may not have had some information you have now that makes you look at it a lot differently. Like when I did, I just did the audiobook for Rebel Without a Crew. Yeah.

Thank you for that, by the way.

I hadn't read it since I wrote it.

Yeah.

So I didn't remember a lot of the details.

And you actually. It's voiced by you.

I voiced it. So I was reading it real time.

Yeah. I highly recommend people, because you comment, you add additional comments to it. It's great.

Most of the time I'm laughing. I can't believe how crazy that story is. I forgot a lot of details. And when you're younger, you know, when you're 21, 22, six months feels like six years. I didn't realize how short that window was until I reread it and how impossible most of that is. But you see some places where a setup falls in my lap and then pays off immediately in a big way, like magic, over and over again. It's clear I don't know what I'm doing. It's clear the universe is just pushing you places, so you can't fight it. Because I remember I was really disappointed. And it says in the diary, I'm really bummed that I go home that Christmas not having sold it to the Spanish home video market, which was my goal. I walked home penniless, and I was like, merry Christmas. I feel like a freaking failure. Good thing I didn't sell it then. You know, with time, you look back and you go, wow, I got an agent the next month. He wasn't even going to help me sell it. He said, oh, if you can get 20,000 for it, take it. I chased those people down for those contracts, the Spanish market, for months, and they never answered me back. And then Colombia ended up buying it for like, ten times as much. And we made it, we released it and did a sequel and did another sequel. If you look back in time, good thing I didn't get my way. My way had this for a vision, and it needed to do that, which you would never know. You don't know that going through. So just, if you don't have the answer right away or even in 10 years, go, maybe it's coming in 20 years. Don't let anything slow you down. Just keep plowing forward, committing to making your thing happen. Don't, don't get shook up by something that you might not have an answer for.

Yeah, every aspect of your journey is super inspiring. We'll talk about it. Let's go to the beginning. Sure. There's a few technical things that are fascinating about your beginning. So you started making films when you're very young with an old Super 8 camera and you were editing on a VCR.

You see, I've met a lot of filmmakers who, you know, they start a certain way, but then they finish another way. They get to be big filmmakers and all that. I still do it that way. Like I still, I like doing things that way. I have a new company called Brass Knuckle Films where the audience can actually participate by investing as movie and investors in these movies that are done the same way. They're action films like we did with mariachi. But 10 to 30 million, it doesn't take a lot of money to start a billion dollar franchise. You know, like John wick only cost 20 million the first one. Second one was, 43rd one was, 84th one was 100. Because the audience kept growing and growing.

By the way, you say, you know, 20 million, like it's not a lot.

Of money, which is not for an action film.

Yeah, that's right. But also we should say that El Mariachi, the, the, the film on which the book Rebel Without a Crew is seven thousand dollar movie. So let's put it all in context.

But you know, you know you're gonna hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor like Keanu reeves for a 20 million dollar movie. You know, I asked Jim, I said, Jim Cameron, I said, you know, like Terminator cost 5 million. He goes, I wish we had that much. He had less than 5 million for that. So you can start a billion dollar franchise using these methods and with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. And this is what I'm going to say now about how I started. You see that DNA of how I give out? You know, I want people to know how I did things with Rebel Without a Crew or with these methods that I started with. You see, that's how we kept going. Hollywood spends way too much and when you can make stuff for less, your profit margin is much better. So when I first started, I didn't have any money. So I still play like I don't have money. So I had Super 8. My dad had a Super 8 camera, but I couldn't afford it, I shot two rolls that you had to get to. You had to buy the film shoot two minutes, I shot two rolls of that. It's another same amount of money that it cost to buy it. Whatever that was, 12 bucks or whatever to develop it. You get it, there's no sound. Most of the shit's out of focus. But then my dad, who sold cookware, had a VCR, one of the first VCRs, home VCRs for the market that he would play his sales tapes to his salesman. And it came with a camera attached like this cable you got coming out. Imagine if that had to go into your VCR for you to even see what it's shooting. And it's this old camera, manual focus, manual iris and 12 foot cable. And I would start making movies with that instead. Now I have for $8 I have a 2 hour erasable tape of sound and picture. Got into digital basically really early. I was doing which was really frowned upon back then and continued to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before everyone realized, oh, that's the future.

Yeah, that's fascinating because you were rebel in that way too. Using data.

Yeah, well, because of the means and the democratizing of that, the elite didn't like that you could just go make a movie like that. But I started practicing and it's much easier to practice when it doesn't cost any money. Like if you want to be a rock star. Right. If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and suddenly be able to play. You have to practice to your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and cutting them together and you just can't afford that on film. Nobody can with a two minute roll costing as much as a two hour tape. So I was moving all these, doing all these movies. First I would cut in camera and that vcr, that old VCR had a really great pause button that they stopped making that when you hit pause it stopped right there. And. And it stopped with a clean cut. It didn't have all this color bars like the later ones had. So I. That was my. And it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it. So if I have people talking, I could hit audio dub and add sound effects so I could have two tracks on the same one. So I. That was my filmmaking kit for a while until I needed to start doing real editing. And my dad bought a Second VCR for his business. Cause I stole his other one. And I found that if I hooked them together, I could play on on one and use that pause button on the second. And this was the limitation. This is what taught me how to edit in my head is that if I shot a bunch of footage, I needed to shoot very little footage so I could find it. Sometimes you shoot out of order. So when I cut it I have to cut in linear order. Because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut. But only it only holds for five minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off. So you got to find your next shot within five minutes and do that. Otherwise if you have to start the machine over, it added all these color 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, knowing what the next shot was. And once I had it cut, I would then add some sound effects to it. Remember because I have the audio dub function. But now if I want to add music, I take that tape, which has two tracks now into the first deck and put it into the VCR again. One generation of loss. But I have a little cassette tape player with the music and I do a Y splitter so I can add the music and right, just like that. That's like being resourceful with what you have. And I made a warned winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video, not many, but they would always win. And they were always funny. Is I stumbled upon Spy Kids that way. Like I wanted to make these action movies in my backyard. But when you're a teenager, you don't know anybody who can come be your action star. And if you just bring your high school buddies, well, they just look like high school kids. So I use my little brothers and sisters because I'm one of 10, third oldest. They're just sitting around watching cartoons anyway. And I made them the action stars just to like learn. And I found those things would be a winning formula. They'd win every festival I'd send them to. So Bedhead was my first time using a film camera. It was a wind up film camera I got in film school. I went to film school for one semester and realized I already knew more than the film students because they, they taught you a whole other outdated way of doing it. So I thought I'm just going to use that film camera to make a low budget movie. A definitive film version that I can send to all film festivals of these Action Kids, which is a precursor to Spy Kids. Bed Head's a precursor to Spy Kids.

And we should say that Bathead was an award winning short film that was probably a big sort of leap for you that probably opened the door to you to then make all my reactions your brain.

Especially because those video festivals I would win, like a trip to New York and a director's chair with the video shorts that I would put in festivals. But I knew the film festival, if I could get into film festivals, I could send that all over the world. So I made that little short film, sent it and it was winning all the festivals. And I thought, wow, I made that with a wind up camera. Film, camera filming, just one take each shot. Just no slates because I'm the editor. And that cost 800 bucks and it was eight minutes. I bet I can make an 80 minute movie for $8,000 if I'd use the same method. So that movie I did, six months later, I was making Mariachi because it opened up my mind that I could try it in a feature.

Can we actually pause on that? Because I think Bathead has a really great, really unique story shot in a really unique way. I think what I'm trying to say is it's very important to write, write the right script, write the right story.

So let me tell you the trick to that. And Mariachi is the same way. This really helped people. Like even Kevin Smith from Clerk said, wow. Robert said, when Mariachi was success, I talked about how I did it. I said I looked at everything I had. What do I have? We have a pit bull, we have a turtle. We've got a bus that Carlos's cousin owns. His brother has a brother in law has a bar and he owns a ranch. So the bad guy lives at the ranch. The fight scene's going to be in the bar. 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 going to cross the road. It gives you all this production value so you write backwards. So for Bedhead, I even did that with a camera. So I've been shooting video all this time. And one thing I wished I could do on video, I never could, was slow motion or stop motion even. So when I got that crappy World War II camera they gave us in film school, I mean, I was so pissed. Like this is the camera I've been trying to get my hands. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a pawn shop. Old Bill and how wind Up. You couldn't even see through the lens. You were seeing through an approximation of the lens. But you could shoot slow motion. I could do reverse photography. If I filmed upside down, I could do. Because if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focus in right. So I started with it in focus, went back, pulled backwards on a chair, and then reversed it, flipped it, and now it looks like it stops on a dime in focus.

The number of times I've seen you shoot backwards is incredible. Like, to achieve a certain feeling, a certain experience, a certain effect, sometimes shooting in reverse, plus the sound effect layer, you can create this reality that's surreal. That then results in the story that you wanted. Like, you have. You have to be functioning in some kind of different space time continuum.

Start putting it together. Right. So I've got this different camera. Well, what now? I go like, I don't want to shoot the same kind of movie. If I got a camera now that can do that, I can do stop motion. So that's why there's an animated title sequence at the beginning. Because I go, wow, I'm a cartoonist. If I set the camera up here, I can slow it down enough. It's not. 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 maybe get one frame off. So I did 300 drawings by hand for that opening title sequence.

Holy shit. That was. That was you doing it by hand?

Yeah. So you watch that. And this is a throwaway title sequence. But I really wanted this thing to win awards.

Okay, hold on a second. How long does that 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 cartoonist by then, so I was pretty fast. But still, that's why it's only penciled. It's not inked. But it looks great. I mean, it's. The camera's going around and all kinds of crazy stuff, but it's just all faked by paper. It took me all night to shoot it, because I remember I walked into the film school the next day, you know, like, all sleepy. And I told one of the fellow students, you know, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence. And he went, why are you putting so much work in this? They're not going to. They're not going to grade you any differently. And I was like, grades? You get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town. I'm not doing this for fucking grades I got. I want people to see what I can do now, and I want to see what I can do now with this. So a lot of the story came from the limitations or actually the freedoms of that camera. I couldn't have done that story on video. So when I saw, wow, okay, I can do reverse photography. I can do stop motion. She has to have special powers. Because if she has special powers, then I can utilize. I can really milk this camera for all it can get. This is one of my shots I love the most, is where she's standing there. And the chair, she makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face. Now if I do that normally, where would I even put the strings for that?

Right?

To pull the chair.

Yeah, yeah. So I start here with the camera upside down. I have the strings in the back because you're not going to be looking at the back. And as it goes back, you pull it back. And then when you reverse it, it goes. And it looks so good you can't spot the string. If you look close, you see the strings are in the back but your eyes not looking. So I did stuff like that. And then just her like getting the H hose and then I just do stop motion for the hose turning on, you know, the faucet. That's why I gave her special powers. So that. And it made the story better. So sometimes the limitations you have with equipment or location, you can use it to make, you know, take chicken shit turn into chicken salad. Take this camera that everyone was like, what's this? And I go, I can do so much with this. But I tell you, today, I look at that camera, I can't believe I ever made a movie with that thing. It's so ridiculously primitive. I'm just like, how did I even think I could get anything done with this? And it even expose and mariachi the same way. You have to think about it. I shot mariachi on film with a borrowed 16 millimeter camera. I didn't know how to use it. I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment and I said, I have an Arri 16S here. Two motor looking things. One has a 24 and one has a bunch of numbers. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. That means you can do a different speed. I can shoot slow motion with this. Oh, wow. Do you have a torque motor? I don't know. What is that? Is there something on the side of the Magazine like it does. Yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to. I was doing it by phone that way. And then I went and shot the movie right then. Yeah. And I didn't know if any of it was exposing or if the film camera was working until I finished the whole movie. So imagine you have to go down Mexico, shoot for two weeks, come back, send it off to the lab. You want to talk about being nervous? Yeah. Just hoping something exposed. And when I saw it come back and the tape, you know, they transferred it to a tape so I could edit it deck to deck again. I was so relieved. Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around that. It's like, oh, yeah, because I'm doing everything. Like right here. You're doing everything. Imagine if you forgot to stop down and it's open all the way and one shot is blown out. You know, I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it.

Wait a minute. You shot Mariachi? The whole thing without knowing if some of the footage is damaged? Wrong.

Without any of it. That's why I only did one take. So my idea was this.

Okay.

What is that? Wow. It was a test film, right?

Right.

I thought it was. I thought it was going to be a test film.

Yeah.

It's the only movie in history ever made where the filmmaker did not think anyone would see it and expect it and even set it up that way. I mean, why would I make an action movie for the Spanish market called basically the Guitar Player Promises no action. No one's watch it. But I thought if someone actually picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're going to be surprised. I put a lot of action in. It was just to learn from. I just needed to make it for as little as possible, see how much I could sell it for. If I could double my money, great. I can make another one and just get more practice. It was just. I was so intrigued by this idea. Because you've heard advice about screenwriting? I heard advice back then that I thought was ridiculous. It said, it's going to take you a long time to be a good screenwriter, so write three scripts and throw them away. The fourth script will be the good one. I was like, it's so hard to write a script. Who's going to write three full scripts knowing they throw them away? Wouldn't it be better if you write three scripts and then shoot each one and be the cameraman, be the sound guy, Be Everything. Because that way you're learning not just writing, you're learning how to make a movie. So that was my idea. I'm going to make three of these, hide it on Spanish video, but make money back. That's like my own film school paying me, paying me to learn. So the first one, I thought, let me just shoot it. One take each. Because my friend Carlos lives in Mexico, if we shoot two takes, most of the cost is to film. I've just doubled my budget. So let me just shoot one take. Some of it's going to not come out, but I'm not going to know what. I'm not going to shoot a safety one that doubles my. Let me. Let me see if some things might come out. I expected, like 70% of it to maybe be okay, but 30% I might have to come reshoot, which is fine. I just drive back there and then I just reshoot just those shots, right? So I just went, let's shoot. We stop, we come back. Then I send it off to develop. Because we're shooting two weeks consecutively to get films shipped back and forth from Mexico to see if it came out. You just couldn't do it. I just had to, you know, double down on it. Do it. One take, everything. I remember one time I was telling the actor, man, I told you to run through that shot. And you, and you, oh, let me do it. No, one take, dude. Just think about next time. Do what I say. I didn't think anyone was going to see it. So you. And because you don't think anyone's going to see it, you end up doing something remarkable, which is, well, I'm just going to make something for myself. Because if I was making a movie that was going to go to Sundance, I wouldn't have made that movie. I would have thought, okay, I got to get serious. But because I made this movie that was just entertaining myself, like Bedhead, it entertained audiences. So that naivete is really important when you're starting out or at any point in your life. Be naive about what things going to and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson. Because I didn't want anybody to see it. I just thought, one take. One take. When I got back home, a bunch of stuff didn't come out. But I'm like, I'm not going back to Mexico. I'll figure out a way to edit around it and make the movie shorter, and that's just going to be the movie. And then that's the one that won one Sundance.

That was Your first feature film. That's one you made for $7,000. You mentioned your friend Carlos. There's the star of the movie. Everything, one take. And, you know, I highly recommend people go back and watch that movie. It's just an incredible movie. It's fun, and it's an action film. Moves really fast. The story is really interesting. So the script is really interesting. All the actors, you could tell, they all kind of stepped up and played their own.

They weren't actors.

That's right.

Friends of ours. Which is why. And because. And this was the magic of not having a crew. They didn't feel like they were making a movie. It's like this, you know, we're. We're just here.

Yeah.

Me with my one camera. In fact, the gal, Carlo said, I had this one girl. I forgot she's in town. Maybe she would work. Because we tried to get a soap star and she backed out. So we got this gal over. She goes, but I don't know how to act. And I said, here, let's watch. I want to show you some. On Mexican tv, a telenovela was on. You see someone, you know, all over, overacting. I said, that's acting. I don't want you to do that. I want you to just talk like you're.

Wait, that. The love interest. The woman in that. That's. You're talking about. That's what you're talking about. She's amazing.

She's amazing because I got a video of her. I said, I want you to just do this one line. Pretend like you're just talking to your boyfriend.

Yeah.

And I showed her. I showed her the video. That was cool, because I couldn't show her the film because we have to develop it, but I showed her a video test of herself doing it, and she saw herself doing it. She suddenly had the confidence. We went through her closet, this red dress you can wear. And everyone just brought their own clothes.

She really had, like, a sexuality attention, like a romantic tension that was real. That was. It was a. It was in part, a great love story that. I mean, as ridiculous it is to say. Yeah, and. Yeah. In part, like a dramatic love story.

Yeah. The idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player. You know, originally, what I wanted to do was a road warrior. I said, I want a guy with a guitar case full of weapons going from town to town like Road Warrior. But I don't have enough money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie. I do. How about we do a Genesis story? How he became that guy. So let's do Mad Max. Basically, how he becomes that guy. So maybe he is a guitar player. So that you start writing it out. I'm going to show you my writing method. I write on index cards, and I carry one of these, a little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag. And I smile when I run across it because I go, I've made a million dollars one of these before. You know, it's like, this is the key to your next success cards. Because you know, when you go see a therapist, you're not going to them for the answers. You're going to them for the questions. You got the answers inside, but you don't have are the questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering questions, like, why am I such a loser? You know, I can think of 10 Answers right now. But if you could. But if you go, what three things can I do today that'll not just change my life, but everyone around me. Take steps to that. Take out your cards and start writing them down. You won't come up with three, you'll come up with 15. I'm like, wow. Because you're asking yourself. And you'll see him. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player for real. And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. So I write down that he walks into a bar. Bar trying to get work. Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Maria, Just get the.

Hell out of here.

So he leaves after that whole scene, explaining who he is and what his story is. Then the shooter comes in with a guitar case full of weapons. He's also dressed in black, and he shoots the place up. Now, if that was a short film, that's how you'd start a short film. But this is a feature movie, so, shit, I gotta figure out how to tell a feature. I'm gonna need a few more cards before that. So I'm gonna need, well, who's this bad guy? How about, he's in jail? I had read a story, this crazy story about a guy who was in jail in Mexico. And he was running his drug business from the jail as protection. He could walk out anytime, but it was to have the cops be his enforcers, basically. So introduced that guy. He's in jail making phone calls, and someone puts a hit on him. So we have action. Right away, there's a hit on him. He kills those guys because it's his operation. He's not in jail. All the cops are working for him. And he tells that guy on the phone, the main bad guy, I'm going to come to town. I'm going to kill all your guys, and I'm going to come kill you. So then he gets in his truck and you see them bring him a guitar case full of weapons. He passes the mariachi on the way to town. And now it's his story. The baton gets turned to mariachi. Mariachi's doing a voiceover. Easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. We don't have to sing sound. There was even a scene when he walks into town where we saw these coconuts, a guy cutting coconuts. And we go, let's go film over there. So we filmed the guy giving him a coconut with a straw in it. And he walks out and went, shit, man, you forgot to pay the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, there's one take. I'll just put in the voiceover that they give away free coconuts in this town. And for years, people in other countries would go, they really give away free coconuts? No, it's because we forgot to show him pain. Little happy accidents. So now look, you're already building a movie. So it's like, now he goes in the bar, now he's mixed up, and the bad guy says, find the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. Then he goes and meets the girl. So you just start your movie visually, you can start seeing your movie. And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff.

It's brilliant. Are you doing this alone usually, or are you branching?

It's coming, and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Or maybe I have dandy. Oh, I know. I want his handshot. He's going to get his handshot because he's a musician and those ballads are always really tragic. So the girl has to die. The girl has to die. Because if it's a. If it's going to be a tragic song for a songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy that's going to be over here. Now you got the ending, and then your brain starts filling in the rest because you're asking yourself these prompt questions that you already have answers for from a past life, from a vision you had that you don't even know are there. This prompts it.

It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out what happens if you get stuck. Like this doesn't make sense. Like Some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense.

You leave all there. You won't. Yeah, you just start. You just start writing in the ones you do know.

Yeah.

Like, okay, I know, I know at some point she's going to betray him or he's going to think she does. She betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come.

Yeah, Those are all like crossroads to the story. Doesn't that? Like, how do you know she has to die? Can that. Can you change your mind about that?

I can, yeah. But for now, I felt like if I really want. The story's telling me now what it is. I didn't know I was going to make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the Road Warrior guy, but the Road Warrior, he lost his family. So really to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So he needs a ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a character. Well, look, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him. Like, it's not going to drive him like that thing. So it just kept it. It's just coming to me. So this is my other trick. And this is the main thing you got to learn about that. If you take any away, this isn't me doing it. I totally believe that. Because when you start doing this, you go, where are these answers coming from? I'm asking the right question, but why? How come the answers just keep coming like this? I believe because I do so many different jobs. I've learned this over the years. When it was in 2002, I was like, how is it that I'm the production designer, the composer, which I don't even know how to read or write music. And I'm writing orchestral score and I'm doing the editing and I'm doing the cinematography. I haven't been trained for any of these. I never went to school for these specifically. Must be something about creativity. So I went On Amazon, it's 2002. I look up creative books. Anything that has to creativity in the title, I just ordered it and I've got a bunch of books on creativity. And I was reading them through. One of them was like, really speaking to me. Yeah, that's it. That's the process. And then it says gels and mediums. And I'm like, oh, this is a book specifically about painting, but it applies to music, editing, cinematography, writing. It's all the same so that's when I realized that creativity is 90% of any of those jobs. The technical part of setting up the cameras, of writing a script in format or reading or writing music, that's 10% of that. How many musicians don't read or write music? And they're fantastic because 90% what they do is creative. Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do me.