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

I write the script in December. January, Josh Arnett, Marley Shelton come down, fly Franken. We're 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, cuz I was such a big fan. I was about to go do this and I went, "Hey, I just took a 3-day steady cam course cuz I can't afford a steadyic cam operator, so I'm going to operate steadyic cam myself on this bar." Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, "Oh, I I did the same thing, and I'm going to do the same thing." That that would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk. But you don't you want somebody who's above that. Do you know what he said? He goes, "I bought a steady cam, but not to operate it. I'm going to take it apart and design a better one." 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 set 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 Sens City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dustel Dawn, Alita, Battle Angel, The Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his first film, El Mariachi, that he famously made for just $7,000. on that film. In many sins, 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 filmm. He has shown incredible versatility across genres including action, horror, family films, and sci-fi with some epic collaborations with Quinton Tarantino, James Cameron, and many other legendary actors and filmmakers. He has often operated at the technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD film making, digital backloths, and 3D tech. And always through all of that, he's been a champion of independent film making, 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 film making 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 Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Robert Rodriguez. Has there been a 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 got to just work with what you got. You know, you got to look work with your result. You get nervous or no? In that moment, oh yeah, you're you're nervous going like just I hope it goes off cuz 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 uh and I got used to doing things in one take and and just living with it. It didn't bother me. In one movie, it was even a low budget movie, they had um rigged a car to implode cuz I was going to throw a guy at it. So, we needed a car to implode and then we're going to throw them and marry it together, right? And um the stunt and the the car guy goes, "Yeah, we're going to have three cars rigged." Three cars? just why you have to prove well in case one doesn't work and then we have a second one after third. 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 I'm good with just going what in a grind house 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 Destl Done first was okay you know how those explosions when somebody walks away in slow motion from an explosion that's become kind You know that started with Desperado. Desperado is the first. If you look at all the montages, Desp. That's right. That is the meme because it was an accident was just supposed to be it was just two grenades, not a nuclear bomb. He throws them over the side. I just wanted like some body parts or you know something to fly up some shrapnel. I literally said 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 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, um, fireball with propane, but it burns away really quick. Like, how fast? Like that, but it'll be big and orange. Okay, we we'll shoot it in slow motion so it lasts a little longer because it just goes poof. So, I told the actors, I don't 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 cuz you might get your eyebrows singed. So, they take off and boom, it goes and in slow motion it looks great, right? Mhm. I remember showing it to Jim Cameron before it came out and his hand went up like you never seen that before, you know. 6 months later, Dust Told Dawn came out. So I I I liked how much it looked so much that in Dust Told Dawn I did it again. So those movies came out within 6 months of each other. That's why it turned into a thing cuz people saw it. And so I thought, how about for the opening of George Clooney and Quinton walking out of the uh 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 and then when they're further away and it's safer, then we'll do the big fireballs. Mhm. So, we're going and you're nervous cuz 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. and 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? 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 goes, I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here. He goes, we have we have an autofocus on the steady cam. You know, we have a focus thing. Oh, it just went like this. I 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, cuz it's radio controlled and we can't tell cuz 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 and back in focus within a second. Now, we got to reshoot it. So, we have 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 cuz 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 just foam catching on fire and I cut just before you see that it's on fire. And we that was the first shot at that bar because 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. Chich goes, "Well, I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight." And but right away, this is what this is what happens. My first ad, Doug Arnikowski comes over to me and I go over to him. The guys came out with the fire hoses. The fire hoses weren't even adding any water. Like, the thing was just scorching. The whole production design team was in tears cuz 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 char. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheich and the the building's black. We didn't go over 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 got to roll with it and then and look look at the blessing you get because of there's a 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, you know, 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 sought 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 cuz 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, we said you see the chicken shit 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. 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 cuz 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?" And 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 is exactly what you're saying. She's not looking at all. She's just concentrating on what what didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else that's there. So she goes very reluctantly. 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." And 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 whatever, 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 It's didn't make any money, right? When Quinton asked me, hey, do you want to make a movie with me and two 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, shit, 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 Copala, Scorsesei, Woody Allen, they bomb because people can't quite rip the hand. What is it? Twilight Zone. I don't want to go see that. But that's not I still said, "Yeah, I I I think I should just still go by Instinct." So, my instinct was to raise my hand. We go make that movie cuz 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 world." And by the way, anthologies is when there's multiple more than multiple one story. Yeah. One movie. Just 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 starting three times, you know? So, I make that movie, it bombs. Now, I could feel real bad about that, but if you 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 bell hop as a babysitter. Well, it's New Year's. Let's dress everybody in tuxedos cuz it's New Year's. They're all going to go out, but the parents leave without him. 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 who one of them keeps falling asleep on the set. He's so young. They can 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 director, 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 sincity. 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. But, like I said, like I like I would say, well, it was successful because, you know, even Rodri 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. It's a 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 ET. 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, 10 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 I told 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 I 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 uh 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. Yeah. Like it takes time. You have to sleep on it a bunch. Sometimes it's right there and then sometimes you come back, revisit it, you know, later cuz you might not have had some information you have now that makes you look at it a lot differently. Like when I did I just uh did the audio book for Rebel Without a Crew, which I thank you for that by the way. I hadn't read it since I wrote it. 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 commas to it. It's great. Most of the time I'm laughing because 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, 6 months feels like 6 years. I didn't realize how short that window was until I reread it. And how impossible most 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 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. 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, Spanish market for months and they never answered me back and then Colombian ended up buying it for like 10 times as much and we made a re we released it and 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 had this for a vision and it needed to do that which you would never know you 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. There's a few technical things that are fascinating about your beginning. So, you started making films when you were very young. Yeah. 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 this being 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 40. Third one was 80. Fourth 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. We should for an action film. That's right. But also, we should say that El Mariachi, the fil the the film on which to book Rebel Without a Crew is $7,000 movie. So, let's put it all in context. But, you know, you know, you're going to hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor like Tiana Reeves for a $20 million 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 uh and with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. And this 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 Eight. My dad had a Super Eight camera, but I couldn't afford it. I shot two rolls that you had to get. 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, you know. 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 this is old camera, manual focus, manual iris and 12T cable. And I would start making movies with that instead. Now I have for $8 I have a 2hour erasable tape of sound and picture. So I got into digital basically really early. I was doing which was really frowned upon back then and 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 cuz you were a rebel in that way too using data. Yeah. Well cuz 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 till your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and cut them together. And you just can't afford that on film. Nobody can with a two-minute roll costing as much as a 2hour 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 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 film making kit for a while until I needed to start doing real editing. And my dad bought a second VCR for his business cuz I stole his other one. And I found that if I hooked them together, I could play 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 5 minutes. You have 5 minutes before the machine shuts off. So, you got to find your next shot within 5 minutes and do that. Otherwise, if you have to start the machine over, it would add 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 Ysplitter so I can add the music and Yeah. Right. Just like that. That's like being resourceful with what you have. And I made award-winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video. Not many, but they would always win. And there were always funny is uh 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 cuz 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, Bed Head was my first time using a film camera. It was a windup 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 cuz they they taught you a whole other outdated way of doing it. So, I thought I'm just going to use that film c camera to make a 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. Bedhead's a precursor to Spy Kids. And we should say that Bedhead 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 Elmer your your your brain especially because those video festivals I I would win like a trip to New York and a director's chair with a 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 windup camera, film camera, filming just one take each shot, just no slates cuz I'm the editor." And that cost 800 bucks, and it was 8 minutes. I bet I can make an 80minute movie for $8,000 if I'd use the same method. So that movie I did 6 months later I was making Mariachi cuz it opened up my mind to that I could try it in a feature. Can we actually pause on that because uh I think uh Bedhead has a really great really unique story shot in a really unique way. I think what I'm trying to say is like 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. And 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 I I looked at everything I had. What do I have?" We have a pitbull. We have a turtle. We've got a bus that Carlos's cousin owns. His cousin is a 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 gonna hit a bus at one point. He's gonna the girl's gonna 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 Bed Head, I even did that with a camera. So I'd 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 on. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a pawn shop. Old Bell & 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 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 uh 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. You start putting it together, right? So I've got this different camera. Well, what now? 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 cuz I go, "Wow, I 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 did that take to draw that? That's a lot. That's a lot of work. Remember I drew it. I drew it over Well, I was a daily cartoonist by then, so I was pretty fast. But still, it's that's why it's only pencled. 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. I 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 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. There's one of my shots I love the most is where she's standing there and the 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 did it normally, where where would I even put the strings for that? Right. To pull the chair. Yeah. So, I start here with a camera upside down. I have the strings in the back cuz 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 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 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 Hey, 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 exposed? And Mariachi the same way. You have to think about it. I shot Mariachi on film and with a bar 16 mm 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 airy 16S here, two motor looking things. One has a 24 and one has a a bunch of numbers. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. That means you can do different speed. I can shoot slow motion with this. Yeah. 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 there's a Yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to do. 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 to Mexico, shoot for 2 weeks, come back, send it off to a 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, cuz 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 all myself. Wait a minute. You shot 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. How gangster is that? Well, it 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 going to 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 cuz you've heard advice about screenwriting. I heard a revised 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 a 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. 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 re-shoot 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 film 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 go, oh, let me do it again." 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're 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." Cuz 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 naivity 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 went one Sundance. That was your first feature film. That's the one you made for $7,000. You mentioned your friend Carlos as the star of the movie. Everything one take. And you know, I highly recommend people go back and watch that movie. It's it's just an incredible movie. It's fun and it's 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. weren't actors. They were just friends of ours, which is why and because um and this was this 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 uh Carlos said, "This one girl, I forgot she's in town. Maybe she would work." Cuz 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 tel nolla was on and 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 talking. Wait, wait, wait. That the love interest, the woman in that, that's what you're talking about. That's what you're talking about. She's amazing. She's amazing. But cuz 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 cuz I couldn't show her the film cuz we'd 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 that you everyone just brought their own clothes. She really had like a sexuality a tension like a romantic tension that was real. That was it was it was a it was in part a great love story that I mean as ridiculous as it is to say. Yeah. And in part like a dramatic love story. Yeah. idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player, you know, originally what I wanted to do was like 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 was going to show you my writing method. I write on on index cards and I 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 with one of these before. You know it's like this is the key to your next success cards cuz 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've got the answers inside. What 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 but if you go what three things can I do today that will not just change my life but everyone around me. Take steps to that. Take out your cards and start writing them down. Mhm. You won't come up with three. You'll come up with 15. I'm like wow. Cuz you're asking yourself and you'll see them. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player for real and he gets mixed up with a guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar. So I write down there. He walks into a bar bar trying to get work. Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Mario. 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 got to figure out how to tell a feature. I'm going to need a few more cards before that. So, I'm going to need Well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd 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 he it was to keep have the cops be his enforcers basically. So, introduce 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 cuz 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 voice over. It's 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, oh, 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 voice over 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. You know, 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 vis 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 brain? It's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have the ending. Oh, I know. I want his handshot. He's going to get his hand shot because he's a musician and those ballads are always really tragic. So, the girl has to die. The girl has to die cuz if it's a if it's going to be a tragic song for his song book, each movie should be like a tragedy. That's going to be over here. You know, now you got the ending and then you 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 riding 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. Uh, 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 I 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 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 that 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 gonna it's not gonna drive him like that thing. So it just kept it's it's just coming to me. So this is my other trick and this is the main thing you got to learn about if you take anyway 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 cuz 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 that's it. That's the process. That's a 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, you know, don't read or write music and they're fantastic? It's cuz 90% what they do is creative. Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music, could literally jump from job to job creativity and do a superior job than most technicians. And there's also something to say there about the learning the technical aspects of an art. You you collide with the uh uh with the experts. What what happens is I've experienced this a lot with like with with using cameras and so on. I don't know shit about cameras. And then you roll in and then there's all the experts almost talking down to you and telling you how things are supposed to be. Everything is wrong. I I talked to somebody about like soundproofing a room and they said they gave me prices that are insane and like the amount of effort is insane and this the the dynamics of this room are all wrong. I'm like why can't I just fucking hang up some curtains? Like what it seems like that kills most of the echo. Like I don't I don't understand. And they're like no this is all wrong. Just there's corn the corners are going to have some and I'm like fuck it. I'm just going to try I'm going to see what it sounds like. A and B. Okay, here's audio with curtsy. Here's audio without seems like this is fine and move on to the next thing. I I think that when you say creativity, some of that is being a rebel like not listening to the experts. Yeah. Well, you're going on your creativity, which is what is that? That's like an Do you consider yourself a creative person? I think you play guitar. Yeah. Guitar, piano. Yeah. You play piano. Do you But would you call yourself a creative person? Yeah, I think so. Good. You should. I I think that's a positive. I would just suggest to anybody is just own it. own it and just say like when I do so many different jobs, it sounds crazy when they would introduce me, hey, Robert, he does this blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I was like, I get tired just hearing that list. But when I think about it, there's really only one thing I do. And I live a creative life. And when you live a creative life, that means anything that has to do with creativity, whether it's filming or piano or guitar or sculpting or you can just you can do it. You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better director by doing all those jobs because when somebody just does one job, they barely know that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity. And this is the main thing I learned was that I'm writing music, you know, for an orchestra. I'm like, how did I I don't even know what I'm doing. Why is that coming out? I don't feel like I'm doing it. I feel like I picked up the pen. I feel like I had the idea to do the cards, but then when everything just starts coming out so quickly, like that's how fast I wrote that movie. I go, I really feel like something else has taken over. So, this is what my belief is. And because I hear it in different realms, like you ask Keith Re, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't I don't. They're they're floating around the sky and I pull them out first. You know, you ask I asked, you know, Jimmy Van, how do you play guitar? Those solos. He goes, it's like a radio, you know, once you get it tuned just right, you can't even believe what's coming through. So, I believe I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us that's creative that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards, and then when you start getting in a flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing. It's that's that. And if you can have that mindset, you take your ego out of it and go, "All I need to do is be a good conduit for this thing. Be a good pipe and it's going to come through." So, you don't ever have to get hung up on that question you had. Well, well, what happens when you can't come up? It wasn't me to begin with. If it's not coming out, it's because I'm blocking it. Mhm. And if I were to do this and I'm flowing and if 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 shut the pipe cuz your ego got in the way. You just clogged it cuz it gets pissed off that you think it's you. It's not you. It's like, "Dude, just open up. Let me through. Pick up the fucking pin." And I learned this in uh when I was 19 when I had a daily cartoon strip. I had to draw a comic strip every day to get paid. And I would be like I'd have to draw like one drawing, draw another drawing, then it's like, okay, these kind of go together. It was a process, you know. And sometimes I just felt like I wish I could just envision it. Sit back. I'm going to try that method. I went home and I would sit back and try to get in my sofa, try the sofa method. I'm just going to try to picture the comic strip. And then as soon as I got one, I think it's funny. Then I'll just go draw that, right? Done. Be done in a half hour. Why? Why? Why waste three hours? I'd sit there and sit there and sit there. My deadline be coming up. Got like 30 minutes. I'm like, "Oh shit, got to go sit and draw it out." And it's like, "Oh, okay. I got this drawing cut." Oh, this kind of goes with that. If I make another drawing, I have my strip. That's the only way to do it. If you don't get up, the creative spirit ain't going to come visit you if you're doing this. Yeah. It needs your hands and it's not going to reward you for sitting there waiting for You have to jump in and do it. And people when they say, "Oh, well, I'm not ready." How pissed off is that spirit now? It's waiting for you to feel like you're ready. it's not you. Just start doing the action and it's going to come through and the ideas will come and the answers will come because it's not you. And if you can take your ego out of like you'll be blessed with this neverending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it and know that you're if it's not coming out cuz you're just clogging it cuz this thing's got endless ideas. And you give that same advice for for making films which is you know don't plan if you want to be a filmmaker don't plan like the movie. Don't think about making the movie. Just go in and start. Yeah. I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring filmmaker and I wonder how what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say stop aspiring because if you if you call yourself that, you are that. And you're always going to feel like you're not ready. And you don't you just jump in before you're ready. You don't feel like you're ready till I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi till I was probably in my last few days of filming. You became ready as you went. You didn't know all that stuff. I couldn't have figured all that out in advance. When my kids worked with me on a project that we did similar, by the end they realized they did an interview with my son who after just two weeks of doing one of those projects, you're a different person. He's suddenly waxing philosophical about the creative process and going, I never knew how my dad did mariachi until we did this project together. And I realized he didn't know either. He didn't know how he was going to do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge that got thrown at him, he had to figure it out. And that's the biggest lesson. Most people never start. And that's the biggest thing. Don't wait till you're ready or that'll be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so. He was never ready. And you don't want to be that guy. Jump in. No, it's not you. You just got to be the hands. And that that that relieves a lot of pressure from you cuz then you don't have to ever have to do anything really. You just have to be the hands. Can you talk through some of the hats, some of the many hats you wore with the Elm Mariachi? That's an interesting case study and you've done the same thing over and over in completely different innovative ways in all the films, but Mariachi is such a radical leap for you. That was crazy. That was That thing's held together with scotch tape and rubber bands cuz of the camera I borrowed. You directed. You did cinematography. You did the sound. It's better to just say what I didn't do. I didn't act in front of the camera. Everything else I did. Everything else I was the whole crew. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like you're doing here except you've got sound recording um right onto the cameras, right? Or do you have it to system? Uh separately, but it's synced. I mean, I didn't have sync camera. Yep. So, I had a camera that it was not it was not a sync camera. And the thing was it was so loud I would have had to blimp the shit out of it, which I didn't have a blimp. And then I would have needed a sound guy. Just to be clear, so people don't understand this. You're shooting basically no sound because the camera sounds like this. It's like it sounds like all your money is going away first of all. So I would go like this action. He'd start running. Yeah. And I shoot my edit. Cut. Yep. You know, they're still running. You know, like I'm I'm only using this part and there's no slates. There's no nothing. There's there's guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of roll. like this is real seven for just a few frames so I know which reel it is and then that 10 minutes of film is just one shot after another and I use almost every frame of those shots cuz I was cutting in the camera now after I shoot like let's say you know tell me your name Lex. What's your last name? Freriedman. Where do you live? Austin, Texas. I would do the whole scene and I would get the sound. Bring the mic in close like that. Say it again. Lex Freriedman Austin, Texas. That'll probably sink. Now, if you were going on and on, there's a place where it go out of sync. I hate rubbery lips. So, I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the girl. And then I cut back when you were back in sync. And since these were non-acctors, they say everything the same way each time. They would say their line just like they weren't they weren't performing it to where they didn't remember how they performed it before. They were just talking in their own rhythm. So, a lot of the times it's anytime you see anyone on camera talking, they're in sync with themselves. And as soon as it cuts away, they're out of sync. And it created this really fast cutting style that I probably wouldn't have had on such a lowbudget movie, but it was the only way to keep things in sync. So, when I would shoot two people talking, I would make sure I'd film a couple shots of like the dog or a a stuffed cat or something just so I'd have something to cut away to to get them back in sync. That's so brilliant. It's I call it It's just resourceful. It's just being very resourceful. You allow it to get maybe a little bit out of sync sometimes. I didn't allow it, but Oh, yeah. I would let it if I just didn't have a way to cut away, right? And I would try to sync it as best I could. But we as the audience like, do you understand where the threshold is where we notice something? Yeah. Seems like you can get away with a lot. You can get away with I just don't I'm just particular about that. I just don't like seeing a dub movie where it just feels canned. It makes you not believe in it anymore. So, I just cut away where the lips are just way off. I just didn't want any of that. I just felt like I wanted it to just be believable and there they could be really believable if they were in sync. But I didn't shoot two takes of film or even two takes of audio, just one take. We just went through the And was cool is that because I just had them go through the whole scene. Again, so I would go ahead and record them like grabbing the bottle or any action they did, opening the suitcase, I'd have all the sound effects, too. I just had to sync it by hand. That's a lot of work for me. But I got great sound that way. Cuz if I had had a sync camera, the mic would have been so far we wouldn't have we would have had to go get new sound effects. But because the camera is off, I could record everything close up. So there was some blessing to that. You uh and Quinton Tarantino had a great conversation about a lot of topics, but one of them is how to bring out the best in the actors. Like what in that Marriage, how do you bring out the best in these non-acctors? And then maybe what's the thread that connects to your future work too? What really helped for those non- actors was that they just look across and and it's me filming. They didn't feel like they were so they were being so natural. Like the guy who played the bad guy, I met him in the research hospital where I was sold my body to science. He was my bunkmate. And I said, "Dude, you look kind of like Rutgar Hower." And then it's like we saw another movie. Man, you look like James Sper. Shit. You should be the bad guy in my movie and it'd be cool to have you as the bad guy. He goes, "But I don't speak Spanish." Well, that's okay. All right. And I'll teach you it phonetically and you're going to wear sunglasses. And if you look close, he's holding the he's holding the lines here and he's looking at the lines like that and just smiling. So can't believe he's getting away with this. He's smiling and he's got the sunglasses on. I read that somewhere in the pool. There's like a scene in the pool. In the pool. He's like this with the sunglasses on with Oh, man. But but he was doing it phonetically and I tell you what, he was so great that guy, right? Yeah. When we do Esperado, I brought him back. didn't even have to do any dialogue. Watch that movie when he shows up in the opening scene when Desperado he's playing the guitar and the opening with the credits to tie it into the first movie. He shows up again and all he has to do is light a cigarette and you see this. Yeah. Cuz he's so nervous cuz now there's a crew behind me. Now it's real. Before it was just me and him and it didn't feel like a real movie. So everyone gave a great performance. So, how do you recreate that later on a big movie is just building a rapport, making a safe zone for your actors. Quinton once told me, sometimes being, you know, we're talking about directing, yeah, sometimes being a great director is just being a great audience. You know, being a great audience for the because you're you're the you're taking the place of the audience for the actor. They try something and if you're enjoying it, they know that the audience is going to enjoy it or if you're, you know, makes you cry, you know. So, sometimes you just you don't have to tell them a lot sometimes. And if you do have something very specific to tell them, they usually, you know, go with it. But I always just like to see what they do. And a lot of times they just are in the zone because again, they're they're getting that flow, too. You create the right environment, everyone's getting this inspiration that's all tied together that you never could have directed. It's just like you just create that space where we're all going to be open to it and it's going to drop in our lap and I'm going to point it out when it does because you may not feel like you know how to play this role yet. But I say not knowing is the other half of the battle and the more important part. That's the part we're going to discover and when it happens, I'm going to point it out and it's going to be like magic and we're just going to go, okay, we're accepting it and we do it. And it gets people in that kind of headsp space and then we're all open to it to where the character is supposed to go, what the what it's supposed to sound like instead of me being very, you know, manipulative to get a certain thing. I don't know. It's it's just whatever feels good. Yeah. There's such an intimate connection between the actor and the director. I've seen some of the behindthe-scenes footage with you. Mhm. You are just a fan. and enjoying the scene when it's done well. But I think there's an aspect if I were to put myself in the head space of the actor, they want you as the audience like to earn that happiness, you know, cuz when a director approves. Yeah. Well, you're a performer, you know, and there's no other, you know, it's not like a live show where you get the approval of the audience and you're like, "Oh, wow. They they like that joke. Let me do more." You know, really the director is it. And a lot of times the director's way behind a monitor somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera because when I'm operating the camera, it's like this. We could have a hundred people here. we wouldn't know because they go away. It's just us. They just disappear when it's the camera guy is the director and we're going, "Let's do that again. Let's do that again." There's a shot in uh I'm gliding Sensity and myself there. I have my crew setting lights and I have uh this great shot of Clive and where he's holding down Benio's head in the toilet. You know, Benio is not there. It's just a close-up of him at this point. And I'm practicing my shot. I'm zooming in slow in his face and people are still walking behind him on the green screen setting lights. And I'm like, I'm rolling. We're ready to go. We're getting this. So, I can already tell we're already in the moment. What you're doing right now, just keep holding that. Look now. One jolt. Like you're like he's starting to fight back, but you don't even flinch. Cut. Okay, never mind. You guys can stop moving that shit. We already got Holy shit. It's like that. Wow. It's like that cuz you're so That's a great scene, by the way. Great. Right. And it can feel if I wait for these guys, this moment will be gone. And then another one was Mickey Ror. You know, he had so much freaking dialogue. He had just done this whole big dialogue scene. He had another one and said, "Let's go ahead and start with a wide shot where the two actor, if I'm the camera, you know, Mickey and Elijah are here. Let's get a two shot and we'll come around on Mickey closeup." You know, we'll turn Mickey around for the close-up. Let's start with the wise thing and get used to the lines and most of it's going to be sold in a close-up. We sit down. Mickey starts delivering the take. Like, hold on, hold on a second. I brought my camera over, zoom in, just adjust that light real quick cuz I'm the DP. Because if I had another director of photography, be like, "Oh, no, no, we have to relight and all this stuff." It's like no no let's just do this this let's go. He's doing it right now and I go and that performance is just right then and so you can feel that when you're or also you're operating and you're the camera guy and you're the DP. It's like high-tech gorilla filmmaking. Yeah, we're on a green screen but it's like all the crew needs are, you know, marching orders. Just put a light back there hitting them harder like that's a this is a 5K, make that a 10K. It's got to be stronger. They don't need to know that I'm going to make that a lamp post later. They just need it marching orders for the moment. So, I can just kind of tell people do this, do this, do that, and then I know what I can accomplish with the actor and then everything else falls into place later because I'm going to put all that in later. You know, things once you know how to do a lot of jobs like that, you can just move at the speed of thought, which is where the actors love being creatively cuz they nobody knew what green screen was back then. They're like, "What is this again?" So, I explained it as, well, it's kind of like doing theater, but instead of a black curtain behind you with a prop, it'll be a green curtain, and you might just have a cup or just a steering wheel, but it's just you and the other actors just like this. And everything else will be painted in later. We're just talking. We're locked in. If we stay locked in, we'll look great when there's rain coming down and we're on a ship later. But it's comes down to this, right? And the more It was so fun to do those kind of movies to this day. He tried to be close to the action connected with the actor that's because it's like a dance you end up that's so to hear remember on on Dust Till Dawn Michael Parks in the opening scene he's talking about the two guys that are running around killing people just before he gets shot and there's a I just start doing this slow zoom I remember it was take eight start doing this slow zoom on him and I'm like I hope I get all the way up to where it stops zooming when he finishes that speech because there's no set way and I don't know how he's going to say it, but you're just locked almost telepathically. And as he's delivered, there's no edits. He's just going, "Yeah, they killed four rangers, two hostages. It's just like and you're just so pulled in." I'm just like, "Oh my god." And then it stopped. It's like I ran out of zoom right as he finished that speech. So, how can a director because there's a lot of great directors that stay in the in the bag. I know. you know, they just trust that whatever they get from their crew, they just you accept it. Just like, you know, you would get a take I like that intimate connection because I could not be behind a monitor even if I had communication with my cameraman. Okay, now start zooming in. I You're not going to 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 with a partner and you're across the room, you know? It's like, no, you got to be there up close feeling the energy and and it's the the creative spirits whispering to your both, you know? It's not your own idea. It's you're capturing a moment that's magic and there's true magic that happens on a set and that's what brings you back cuz you know I didn't direct that and they didn't act that came through us and we just had the cameras rolling and we captured a ghost. It's like just like you said you had the pen in hand and you were you were there. It's crazy. It's crazy. All right. Your friendship with Tarantino is just fascinating and just the whole timeline of the history of movies and that the two of you collided and met is is just a fascinating part of the story. You first met him in 1992 at the Toronto Film Festival. Can can you just talk about meeting Tarantino? Yeah, we both had films at the same time with first films, Guys in Black, action, violence. In fact, I had seen his movie already. My first film festival was a few months before that, the Tellyide Film Festival and Reservoir Dogs was there, but Quinton couldn't be there. He was at Sundance earlier that year and the guy who became my agent, he saw it, he said, "Hey, you're gonna like this guy, Quinton Tarantino. I told him about you. You're going to meet him. He's going to be in Toronto." Oh, cool, cool. Okay. And so I went ahead and saw his movie and Tellide and I was like, "Holy shit, this guy's in black again, just like the mariachi's dressed in black and action." I said, "Oh, we're going to like each other's movies. He's going to like my movie when he sees it." So then in Toronto we met and uh we met first on a because I knew I was going to be doing a panel discussion with him. They asked us to do a panel discussion about violence and movies in the '9s even though it was only 92. So we're on a panel together and that's where I met him and he's like hey Robert your agent told me about you and I was like yeah and I saw your movie Reservoir Dogs and he goes oh you got to come to my screening and I'm going to come see yours. So he came to Mariachi and I videotaped the audience reactions because they were insane insane reactions to it. But I have the first screening he saw of Mariachi sitting next to me laughing. He's laughing and everything. He was just the best audience. I have his recording of the first time he saw Mariachi. Oh no, really? Yeah, cuz I taped it all and he's so loud cuz he's right next to me. Well, just like you, but even probably even more than you. He's a fan. He watches He just loves movies. He loves movies. In fact, I the the next time I heard him laugh that way was at the own premiere for Kill Bill. We're watching Kill Bill and he's laughing like it's somebody else's movie. He still enjoys the movie. It's so he loves what the actors did and…

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