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

24:18What lessons do I take from it? How do I assist through the ashes, as you said? Yeah. Like it takes time. You have to sleep on it a bunch of nights. Sometimes it's right there. And then sometimes you come back, revisit it, you know, later, because 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 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.

24:50Yeah. I highly recommend people because you comment, you add additional comments to it. It's great. Most of the time I'm laughing. Yeah. 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 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.

25:19So 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 was even gonna help me sell it. He said, 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.

25:54And then Colombian and Abiann for like 10 times as much 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 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 for committing to making your thing happen. Don't get shook up by something that you might not have an answer for. Yeah, every aspect of your journey is super inspiring.

26:29We'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 were very young with an old, super -aid 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 -nuckle films where the audience can actually participate by investing in these movie and investors in these movies that are done the same way.

27:01Their action films like we did with Mariatri, 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 in a lot of money, which is not for an action film. Yeah, that's right, but also we should say that Elmeriachi 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.

27:34You think get a big actor like a Tiana Reeves for a 20 million dollar movie You know, I asked Jim I said Jim Cameron. I said, you know like Terminator costs five million He goes I wish we had that much he had less than five million for that. So you can start a billion dollar franchise using these methods and and with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. And this is what I'm gonna say now about how I started. You see that DNA of how I give out, 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.

28:06Hollywood 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 to superrate, my dad had a super -acamber, but I couldn't afford it. I shot two rolls that you had to get 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 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.

28:47And it came with a camera attached. Like this cable you got coming out. Imagine if that had to go into your VCR, viewed even see what it's shooting. This is 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 two hour 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 continue to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before everyone realized so that's the future. Yeah, that's fascinating because you were rebel in that way too using data.

29:24Yeah, 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 suddenly go 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 two -minute role Costing as much as a two -hour tape So I was moving all these doing all these movies first.

29:56I would cut in camera and that VCR that all 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 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 because I stole his other one.

30:33And 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 would 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 because 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 We're added all these color bars and it would be all screwed up.

31:08So 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 memories. 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 wiseplitter so I can add the music and the yeah, right? It's like that. That's like being resourceful with what you have and I made a warrant winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video not many But they would always win and there are always funny is a I stumbled upon spike kids that way like I wanted to make these action movies 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.

32:07I'm one of ten 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 with my first time using a film camera There's a wind up film camera I got in film school, 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 Spike It's bit, but it's a precursor to Spike It's.

32:47And 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 too, then it made me feel very out of tune. I opened up your brain especially, because those video festivals, I would win like a trip to New York and a director's chair with a video of shorts that I would put in festivals. But I knew the film festivals, if I could get into film festivals, I could sit at 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.

33:24just no slates because I'm the editor and that costs 800 bucks and it was eight minutes. I bet I can make 80 minute movie for $8 ,000 if I do 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 badhead 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 the right script Write the right story. Let me tell you the trick to that. Yeah, and mariachi is the same way This really helped people like even Kevin Smith from clerk said wow Robert said When mariachi was obsessed I talked about how I did it.

34:10I said I 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 is cousin owns his cousin is the brother as a brother in law has a bar and he owns a ranch So the bad guy lives at the ranch the fight scene is gonna be in the bar He's gonna hit a bus at one point He's gonna the girls gonna have a dog and a turtle is gonna cross the road It gives you all this production value. So you write backwards So for bedhead even did that with a camera so I've been shooting video all this time And I'm one thing I wish I could do on video and it could with slow motion or stop motion even So when I got that crappy World War II camera they gave us in film school.

34:48I 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 in a bunch of 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 backwards on a chair and then reversed it, flipped it, and that looks like it stops on a dime and focus. At the number of times I've seen you shoot backwards is incredible.

35:24To achieve a certain feeling, a certain experience, a certain effect, sometimes shooting and 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 some kind of different space time continuum Well, you start putting it together right so I've got this different camera Well, what now I go like wow now 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 is I go wow I'm a cartoonist if I set the camera up here I can slow it down enough.

36:05It'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 watched that and this is a throwaway title sequence But I really want to just think to win awards. Okay. How long does that take to draw that that's a lot? I remember 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 that the camera's going around and all kinds of crazy stuff, but it's just all fake by paper.

36:44I took me all night to shoot it. Because I remember, I walked into the film school the next day, you know, like I'll sleep in, I told one of the fellow students, you know, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence anyway. Why are you putting so much work in this? They're not gonna grade you any differently. You know, it was like grades, get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town. I'm not doing this 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.

37:17I 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 and 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 do it normally Where would I even put the strings for that? Right to bullshare it. 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.

37:54And 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 this. If you look close, you see the strings are in the back with your eyes open. So I did stuff like that and then just heard 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 and chicken salad, take this camera that everyone was like, what's this?

38:25And 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 it. It's so ridiculously primitive. I'd be 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 of 16 millimeter camera, I didn't like to use it. I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment. and I said, I have an ARI 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.

39:03I 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 do it. 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 a lab. You want to talk about being nervous? Yeah Just hoping something exposed and when I saw it come back in the tape, you know, they transferred it to a tape so I could edit it Dected deck again I was so relieved.

39:45Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around that. It's like, oh yeah, I'm doing everything. 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. I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it. Wait a minute. You shot, oh my gosh, 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. I'll get yours then. Wow. It was a test film. Right. 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.

40:24And 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. It was just to learn from. I just needed to make it firm as little as possible. See how much I could sell it for. If I could double my money, great, I could make another one and just get more practice. It was just, I just so intrigued by this idea because you've heard advice about screen writing. I heard advice back then, I thought was ridiculous.

40:53It said, it's gonna take you a long time to be a good screen writer. So write three scripts and throw them away. The fourth script will be that good. And I was like, it's so hard to write a script. Who's gonna write three full scripts knowing they throw them away? It wouldn't 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, pain me, pain me to learn.

41:25So 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'm just doubled my budget. So let me just shoot one take. Some of it's gonna not come out, but I'm not gonna know what, I'm not gonna shoot a safety one. That doubles my, let me see, something's might come out. I expected like 70 % of it to maybe be okay, but 30 % of it 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 wanna shoot. We stop, we come back, then I send it off to develop.

42:00Because we're shooting two weeks consecutively to get film shipped back and forth from Mexico to see if it came out. I just couldn't do it. I just had to, you know, double down on it, do it. One take every time. I was still an actor and I told you to run through that shot and you go, 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.

42:31I would have thought, okay, I gotta get serious. But because I made this movie, that it's just entertaining myself like bedhead, it entertained audiences. So that naïve, it is really important when you're starting out or at any point in your life, be naïve about what things gonna, 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 Make the movie shorter and that's just gonna be the movie and then that's the one and one one Sundance That was your first feature film that's one you made for 7000 dollars You mentioned your friend Carlos does the star of the movie everything one take and You know, I highly recommend people go back and watch that movie.

43:18It's just 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 were an actress. That's right. They were his 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 just here. Me with my one camera, in fact, the gal, Carl said, this one craw for God, she's in town. Maybe she would work because we're trying to get a soap star as she backed out.

43:56So we got that scallop where she goes, I don't know how to act and I said here let's watch I want to show you some Mexican TV Atelano Velo was on you see someone you know all over over Agdessa that's acting Mm -hmm. I don't want you to do that. I want you to just talk like you're talking about 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 amazing, but 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 a closet this red dress you can wear that everyone just brought their own clothes She really had like a sexuality Attention like a romantic tension that was real those isn't it was a is in part a great love story that I mean as as ridiculous It is the same yeah, and yeah, like a dramatic love story Yeah, the idea was that you know, I thought a guitar player You know, the real usually what I wanted to do was like road warrior.

44:58I said, I'm going to guy with a guitar case for the weapons going from town to town like road warrior, but that I'm having enough money for the first one to do that. That would be the second movie I do. How are 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 on index cards and I carry one of these little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag and I smile when I run across it because I've made a million dollars one of these before.

45:31You 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've got the answers inside, which you don't have for 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 go what three things can I do today that will not just change my life But everyone around me take steps of that take out your cards and start writing them down You won't come up with three you'll come up with 15 Like wow because you're asking yourself to 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 right now then he walks in a bar bar trying to get work.

46:23Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Mary. She's get that 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 that was a short film. That's how you 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 going to need, well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story. It's a crazy story about a guy who was in jail, Mexico, and he was running his drug business from the jail.

46:57It's protection. He can walk out anytime, but it was to have the cops be as enforcer 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 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.

47:36And now it's his story, the baton gets turned to mariachi. Mariachi's doing a voiceover easy to shoot we can just the voice later. We don't have to do sing sound There was even a scene when he walks in the 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 like shit man You forgot to pay the guy well that shoot that no one take I'll just put in the voice over that they give away free coconuts in this town and for years people and other countries they really give away from the covenants and us because we forgot to show him pain, you know, little happy accents.

48:10So 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? Are you playing? 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 handshot because he's a musician and those ballads are always really tragic.

48:44So the girl has to die. The girl has to die because 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, 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 lie, from a vision you had that you don't even know where they're. This prompts it. It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out. What happens if you get stuck? This doesn't make sense. Some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense. It's the default part.

49:16You live all there. You just start writing in the ones you do know. Like okay, I know at some point she's going to betray him or he's going to think she does. She's chasing him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come. Yeah, those are all like crossroads for 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 went, the story's telling me now what it is. I didn't know I was gonna make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the road warrior guy, but the road warrior, he lost his family.

49:50So really to propel him to become a guy who has a a target full of weapons he has to lose everything. So he needs a ghost. So this is a genesis story of a character. Well, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You can say, well, does a parent have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him. It's not going to drive him like that thing. So 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 any way, this isn't me doing it. I totally believe it. 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?

50:28I believe because I do so many different jobs. I've learned this over years. At American, it wasn't 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 creativity in the title, I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on creativity.

51:05And 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 the 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? It's because 90 % of what they do is creative.

51:42Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music, could literally jump from job to job creatively 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 collide with the experts. What happens is I've experienced this a lot with using cameras and so on. I don't know shit about cameras and that 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 talked to somebody about like soundproofing a room and they said they gave me prices They're insane and like the amount of efforts insane and this the I'm showing you something the dynamics of this room are all wrong.

52:30I'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. The corners are going to have some, and I'm like, fuck it. I'm just going to try and I see what it sounds like. A and B. Here's audio with curtains. Here's audio with Ocran. It seems like this is fine. Let's move on to the next thing. I think when you say creativity, some of that is being a rebel, not listening to the experts. You're going on your creativity, which is what is that? Do you consider yourself a creative person?

53:03I think you play guitar. Yeah, guitar piano. I'm like, piano can you could be would you call yourself a creative person? Yeah, I think so good. You should I think that's a positive way to just anybody is just own it own it and just say I 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 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 I mean, 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.

53:37You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better director by doing all this 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. I was like, 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.

54:10I 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 Regis, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't, I don't. They're floating around the sky and I pull them out first. You know, yes, as you know, Jimmy Vaughan, how do you play guitar? The solos. He goes, it's like a radio. So 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. It's creative that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards.

54:40And then when you start getting in the flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing. 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 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 because your ego got in the way you just clogged it because it gets pissed off That you think it's you it's not you.

55:19It's like just open up. Let me pick up the fucking pin and I learned this 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 one drawing and 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 gonna try that method. I went home and I would sit back and just try to get in my sofa, try the sofa method. I'm just gonna try to picture the comic strip. And as soon as I got one, I think it's funny, then I'll just go draw that, right?

55:54I don't be done in half hour. Why waste three hours? I'd sit there and sit there and sit there. My deadline would be coming up, got like 30 minutes, I'm like, oh shit, gotta go sit and draw it out. And it's like, oh, okay, I got this drawing. 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 greatest bearing ain't gonna come visit you if you're doing this. Yeah. It needs your hands. And it's not gonna reward you for sitting there, wait for it. You have to jump in and do it. And people when they say, oh, well, I'm not ready.

56:24I'll pissed off as I'm, 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 never ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it and know that you're, if it's not coming out because you're just clogging it because this thing's got endless ideas. And you give that same advice 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 them, we just go in and start.

56:58Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduced themselves as aspiring. I'm a aspiring filmmaker and I wonder how, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? It's a 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. So I didn't feel like I was ready to do Mariachi until 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 suddenly waxing philosophical about the creative processing going I never knew how my dad did Mariachi until we did this project together And I realized he didn't know either.

57:43He didn't know I was gonna do it He figured it out day by day. Every challenge that's got the own had 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 too, 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 relieves a lot of pressure from you. Because then you don't have to ever have to do anything. Really? You just have to be the hands. Can you talk to some of the hats, some of the many hats you wore with the El Marriottes?

58:16That'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 El Marriottes is such a radical leap for you. That was crazy. That was Stetting's Hell Together with Scotch Tape and Rubber bands because 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. It's just like you're doing here, except you've got sound recording right onto the camera. Right, or do you have it to the system?

58:53Except for the thing, I mean, all the model. But it's sync camera. So I had a camera that was not a sync camera. And the thing was it was so loud, I would have had to blimp the shit out of it if I didn't have a blimp. And then I would have needed a sound guy. Just to be clear, so if people don't understand this, you're shooting basically no sound. Because the camera sounds like this.

59:17It sounds like all your money is going away first of all, so I would go like this. Action, you start running, and I shoot my edit.

59:28Cut. Yep, you know, like I was still running, you know, like I'm only using this part. And there's no slates, there's no nut, there's guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of roll. like this is real seven for just a few frames. I know what's real it is. And then that 10 minutes of film is just one shot after another. And I use almost every frame of those shots because 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? Friedman. Where do you live? Austin, Texas. I would do the whole scene. I don't get the sound. Bring the mic and close like that.

1:00:03Say it again. Lux. Friedman. Austin, Texas. Donald probably sink. Now, if you were going on and on, there's a place where it'd 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'd cut back when you're back in sync. And since these were non -actors, they say everything the same way each time. I would say they're lying. Just like 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 seen, anytime you see anyone on camera talking, they're in sync with themselves.

1:00:37And 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 low budget 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 of shots of like the dog or a stuffed cat or something, just so I'd have something to cut away to get them back and sink. That's so good. And it's fat and color is just resourceful. This is 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.

1:01:06Right. And I would try to think it is best I could. But we as the audience, like do you understand where the threshold is? Where we notice something? Yeah. It seems like you can get away with a lot. You can get away with, I just don't, I'm just particular about that. Okay. 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 there and sink But I didn't shoot two takes a film or even two takes a video just one take we just went through and was cool is that Because I just had him 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 have all the sound effects too.

1:01:52I just had to sink it by hand That's a lot of work for me, but I got great sound that way because 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 cameras off I could record everything close up So there was some blessing to that You and Quentin Terrentino 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? Elmeryachi, how do you bring out the best in these non -actors? And then maybe what's the thread that connects to your future work, too?

1:02:26What really helped for those non -actors was that they just look across and it's me filming. They didn't feel like they're, so they're being so natural. And I think I who played the bad guy, I met him in the research hospital where I was told my body to science. He was my bunk mate. And I said, dude, you look kind of like Rudger Hauer. And then it's like, we saw another movie. Man, you look like James Spader. 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 gonna 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 was getting away with this.

1:03:02He's smiling and he's got the sunglasses on a red That's somewhere in the pool. There's a casino in the pool. He's like with the sunglasses on with an oh man But but he was doing it phonetically and I tell you what he was so great that guy, right? When we do Desperado, 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 they open 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. Because he's so nervous, because now there's a crew behind me.

1:03:36Now 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 report making a safe zone for your actors? Quentin once told me sometimes being a, you know, we're talking about directing you say sometimes being a great director is just being a great audience. You know, being a great audience for them because 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.

1:04:06So 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 getting that flow too. You create the right environment. Everyone's getting this inspiration. It'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 in the more important part.

1:04:42That'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 head space and then we're all open to it to where the character is supposed to go, what it's supposed to sound like instead of being very manipulative to get a certain thing. I don't know. It's just, whenever it feels good. Yeah, there's such an intimate connection between the actor and the director. I've seen some of the behind -the -scenes footage with you. You are just a fan enjoying the scene when it's done well.

1:05:09But I think there's an aspect if I were to put myself in the headspace of the actor, they won't use the audience to earn that happiness. You know? It's when a director approves. Yeah, well you're a performer 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 like that joke. I mean, do more, you know, really the director is it? And a lot of times the director's way behind him monitors somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera. So when I'm operating the camera, it's like this, we can have 100 people here.

1:05:36We 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 to do that again. So there's a shot and I'm lighting since I need myself. There's a bad my crew setting lights and I have a great shot of Clive O 'Nee. Where he's holding down. Benicio's head and the toilet. You know, Benicio's not there. It's the close up of him at this point. And I'm practicing my shot. I'm zooming and slowing his face. And people are still walking behind him on the green screen setting lights I'm like I'm rolling we're ready to go. We're getting this 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.

1:06:14Okay, never mind you guys can stop moving I should already got holy shit Wow That's a great scene by the way great right and it's only shit I've I wait for these guys this moment will be gone And then another one was Mickey Rourke. You know, he had so much freaking dialogue. He had just done this whole big dialogue scene. He had another one that said, let's go ahead and start with a wide shot. We're the two actors. 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 close up. We don't, we'll turn Mickey around for the close up. Let's start with the wide thing.

1:06:47Get used to the lines and most of it's gonna be sold in a close up. We sit down, Mickey starts delivering the take. I'm like, hold on, hold on a second. I brought my camera over zoom in just to adjust that light real quick because I'm the DP because if I had another Director of photography they're like oh, no, no, we have to relate 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 like camera guy and you're the DP It's like high tech grill of filmmaking.

1:07:18Yeah, we're on a green screen, but it's like all the cronies that are you know marching orders just put a light back there hitting them harder. Like, this is a 5K make that a 10K. It's gotta be stronger. They don't need to know that I'm gonna make that a lamp post later. They just need it marching orders for the moment. So I can just kinda 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 gonna 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.

1:07:50Because they know 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 we stay locked in Well, look great when there's rain coming down and we're on a ship later But it comes down to this right and the more it was so fun to do those kind of movies to this day you try to be close to the action connected with the actor that's like a dance you end up that's so like to hear a member on Dustle Don 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 as a I just start doing the slow zoom I remember this take eight start doing the slow zoom on him and I'm like I hope I get all the way up to where it's stop zooming when he finishes that speech because there's no set way and I don't know how he's going to say, but you're just locked almost telepathically.

1:08:54And as he's delivered, there's no edits. He's just going, yeah, that killed four angels. Two hostages. Just like, wow, 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 back. I don't know. It's back of the path. You know, they just trust that whatever they get from their crew, they just, you accept it. Just like, you know, you would get to take this. There's so much. But 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.

1:09:29You'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 in your across the room. You know, it's like, no, you got to be there up close, feeling the energy. And it's the creative spirit's whispering to your both. You know, it's not your own ideas, you're capturing a moment that's magic. And this true magic that happens on a set, and that's what brings you back, because you know, I didn't direct that, and they didn't act that. That came through us, and we just had the cameras rolling, and we captured a ghost. Like you said, though, you had a pen and hand and a new one.

1:10:01You were there. It's like that. 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 the two of you collided and met is just the fascinating part of the story. You first met him in 1992 with the Toronto Film Festival. 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 Telly Ride Film Festival. And the rest of our dogs was there, but Quentin couldn't be there.

1:10:35He was at Sundance earlier that year. And the guy who became my agent, he saw it. He said, hey, you don't like this guy Quentin Tarantino. I told him about you. You're going to I mean, he's gonna be in Toronto. Oh, cool, cool. Okay. And so I went ahead and saw his movie and told you, right? And I was like, Holy shit. And guys in black, again, just like the mariachi's dressed in black and action. And I said, oh, we're gonna like each other. And he's gonna like me when he sees me. So then in Toronto, we met and we met first on a, because I knew I was gonna be doing a panel discussion with him. They asked us to do a panel discussion about violence in movies in the 90s, even though it was only 92.

1:11:08So we're on a panel together. And that's where I met him. And he's like, hey, you're a patient. Don't worry about you. And I was like, yeah, I saw your movie reservoir dogs and he goes, oh, where you got to come to my screening. And I'm going to come see yours. So he came to Mariachi and I videotape 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 at everything. He was just the best. So I have his recording of the first time he saw Mariachi. Oh, no, really? Yeah. Because I tape it all so cool.

1:11:39He's so loud because he's right next to me. Well, just like you, but he would probably be more than you. He's a fan. He watches, he just loves movies. He loves movies. In fact, the next time I heard him laugh that way, was it that he's 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 movies. So he loves, but the actors did and it's like, that's the kind of energy you really love. But I tell you what, what happened. I'm not a very shy person. And I'm very shy. I'd have to go talk. I'm sure you probably feel like, you know, an orator or anything, you know, just have to go do it.

1:12:15I thought, well, man, I'm gonna have to introduce my film and talk about it afterwards. I'm afraid of that. What am I gonna do? I don't know what I'm gonna talk in front of more than five people before. So I went to see this other movie and it was good. And I was watching and then the director comes up at the end and goes, yeah, well, that was my movie. And, you know, he was the writer and was like, I don't like the movie anymore. because kind of a dick. So I cannot do that. I'm gonna have to go be who they imagined made that movie. So I wrote out my whole intro. It was like a 20 minute intro because no one had ever heard of anybody making a movie for no money much less about a crew much less.

1:12:55You know the way I did it was just very new. Nobody knew it was possible. So my whole intro is like you'll see the Columbia logo slapped in front. It's probably cost more than the whole movie. And then I go through this is how I made it with a wheelchair for a dolly turtle You know I wrote around things I had I mentioned the turtle the pit bull the bus the ranch all that stuff right so then when they see the movie In fact, I think my wife was in the audience said in Sundance People are laughing so much at your intro. They just wanted a year story like this. Oh, Bailey I heard someone next to me say I'm gonna vote for his movie that I haven't even seen the movie Just because the story was so good.

1:13:32They wanted that movie to be great and when they see the turtle big cheers when they see the pit bull big cheers when they see the school bus cheers but then when they see how we use it and he slams into it and falls in it they freaking lose their minds because they know how I put it together they know that the rubber bands and the popsicle sticks I already set it up and so that's why that audience I just hate the reaction they're so with it the context is so key like you can watch Maria Chi and go hey yeah this looks like a 7 .1 But if you know the story behind it suddenly I was curious I hadn't seen it a long time I was watching it for the 20th anniversary we did a screening and the first few shots come up and I'm like Oh, yeah, well, it looks like a $7 ,000 movie and then it keeps going and it's in the once we're in the jail cell and the shooting is happening And I realized oh my god.

1:14:22We had these blanks that only fired one shot and it would jam so I had to Show it going use the sound effect cut to the other guy cut back to have another one go I had to do these editing tricks to make it look like and then repeat a few frames so it goes So it looks like a machine gun all these stuff that I'm starting sweating as I'm watching it going I can't believe I made this movie with that freaking camera. I don't know how I did I couldn't even see I'm there with this long lens pulling my own focus when I finally had to do a real movie I was operating the camera my first real movie with a crew and I get the camera and a guy comes over and he focuses for you You know, that's your job.

1:15:02You focus should I had to do my own focusing on the last movie? I didn't have so hard. You're trying to focus on a guy while you're filming. You know, don't worry. You are. And it's just I was couldn't believe how much easier it is when you have a crew. It's extremely valuable to know that the pain of that, the, the spectrum of creativity that's allowed within that, even just the focusing. Yeah. Like how focusing fucks up on older cameras and newer cameras. What are the different artifacts that come up just to know? Yeah, the battlefields in order to be a great general you have to know how to be a soldier in the battlefield.

1:15:35Yeah, yeah, it's good to know all that stuff, but you know, it's like day to the day you could shoot something on a phone and if you have a great story, no one's going to even notice. I'll be, oh, we shut that on a phone and it goes, you know, so sometimes people get cut off. I know what kind of camera should I have? It's not the camera. That's just the tool. That's just the pen. That's just like, yeah, you can have different paint brushes, but you can go, I'm going to, I'm going to limit my palette. But I'm only gonna use a fan brush and a detail brush. And I'm gonna make a painting. Do you think that painting's gonna suffer?

1:16:02No, it's gonna take on an identity that you wouldn't have had if you had all the other tools. So sometimes the limitations help you because when you can do anything, you can be crippling. When I knew I could only use those things from mariachi, it's like, all right, well, it's very simple now. Let me show you how cheap Skate I was. Like I did not spend on anything. So when you see him walking around with a guitar case, it's a shitty cardboard one, you know, like I got from home. I had to get a heavier one to put the guns in. So we borrowed one, but it had this material ripped off the top, so you could see the wood.

1:16:35It's just the wood on top. So it didn't match the other one, because it wasn't all black. And I was too cheap to paint it black. I didn't even want to spend money on paint. So you see that cardboard case, you put it down. And when he goes to open it, I cut to the other one. Once the wood is, watch the edits, you'll see it open. Now it's a completely different case for the guns. And when he goes to cut it, when he close it, it cuts to the other one. And he goes, that's how I did that whole movie. Again, it was a practice film. I don't want to waste any money on it. I don't know if it's going to be even, I will be able to make five bucks from it.

1:17:07Yeah, but you're one of the, one of the few great directors where both the movie is genius and the process of making it is creative genius. It's like, fun to watch both, to know of both. You know what I believe. Right. It's like, it's not me. It's like, it's not me. I have to say, it's just, that thing. This freaking I didn't get in its way. It is basically what would help and people say that you know Don't get in your own way. This is a little bit easier to understand like keep the pipe clear Don't block it with your ego. Don't say you're gonna be shocked But don't ever say oh shit. How do I do that?

1:17:41I don't know if I can do that You didn't do it if you begin with except that it just came through you and try to get back into that headspace Especially when you go to make a second film or a third film or follow up a success That's when artists get really crippled. Because sometimes they start to towing around as an artist going like, oh shit, now it's my second film. My first one didn't really well. They meant it like my second one so much. That's not the head space you were in when you made the first one. You were in a hesitant like that. You were just, so try to keep that very naive. And that's why I say commit to a body of work.

1:18:11Because I know a lot of filmmakers get stuck on their second one and then go further because they get crippled by the success of the first one. And they start asking, oh shit, how did I do that? How can I do that again? And you get deeper and deeper in a hole you can't get out of. I think you've spoken about that filmmaker, especially early on in their journey, critics and the audience can destroy them, meaning like it creates too much of a burden, too much just wear them down to where they're almost scared to be creative. Can you just speak to that how to ignore the critic? I'll tell you something that I'm my best advice ever got.

1:18:42Yeah, very early on. It was so fortunate. From an unlikely place. Because he said, he sounded like Clint Eastwood when he said, it was when you said that, I thought, but I got, I did this brauto. It had Antonio Bendedas. I brought Antonio to be in it from Europe. Big action movie. And so Spielberg saw it and he said, hey, I want you to do Zorro with Antonio. So we're working on it for a while. I did, I was working on the pre -production. and got to work with Spielberg during that. It ended up stalling me as there was like two studios and all the amblin was moving or it was some weird thing where, but I got to work with him for about five months to him.

1:19:22And I started getting really nervous because it's like, oh shit, you start thinking about, even movies of his that people would say, oh, you know, Temple of Doom's not as good as Raiders. It's a pretty seem Temple of Doom. And I'd go, till the fucking do that movie. If I could make Zoro as good as that one, the one that people said it's like, people don't know how good they had it with that guy. But I started thinking, I even said, man, I just rewatch Temple of Doom last night. I don't know how I'm going to do this or I'm just never done anything like that. You start getting afraid because you go the second thing, he said, oh, you're going to do fun.

1:19:56But then I started thinking, this guy at that time, you know, know the era, but this was like mid -90s. He was making the biggest, best movies of all. People would shit all over this guy they would throw something like they were so jealous Press audience everyone was just like hits at them. I'll just throw in rocks at him for everything Speeler. Yeah, you can't imagine it now. You had to Been at that time now everyone has respect for him, but they made a run of fucking gauntlet And they were like drastic parmed You can't even imagine it now, but you should have seen the climate it freaked me out because I'm like Maybe I should just stay under the radar where I've been.

1:20:36You know, not poke my head out so much. Yeah. Because this guy has a head out and they're unwarranted. You can't even fathom it now because you weren't here at that time. It was crazy. You never even think of him that way. I'm glad it changed because back then it was just, it made people not want to be successful. And I made me be worried. Like maybe I shouldn't be going making a movie with the asses name on it that's going to I put my head out in a whole different realm of filming at a studio level. Because even if I make a good movie, if I make a great movie, he's making great movies and he's getting this dog shit.

1:21:09I don't know if I could take it, you know? So I asked him, because you don't know how resilient you can be. So I said, you know what, Pan, how do you do it? How do you, what do you do when people just throw rocks at you? All day long. You know, it's all rubber, you just don't blink. And I was like, whoa. Now I see how he got through it. Just don't blink. Just like, you know what's coming? Don't blink. And to him say, it's like a cleanies with line, right? But it was like, you could see, he was telling the truth, and you could see that's how he did it. He just avoided all criticism by just not blinking.

1:21:50It's like it's designed to make you blink. And you're just not gonna blink because you're committing to a body of work. He just keeps cranking out movies. whatever he feels like doing he does. And that was like the most part and it never bothered me again. I just like always kept in mind. I tell that to my actors. I tell that people that story has traveled. I even had some little actors who were like starting to get up. And I said, remember, tell you a couple of things. Some people have told me, you're never as good as people say you are. And you're never as bad either. So which cleaning is all that?

1:22:19So whatever that. And then the second one, Spielberg, don't blink. Don't blink. But there has to be a kind of vision for yourself of what you're reaching for, what you're trying to do. Again, yeah, sort of, like I think if you told me what would be my vision for the future, just committing to a body work, which I've just kept doing. Like it's about as far as you can see. Do you have a sense, do you have a vision of the body of work you'll make in the next 20 years? Yeah, or is it just as far? I did, like I was unsure. because you don't always know with the, you might not have the vision yet because you don't have the information yet.

1:22:56So you just commit to a body of work, you'll start figuring out more reasons to keep doing that body of work. So when I turned 50, I was like, I guess I could just keep making movies. I mean, I guess that's been good for me, yes. I guess I could just make more. I kind of done that already, but it's always fun and it's always new. And I guess I could make, but it wasn't a lot of drive, right? It's like, it's like, well, I guess I could just keep doing in the body. You know, that's not as much as I can't wait to keep doing it. I know. Yeah. She's a dad. But I didn't know how to get to that point.

1:23:26So I said, you know what? I got at this job so early. I wasn't the early 20s. I bet there's some other job out there that exists that I don't even know about because I don't know other jobs. So I looked up, you know, believe it, but I literally bought jobs for dummies. Nice. It was just like, I don't even know what I do a basic job to even out there. Turn to the page. Oh, yeah. Don't want that job. Don't want that job. Don't want that job. Just going through. And And it gets to filmmaker. There's a little icon, Vitality's job. This icon is a guy like this. But laterally, you're looking up and it says, this is the best job ever.

1:23:59You get to just be creative with your friends, sit back, watch the money roll in, cross the desk. And I said, but 99 % of film students don't get this job, so give up that dream. So I was like, I guess I got the best job. But then I started working with my kids when we did a, had a TV show called rebel without a crew based on that right. I found filmmakers that only made a short film they hadn't made a feature. I picked this diverse group of filmmakers. Game $7 ,000 and we documented them making a feature two weeks like I did. You can bring one person like I had Carlos Guy out of the producer and star of Barriachi.

1:24:35Bring one person, you'll be your cameraman, you can be your sound guy whatever. But it's only that for the shoot and you'd have to do the whole thing. And I saw those guys by the time they're like I don't know how we're gonna make this movie. by the first week of shooting, they're already talking about their next feature. They became so confident because their idea of what impossible is drops really quick when you do that. Yeah. Anyone interested in unlocking their creativities? They're not even just filmmaking. I highly recommend that show. And I highly recommend the kind of the follow on show, which is where you make red 11.

1:25:05Yeah, so that's the one I did. So then it came time for me to do one. So I made a movie called Red 11 based on my experiences in the medical hospital. But I'll turn it into a sci -fi thriller just to use that as so that I can use like somebody getting stabbed in the eye. So I'm gonna still gonna have more elements to show how you can do camera tricks and stuff with no money. And the old days make it for less than $7 ,000, which I think were like $5 ,000. Mainly because you know, I had a lot of actors I wanted to pay. But the movie itself can make it for nothing. But I brought my son aboard as my number one who hadn't been working with me in a while.

1:25:38I mean, he wrote Shark Boy in Lava go and he was seven, but then he hadn't really been at working on my crew. So he didn't know how to operate the sound equipment, the separate sound system and all that. I didn't show him until the day of filming because I knew we're documenting it would make a better tutorial. So by getting them working on the movies together, they came to be super excited by end of the day. I thought for sure, oh, they're going to hate this. Even though it's only two weeks, they've got other interests. They don't want to be filmmakers. I thought they were going to be like, all right, I'm out of here.

1:26:05After one day, but instead he came to me and his brother who acted in it. Amen. Dad. The actor didn't show up after the first day. The location didn't match the script at all. We asked you how we're going to solve the problems and you're like, I don't know, figure it out. We thought, that stump for once he's these stump finally, but they might be in the day. His eyes were all white. We figured it out. They went, oh, they don't realize this is the creative process every day is like that. And in life too. every day you don't know your machine's gonna not work or you're gonna get a flat tire or you're fired that day.

1:26:40So life is very unpredictable just like a movie said. So I realized I'm gonna make them well work on my movies now because it's teaching them about life. I'm teaching them very little about the film make it's about lifeless. It's about how you take on something impossible, turn chicken shit to chicken salad and make it work and that's the straw and that's life. That's the process of life. So many people say, well, I'm not ready to make my projects. Like, you're not ready for life. You're like this all day, you're dodging shit that's going on. How come art has to be perfect? It's like it should be the same.

1:27:13Life and art should be the same. And I think filmmaking in general is full of unpredictable things. And in a short little microcosm, too, within one project, you've got a whole blueprint for how you're going to solve life because you've just done it on a creative level. I think of all the art forms of all the art mediums like that it just has so many different components a lot of components to it And so like there's so many ways to fuck things up to learn from but fuck up any of the disciplines if you add those to it Like I teach my actors to paint In between takes we'll go and we'll take a picture of them and character I show them a canvas.

1:27:48I show them paint. You don't need to know how to paint This is to show you the brush is gonna know where to go You just got to pick it up. Pick the colors you want, no matter how crazy they are, whatever speaking to you. You lay it down, I'll show you some of the pictures. You're not going to believe the masterworks these actors did, like in a day. They just start doing it. Lady Gaga had her fingernails in there, you know, Josh Brolin's doing this thing. Then I take a picture of them and character do a line drawing of it. We project it on top. And mostly it's the painting coming through. They're line drawing with a little bit of their ice painted in.

1:28:15You're not going to believe these things. They couldn't believe it. But it teaches them that that thing about that the creative He's gonna come through. So even though they're already acting, they're already being creative. We're already making a movie. Like you said, that's already a really great creative endeavor. When we would sneak off and paint, you could tell it's firing a whole other part of their brain. It was funny, I think Josh Broderick, girlfriend said, Josh said, hey, my girlfriend just said, she said, his wife now, but at the time, are you guys doing drugs? You leave the set and you come back and you're all like, I'm like, no, we're painting, we're painting, but that makes sense as you say that, because when you get your creativity, fire is more powerful than any drug.

1:28:58And we would come back and be on the set going, I said, bathed and I'm still thinking about the painting. No, I think it's good. I think it's all good, but you can tell us opening a whole other part of the creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie, and the painting's still gonna tell us just how much untapped potential your creative brain has. So the more you can do, the more you're firing off them, And it was so cool. I got married. We did one with Joseph Gore and Levitt was painting. We came in and the table was like this and they said We have a problem you want them to throw the cards out the playing cards out But it's so slick.

1:29:30They go sliding off the table We both look at it and we both got the solution at the same time. Oh, we just Just just haven't just haven't thrown wherever they go and then we'll play some and then digitally It's even better that it looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark is That's what we have to do. They're not going to, we can't put people here all day. We're trying to get, if we're going to worry about where they go, just go, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then we'll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up and then we'll marry the two in post.

1:30:02You know, you're just, you just come up with creative solutions better, easier because you were just solving crazy creative solutions in the other one like what paint meet him do I use? What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking, you're like, oh, I can I don't even think I can figure this out in two seconds. So it helps you create a problem solve. So that's basically working with my kids, made me realize, oh, now I know exactly what I want to do for the next 10 years. I only want to make movies with my kids, because I'm mentoring them, but they're teaching me shit, because they're the age I was when I made Mariachi in Desperado.

1:30:32And their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways, and it's like the greatest parenting you can do, because you're building a project together and in the same boat together, figuring it out. And it's family time. I mean, like checking all the boxes. So I thought my filmmaking going forward is gonna be checking all the boxes in life. So I'm not spending time in my family. We're actually giving them lessons that they can go do anything they want in their life because they're gonna have different interests. But now it's kind of like going to college. And this college is like the best college because it pays you to learn.

1:31:02You get to do these crazy skills. Like my son is, you know, conducting the orchestra, the James Bond orchestra in London for the Spy Kids score and the score he wrote because I can't write at his level because he was always our best piano player. And they get you get the charge out of working with them. And then by making a label, there's a weird phenomenon that happens you guys want to take your game to another level. I stumbled upon this idea. My son that was my counterpart on that movie, racer, he was my sound guy. Like I said, came up with Shark Boy Lavergro and these little, he became my writer, co -writer, co -producer.

1:31:41He had come to me and said, I want to do VR type movie. I said, oh, let me show you, as an example of creativity and manifesting. I said, let me show you how it works. Let's make a company. We'll make a company called Double R, Double R Productions, because we all have a Double R name, all the kids. So if anyone ever wants to do anything, we can use our company. So let's make a logo and I'll make T -shirts and notepads and stuff, because once you have a company, you now have to make things for that company. Just like the advice I gave to people, stop aspiring, make a business card that says, writer, director, cinematographer, I did editor, because then now you have to conform to that identity.

1:32:19So now if I create a label like Double R, we're going to come up with ideas. We'll call up VR companies and say, hey, we have a company, a VR company, would you like us to make you a film for your sole your headsets? Yeah, they gave us a budget. They're dying for content. They gave us a budget. We shot a 20 -minute action movie called The Limit with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Redis, where you're in an action movie with them. And it was killer. They made us a big double -r logo animated logo. Later that year we did Red 11, same logo. That movie went to directors Fortnite and Cannes. Festivals were paying us to come talk about how we made that movie.

1:32:56That's when we're doing the cards, throwing the cards out, because they wanted their audiences. They knew they would love that. So we could have had a whole gig just continuing to get paid to go to the fed usually paid to the feds go to the feds You don't get paid. That's how what a success that was but then we had to make we can be heroes So we had to stop but we can be heroes was a Netflix movie Where they asked me to make a spy kids type thing and so I thought oh, okay, well, let's do it with superheroes That's there eroded with my kids Based it on the some of their personalities It's the most watched and re -watched movie in Netflix history.

1:33:31Like nothing in touch. It's kids just keep watching it over because this kid was super bowed. No one's ever done that before. And they couldn't believe it. I'd heard anecdotally that's how this bite kids. People said, oh, that kid's watching over and over on video. But you can't keep track of that. You can't on Netflix because their biggest thing is people completing the movie. A lot of people don't complete a movie and it still counts as a view. They may watch five minutes and change the channel. So do you complete a movie? I mean, that's really where they, you know, really value. Not only would it complete, but rewatch, rewatch, rewatch, per household.

1:34:01So many times in the movie, that's what I'm saying. That one has a double R logo as well. And my kids are like, Dad, it really worked. I was like, I don't know better than I thought. I didn't know that me manifesting that company was gonna turn into that and we've just keep making stuff. So I wanna do that with brass knuckle films, now with the audience, because it works. So I said, as soon as you have a logo and a company, your brain starts coming up with all kinds of ideas. And it's a filter. Like I said, sometimes the freedom of limitations is all freeing. When I had to do four rooms and it's like, we have to use one hotel room.

1:34:39Oh, within this is going to be a dead body. You can do a lot with limitations. They said you could use the whole city with an harder to come up with something. Nebraska Echo Films has a filter. Only action. Action movies, because that's the stuff that there's always an appetite for. If you ask Netflix right now, what do you need more of? They'll say action action action. We don't have a defaction. The last regime didn't leave us enough action We need action. They'll pay a premium for an action film that we can make at a lower cost a 20 million dollar action film is very cheap Studios don't know how to make them that cheap.

1:35:10That's why they'll pay for an independent to go do it And right now that's the key is to be independent because a lot of studios that came in greenlight anything because things are so expensive They don't want to lose their ass, but they need action films. So let's make something that everybody needs and let's make it at a price. We'll make it in my studio, because I'm our own studio, and I can keep all the cost down, because we have all the costumes and props and sets from 25 years of filmmaking to keep the cost down. And we'll have the audience get to invest. It's not crowdfunding or Kickstarter.

1:35:40You're actually an investor. Anyone who puts money in can pitch their idea for an action film to me. And I'm gonna bake one of the four films in that slate from one of those ideas, because I want the audience to win. I want the audience to win and be a part of it because the audience is an afterthought in Hollywood. They make a movie, they show the audience the movie, go tell your friends now, so y 'all spend money on our movie. What was your cut of that? So I want them to be successful. So if any of the movies in the slate do well, they make money off that one and then sequels or anything. But they're all gonna do well because everyone needs an action movie, or we're gonna keep the cost down.

1:36:15Can I actually ask you just to focus in on action you've created a lot of epic action films what makes for a great action film? It comes down to the character, you know like if you think about one of the best action films one of your favorite films like Die Hard. He's a cop so he's still capable, but he's not Superman the fact that he's like in over his head and you're rooting for him That's a great character You know John Wick. He is Superman, but he's retired and now he's pissed off and he's going back into a job. You know, it comes down to the character, really being very important, because the action will then have a character to it.

1:36:54I think Leon the professional. It doesn't, it's a, it's a character. I mean, it's all about the character. And now that, when I say we're gonna do action movies, I mean movies that are really action first. Like there's some movies that are more dramas that have action. Where's the boundary? So John Wick is action. That's more action, but it has character in it, but it's action driven. and what about like predator? Predator is the sci -fi action film. So that's kind of a hybrid, which I like, but sometimes it's hard for the audience to know what they're buying into. Like they focused a lot on the action and the trailer, you know, and then they felt there was some other worldly thing, which you didn't really know, but it's a great movie.

1:37:28So die hard is a good example. It was a good example, right? I think I've right off where there's a character that really made the difference. And then everyone repeated that, you know, for a while there was like under siege, all this like a regular guy who's really actually has some training on a ship up now, and then on the bus, you got a cop. He's a cop, but he's not super cop. So that's why you root for him. That became an element that people repeated a lot. What about taking? That's a great one. That's a great character who is super human, who's also retired. There's a superhero type character in an extraordinary circumstance.

1:38:02That's now his daughter's taken, right? And then there's ordinary people, like the Terminator. That's a great character. Not the Terminator, he's a villain, but Sarah Connor, who is a waitress doesn't think her life's going anywhere and she finds out she's the mother of the guy who's gonna save the human race and she's got to train him you know suddenly she has to become someone else those are cool movies because it's a Genesis of a character and you see a character go from waitress to revolution and race step up yeah what about mob movies I mean some of them like Godfather's really not about is not action movie drama that has some action I mean, John Wigg is a mom film in some sense.

1:38:39Good fellows. I mean, there's a lot of dynamic action, but there's really not action first. That's really a character type piece. Great, really amazing. And it feels like action, by the way, he does it. It's just like fast pace, fast talking, fast moving. Like Escape from New York's one of my favorites since I was a kid. Because every movie you'll notice this now, I tell you. Even like a romantic comedy. There's a timeline. Every movie has to have like a ticking clock. So the audience knows this is the story and I'm just gonna take over a period of years though suddenly someone in the movie around 20 to 30 minutes in will say We've got to go find the groom Before the wedding this weekend, you know, it'll be just like that Skate from New York has the best example of a ticking time clock because he's literally got bombs in his neck And he's got a watch that shows him He's constantly clocking it how little time he has and he gets you so like oh my god, is he gonna make it?

1:39:32That's like the best use of that. No one's ever top that ticking time clock. All the other ones seem artificial in comparison. Aliens, we gotta get off this planet now because this whole thing's gonna blow up. There's a timeline. It's already urgent, but now there's an extra timeline on it. This is what happens. As you're talking, you're just making me fall in love more and more with action films. I sometimes, you forget how much you love action films. a really good action film. In fact, like the Terminator. The original Terminator just came out in 4K. I'm gonna watch it again. It looks like better than most movies look today.

1:40:08And that's a $4 million movie. It looks incredible. You can see every beat of sweat in this movie. I was watching it again with somebody, a female. And there's always a point when you're watching that movie where she'll turn and say, I love this movie. You know, a point that is the point where Michael Bean tells her, I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you, which is, you know, I always have. And you're just like, oh my God, there's like a real emotional love story there that he put into Titanic, that he put into Avatar. He figured out that thing that makes those movies work. By the way, I should say that.

1:40:46I mean, there is an aspect of El Marachi that is a love story. To me, there was a rough story. I don't know if you see it that way, but I got it, what I just rewatched it. I was like a tragic love story. I was like hardbroken that she dead. I got hardbroken twice. Let me tell you the second time in a moment. One, that you're making that and you go, okay, this is how it has to go. But then now you're invested in this person. You go, oh my, she has to die. It's gonna be really sad. In fact, the studio even, when they said they were gonna remake it, a good thing I put that ending on. That's the only reason they showed it to an audience.

1:41:16We were gonna remake it. They weren't gonna put that movie out. They showed it, we need to show this movie to an audience because they might not like the fact that we killed a girl before we make it. All right, the show to Nadia's audience liked it the way it was. So they said, we're going to take this movie to some film festivals and I was like, no, not this movie. This is my practice movie. No one's supposed to see this movie. And they go, no, no, you got something. No, no, no, dude, if I knew anyone was going to see this, I would have shot it completely. Give me $2 ,000. I'll go re -shoot half of it.

1:41:47Just knowing people were going to see it, I won something. And the head of the studio was really smart. He said, you don't know what you have here. It's very, very special. let's just take it tell you what happened tell you right Toronto did great like I said in one Sunday it's so now we had to put it out but I was like I would have said don't show that movie but they also questioned the ending and didn't come into play because we ended up making desprato and the girl in desprato doesn't die you know we didn't do that we didn't kill Sama but that's what needed to happen to my match I'm quitting call me one time people would always say like oh the rest of our dogs he he borrowed from this movie Hong Kong actually I'm called the city on fire.

1:42:22The about these guys, they're all criminals and they kill each other with her. And he said, hey, they're showing a double feature called East Looks West and West Looks East. They're showing reservoir dogs with city on fire, the one they say I part from. And they're showing Mariachi with a Hong Kong film called Run where they ripped off Mariachi. Like they just took the whole story. It had two Chinese actors in Mexico with a guitar cases. One's like they just It was followed at beat by beat. So we were watching it and it was like seen by scene. They just rebated without even getting the rights or anything.

1:42:53It was so fun to watch. So we saw Marantya first and we watched that one. And I'm like, what's this big brothel scene though? This is in my movie. Oh, the bad guy. Oh, there's this scene in my movie where the bad guy has two girls in bed with him and they figured that was a whore house. But it was just this apartment. Yeah. So they got this whore house. But they're really interesting. And they have helicopter shots and all kinds of big thing. and the action was awesome. But then the girl's really good. And then midway through the movie, I'm like, oh shit, she's gonna die. Cause I killed her in mine.

1:43:22I don't want her to die. I like this actresses really great. And they have a really great love story. I go, well, I hope they change that part. No, they kill her. So I felt bad twice. Cause I sealed her fate. I sealed her fate because... Yeah. I have a line in Spike Kids 2. When you create stuff, you start thinking... I wonder if that's how our creator is. He's like, oh shit, I just kind of threw that into memo. And now that whole town's gonna get wiped out. Yeah. You know, I didn't even think about the implications of that. Um, because there's a line that was making a character that Steve Busemi plays and Spike Kits too.

1:44:01And he's a creator. He just wanted to make a little miniature zoo for kids. And then he thought, well, what if I put some together like a lizard with a snake and it's a slizzard or you have a spider monkey, which is literally spider legs in a monkey top. So he makes that and then he thought, hey, why don't I make him a little bit bigger for kids that have big hands? And it got out of control and they turn in these huge creatures and now they're trying to eat them. So he's hiding, the kids find him hiding. And he says this one line that people keep coming, it's on the internet you lot, this meme about this, why is this line, this movie?

1:44:37It's so wild. I thought I I wanted Steve to come up to the camera and like he's just he's lost in his own creative world And he says I can't even go outside because my own creations are gonna eat me Then he comes up to the camera goes. Do you think God hides in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he created? your own earth It's like really just for a moment this thing and it's like because you feel like that way when you're When you're creating stuff like you're creating something and then now it's taking all life on its own And like, oh no, now this character has to die. I didn't want that, you know, this domino effect of creation.

1:45:13And you start thinking, what best must be what creation? Maybe he is hiding up there because, look at, he didn't expect all this shit to happen, giving us free will and all that. I mean, this particular context that you are the creator of this story. And for some reason, it makes me feel good to know that you feel the pain of this character dying. Yeah, absolutely. Because like if I'm I'm writing it, but if it's not coming from me, I'm as surprised Sometimes and couldn't would say that you know, it's a you just get two characters talking when I'm writing my script And then suddenly they're just talking to each other and I was like, what does that mean?

1:45:47And now I know what that means It's like he just gave them life and now now the dialogues coming through him Let me just ask you you're the perfect person to ask about the genius of Quentin Tarantino What makes him special as the director as a creative mind? And what do you see in him? That's beautiful, that's brilliant. He just, since I met him, he was just like this brilliant ball of energy. And, you know, like if you see him, I walk around his house and I'll see, like a few sheets of paper all handwritten out. I'm like, what's that? He was, oh, that was something I was starting to write and I, you know, I'm not gonna finish, I'm like, And I take these and go turn it into like whole trilogy of films, you know, like what he throws away, all this mortal men would kill for.

1:46:35You meet people like that. I tell people, you know, your parents say, whichever your peers are, you know, when you're younger, that means one thing. But once you get older, surround yourself around people who swing much farther than you, you know, that's just like, but that's really true. I mean 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 it. I mean, you know because I was such a big fan I was about to go do this barato and I went hey, I just took a three -day city cam course because I can't afford City cam operator so I'm gonna operate city cam myself on this barato Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, oh, I did the same thing.

1:47:20And I'm going to do the same thing. That would be like hanging out with somebody of your real. But you don't want somebody who's above that. 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. So, us mirror 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. So surround yourself by those kind of people. and that's when you learn things like don't blink. You know, like somebody who's like really swinging for the fences and accomplishing so much.

1:47:53And Quentin was like that. So I met him at the festivals. He's so mariachi, he loved it. We came up, we talked and he said, you know, like my next film I'm writing right now, Pulp Fiction. So I thought, man, I'm gonna put this guy so, he's so fun. I'm gonna put him in, I'm gonna write him in my Desperado script, which I was writing. So I always before Pulp Fiction and all that, when I had cast him. I didn't know he was gonna go become such a household name. me. I just was drawn to his energy and I'd already ridden him in and I met Steve Busemi there and I was like I'm writing a character for Steve Busemi.

1:48:22Then I went back to the Sony lot where I was working on Desperado and Quentin and I ended up having offices right next to each other on the Sony lot. By accident, I didn't even know that. I just met him and I go back and he was because originally Pulp Fiction was for TriStar because Danny DeVito was a producer and he was going to make it for TriStar. So he was there writing Pulp Fiction and I was writing Desperado. So I'd go show him like storyboards from Desperado. He'd come act out scenes with Pulp Fiction and we got to be really good friends that way we'd go eat lunch at Versailles across the street the Sony lot and then Sony passed on Pulp Fiction.

1:48:55It's too weird too long $8 million dollar movie or seven million they're like, yeah, we're gonna go make the next polyshore movie instead You know, like we don't understand this thing and Miramax got it. They had just been bought by Disney So they produced their first film with Pulp Fiction And then that thing went to Cannes. And it was a whole thing. But what I loved about his story is that, when he made Pulp Fiction, he had a director screening. He showed it to some directors. And I wasn't able to go. But anyway, I had dinner with him once. And it was in my journal, because I keep a journal.

1:49:27At 2 .40 a .m., when after he dropped him off at his house, I said, oh, wait, how did your movie come out? You know, Pulp Fiction, he just finished it. And he went, nah, it's dumb. still feels like a movie Quentin would make. Doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was like, that's fine. What does it mean? It feels like when those movies I would make, like Rizavard Dawesome, doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was trying to be the supporter friend and going, man, he was so excited about this movie. You know, he's bummed about it. And I was like, well, it should be different, it should be like, he's like, I wouldn't have it.

1:50:00Drove off, so I don't know, I guess that wasn't the one. So I went home and I called some of the directors that were at the screening. I mean, they go, yeah, this isn't the one for him. It's not, they had none of them saw it. None of them saw it. But that, you're like surprised. Yeah. But that happened with George Lucas too, with Star Wars. Everybody saw that movie and was like, poor George. They showed it to all his director friends, poor George, but he just, he's all the time with his four. Only Spielberg was the one who said, it's naive and it's gonna do really good because it's naive and kids will like it.

1:50:29But everyone else was like, what's he doing? Where art is? We're making art film. What's he doing this garbage for? because nobody knows. It shows no one knows anything. Not even the filmmaker. When you're being groundbreaking, you don't know what groundbreaking is. Not you or anyone around you. Except maybe one or two people. So he said, there's one person. Like, oh, yeah, who is your Spielberg? It goes, Catherine Biggle though, without a doubt. She's the only one who said, there's something here. No one else was seeing, was saying that. He said, in fact, because he remembered suddenly, he'd forgotten the story, but if it wasn't in my journal, I would have forgot it too.

1:50:58He goes, in fact, one of my friends, same and said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with your movie. But I'll wait till you get back from the Can Film Festival. And he goes and he wins the Palm Door and then his friend's like, what the hell though, I know I only made one movie myself, so I never mind, I guess, I guess we're all wrong. So even he didn't expect that at all. So that was a shock, you know, even to him. So think about that, yeah, that means what do you do? Commit to a body or just do that. So you don't know, you don't know what's gonna be a pulp fiction and what's going to be a Jackie Brown, what's going to be, you know, you don't know.

1:51:31And they, and you like to think they know, but they don't know either. They feel it, like Ask Jim Cameron, I said, do you see your movie really clearly? Like, can you see it like with, with hyper focus? Because it seems like that. And he goes, it's like really far. It's out of focus. As you work on it, your work on it starts coming. I said, okay, guys, so that's, that's normal. I thought maybe he had laser vision or something. But no, even him, he doesn't really know. But he feels that he can make decisions and me understands what a creative drive is and how to just keep being relentless about it.

1:52:03But it's not like they have all the proximity is huge. Proximity will change your life. Did for me just being around those guys, they didn't teach me, hey, I'm going to teach you how to make a movie. Just being next to them, being in their world just ups your game. And you just you're able to do things you weren't able to do before. You get ideas you didn't get to do before us. I'll show you one of my painting things. You're not going to believe this freaking thing. I had a painter friend in Germany, Sebastian Krugnery. He gives a workshop once a year. I'm going to go there and I'll learn more about directing by watching this guy paint than I will by watching another director.

1:52:44Because that's just now, I know how creativity works. You're going to learn lessons outside of the box by doing that. And I tried to practice before going out there. I was doing a Danny Treho. I'll show you the before and after. You're not going to freaking believe what you see. But this is how it really tells the story of how important proximity is. So I do this painting. It's like, ah, it looks garbage. I'll show you. It looks like garbage. I'm not used. I can't do paintings that are just like, see, I never should say I can't just cut your leg off. But I could, at the time, paint just paint brush into paint and then right on the canvas like that without using some kind of medium, which this guy Sebastian Kuger would do.

1:53:24So first I did a digital painting of Danny Treho like just to get the framing and all that And then I waited. That's just like that's like on a wake -up tablet But then I did it with paint and it's like oh, it's all credit and the food It's too thick the pain and it just looks and I just gave up right away I was trying to pre -practice. I wouldn't be a total buffoon there because I was going the next week And I thought he's using a different brush. Obviously. He's using a better paint the stuff just is clogging up and it's crap I'm sure when I get there. So I get there and he's doing a Mick Jagger.

1:53:56And he starts with a mid -tone. He starts blocking in the face with a little tiny drawing of where the face goes. He starts doing that. He starts adding some highlights. There's the photo, his reference. And I'm like, why are you concentrating so much on the cheek first? And he's like, it's different every time. And go, why do you? What paints are he using? And he's like, it was regular acrylic paint. What brushes do you have? regular brushes. I'm like, how come mine doesn't look like yours? Let me try what he's doing. I mean, you start with a mid -tone. I'm gonna do that Danny again. Yeah. Start with a mid -tone.

1:54:32I'll start adding some highlights. And I did that. And everybody kept coming over going like, did you just do that? I was like, yeah, I don't know how, but it's very cartoony still. He's doing a very realistic Mick Jagger. Like how real that is. And you just watch it and he doesn't teach you anything. So he just starts painting. So this is the photo he had as a reference, but then this is his painting. Right? Yeah. And because I'm there, he's not teaching you how to paint. Theross Moves is learning some of your scene. There isn't a trick. Yeah. I thought he had a trick and that's why I couldn't get any further.

1:55:09He's using the same brush and the same paint. Well, how come I can't do that? And you go, you do it. I'm going to try and do something realistic. I've never done realistic before because I'm a cartoonist and everything I was cartoony and that was just easier for me because I thought I would need too much training. I did another trio. I started doing a realistic. I finished out just one section of his face and put the pen down because I did that. The same day. Nice. I got out of my way because seeing him get out of his own way, I think that's why sometimes people need to go to school for stuff like that because then now Well, I just did four years of school.

1:55:46So now I must know. Now you're giving yourself permission, but you could give yourself permission right away and it's gonna come through. And drawing Danny and Terry, of all people, is like there's so much going on there. And it's like he's so expressing. He's so expressing. And you've worked with him a lot. And you've, I mean, he's one of those badass humans on the screen. You've created that. Can you just talk about what it's like creating those characters? It was exciting about Desperados. I went to go make it. And there were no Latin actors working in Hollywood because no one was creating roles for them.

1:56:17So I thought, wow, I got to go create my own stars. We'll bring Antonio from Europe because they kind of know his name from the automotive our movies. And I saw him and time me up, time me down when I was in the hospital, writing Mariachi, we're watching TV while I was a patient. There's a scene where he like, headbutts Victoria Abelir, you know, he just said, gave us a head, but he goes, like that. I was like, whoa, I bet that guy would want to be an action. He's got something inside. So I called him when we were doing Desperado and I said, would you ever consider doing an action? Oh, man, I'd love to do action.

1:56:49So I said, I got a movie for you. I got a movie for you. It was sequel to Mariachi. And so, Salma, I found Mexico television, you know, doing, she couldn't get work in the US because of the world. You fired her. I mean, this is one of the greatest, the best stories. I was really determined higher a real Latin, especially Hispanic, and then she's Mexican actress to be the Mexican character. That's like as authentic as you can get. And there was no one who was getting any jobs because no one was creating any. So there was no one that had any movies under their name because there was no one, it was a whole systemic problem, right?

1:57:25This was 94, 93. So I was watching a Paul Rodriguez show on Munevision because he, I was trying to practice my Spanish because I was having to do all these Spanish interviews because Mariachi was in Spanish. I was the other part I didn't tell you. I didn't speak Spanish when I made that movie. We didn't grow up with it. So I left that part out of the Mariachi story because I thought people already didn't believe I made the movie by myself. They knew I made it in a language I didn't speak. I should have said it because it'd be even more inspiring. Like now you have no excuse. I would wrote the English subtitles basically.

1:57:59I wrote the titles. What became the subtitles. and then we take it to the actors and the actors would translate it for me. And I was like, that is so, I'd be like, holy crap. I would try to speak Spanish and say, I'm like, let's record and they'd be looking at me like, that means, let's remember. The record doesn't mean record. That means good, I'm out. Now I know, back then I know. So I'm watching Univision and then there's Sama as a guest and she's a big soap star down there in Mexico. And she comes out, she's beautiful, she's funny, everyone's laughing, she's summer. Everyone that we know now.

1:58:34And she starts talking about, you know, what I gather from what she's saying that she's having trouble finding any work in the US because of her accent. And then, uh, Parker, you just said, well, say something in English that she says, then she sounds just like she does now. And he goes, that's great. She goes, I know, I know. And I went, I think this is the girl. So I called her in my office and I videotaped our first meeting together. So I have that somewhere. That's awesome. Tell me about it so often. It's so much. It's so much. It's her. With her energy, with her passion and funny, she became instant friends with my wife.

1:59:05You know, before they walked over, your wife and her best friends, she already was like part of the family. She's a godmother to my kids. I thought, I'm going to help you. You're going to help me. I need to have a mixing actress in this and you're going to be phenomenal. The studio didn't see it. They were like, what? She hasn't done it. Why don't you just hire somebody else who, you know, already, you know, you're going has a name. So if we just give her one movie, then she'll be someone who's in a movie, and then you can keep casting. So I made a whole mother movie with her in English called Road Racers.

1:59:35It was my second film for Showtime. Really cool little, Ripple Thadak -Cautz type movie. And she's, and I gave her a role, and that's we have an example of her doing English. And they still were like, we need a screen test. We didn't have a screen test with a bunch of other actresses, you know. So it said, sure, let's do that. So I went over to house the night before the screen test and we worked on the scene which is the best scene where she's operating on his arm and they've got all this chemistry and I was just directing her through it like, completely down to when you pick up the water and you hand him the water, don't scream, oh hot water, just be like hot water and while he's spitting it out and it's going to be a vig dramatic action with like a very light delivery and so we got it down to the science.

2:00:19The next day we show up, Antonio does a scene with all the girls coming. He does it with her. Clearly, they've got amazing chemistry. She just nails it. He's great. He loves her too. Studio is like, okay, you can hire. Reluctantly like that, right? But once they saw the footage come as we're shooting and they saw it on the big screen when they're watching the dailies, then they were like, oh my god, then they saw it. Then they saw what I saw when I met her. But sometimes you, like you say, what do you do when people are like, hey, why come are you using these? Just know that not everyone's going to see it.

2:00:58You may have the only vision. Just keep going. There's an instinct that tells you to keep going that way. You'll get proved right or wrong. Or maybe you're just slipping on the first two rocks or whatever. But follow your instinct because you can, everyone's going to have an opinion. And it's not necessarily the right one. And when you're an independent filmmaker, you can make those decisions to change people's through the change of the world. And that's why you want to remain independent. That's why what's happening now in the industry is great because I have to make movies like the way I started, which is why I always like to do, which is just doing it where we create our own destiny.

2:01:32We go, hey, we're gonna make a movie, we're gonna make it for this budget, so we can make it, and the story's gonna be so character driven and cool, we're gonna be able to get big actors to be in it because they're gonna wanna be in it. So Danny Treo, you asked me about Danny Treo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get Danny Treo. We're doing this, brought on now. I'm casting all kinds of people. Now I have this character that I want to have a bunch of knives. He opens up his vest and his a bunch of knives. So bring me all the coolest looking Latin actors we can find. And before he even walked in, there's a picture of him.

2:02:00He already looked like the guy, but he was younger. He always just played prison inmates. It was a picture of him as an inmate and a prison. I want to give him a cool role, you know, this wherever this actress. He walks in and I see him. It's Danny Shrely. He sits down and I had the prop knife already made. And I say, You need to have this in your hand and look like you sleep with it like just practice flipping it around your hand Then gave it to him you got the role just start practicing with it He gets up and walks out. You don't have to say anything because there's no dialogue He walks out We get to the set and he kept saying put me in coach.

2:02:33Give me a line. Give me a line It's like no, no, you're such a nice guy. You're in a blow the whole mistake I went this guy to feel like the most evil scary guy of all and you're such a nice guy I didn't let him talk till dusted on but one thing I noticed was that the town we're shot in in the Mexican town, which is the same town as Shot Marillachi. We went back there because I wanted to pay back the city. So we had this big movie there. And they didn't really know Antonio because he was in European movies. It's not my hadn't come to this set yet. But they saw Danny Trejo there in his vest looking like a Mexican icon.

2:03:05They would go like this. Everyone thought he was a star. And I just know magnetism when I see it. And I went, this guy's got something. So I went to him and I said, I got a movie we were going to do some day. This was 94. We didn't make this movie for 15 years. Machete. You're going to be machete. I had an idea for machete then. It wasn't the same story. I had seen a story, actually, Marriott you then, a guy in front of my heart, said me this funny story. He said, hey, look at this story. That the USDA and FBI, sometimes would hire a Mexican federality to come do a job for 25 grand and didn't want to get their own guys killed on.

2:03:45I said, that's machete, the guy that they pay. But he's not doing it for the money. He turns out he has to get this guy that escaped Mexico and that's the twist. So that was a reasonable story I had. So we're gonna do this someday. And we talked about it for years and never did it. Never had it got around to doing it. So when I did Spy Kids, I put him in Spy Kids and I said, hey, let's pay tribute to that character we never got to make and you'll be Uncle Machete. He's a gadget guy, he's got a mysterious pass. But then a few years later, Quentin and I were doing grind house. And then he'd already done Dustle Domino.

2:04:18I was building my own Latin star system. Salma showed up in a bunch of my movies. Cheat shows up in every movie. Danny shows up here. I brought Cheatj out of retirement, put him in my movie. I needed to create my own Latin star system because all my scripts, because when you write in your own voice, you're going to write probably somebody that's Latin. You know, so you need to have a star system that matches that, so that you don't have trouble casting and people will like, well, you can't hire this person. So I built up my own star system. So Danny was one of my stars. So after we're doing Grindhouse, we had to do fake trailers for Grindhouse.

2:04:47And I told Quentin, I know what trailer I'm going to do. For the movie I never had to make with Danny, call me a shetty. That'll be so fun. Finally get to our other system. And doing a trailer is so fun. It's two days of shooting. Just still being that resourceful guy, we asked this company that had a digital camera we wanted to use. Can you let us send it to us for a couple of day screen tests? I mean, camera test? Instead of shooting a camera test, we shot the trailer. We got a free camera shot the trailer with him. It's just the money shots. Him opening his vest full of machetes, you know him aiming that gun, him in a waterfall with two gals.

2:05:20And I just came up with this really funny trailer and we shot it. People were screaming at the premiere. You can't even hear it. They just wanted that movie so badly because there was black exploitation in the 70s. There was never a exploitation. It felt like this should have existed, but it didn't. It's Mexican superhero. I just never seen anything like that. Now you know, but not even his mom calls a machine. He just became this guy and I've had 250 movies that he's been in. Machete is his most famous one. So for five years, five years people would come up to us and say, where's machete? Where's the, when's that movie coming out?

2:06:00We're like, it's not a real movie. it when it looks real we want to see that movie. So we finally made the movie because people just asked for it and I used I wanted to I was adamant about being resourceful again. All those shots that are in the trailer are really great. I got to reverse engineer the trailer into a movie so I can use that shot that's in the trailer like this girl in the waterfall. Why would this girl be in the waterfall? I thought of a really clever way that he gets the bad guy. Her hair's kind of her face is kind of covered by this hair. Well, Cast Lindsay Lohan there or the Senator will switch it out for Robert De Niro.

2:06:31Well, I just reverse engineer it. So every time there's a shot in the trailer, it's in the movie, but I shot all the footage around to lead up to it. It's another fun creative exercises to reverse engineer something. You just did like this on the day. You just threw a bunch of cards out basically with that trailer. And now you got to go make a movie using all those cards. That's like a creative exercise that I thought so satisfying, so fun. Yeah, that was beautiful. You're actually known in part maybe you can correct me, but do pretty unexpected surprising kind of interesting casting So Robert De Nier is an example of that and that's just a great role The second aspect of that I heard the story that you can just get an actor in and out in just a few days Really fast though that the Robert Rodriguez experiences they call it.

2:07:15How do you make that hat? That can you just tell the story? I'm the editor. I'm the cameraman on the DP And so when I call him and say I got you as the villain in this whole movie, but I swear I'm gonna shoot you on four days. You come down four days. There's a scene where he's in the hospital. He just smiling. He just said such a good time because he couldn't believe it. I said, guess what? When you wake up from your hotel room at the Stephen F. Austin, you just crossed the hallway. That's the set. The room next to yours, we turned into the hospital set. So you're just gonna come laying there in your pajamas.

2:07:47Really? That's what you did. Well, yeah, we had to save time. We only have four days. So everything had to be very thought out to be like boom boom boom this shoot the money get him out And there's we don't have to spend a lot of money on him book a room at a hotel set up to look like a hospital Yeah, that's our set and it's real. You don't have to dress it. It's just right there All you do is put like a little tube there You know like for his IV and then you have a couple of nurses and it looks like Top of your resourceful resourceful next door But I said you're gonna think about me when you're on your next meet the fuckers movie And you're on there for six months, but have you sitting in a trailer?

2:08:20I don't like to do that So you know, I gave Lady Gaga her first two movies Because um after machete. She said it publicly. She said I saw machete and my song Americano should have been in machete I thought she saw machete So I called her up and I said hey, I'm making a sequel and I would certainly use your music But if you ever thought about acting because you're an amazing performer I think I've worked with a lot of actors who are also musicians and they're always great because I already know how to be a person, a beyond stage, being in front of a bunch of people, which most actors can't do. And she said, actually, I studied acting before I became a singer.

2:08:51So well, you'll never be able to be in a movie because you know what? They don't know how to shoot people out. They want six months of your time. And you're always on tour. But if you come be here, I have a part for you. I can shoot you out in half a day. This whole section of a movie, and I'll shoot you a movie poster. It's just like, okay. So she shows up. I had all the sets like a conveyor belt right next to each other. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. She's in the car. That's why she had me do her music video for Rain on Me Later. She said, she's just going to Austin. Robert, pull me on a grease.

2:09:21I was throughout that whole. I don't know how we did that. It was half a day. She was there half a day. It did the same for Sin City too. I was like, I have a set here, waiting for you. If you're on tour and Houston just driving to Austin, I'll shoot you on half a day. You get to be in a scene with Joseph Gordon -Levin. Trap, she came down. So wait, how do you take Robert in here? How do you take Lady Gaga and solve the puzzle of all the scenes that have to be in, how do we shoot them quickly, efficiently, conveniently? You have to edit your own movie. I have this analogy, a food analogy that works really well.

2:09:52Script is like your grocery list. Filming is like grocery shopping. Getting the best performance is getting the best beat, getting the best ingredients, right? Editing is like the cooking. Too much of this and not enough of that. You fucked the whole thing up. So so many filmmakers do not edit and they give it to some other guy who might look at all your ingredients and go Well, this is all great, but I'm gonna go make a fucking souffle and he makes something else So by doing that job, I mean like I've worked on some big stuff and I realized finally after many years because I've always edited I realized this is why movies cost so much There could be a hundred and fifty two hundred people on the crew But I swear not one of them knows how to edit not one So they're getting the wrong stuff.

2:10:37They're having a reshoot, shit. The editor isn't a room somewhere useless, calling after the fact, we still need to get this close up. We got to reshoot that because it doesn't match because no one knows editing. So if you just know that, you're already miles ahead of 99 % of Hollywood. But that's just how I learned by accident. So I kind of stumbled upon it. But I realized that's what the problem is because across the board, I'm watching them going that's not gonna match you guys are just spending money sending cruise out shooting stuff for this It's just it's a clusterfuck. Let me show you And that's how it's in city Bruce Willis nine days Well pretty Murphy's in all three stories one day Benecel atoro three days It's just like you're just shooting this stuff Mickey work is in a sequence with Red Grower.

2:11:25We shot eight months apart I didn't have Red Grower's law is doing Shark Point Lava girl So I just shot Mickey acting with me and then I shot a red girl acting with me and I just come together. What's weird is like editing exercises are like I used to do these editing exercises where I went to my VCRs together and I would cut my movies but sometimes I would just cut a music video and I cut a music video once because I was a big fan of Red Girl Howard and a big fan of Mickey Rourke. So I said I want to make it look like they're in a movie together. So I cut this music video together but so it shows like lightning on Red Girl in the hit show and then lightning on Mickey for a rumble fish.

2:11:57but rumblefish is black and white. So I made the whole thing black and white. I was like 19. I was 19 years old. Wow. And then years later, I'm making Sin City. I shot Mickey not knowing who the other actor was going to be until I cast him eight months later and it was Rudger. I'm cutting them together to look like they're in the same movie. It's in black and white. I'm like, I've done this before. Ha, ha, ha. Oh my god. I found that all of it is like, oh my god, I already made a movie them in black and white. That's more shit, right? That's the magic of creativity. It's like sometimes when you have a vision, it's not clear, but it's coming to you from the future.

2:12:31So you got to just follow the voice. No matter what anyone says about your curtains, just follow the voice you got in your head because you don't know and you're not smart enough to know. And you don't need to know. You just need to do. You just need to be the hands. So this is like what you can do with no time or money when you know all those jobs. It's the benefit of knowing those jobs. Like I said, the more you know those jobs, the more you know your main job, which is being creative, not on the day, thinking on your feet. So I'm gonna show you this, um, this test. Okay, so for Dustled on the TV series, I would always shoot the first episode in the last episode, like a seven or eight episodes season, there's three seasons.

2:13:13By the time we got to the third season, I was doing Alita, so I couldn't do the big finale episode. In my actor who plays the George Clooney character, DJ Katrona, he's somebody who fucking One, it'll be a writer was writing. He's wrote, fight and flight. This is movie that's gonna come out with Josh Arnett That's his he wrote it after doing this he was like, man, hearing you talk, you know what? I got this is what I love about you inspire people the feedback loop that spires you back He said, man, hearing your talk for red 11 and the cards and I've got a script. It's partially written I'm just gonna go I'm gonna go crank it out in 3D I'm gonna cut off the phone in 3D.

2:13:48I'm gonna finish that thing in 3 fucking days and he came back and he said I finished the script And I read it and I go, you read it in three days and go, I wrote something before, but I just kept thinking I wasn't ready. And then you told me the thing about not being ready. And you said that, I really resonated. I went and I finished it in three days. I go, man, I'm going to do that. I'm going to go do the DJ method. I call the DJ method. I've a bunch of half -baked ideas that I'm just going to go turn off the phone and finish the thing in three days. And I'll fix it later. But just three days, there's going to be pure pipe.

2:14:17It's just going to be coming through because you're just going to be picking up the pen. So anyway, he came to me with this idea. He said, oh man, I was hoping you'd do the last episode of Dustle Dawn because I had this great idea for a scene We're in a zombie town western town. We have those ones those guns where you have to Pull the trigger, you know the hammer back before you can fire So I thought what if I have a gun that's empty and I got bullets in the other hand and I bump into a zombie the bullets Go flying I jump and I catch all the bullets and shoot the guy before I hit the ground Okay, that's kind of real cool like desprow's type thing, but dude.

2:14:47This is a seven -day shoot for these episodes Every one of the crew will have a different idea on how to do that. Stunk guy will put you on wires, because you have to do all that action or the DP isn't even operating the camera. It's a camera. The director doesn't know how to shoot. He's not operating the camera. Your editors in a room somewhere. VFX guys aren't there. I'm going to be able to ask them how to do it. But I am my own VFX. I came up with how we do it all the shots in Sydney and all this bike and we thought. We need one guy to come do it. I'll come do it for you. I'll come do it because I'm already gonna be there because I have to shoot a second unit fight scene for the other actor who wanted a cool fight scene.

2:15:29So I was already doing that. When it comes to your scene, we'll switch places because it's gotta be done quick because you've got to shoot it in 20 minutes because you got a ton of other shoot you got to shoot. And you just never get it. You won't even get it in a film schedule, you know, in a regular movie schedule. It's just too crazy. You need somebody with a vision to do the whole thing. So this is what it would look like if you're on the set. I'm going to show you the footage and I'm going to show you the scene. I have to show it to you a couple of times because you're not going to believe what you're about to see.

2:15:57So if you were on the set, this is what it would look like. So I get there, they say, we're ready for that scene. So I get over there to the set and I go, okay, where are you coming out of? This building, where are you getting the bullets from? That body. Okay, bring that body closer. Okay, stunt guy, bring a pad over. I want to see you just jump and start to twist as if you're turning. I just want to see how much air time you can get to get any action Now before you hit the path. He starts to jump. He's barely starts jumping He's already hitting the path. So okay, that ain't gonna work. You get out of here.

2:16:25DJ. You're gonna do it I have no idea how I'm gonna do this. I hadn't thought about it before but now you're there So awesome and now the options are very limited. You're very look at the sun You're gonna see the sun not move. You see that's the point where the sun starts getting lost I have to shoot this in 20 minutes You're gonna do three jumps and I'm gonna cut it to look like one jump. All the bullets are gonna miss. Only one is gonna go in. So here, just follow what I'm saying is gonna have time. What cameras do we have? What's on the A camera? Along lens. That's my camera. I'll upgrade that.

2:16:53What's on the B camera? Steady camera. Leave it on steady camera. No chance. No time to convert it. At one point, I want to lower it. So just flip it upside down. We'll flop it later. Give me the main camera. Okay. DJ start running towards that bullets and grab it and pretend like you get shot out of your hand. I shoot it in slow motion, but I'm showing you how it would look on the set. Okay, now the bullets are flying. I'm going to add those digitally. I'm going to hold the bullets up to the light in each angle so that they know what it's supposed to look like so they can match that otherwise it'll look phony.

2:17:22Now, first jump, I just want you to commit to just jumping out and just look at the barrel. Just look at the barrel on your hands when you're jumping because that'll look like you're looking at the bullets. And just don't even think about that you're going to catch your bullets. Don't think about that you're going to start turning just stretch your body out. Get a really graphically that how cool that looks. And then the side view, it's shot this at the same time. You can already tell it's going to look like bullets are missing, right? Okay, now I need now I need this part though. I need the part where he's catching the bullet.

2:17:58This little window there. How am I going to do that? With the lens that long it's going to be all focus. It's not going to be slow motion enough. He even knows me. He's like, what the hell am I doing? Say just lay on the pad and rock up and down. And as you're coming down, that'll look like you're falling as I'm zooming in because I'm operating the camera and I'm cutting this in my head. Yeah. And I'm saying just do it again. He's like, what is it? Rock up. And then as you go down, it's going to look like you're falling. Well done. Okay. Well done. You've caught a bullet. One went in. Now Now, second jump.

2:18:30When you do the next jump, as if we just pass those other moments, you've caught a bullet already. So now you're going to snap it close and start your turn. It's all you'll get before you hit the pad. Snap turn, right? So like, okay, this is, I went the cameras to feel like they're dropping with them. That'll give you more of the sensation. So let's actually lower that steady cam shot. Flip it upside down and get a low angle. See, I look at the suns right there. It hasn't gone behind the nail. And then my camera, I lowered my camera today. And I got an angle. Right? Okay. Now, last jump. I bury a thin, I said, just bury me, bring me a thin mattress, because I want him to do it all the stunts.

2:19:08I don't want a stunt guy, because he does this himself. He just did it in three jumps. But the audience will know they'll just be like, we believe that this guy can do anything. I want you just to finish by turning and cocking the hammer back and firing before you hit the ground. We'll give you two takes for that. that almost gets it there. Then we do a second thing. Oh, no, no, the other one was probably a little better, even though you don't really see it. I've gotta go do everything though. I gotta cut it. I gotta add the sound effects myself. I gotta put the music in myself because music guys would just end up filling it with music and ruin it.

2:19:41Sound effects guys would just fill a full of sound effects and ruin it. I went all the sound to drop out. So as he's jumping all year, is the wind. I mean, it's jacket. The clinking of the blitz is their bouncing off. So you have this breathless moment. No music, cut the music. And that moment you cut it, so that you're like, I wonder if he's gonna make it, right? So I go home, I cut it, before I even have the visual effects in, I just cut it that night, because I cut my own sound effects. I cut my sound effects in. You can already tell it's gonna work. You can already see, with even with a bullet's not there, you can tell by the sound, where they're gonna be, it's gonna work.

2:20:16I call them up and say, dude, this is gonna work great. So I then I go to the effects guys, and I go, okay, there's the bullet in this frame, the next frame is here, because I used to animate in the next frame. It's there. Then it hits the barrel and then it starts bouncing this way. I went at that clear so we can follow that a bullet was supposed to go in and then it bounced way over there and then this bullet bounced way over there. And they send it back and a bunch of bullets come down. No, guys listen to this. I'm gonna show you again. I'm gonna drive to you again. Just the sound will play like there's multiple bullets flying.

2:20:45I don't need to see all those bullets or the eyes not gonna know where to go. So then they got it right brilliant and then check this out. I'm gonna show it to you twice because you're gonna believe

2:21:09Wow, changes direction. Wow Wow. Wow. Pretty well done. You didn't even see that in a feature film. Much less a TV film. This is a director. Well done. Oh, thank you. Here, just one more time. I'll show you something you didn't notice, both times.

2:21:46That's amazing. Just those decisions coming together perfectly. Oh, coming together really well done. And like this, you got minutes. It's just moving the camera like you decided to do really worked really well, the balancing and the matchers, whatever. And it's not like you have this whole plan figured out ahead. You're literally in the moment. It's coming through. But you're seeing it. Right. I'm seeing it because I've done it enough. That's why you really want to learn all those jobs because it comes a moment like this when the shit's fucking in the fan. You got to know how to pull it out. You could have gotten all those people together and they never would have figured that out.

2:22:17You had one person had to see it all the way through. You're seeing the bullet hole is going to go in the result. I've done enough times to know that if you don't do it, just right, you're gonna lose the image. You're not gonna know where to follow and you'll miss the point. And I love that you're thinking about where the eyes of the audience will go and that's like I feel like too many people might think about some more general concept of a scene versus like the audience, where's their eyes? Well, you're drawing it through sound, to picture, I'm gonna show you. If you notice without the sound, you don't really see him click the sound.

2:22:54The sound is so sensory here. Watch this. You don't really... Right. I thought I saw it. You think you saw it, but you hear it, so you feel like seeing it. But watch it. It's actually... He's already finished. You don't really see him do it, you know. But you swear you saw it in a close -up because the sound is in a close -up. I mean, the sound in a close -up. Now, here's nothing you didn't notice. He hits this ground in the first shot, watch. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, you didn't even notice it because I didn't play the sound there. So if you don't hear it, you don't see it. And if you don't see it, but you play a sound, you hear it, and you see it in your mind, right?

2:23:29So check that out now with the sound on, and you'll see both of those parts play completely different now.

2:23:41Right. Now you hear it. I know you can get away with that because I know editing and I like I thought I'm playing a sound I can go ahead and milk that shot as long as I want I'll make him be in the air longer even though he's actually touching the ground by not playing the sound and that comes from you said directing but it's not directing like people can direct and say this is what I want but to actually execute it you need to be a craftsman and to be a craftsman you have to learn all those crafts and not just with the visuals but with the sound and the sound too the sound is so sound important, sound is half the picture.

2:24:15Sounded, and if you cut sound, you realize how important sound is. I would learn so much by doing those movies, like Dust Brow actually moves where you go, wow, the sound, I can add an extra sound effect of an extra punch heat, and even throw. And it sounds like he's beating the shit out of this guy, and you only need to see one or two hits, and you can hear five. You know, you know where you can push your limits, because you've done it, you've done it, and you've got the experience. It's so amazing that you can use sound to make a person believe they saw something there wasn't actually there on the screen.

2:24:44Yeah, your brain fills it in. That's crazy. And that's why that's so important because if you don't know that, you'll be on the set shooting 10 takes of that. Because you're like, no, he didn't, I didn't see him click it back. I didn't see, I didn't see him click it back. It's, that's really needed. I can do that with sound. Let's just go. Let's just keep moving. When you say sound close up, was that, was it, was it like, it's the way, it's the sound. All the other sounds dropped away and all you hear is, like, the sound, like, the mics right on that thing so that you hear it so big in your ear that you swear it was in close up too but just the sound was close.

2:25:14How do you, sorry, just to give an insight into that process of sound design? What are you listening to the sound and just experiencing the feeling that creates? And then you're like, that's just right. I'm siren in post a lot. So I have a whole library of sound effects from all my movies. So I can pull up like the gun sound we created for Bruce Willis in the Sensitiy and use that and mix it with Antonio's gun from Desperado. You know, I remember in four rooms there's a scene where the bell hop goes into the hotel room. James is key into it and clicks it and I used all gun sounds for the sound of the key.

2:25:49Instead of the key sounds because it wasn't sound close enough. So if you listen to it, you hear like all these sounds from gun to do the key is it's like that conveys the sound better. You know, I'll use different kinds of sounds that just have impact and put it somewhere like when he hits the ground or so I like playing with all that in post when I'm editing because it makes my editing job easier. Sometimes it's like oh the sound is covering me. I don't need to keep trying to massage this. The sound is actually selling it and so I keep those sound effects into the final movie. So it's just all part necessary.

2:26:21It's like being a chef, you're cooking and you're going like I know the recipe says this but I think it really could use jalapenos and some extra pepper or maybe a little more and then he needs an acid of some kind someone adds some lemon juice. Yeah, you made me realize I'm not sure where I saw that but you were talking about making sort of home film sort of fun and like you mentioned, how exciting you can make a very mundane scene by just adding sound. Oh yeah. I think there's like a little kid for this car. Yeah, I've got this little and but I added a motor sound to it and it's like wow. And it sounds realistic somehow.

2:26:56And then we're playing and then we're playing with these little cars. filming ourselves playing with the cars. Hmm. But then I replaced it with real car sounds. And it just, your brain released the reality of the real thing. It's crazy. And you realize how unimportant the visual is and how important the sound is actually. Sound is everything. That's what I was really lucky in Mariachi that my camera didn't work for sound. Because then I got really good sound that I would have gotten with a shitty mic out of frame. Because that's the first telltale sign of a low budget movie is bad sound. That sound right away, you can already hear all this hiss and all this.

2:27:30Mike was too far and you're like low budget movie. Before your eyes even tell you the sound gives it away. Isn't that amazing? The audio is first, sound is first, really. Even though it's a visual medium, that's so crazy. Just on the, what's the plan with the four action films? Like what are the next steps? I'll probably direct more than one because I already several that I want to do. but I'm going to direct at least one, but I'm producing all three, all four, and there at my studio, it does draw you in. It draws you in and it makes you go now, think of ideas you never want to thought of for, mainly because it has a filter.

2:28:06Well now I don't have to think of all these ideas. I can only, I actually have like me on that set. There's only very few things I can actually come up with that are just action driven first with a have a great character. You'll get to it a lot faster with a filter. That's the beauty of a filter. And so now you've just shrunk your target. And now you can hit that target. And people are coming up with ideas because now they've got proximity and they've got a reason to come up with the idea. And they've got a deadline, which is the best thing you can do, is have a deadline. Because when you have a deadline, you can freaking move mountains.

2:28:39You know I had a spike his in the theater every year, three years in a row, not being pre -planned. Every year there was a spike his. Now the third one was the biggest one. biggest cast, mostly green screen, video game, and the first digital 3D movie ever. So getting visual effects companies to make that, we realized, oh, I shot it with two cameras. That means each effect shot has to be done twice from a different angle. So I went to the studio, midway through that and said, there's not going to be a movie in the theaters in time. You're going to have to push the date back. And they said, okay, we've never heard you panic.

2:29:13like, we'll push the date back for you. They call back 10 minutes later. I was like, oh, thank God. Because it's really complicated. I know it's gonna be this complicated, but I wanted a challenge. And they said that McDonald's will sue us for $20 million if you move the date. You have to have a movie that day. We started shooting that movie in January of 2003. It was in 3D, in theaters by July. That's the fastest, any effects movie has ever been done. That's insane. That's the same. Because you had no choice. So deadline makes you do things and make decisions really quick and it was the biggest of the three deadlines are good and it's hard for us to self -impose a deadline sometimes because we know it's a bullshit deadline and your brain knows it's a bullshit But why do deadlines work because when the deadlines coming up, what do you do?

2:30:03You can you start you start to put the pen to the paper and it starts just flowing You have no choice You have to get out of the way and open the pipe and it just comes out and you're shocked. You're like, oh my God, I should do everything at the last minute. Well, no, you don't have to, but if you just learn how to open that pipe earlier, you wouldn't have to be on a rush, but you had to get out of your way because your deadline was up and you had to come up with it. So many people are gonna come up with all these extra great ideas at the last minute. They've already, but I look like everyone who's already signing on, because they didn't, it's cool, they don't know when the deadline is.

2:30:36They keep writing in saying, when is the deadline for this? And we say, well, when we close the funding in May, But we didn't say when still so I think that gives them like a sense of a deadline like shit I it might be May 1st or maybe May 2nds. We better get my idea So I think it works in your favor because then you come up with stuff and you're gonna feel so enriched by doing the idea That you're not gonna care if it gets picked or not. You're gonna love this idea so much It could turn into 10 other things you never even thought about That's the beauty of doing a project nothing ever goes to waste so many ideas that were sitting around that I'd come up with and put a lot of time in are now like oh I can do these now.

2:31:12I know how to finish it now. I have to ask you about Oliya. So if you've done so many incredibly innovative projects, this is one of them. It turned out to be this visual masterpiece. There's a bunch of complexity, beautiful complexity about it, and that it started out as a film that James Cameron was supposed to make. And then you started to collaborate with him on it, and these two always say brilliant directors, but with different styles, like you were talking about. And so plus there's the complexity of for people haven't seen it, you're putting this artificial creation, this beautiful, photorealistic artificial creation of a human being into a real world.

2:31:53So you have to capture the performance, not just the motion, but the performance of this actor, put them into this, with the power of technology, into the real world. So convey all the emotion, the richness of of the human face, can you just speak to the process of bringing that world to life? Sure, I mean, why not? I never would have attempted it. It was in Jim, because Jim has, has figured a lot out of this out. So just to get you, again, remember like I said, Hey, Jim, I'm operating a study camp. What do you think of that? Well, I'm designing a new system. That's always how it is between him and I.

2:32:22So when I went to show him this product when it was done, he said, you might not want to sit through, if you don't want to sit through it while I'm watching it, it's fine. Do you want to read any of my scriptments, my treatment, treatment scripts, you know, call scriptments? The churros gave it a Spider -Man and I got Avatar. This was in 95. He was showing me the scriptman for Avatar, which there was no technology for that. He was already doing stuff that didn't exist. Yeah. And I was reading it going like, it's a great story. He was like, wow, that's gonna do this. It's impossible. It's not even, he had just done Terminator 2 a few years before.

2:33:00It's like, that was the thing to the art. So Alita was going to be the movie he did first to prepare for Avatar. And so he had already done some prep work on it, it was based on Amonga. But before they did that, they just started doing some tests for Avatar. And then as they got deeper into the test for Avatar to prepare for Alita, they went, I guess we're making Avatar first. So Alita got kind of pushed to the side and they ended up doing it, which ended up becoming such a journey to make that movie, to get the technology to build it to make it. So I remember visiting him on the set. I mean, I've known him so long.

2:33:34I was on the set of Titanic. That's a long time ago. I was on the set of Titanic. I was on the set with Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Furlong for the 3D ride he made for Universal a few years later. So, I mean, I feel like I've been around him a lot of his career and to be able to visit the set, you know, of Avatar and remember him showing me like, artwork they did. Very photorealistic and he goes, curious to see how photoreal it'll be when we're finally done with this process because you don't get to see it till it's almost done. And I was like, wow, he's just shooting blind.

2:34:10He's really talking about me shooting, Mariachi not seeing the footage. He's making this whole movie not even knowing what the end result is going to look like at all because you're not going to know till you get there. And when you get there, if you don't like it, there's not a lot you can do. So it's just seeing him do that and have that success really made it easier for me to do Alita because then it's like okay we don't know. Again we don't need to know. We know we'll get there but we don't know how we're gonna do it. We're gonna start and anything that I would come up with on this movie in his team because he had all his wedding people working on it.

2:34:42He had them all working on it too. I do a fast version of his process because there's a lot of live action. Avatar's mostly CG. I have live action sets. You have to come to my studio because I still have the whole Alita city in my back lot. Well, here the troll maker studio. Yeah, that's where it was. Yeah, it was shot here. So when you go see my city, I built it very resourceful. This is weird. It looks just like the town from Mariachi. I'm like, you look better than the town of Mariachi. Yeah, 90 ,000. It's the biggest largest standing set in the country because sets are always moaned down for the next movie, but I just kept it there.

2:35:18So we should have shoot it all the time for Mexico or South America or Europe or whatever. It's seven streets and we added digitally above it that the ceilings are 20 feet high. You got to come see you don't believe that it's here. It's unbelievable. Where is it north of Austin? It's where the old airport was. So it's like on 51st Street, you know, it's like really close to town. I would love to visit. You got to come see you're not going to believe it. All my props, all my stuff from all my movies. So the people who are, you know, investing in brass knuckle, that's way. They say it's like a Willy Wonka movie because they're going to get to come check out all that stuff and and be in proximity and see, oh, like me with that painter, it's not a trick.

2:35:55He's just doing it. I then you realize you can do it too. But we thought a shoot mostly live action and we'll just replace her, but we still have to figure her out. You have to cast the right actress. And when I saw Rosa Salazar, she was just amazing. She made me cry and auditioned the first time. I was like, oh my God, this person has some. If we can capture even a fourth of her facial expression, it'll bring so much life. And they got it one to one. And it really helped Jim on the next avatar in wetta, because they got to try out a bunch of things. That's why the second avatar way of water looks so much more refined than the first avatar because of that middle step of doing elida.

2:36:36It was training ground for them. Can you actually educate me on the wetta process? Is this like a performance capture technology? Yeah, I have her in a suit for capturing her body movements, but also facial capture. It's a performance capture of all her performance, all her emoting. And we have witness cameras around everywhere to pick up where she is and everything else is real. And we're just replacing her. But with someone even smaller in size, so you have to erase everything behind her. There's like a bunch of technical things you do. But the idea is to whatever performance she gives, she's such a great actress, is to capture all of that because then this character that doesn't even exist will feel very emotional and you have to be tied to it, you have to feel it's heart.

2:37:18She was the heartbeat of it. So she's acting with all this acting with all that, but it just disappeared. She's not even there. Like, we don't notice this is here. It's like that. She can just perform through it. What was some interesting, unique, challenging things about you directing her performance in this kind of world? I just knew she had to be her. It was gonna be just so easy with her. She's just so great. She everything was just so real and everything was just like she's that character. She becomes that character who's seen this world for the first time. No special effects gonna help you with that if the performance isn't there So it was all about getting the performance and casting the right actors.

2:37:54That's why you get Christ off Waltz there and you get Jennifer Connelly, you know these masters are all in the set You know, you've got an amazing cast of people, and that's really the heart of it, so that the technology kind of goes away. How hard is it to get the actors to act when the full world is not around you? 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, so everything was very tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that.

2:38:35Because if it was all done in CG, well, they know you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge. And that really helps them on Avatar. Because that whole place is created in Avatar. You could get away with a lot, but they wanted to commit to that kind of detail. And on the next Avatar, that's why it just feels like you're really there. It's just stunning. And you get there by having something to work on like this to take the technology of the next level. So it was cool to be able to help, you know, knowing that you're being helpful to him in this process and not just distracting him.

2:39:05But then also he liked that his artist had something else to work on besides just Avatar to just work on something different to freshen up the perspective on things and methodology. And so yeah, that was a really exciting movie to work on. And that we got to shoot at here, Jim Cameron movie here. And also that was the best time in here. And that my whole crew who's worked to me 25, 30 years, everyone had an extra spring in this step. They're like, wow, we're working on a Jim Cameron movie. I mean, that's just like a high bar of achievement for everybody, you know, working on it. Since we talked about it, you know, the directors, can you speak to the genius of James Cameron?

2:39:40Like what makes him special? You talked about some of the difference in your approach in his, he's created some of the most special movies ever. also what's behind that what would you say is interesting about the way his creative mind works I think I use guys George Lucas you know him you know I'll ask them any of the Pixar it's a mix of And I got really lucky my first job was a Photoshop because my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop He said you're some are job and I was 16 go from my friend Mario. I got a Mario's Photoshop and I'm you know developing pictures I think you develop photos from film and he said, here, take this camera home, give me one of those cameras.

2:40:21Take this camera home and some film. I need you to learn how to use the camera so you can only sell the cameras. So I went home and I have a bunch of siblings. So like when the star is a bedhead, taking all these pictures of everybody, I take it back and he looks at the pictures when he develops, he's like, whoa, these are really creative. You're a creative person. This is someone sometimes people tell you something that you can't on here and he goes, Because that's a gift. What you need to know now, now you need to become technical. Because most creative people need technicians. The technicians always need creative people because they're not usually the same.

2:40:54You're born with creativity. It's against your nature to be technical, but you can learn if you apply yourself. And if you're both technical and creative, you'll be unstoppable. And I was like, stop, wow. So here, once you learn zone photography, you know, against how much you learn this, this the technical part of it. So that's why I didn't take a crew of Maria cheese. I knew if I'm just a creative person and I need a crew to go actually technically make the movie, I'll always need something. And when you want to really change your life, you want to get your I need list down to little as possible.

2:41:31Because if you're like, well, I want to shoot my movie, but I need a cameraman and I need somebody who knows how to lie to your I need list keeps growing. That's further and further and further you will be from what you need to accomplish So I kind of went down there without any help So then remember that script analogy where the guy said throw away three scripts I said no, I'm gonna write three scripts and then shoot each one so I get better at you Which one of those jobs so I can learn to be technical my technical Compatibility was so little like I'm literally calling the guy on the phone. How do I use this camera?

2:42:02You know, that's how little I knew about it, but I knew by doing the job I would learn by being both That's really the key. So Jim Cameron is like that. Jim Cameron, when you see those guys, George Lucas, very technical and very creative. John Lester, very technical, but very creative, Pixar. Jim Cameron, very technical, very creative. Putting those two things together is really what sets you apart from other technicians and other creative people. And it's very, very powerful. A lot of creative people, again, it's against their nature to be technical. They don't want to do it. Make yourself do it.

2:42:33Read the manuals. Take the lessons. It frees you up because then you can go do like, you know, I just showed you in that demo, you're able to now be a technical person and creative and then you're in trouble. He's one of the best at it. And he just knows how to craft a story. He's very analytical as well. Like we bounce off each other in a funny way. He goes, man, he came down to visit my studio for a ditto lead. And he went, you only surround yourself with people for like you, like you exude creativity, you know, from every pork. And so does everyone at your studio and I go, yeah, I didn't hire them that way of purpose, but I think if you're not that way, you kind of know, you know, belong there and you kind of leap.

2:43:13And then I went to his studio and there are a bunch of gym cameras there. They're like, oh my god, they're all very technical. You can't get all kind of fuzzy with a logic or the, you can't get, you can't get really creative with a physics or anything. They're like, no, that's not how work would be like it.

2:43:35And Sky high and they're all like that because yeah, if you're not part of it If you're not like that you can't hang with those guys. You can hang with him very long I heard a story where the guitar case being a rocket launcher Where to you you create this real world where everything is possible the magic feels real and for James Cameron He has to know how a guitar case would work that would actually be a double as a rocket launcher when I show him the trailer for Grand Ashton he sees the machine gun laying all that he goes whoa That's unbridled filmmaking from the it It makes sense only the second you're watching it not a second you're watching and you believe it Yeah, he's really interesting in that he's so prolific I walked into his writing studio And it'd be like on a one of the tables Like did you have those papers there imagine them that thick that thick that thick all script scripts What are these he's this?

2:44:26This is a whole you know space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one He's like, he's cranking out all the stuff. Again, can I take this and go, right? Yeah, we bounce off each other because I loved his analytical part of his brain. I'm not that analytical. I'm just kind of like, hey, I'm really creative feeling. I'm like, whoa, I'll go this way and then, whoa, I'll go that way. And he likes that about me. But I like, I want to be, because I think about things too much. Like, you think about things like, what makes a movie a billion dollar hit? What are the elements that you need?

2:45:00And I'm going to analyze that and I'm going to make sure my movie does that. He engineers a submarine that can break the world record. He engineers a movie that can break the world record. You know, he's like, he has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rare. So that's very rare and he's capitalizing both. He had this submarine model like this being on his desk, the one that he broke the world record board going and just seen it and knowing he even have kids and stuff and wife and I'm like, weren't you afraid going down there with, you know, something had happened? I was like, no, wasn't afraid.

2:45:35Like, why not? And he was, because I designed this skate vehicle. Yeah, but was any other bozo I'd be afraid, but he designed this skate for that kind of confidence. That's him. He just knows if some other bozo had designed this skate vehicle, I would be afraid. But total confidence, as he did it. The confidence of extreme confidence is brilliant. Just to get you excited about how creative this stuff is, so Desperado was the only movie on the Sony lot being edited digitally. Not only was I editing on a computer, I was editing in my house, which in 1994 was just unheard of. So I'm there in my house and they made me cut an L .A.

2:46:12because at first I told the studio, I want to edit Desperado myself because it's important that I edit it and they go, no, you can't. Why not? We've never had a director edit his own movie here. So we don't want to set a precedent. Okay, so I thought that we'd give you too much power. So this is the power of precedent. I said, well, you bought Mariachi and I edited that. So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit in the lace. We can watch because we don't think you know what you're doing. We saw the footage and the shots are really short. It's too short. It's like shots are too short. Oh, because I was shooting my cuts.

2:46:47You know, like they're used to seeing footage on Tonyo walks into the bar and he's going to be a dialogue scene. They expect the whole thing done from a wide shot. I would shoot the wide shot. You walk in, cut, move the camera, let's get over here. Cause we went into, so I'm not gonna use it for the rest of the scene. I know we're gonna get into coverage cause I've already cut it. So I say, oh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. If you ever seen Desperado, the first scene is the best scene. Steven Semy's telling the story. He's talking about the myth of the mariage. He's doing this crazy.

2:47:10It's crazy. It's crazy. So then they come over. I say, you come see my first scene. So they come over to my house. They watch it. Okay, you know what you're doing, But I was cutting Desperado in my house that I rented there and then we shot Destaldon at the same time So I was cutting Desperado for rooms and Destaldon myself. I'm the editor. I don't have an editing other than the ones who imported into the machine So Diltorial came over Soda Burk came over. We're gonna borrow for Skits office Then no one had heard of somebody having an avid in their living room Jim comes over and he goes I hear you have an avid in your living room And I go yeah come check it out.

2:47:44I'm just like I roll out of bed. It's like I'm so remarkable because this is what you do right now but back in 1994 it was unheard of. I'm cutting three movies at the same time myself. I roll out a bit. I come here. I can cut this baron or I can cut this to the line but that's it. I hate working with editors. You know, when I was doing Terminator 2 they wouldn't even let me put the bad to the bone song in Terminator 2 because they didn't think it would work. And I had to sneak into the at a room at night on the weekend to cut it in and show them the next day. It was like, that's your own movie.

2:48:14He kind of powered up people. He said, I hate working with him. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna turn down the wall in my house. I'm gonna put it in an avid. I'm gonna cut my next movie. And he did. He got an Oscar for editing Titanic. Can't do other editors, but now no one ever took him for a ride like that again. He edits on every movie. He has other editors, but he can go to his own cuts when he shows me like footage. He's showing to me himself on his own machine. And it's like, again, it gives you all those tools to be able to really find your vision that you're looking for, because you can't always explain it to somebody because you don't always know yourself.

2:48:46It's part, you kind of come up with it as you do the process. Just a small tension about the different software and the technologies involved. So you mentioned Avid, this premier pro. Premier was still in its early stages then. I think Soderberg looked at it and it said, yeah, I can't afford an Avid for this movie. I'm going to go do it. So I think he started cutting on Premier. But I'm sure it's all better now. I just have always used an Avid because I just always ran it back to the same production. I think I've just, I don't have to buy a new one. but there's lots of good stuff here about all kinds of systems.

2:49:13Let us use the same one. I guess that's the question I have for you. It's interesting for people. It's very interesting to me, just the details. Use avid. What do you like multiple monitors, one monitor? Have a couple monitors. And then I'm one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene back because the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, I've ever designed my own system. I've probably designed it differently. But I'm literally, I've worked on that thing since 94. I still don't know all the shortcuts and all this shit. I still use it like my tape deck play rewind pause and I can cut so fast with that Just I don't use the mouse for shortcuts.

2:49:45I'm just like so you found your way. Yeah preferred way the workflow of using it and now you can Sort of let go the technical and then be creative Yeah, just be creative. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. It's like it doesn't matter what system it is It's like if you can get it to work for you great like there's a lot of problems I have with it that I would I know or probably fixed on another system but that they'll have a whole other set of problems. So it's like, well, why bother with that? There's limitations, I think, that it has, that it would need to be fixed, but not for what I'm doing.

2:50:13I mean, I can still do what I need. It feels like part of the artistry is every system has limitations, and you learn how to work around those limitations. I mean, that's the best thing. I think my first VCRs, those things, those things were, I was always known for taking what little basic equipment and milking the shit out of it, what it could push in the boundaries of what it can do. And now it's flipped. Now you're working on a program and you can spend 10 years on this thing and you're scratching the surface of what it's capable of. It's totally flipped the other way. I'm not milking anything anymore.

2:50:46I'm barely getting the smallest capability of it because I would have to spend a lot of time to figure out all the stuff that he can possibly do. And I'm sure it's all great fantastic stuff, but what a different world than when I grew up where it was like, okay, I mean, splice these two sound things together and it was so hard to get it to do. People would be like, you got that movie out of that equipment. We're now it's the other way around. You know, it's like all this equipment is great. So when people come to me and say, I've got, well, I've only got this camera. I was like, did that camera's 10 times better than anything I had for my first 15 years of filmmaking?

2:51:20So you have no complaints. This is like, you're going to start now and just start making stuff. I have a lot of friends who are huge fans of your movies. So one of them asked me that I'm absolutely must ask you, do you know if there's sequel of a lead upcoming? We're working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it. That's usually when we meet, we talk about it. I gave him something to read. He's a little busy with Avatar movie, but I'm going to see him again soon. We'll see where it's at. But we would love to make another one. We have ideas on how to do it, because it was always built to be a trilogy.

2:51:53And he sees that there's a lot of love for it. It was just weird, because it was a Fox movie. And then got bought by Disney. and then they weren't really making Fox movies because they had enough Disney movies. We work with their Disney movies, but now they're starting to make some Fox movies like they did Deadpool and some Fox movies are starting to get made. So time might be right for us to come back and do it a little. No, I hope you do soon. But it is, I mean, you do so many different kinds of movies. That's a whole different kind of puzzle, right? No, but it's not a bad one. It's a good one.

2:52:25It's a cool one. one of the few, usually I made kids' family kids movies or our rated action horror movies. And that was the first time I got to do a PG -13 movie, which was kind of like a hat on an action, but it was for our families could watch it too, and it was kind of like the best of all worlds. Have to ask your boss in the city, one of my favorite films of all time, it was a visually stunning world. What are some maybe interesting detailed aspects about you creating that world? This is why you just gotta follow your nose and go do something, you know. Jim and I were both into 3D really, you know, like I visited his set for the Terminator 3D right.

2:53:00Dustle Dawn, I wanted to be 3D. Actually, when they got to the bar, if you watch from that point on, everything's kind of set up for 3D. Everything was shooting into the camera and all that. But the cameras they had for 3D and film were those old shitty ones. They were so bad that I went, okay, we can't do it. But I really wanted people to have to put on glasses when they got into the bar. And it was going to turn into a 3D, different movie. I got to do that on Spike It's 3D. So when I did Spike it 3D I thought oh if I get Jim's camera that he's done for these underwater 3D you know documentaries I can make the first digital 3D film for theaters.

2:53:38And so I did and it seemed like the easiest way was to utilize that when you put on the glasses when you go into a game world. So there's a green screen and we shot all the actors on the green screen for all the game stuff. We can do a lot of 3D stuff coming at kids faces with it reaching. My 3D is not like the kind they have in theaters where it's very polite minds like theme park 3D Kids are doing like that trying to grab. That's why I was such a big hit. Nobody does 3D like that But I wanted that I want shit following people's laps, you know So you remember so you go okay, this is why I'm wearing glasses Yeah, I'm wondering why and when I went to go make my next movie so this is how crazy is what we shot Spike is three remember actually how fast they came out that was in the summer of 2003 few months later once upon a time Mexico came out.

2:54:22Two number one movies, both were finishing trilogies of mine. An each one starred in Tonyo, Danny Trejo, when I was editing those at the same time, you'd be like, whoa, when were they're killing people? And the other ones are like, where the kids going, hey, family. So it was really fun. It was fun to, it's easier to do very different things than to do like two action movies or two family movies at the same time. But I was like, okay, what's my next movie going to be? No shit, how crazy is this? Okay, so Antonio is on the set. I'm gonna shoot him out in half a day for Spike his 3D because he's only in the last scenes on the green screen.

2:54:57Shoot him to lunch. Okay, now go away, put on your Desperado outfit cause we owed some shots for one time, mix you on the green screen. He finished two trilogies in the same day. That's gotta be a first, if ever, that's never finished two trilogies in the same day. And it's just Kismit, you know, it's just how it happened to happen that day was just luck or the universe. or whatever, but I needed to get something new now. So I was looking through my bookshelves of inspiration and I picked up my Sinciti books, which I've had, I used to be a cartoonist and I always loved how he drew that. Every time I'd see a different edition, I'd buy it, go, oh my god, I already have this, I got like three copies of this already.

2:55:33And we just always grab me by the throat and I like that he was a writer, director in a way because he would not just wrote the comic, but he drew it too. A lot of times it's a different writer and a different comic artist. He's like a real like a kinship, you know, this is someone who writes and directs his own thing. But I was looking at it and I went, oh, shit, I know how to do this now. I just did it on the green scene. If I shoot this on green screen, the actors on green screen, I can make the backgrounds look just like this and I can contrast up the actors and I could get this very graphic look, which sometimes for a window, it's just a white box.

2:56:04So it's even got a sliding scale for budget. If I run out of money, just put the actors in black and white, just put like a white dot behind them for a street light, and that looks just like the book. So I'm going to bring the book to life. So I'll show you how fast we go from development at troublemaker. It was October. Once upon a time Mexico had come out. I was like, oh shit, I know how to do this now since city. I'm going to do a test. I want to my green screen here in my studio. You'll see my green screen where I shot all these movies. And I shot, you know, my sister, myself, we put it black and white.

2:56:39It looks just like the comic, but it's moving. So I call a comic book artist friend of mine, my Gal -Rid, and I said, do you have Frank Miller's number? And he goes, yeah, I do. Okay, I'm gonna call him up. So I call Frank Miller. Hey, he's Robert Dregas. I have a test I'm gonna show you since city. I'm gonna be in New York tomorrow. And he's like tomorrow, okay, yeah, sure. Come by me, me and me at this bar, okay, book a flight for New York. I didn't know what to do. I fly up there, I have my laptop just like this. Yeah, that's good. I go to the bar. I show him what looks like an image from his comic and it starts moving and He's like, wow, how did you do that?

2:57:16I said got my own studio and all this and I start tell man. Let's make this movie because No one had the rights to it. He never gave the rights to a studio a lot of comics Oh, Warner Bros bought this a while back, you know, or then you got to go through the studio He still owned his own rights In fact, he'd gotten burned by Hollywood so many times as a screenwriter that he said fuck it I'm going to go back and draw a comic that's so raw that can never be made into a movie. So because I call him, hey, it's maker -grang -me. It's like, show him how we can do it. And I go, I know you don't know me.

2:57:46And you're going to have to earn your trust for you to give me your baby. But we can make this right away. And he's like, he's all excited for about two seconds. And then he goes, oh no, then we got to write a script. And then the studio's going to have notes. All I should he's been through before. Anyway, it's not like that. I have a whole different set up. I got my own studio in Austin. This is how it's gonna be. If you like this idea, you're not gonna have to take any risk. Let me take all the risk. I'm gonna go write the script myself next month. It's gonna be unremarkable, because I'm gonna write it right.

2:58:19I'm gonna edit through the stories down. I'm gonna just take stuff out. Really, I might add a few things to connect it, but I'll write the script in December of myself. No money involved. Then we'll call some actor friends of mine. We'll have them come to my green screen. We'll shoot the opening scene. as a test, but it's also the opening scene. I'll do the effects myself, do the sound, do the music, I'll do fake credits. We'll watch it together. If you like what you see, we'll make the movie. You get me the rights then. If you don't like it, keep it. It's a short film to show your friends. It's be really cool.

2:58:52So he's like, all right, there's nothing on him to do. It's all in me. I write the script in December, January, Josh Arnett, Marley Shelton, come down, fly Frank in shooting for 10 hours on my green screen. We should that opening sequence. Incredible opening sequence. Record his voice over right then in my little voice over booth. Marty Shelton comes up, why did I hire him to kill me? I don't know. Let's go ask Frank. He's right here. Let's go ask Frank. I want to know myself. So he tells her and he's like, I want to do this movie. He's already, I tell you Frank, I used to be a cartoonist. It's the same thing.

2:59:25You're already a director. You're just using a pen instead of a camera. The performances you get out of your paper actors or phenomenal. The shots you do are like beyond any DPs ever done. And the visual look we've never seen that. I wanna 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. They would miss the point that the visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this because there would be the boldest movie anyone 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.

2:59:56In fact, asked him, do you ever feel like directing I thought about directing the big fat kill maybe the short films you should come direct that one Yeah, you should direct all of them with me because I'm really copying it right at a book you should direct it with me Alright, let's go So then January okay, so remember I met him in November I wrote it in December January we shoot the test took me a couple weeks to do the effects. He loves it Make it meeting with Bruce Willis show it to Bruce Willis But so cool about doing that opening scene is that any actor I show it to now I show him the book which is awesome You'd be playing this character, but look at this test.

3:00:32Let me show you the book what it looked like before I turned this test into a test. Watches it, Josh Arnett, voiceover, music, titles come on. First name on the screen. Bruce Willis, and he goes, hey, look, you're in the credits. You have to do it now. Man, I'm festing it, right? He's like, shit, man, this is great. I'm in. He's a... Wow. Go get everyone else from that. It was just easy to get. And we were filming the movie. So February, right? Building the few little sets we had like the bar. I told Frank, we don't need to build a bar, but I'm gonna go ahead and build a bar. So we have a place to go have script meetings.

3:01:08Everything else will be green screen. We'll build fake steps and things out of green. So we're doing that and I'm casting the first one. We're shooting the movie by March, beginning in March. And I remember because my son was born March 3rd. And I was in LA for his birth because I was also recording the orchestra for the score. I wrote somehow in the past few months for Kill Bill too. That's how much stuff was going on. That's like when you just let it flow, you're just riding the wave. You're not doing any of that. So that's what's by staying in that urgent, there's always the deadlines are just pushing you to create stuff.

3:01:49and we shot the movie so fast in record time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year. I shot the Avengers of Shark Boy and Laver Girl with kids that came out two months after Sin City the next year, within less than a year since it was out. Just shooting down the parallel Sin City, that's hilarious. Is that great? Yeah, like sometimes we be shooting with the kids and then the afternoon, Redgar Howard would come and some of the Sin City girls to finish shooting stuff that we needed to film. It was just insane how fast we had to move. I was doing it in my head, I was editing. I just edited it.

3:02:16And then I would scan the artwork into the computer and I would edit the storyboards with the sound effects and I would do the voiceover. I would imitate Mickey and I would imitate Bruce and lay out the house fast it was gonna move. And you were like, wow, so now we have a template with the real drawings and the lighting on how we're gonna do it. It was funny because I could do a pretty good and Bruce Willis because I know his career is so long. If you're doing his voiceover and he would hear my guide voice for the timing, I mean, you'd be like, so that means that you can't tell. Oh, that one was me, but just do that.

3:02:51So that man sounds like me. First of all, why haven't films like that been made? Well, it was a very specific look because it went into that comic. The first piece of music I wrote for that was the main title and I called it Descent. I wanted the notes to Descent because it felt like you were descending into this dark world and you don't come out to the end of the movie. You're just like in this world where all these layers of unreality, like water doesn't photograph that way, snow doesn't photograph, but it's there and you're seen and you're seeing the actors. So you're just really, it's like a dream world.

3:03:19Yeah. So I was really into it and I did test for the most difficult shots first. Like how do I get his his tape to glow in the dark like in the comics with still in the shadow and I realized, oh, you've flourished in tape and a florist in light. That way I can keep it. We can still key it. Like I started just doing my own visual effects like that early on because I knew technology was changing so fast that I would need to just know how to do it like a like a magician shooting digital nobody wanted to touch digital back then DP's were all afraid of digital they didn't want to learn something so I had to DP it so me photographing it and like so funny it could because I mean to light like you have to have that light out of frame right now but I could bring the lights in right here as long as it was they're not crossing it I'm just going to take it out of the green anyways I could have the coolest light on everybody Cool edge lights.

3:04:10You can have an edge light back here, an edge light back here, a fill light here. You're not gonna erase them. I just take him out. Can you educate me and people curious about this? Oh, like what was the power of light? When you're telling a story, when you're creating a feeling of experience, like what's the artistry of that? Well, if you look at the drawings too, sometimes it's the absence of light. Like you would see this face, but then this would be completely black, but you would still see my eye. Which is like impossible, right? But you believe it when you see it, because it's there. So things like that were a lot of the tricks I tried first because I like that about it It's like you have a guy completely backlit so there's no light on his face Yeah, but yet his glasses are glowing white.

3:04:48Yeah, so we put florist and tape in there hit that was a light Then we could turn it white later the black and white really helps and then just up in the contrast But I mean, it's just something that you have a feeling for but you're able to try it In fact, when I took it to George Lucas who George Lucas said this to me early on because I was worthy only guy shooting digital He said man, it's so good You live in Austin, that's why I'm in Marin County. Because when you live outside of this box, the VLA, Hollywood, you think outside of the box automatically. You're just gonna stumble upon innovations.

3:05:19And he was right, it was like, we're like, why are we shooting digital? Let's shoot digital. Why are we shooting digital? Let's do that. Why don't we just use green screen for the background? You just start innovating because you're away from any month saying, hey, you can't do it that way, which they would say if I was in LA. So we just came up with a whole other method. So I took him since city to check out The first thing I was gonna show at Comic Con, he said, now this will really show people what digitals capable of. This really shows how, how on guard you can get with that, that you could never have done that on film, you know.

3:05:50And so by me versus myself in that technology early, I was able to make a movie like that and then everyone had to play catch up, you know. So you should always just follow your, that's why. People say don't use those currents, that's not gonna work, just blow past those guys. go innovate your own thing because sometimes not knowing is better. Being too naive to... Don't you know you shouldn't have been able to make that move that way? People would say like that. How did you make... You know, it's impossible. Why do you keep using that word? Because it can't be impossible if I did it because I'm not that smart.

3:06:25And it's like saying, how did you get to the top of Mount Everest? It's impossible. Well, I just kept walking. I mean, I didn't realize it was kind of how to slow, but I didn't realize it was going up that high. Yeah, you've talked about like a big part of your approach to filmmaking to life is manifesting, manifesting the reality you want. In fact, I should sort of comment, and I'd love to ask about manifesting that. You asked me at the beginning of this conversation, do you consider yourself a creative person? I should sort of reflect on that because I was very uncomfortable answering that. Yeah, I noticed a little bit, and I was like, I'm gonna free you up, So you're never uncomfortable again.

3:07:02It's scary just to say that about yourself to a whole lot. There's a lot of people who go, you're not an artist, you're not a creative person. But not just saying I'm an artist, I'm a creative person, but that's an artist too, isn't it? Artists isn't necessarily the guy with a French mustache and the funny hat, isn't necessarily one art. Artists are regular people. And regular people relate to art that's imperfect. If you can make art that's perfect, don't want to relate to it. So when you think about it like that, you go, well, I can make him perfect art. So yeah, I'm an artist. And if you have doubt, you're an artist.

3:07:31That's an artist, real artists always wonder if they're good enough. So you are an artist, just by the fact that you had uncomfortable saying it, you're a real artist. Yeah, and there's some degree, I don't know if you could speak to this, but there's a fear of creating shitty things. I've created a lot of really shitty things in my life. And it always feels like that's really important to do. Okay, but you're judging something that you have no business judging. Right, like I have so many people that's why I like making movies on purpose that have less money and less time on purpose Like the biggest movie it said all time and Netflix is we can be heroes.

3:08:10I told them I don't want to spend more than 50 million dollars. I know you all want to give me 80 But I want to be a hero and come in 50 because when you don't make it better and then two you'll make three of them instead Or just what I don't want to just go spend the farm and how many filmmakers do that? Don't try to get as much money as they can but when they're spending less it's a win -win situation and you have more creative freedom so they're gonna leave you alone, you can do whatever you want. So I like the creative limitations that come from less money. That's why I like brass knuckle films.

3:08:36Like we're gonna make them for less so that they are better, not because they're not to make them shitty. So many people have come up to me and said, you know what part I love in your movie? You know, tell me some scene. I'm like, oh, well that's because we ran out of sun. We had to like do that jump with just him jumping on a pad three times or whatever it is. it's something that you fumbled together and that's what they're drawn to. They're drawn to that imperfect thing. And so I wouldn't judge it because somebody's, you know, if you called your movie shitty, that's like John Carbunner saying, yeah, nobody liked the thing and it's a shitty movie and everyone hated it.

3:09:12So it must not be good. Then 10 years later, it's a masterpiece. So don't judge it because if you words we use on ourselves are very powerful. So if you say, well, you know, I'm kind of an artist sometimes, and make a lot of shitty stuff. Well, that's gonna be your lot in life. You know, I'm pretty good shape for a director. It's not because I'm operating the camera because I work out, right? But I always hated working out. I was not into sports. I was a filmmaker. I was a cartoonist. In high school, I was really tall. I would say, come work, come be an artist. Teen, we need a small school. We need you.

3:09:48I don't need a lot of playing any of these things. I'm an artist. There's a line in the faculty that was my line into my coaches when they would say, you gotta come run with everybody, I would say, I don't think a person should run unless he's being chased. I get that to the line. So Elijah Wood character, because that's the guy I identified with. He's there with this camera, and that was me. So I hated it, and then, because I had, I was a cartoonist, drawing like this for hours, four hours, my back would go out. Like out for a month, it would just go out from being so tall and cringed over. And then when I started making movies, operating the camera into instead of camping, every year would go out to where I would need quarters of shots to get up again to from filming or just be out for a month.

3:10:25And on Spike kids too, Ricardo Montelbun had bad back surgery that went wrong and he was in a wheelchair. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm in a walker. And he's like, I'm 84. What's your excuse? And I was like, I don't know. I just was operating and standing goes, you have to work out, Robert, you have to work out. I was like, yeah, okay, I know, I know. And so then I thought, okay, next year I'm working with Stallone, last Stallone, last Stallone. How do you get in shape? Because I need to get in shape. My back's always going out. Get the trainer. Anyone who you ever saw in Hollywood got in shape?

3:10:58They had a trainer. I say, even you, everybody, I need a trainer. He has a trainer. He's like, no, I need a trainer. I can't train. He's like, well, shit, if you can't even train on your own, then what it was, mortal men have. So I got a trainer. And guess what happened? Heated it. I would feel sick when he's coming over because he hates I hate working it. And then some years of doing that, I just can't stand it. But I know it's good for my health. So the desire's there. So if you can't accomplish something in your life, it's not a lack of desire. Like if you want to be more creative, it's not a lack of desire.

3:11:28It's a lack of identity. Like the fact that you went, you're comfortable about saying creative, it's because there's a lack of identity there. You have lots of desire. You gotta get the identity up, and then suddenly you're making shit. it. So a friend of mine from Mexico, she comes over, I have to stop smoking. My doctor said, I have to stop smoking for my health. So I have to, I'm not smoking right now. So I've been smoking since I was eight years old. So why are you going to go back to smoking? Because you just told me your identity is a smoker. So right now you're a smoker who's not smoking.

3:11:59What's going to happen eventually? You have to say, I'm a non smoker, you know, like just that, that lesson I've forgotten. You have to say, I'm a non smoker. I'm a non smoker. because what does a non -smoker do? If you believe you're a non -smoker, you hate smoke. Start choking at the smell of smoke. Okay, I'll try that. She walks off. And I go, shit, I forgot about my own. I wonder where in my life I gotta apply that? Working out. Of course, my God, I hate working out. No wonder I am so miserable. I'll tell my trainer and anyone who will listen. I can't stand working out. I don't understand sports.

3:12:31So that day I said, I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. That's the last thing I would ever call myself. It's all through my entire life. This was 2012. I'm an athlete. By the next day, not only did my life completely change and it's easier if it's opposite day. Like if you're just doing it by degrees, that's bullshit. You gotta go complete opposite. Because if there's like a donut, you know, if you say, well, I'm only half of it. You gotta go, no, I'm gonna get an apple. Absidate, much easier. Not only did I change my life working out, I didn't ever need it a trainer. I have not had a trainer since all these years.

3:13:09Because I'm an athlete. I'll just do it. What an athlete do? An athlete? Love is working out. An athlete will make time to work out. And they'll eat right. I was, I would never be the person that would call themselves an athlete. But that's how much it can change your life by changing your identity. So if you want to be more creative, you've already got that in your, that desire. You've got enough of that. You don't need more desire. You need more identity. So you got to say I'm a creative person. with a straight face. So when I say, hey, are you going to be a creative person? Go, yeah, because then if you say that, what do you do?

3:13:44You're going to do more creative stuff because that's what a creative person does. It doesn't make sense to me how manifesting works, but it does seem to work. Like basically visualizing a path towards a certain kind of future. I guess everything around you, everything within you kind of makes way for that, makes way for the possibility of that. It's weird. It's weird, but it's kind of a nice to know that you can do that. But you have to just have that conviction and just say start with a label. Yeah, the star. The double or the label you just gave yourself. Yeah. Like I changed my label. My label was I hate working out.

3:14:17I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. Not a non -lastly anymore. I'm changing my label and you get so inspired. You know what to do because you can't help but conform to your identity. You're always going to conform to your identity. So just change your identity and you'll change your life. But it's not that hard. I have to go get hypnotized or anything. It was literally I just told myself if I could do that go from a guy who doesn't want to work out hate sit hate sit I had to desire was already hiring the guy. I lacked the identity as soon as I changed my identity boom Well, one of the things for me like that is probably music just playing guitar.

3:14:51Are you a musician? Yeah, I'm I was definitely not I mean, I'm going along with it now But if we're honestly for just an obsession, but I heard you rip I'm fucking guitar and that for you You play kind of amazing in all different kinds of content. Oh, but I should be like freaking centenied by now, because I've had a guitar in my hands, that was a kid. But since I'm not a full -time musician, I don't get to play it that often. So I'm not as good as I should be. But when you apply yourself to just rehearse for a couple shows, you book some shows. Look at this. This is me just like playing our first arena show, opening for George Lopez.

3:15:30That was crazy to be on the stages where you're heroes that you saw them and now you're seeing what their point of view was, blizzard, you need to get skin on stage. You get on stage once and you'll see that it's not as bad as you think. You're not like terrified because you're playing pretty complicated things. I've seen you play live. Yeah, and I messed up a bunch of times because you don't want to focus on that and you just go like, okay, I got it through it because when you're up there, it's not that you're like screaming nervous, but your hands will just won't work anymore. Something will happen.

3:15:57But that happens there, but if you really watch even the best in their live performances, watch really close. And you see they screw up a couple things, but you just want to know. It's like it's about the live performance and that's how you know it's real. So I think if you can really just lean into it more, you really work on the identity part because you've got the desire. You want to play guitar. But as soon as you say, yeah, but I can't play live, you just chopped off your leg at the start of the race. If you say, I, I don't know, you just chopped off your other hand. You're doing this to yourself.

3:16:31You're literally doing this to yourself. I mean, just you, I mean, anybody who's just like who pauses, who hesitates, you don't have to have doubts. Why would you have a doubt? Because you know the process now. It's like, if I don't know how to do something, I know how to figure it out. Like I didn't know how I was going to do that scene with him jumping and flipping. I didn't know that. But do I have doubt that I'm going to go in there and be able to do it. If you say that you do, you now you're a doubtful person. That's how powerful that is. But if you say, no, I don't have any doubt because I know I'm going to figure it out when I get there somehow.

3:17:03It'll follow my lap. I trust the process. You don't have to know. So if you trust the process that you'll figure it out. But here's the thing. Sometimes you fail and there's audience. Yeah, then you get four rooms. Yeah. And then what happens? Right. Don't blink. And then you go sift through the failure. Exactly. You go, wait a minute, what did I get out of that? Yeah, I've done that a bunch. It was great. Look, what's the worst that can happen? You go on a stage and you bomb. It's not gonna be the first stage. And it's one of those you can talk about so that when you do the next one and it all, sometimes they all go right.

3:17:36I've had a couple of shows. We did a couple of shows where we had video cameras set up for the second day. They said, let's not film the first day because we're gonna be fine just finding our feet. Let's film the second day. First day, it's fucking flawless. We have flawless, because no cameras, it's like you just go. The second day, we were in his end of it, because we had just done it. It felt like the second take, you know, it just didn't have magic. And that's the one that's recorded. And we're like, oh, kicking ourselves, we didn't film both nights. We should have filmed both nights. I love how much of a mess this human existence life is.

3:18:12Yeah. You've talked about the importance of journaling, because living is... is really living. I love that phrase. I came up with that because it's like, wow, I see so many people who get it after you for like filming a concert and they go, live in the moment. I'm like, dude, counterintuitive. The moment goes by like this. We're not gonna remember any of this. In fact, we taped it, thank God. Cause later on, it's gonna be a file photo of me remembering you, three pound me computer. All I'm gonna have is a file photo who may be in a suit and you picture me in maybe a black t -shirt. and the metadata narrative is gonna say, how to great talk about if we remember creativity.

3:18:51You know, like, your brain doesn't remember. But when I pull up old home movies, like, show my kids that I just found, and they're like, they don't remember it. I don't remember filming it. And it's like new adventures of, it becomes iconic and it sticks in her head. And all their jokes are based on old things that we used to do and say, so living is reliving. So keeping a journal is very important because I found that anything at past 15 years, I'm reading someone else's journal. I'm like, I didn't even know that's where I got that guitar. I thought I bought that guitar. It was given to me at $10 ,000, St.

3:19:22Tannig. It was given to me my birthday by the studio that I made that movie. I thought, I now remember that. It's like crazy, but you don't remember. The brain is not a very reliable computer. It's made out of vegan butter. That's a really profound idea that so much of our life is lived through replaying our memories. And then watching stuff is one of the ways to sort of refresh, give some more, you know, texture and details. It makes that iconic. It makes that iconic in your life and part of your life. Otherwise, it just went by. It went by. Like, I'll ask people that we just had a really, what do we do last week?

3:19:59What do we do last Wednesday? I can tell you because I wrote it down, but I'm going to remember. And then when you see, when you go through your journal, like I go back and I find, wow, Life changing thing happened Friday. Another life changing thing I didn't know at the time, till now I know that really sent me on a name, happened Saturday. And another big freaking thing happened on Sunday. Like they come in threes sometime. You start being able to predict the future a little bit because you see the patterns. And it's pretty wild to do that. And I, I, I, I, I've talked to people, big group of people, five hundred people.

3:20:34How many people here journal? Mm -hmm. Two hands, three hands. I couldn't believe it. It's like, man, you guy, I've had this anything I'm going to part on you is drone. Your life is way more interesting you think because it's not going to feel like anything while it's going by, but in retrospect, you look back. Like I can just go through, I keep a journal one file per year. So I started a new one in 2025. If I want to look up, like I'm going to do a director's chair episode, I look up Michael man, Michael man, Michael man, all the conversations we had since 1994 that I wrote down that I And it's like, oh my God, I can't believe we said that.

3:21:07That's how I knew about that thing with Quinn. I had forgotten about that story with Quentin saying, I had a politician, I had forgotten that because from the moment I asked him that question to the success it can was very quick. So it was a lost moment in time where I had it recorded down to the time, down to the hour. When I asked him that question, he thought it wasn't. He didn't think that was the one for him. Yeah. And there's a, I don't know, when it went as private journaling, There's an honesty, there's an innocence about the dreams, the future, the conceptions, the future. I mean, this thing is a journal.

3:21:40It's just a journal, it's like, but the profundity comes back. It's crazy, yeah, you didn't, and so much I figured out then. I'm talking like a professor by the end of that. Like, people come up to me and they're asking me all these questions about stuff I wrote in there and I'm like, I wrote that in that book. Shit, it was smart back then. What happened? I don't remember half of that, But I think that it's the same thing when you go to teach someone Your mouth opens and stuff comes out. I'm always taping myself like when I go to give a talk Because that's also the pipe working someone else is talking through sometimes so The act of sharing that's why I've always liked to share information because the feedback loop is insane like me Inspiring Daisy DJ to go right he writes the script in three days comes back tells me now I'm doing that method and it's like wow People come back with their version and I love telling my kids Stuff that I learned that I wish I could tell myself But I can't take a time machine close thing is telling your kid cuz then they can take that information in process so many times They've come back and said wow dad that lesson you taught us about this is really It's really become big in our minds.

3:22:46Yeah, what was that? And they tell me I'm like I never told you that they say yeah, you told us well, I told you maybe 10 % of that All the rest you had it. Oh yeah, well we embellished it over. They turned it into something else and it's like, wow, that's so cool. But yeah, that thing about reliving, like that was one of my favorite ones. It's just, yeah, my mom turned in 75 and not wanting to do anything for 75th birthday. I said, why not? And she goes, the whole family's gone. We have 10 kids, they're all gonna want to do some for your 75th birthday. Nothing can top my 65th. They're like, what are we doing here?

3:23:1965th, I don't even remember even. I'm going to orchestrate it at all. She goes, oh, you flew everyone in from all over the country. You give me a car. I gotta have a journal of that, so I'm sure I have video. I go back 10 years, I see what tape I had it on, find the tape, pop the tape in. I forgot about all this stuff. So I cut together a 10 minute version of it, showed it at her 75th birthday. Just watching the old one. Everybody was like, oh my god, look how young everybody was. Like I was small, the nieces and if you were. she starts bawling as soon as she gets the key, the gift of the key in the video, because she realizes now what it's gonna mean that she's gonna get this car.

3:23:58And so it's like, wow, let's just play the old tapes. We don't even have to do anything anymore. We banked so much amazing stuff that we've all forgotten, that my kids just love watching their old home movies. They hardly remember any of it, but even a VHS to them is virtual reality, because compared to our memories, it is virtual reality. They're like leaning into the screen to see what's around the corner and they're remembering the place and the sounds. And they say, oh, we left the living room. It's like we're there. It's like, wow, I was always afraid they would see this old footage. And you go, ah, that duck shit.

3:24:37Kind of camera was that. This is the limitations of, you know, you put up one of those files and you're screened, it's like this big on your laptop. No, that's how low res shit was back then. That didn't matter. It's like comparing our memories, that stuff. Living is reliving. Like pull up that shoot as much as you can, take as many pictures, but write the journal because you'll have a picture swear you're not going to know what it's from. Even 10 years from now, you won't know what that picture's from. You read the diary, you go, oh, that's what that is. Oh my God, you can piece together all these things that are important to you, or that become more important with time actually.

3:25:09And you know what's important later, compared to what's been happening at the time. Too bad on top of that. So journaling is the kind of raw, or like home films is a raw projection of what's going on in the moment. I think it's also really powerful because I've done that. It's to do a high effort description of where your life is for you just for yourself. So sometimes generally it's like low effort. Yeah, sometimes it's just I just want to mark that you know, we had this conversation, I had to go do something in five of it to that. Met somebody that I know last night I met somebody that's going to be life -changing.

3:25:38I'm going to write a little bit more on that because I can just now I know. But I'm going to just record it until later if I look it up. So one of the cool things you could do is, you know, like, for example, somebody, uh, uh, Jamie, Mr. Beast does, does, does these videos, which are great. I think, I think it's a great exercise to do for yourself, which is a video here records, uh, for himself. He doesn't look at to be published 20 years from now. This is a message to myself 20 years from now. Here's where I hope you end up. You're basically a younger version of yourself speaking to an older version.

3:26:08Yeah. And then you get, you know, time flies and like, you get to a point where it's like, Holy shit, it has been 10 years, it has been 20 years. You get to listen to a younger version of yourself. Like it would have been hilarious if you shot videos like that to yourself, because it was just like the incredible journey of your career has been on. And just to think about that, like the delta, the difference between what your dreams were where you ended up, usually you all do yourself in many ways. Sometimes your life goes in a totally different trajectory. that's, and the result is kind of funny.

3:26:43It's a nice, it's a nice illustration of the non -linearity of life. I filmed stuff like that with my kids. I couldn't do it, but I would film my kids saying, hey, turn to the camera now and say, hey, Rebel, it's me, Rebel. I'm gonna Rebel in the future. So you have shots like that. Yeah, and then they show them like, cool. Like that, 10 years later, and they're like, whoa, just to see it talking to them and saying, Yeah, and I would do this thing where I would film them watching it and then pan off So that 10 years later I could get Hey, Revel him reacting pan off to the new level watching it.

3:27:21It's just like keeps going So I have one like that where it just keeps panning and their watch themselves within the movie within the movie within the movie It's like an ongoing project. You know, it's just so fun to just play with memory and make you realize how fast time moves and And to go, they go like, I kind of remember that, but I don't remember being that tiny. Yeah, I had that memory just like wild, how time moves and it makes them feel much more precious about how quick time moves and how important every little moment is because you see the fragility of it too, you know. Does it make you sad?

3:27:57Break your heart, you know, the number of memories we get to create is finite. that this life ends eventually the story is over. I had this theory, but I'm gonna put this in a movie, I don't think I've ever seen this before, because I was woke up from a dream and it was like trying to remember it, you know, you're like, kind of so real. If you don't ride it down, ride away, ride it kind of fades away, but you while you're dreaming it, it's really real. It's like, you almost see the walls, but time went to go tell somebody, it's like, shit, I forgot most of it. But I wonder if that's what it's like when you wake up and your consciousness after you die You wake up and your next consciousness getting ready to move into whatever your next body is and you're like Wow, it was a filmmaker had five kids

3:28:45And oh, well, I'm gonna be a fish now Yeah, it's like it's like a dream. It was like that gone that way. And it's like that's what past lives are they like distant memories like a dream that's faded away. That's why you barely feel remnants of it. Do I feel sad about that? When I tell people, they flip out when I tell them that. I want a character to be like that. He's dying. I don't want to forget this dream. Don't let me wake up. Don't let me wake up. But you forget, especially the moment you try to tell somebody. Yeah, they tell the next picture. Yeah, the next thing. It will be a fish next.

3:29:17But yeah, yeah. It feels like I almost sad about it, but then it just makes it even more double down that be precious about the life you're in now. Waiting is the meaning. Record it, record it. Waiting is the meaning of this whole thing of life. Why are we here? Oh, why are we here? I mean, I really feel like my kids and I were just talking about this last night. We were just blown away. We did this a staring astrology thing. It was the oldest form of astrology. It just nails each person. And it's like, yeah, because when you have a kid, you realize right away this isn't my kid. This is not my, I'm just in charge of him.

3:29:54It's a completely different soul. He's a different soul that ended up in my hands. It's not, there's physical characteristics that get passed on because of just how biology works. Even sometimes posture and movement is the same, but the actual person is somebody else. And all the kids, I have five kids and I have nine brothers and sisters, and they're all different. And you realize we made a pact in a past life. to gather together because every time it's like it's so good you were born in this family because you were given free reign to go find who you're really supposed to be and you find out everyone is doing what they were supposed to be doing but it's cool almost like this clarity you get by just saying it they now know that they were always supposed to be like this creative person or the and now they can double down on it because they know that's who they were supposed to be they don't have to have any doubt anymore they don't have to wonder well am I I'm supposed to be more business minded or can I be creative?

3:30:49And that's some kind of frivolous. Is that a real job? Can I do that? Now they realize, no, you're supposed to be doing that for these, these, these, these reasons. And now they can double down. You can skip all that and just decide, I feel like I want to be that person. So I'm just going to declare I am that person. And as soon as you say it, you are that. And tomorrow your, your activities will conform to that. That's how powerful that decision is. So when you walk out of here, it's going to be with a complete commitment. I'm a technical and creative person like my first boss. I'm unstoppable.

3:31:25Because my boss told me that and he was right. I became technical and creative and you're just unstoppable. You can just keep going and you just go, I'm unstoppable. That's what you're going to do. You're going to use your powers for bad, but you've just changed your life by just declaring that. And I'm also a creative person who lives his life creatively. I'm going to find creative ways to use that technology. If somebody says, you're not the same kind of RS, I was expecting, that's their own opinion. Don't blink. Just keep going. You know, all these things that you've learned that people were supposed to tell you along the way.

3:31:58They're telling you for a reason. Anytime you got pushed, like if you go back to your life at your really critical moments in your life where you went, that way and said it that way, there was probably somebody there who said something to you that kind of pushed you. I was one guy when I was in high school. It was like senior year, I wrote a paper. And I was, wasn't a great writer at all. I wrote a paper for Latin Americans that his class gave it to the teacher. And he said, wow, you're going to be rich and famous in four years. It's based on what I read. Because I really flight home like 17 or 18.

3:32:37Four years later, I did Mariathe and I went to him later at a reunion. and I said, you called it. You said, I was going to be, why did you say that? And he's like, I said, I don't know. He looked like he would never say that to someone. You think he would own it and say, oh yeah, I knew it. I told you, no, he was like, you look like you didn't even know who that was. I was asking, I feel like he never would have said that in a million years. So again, sometimes things come out of our mouth. It's not us. It comes through us. So if you think of it that way, why are we here? We're here for a reason.

3:33:05We're going to get nudged along, listen to the signs, own who you're supposed to be, because you are that person don't let your human doubt get in the way that's like the guy closing the pipe but I don't know if I'm really creative I don't know if I'm really a businessman and you're just closing the pipe you're not gonna let it flow just be a good pipe just say I just want to be a I just want to be a good pipe clean open and then that's when the magic happens and no matter what don't blink don't blink don't matter how many that dude was getting so much shit thrown at him I wish you knew that time period because then you wouldn't do it go like yeah that's right it's It was unbelievable.

3:33:40I can't even convey. There was no internet and stuff back then. This was like literal press reviews public It was like why are they targeting this guy? You know, they just did not like he just had unprecedented success And was a really great guy and was making amazing shit. So was the triple threat of Make people jealous Well, he's one of the great artists of all time. So are you it's a huge honor to talk to you Thank you for everything you're doing in the world for creating the world and for inspiring millions of people to also be creators in the world And for your new project that's bringing people in Robert as I told you I'm a huge fan.

3:34:20I appreciate that honor to talk to you But so great talking with you great questions. You're gonna change your life. Thank you brother million dollars. Yeah right there Thank you for listening to this conversation with Robert Rodriguez to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from Alfred H. Gawk. In feature films the director is God. In documentary films God is the director. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.