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

Robert Rodriguez tells Lex Fridman the story of his career, from shooting backyard movies on his dad's VCR as a kid to making El Mariachi for $7,000 as a one-man crew. He shares a creative philosophy centered on turning failure into success ('sift through the ashes'), being a 'conduit' for the creative spirit rather than forcing ideas, embracing limitations, and using deadlines and identity declarations to unlock output. He breaks down his resourceful, do-it-all production methods, including editing on his own Avid at home in 1994 and inventing his own visual effects techniques. He also reflects on friendships and collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas, the genius of those filmmakers, and his views on creativity, memory, journaling, manifesting, and the meaning of life.

• Rodriguez shot the entirety of El Mariachi in only one take per shot, never knowing whether any footage was even exposing, because he believed the film was just a disposable practice movie no one would see.
  00:34:13
• The iconic slow-motion 'walking away from an explosion' meme started by accident in Desperado, when a propane fireball was the only effect available and he shot it in slow motion so it would last longer.
  00:05:35
• His financial flop Four Rooms directly seeded two of his biggest hits: the spies-and-kids premise became Spy Kids, and his desire to make the anthology format work led to Sin City.
  00:13:26
• Antonio Banderas finished two trilogies in a single day, shooting Spy Kids 3D before lunch then changing into his Desperado outfit for Once Upon a Time in Mexico in the afternoon.
  02:48:51
• Rodriguez secured the rights to Sin City by flying to New York, showing Frank Miller a moving test of his comic on a laptop, then shooting the opening scene as a no-risk proof-of-concept that Miller could keep if he disliked it.
  02:50:32
• Rodriguez transformed his health by changing his identity, declaring 'I'm an athlete' in 2012 after a lifetime of hating exercise, and says he never needed a personal trainer again.
  03:06:37
• After finishing Pulp Fiction, Tarantino privately told Rodriguez it 'still feels like a movie Quentin would make, doesn't feel like a real movie' shortly before it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
  01:43:31

• The burned, charred front of the Dusk Till Dawn bar in the George Clooney/Cheech scene was real fire damage from an explosion using ten times the planned charge; Rodriguez kept shooting because the apocalyptic look was better than the clean foam set.
  00:09:20
• Rodriguez hand-drew 300 pencil drawings overnight for the stop-motion animated title sequence of his student short Bedhead.
  00:30:03
• El Mariachi's blanks fired only one shot and jammed, so Rodriguez faked machine-gun fire using sound effects, cutaways, and repeated frames.
  01:08:21
• On El Mariachi, Rodriguez learned to operate the 16mm camera by calling a Dallas rental company on the phone for instructions while shooting in Mexico.
  02:35:11
• To save money, the guitar case in El Mariachi was a cheap cardboard one; Rodriguez cut to a different wood-topped case when it opened because he wouldn't spend money on paint to match them.
  01:10:26
• In Sin City, Rodriguez filmed Mickey Rourke and Rutger Hauer eight months apart and cut them together to appear in the same scene; Bruce Willis was shot in nine days and Benicio del Toro in three.
  02:05:11
• James Cameron told Rodriguez he wasn't afraid piloting his record-breaking deep-sea submarine 'because I designed the escape vehicle.'
  02:39:41
• Spy Kids 3D went from January 2003 production to July 2003 theatrical release as the fastest effects movie ever made, partly because McDonald's would have sued for $20 million if the date moved.
  02:23:00
• Rodriguez was the only director on the Sony lot editing his film digitally (and at home) in 1994; seeing his Avid setup inspired James Cameron to start editing his own movies, leading to Cameron's editing Oscar for Titanic.
  02:39:09
• Rodriguez discovered Salma Hayek on a Univision talk show and fought the studio to cast her in Desperado, helping build his own 'Latin star system' alongside Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, and Antonio Banderas.
  01:51:14