YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Rodriguez

lines on the record
320
first
2025-04-17
most recent
2025-04-17
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “So funny, a cut because to lie, 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. You could have an edge light back here and edge light back here, a fill light here. And I'd erase them, I just take him out.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “So, I was really into it and I did test for the most difficult shots first. Like, how do I get his tape to glow in the dark, like in the comic so it's still in the shadow? And I realized, oh, you fluorescent tape and a fluorescent 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 magician. Shooting digital, nobody wanted to touch digital back then. DPs were all afraid of digital. They didn't want to have to learn something. So I had to DP it. So me photographing it. I'm like.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “It's a very specific look because it went to that comic. The first piece of music I wrote for that was the main title, and I called it Dissent. I wanted the notes to descend because it felt like you were descending into this dark world and you don't come out till 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 seeing it, and you're seeing the actors. So you're just really, it's like a dream world.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “And lay out how fast it was going to move. And you were like, wow. So now we have a template with the real drawings and the lighting on how we're going to do it. It was funny as I could do pretty good in Bruce Willis because I know it's Chris so long. If you're doing his voiceover and he would hear my guide voice for the timing and be like, that means that you can't tell. That one was me, but just do that.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Is that great? Yeah, like sometimes we'd be shooting with the kids, and then in the afternoon, Rutger 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. I was editing. I just edited it. And then I would scan the artwork into the computer. I would edit the storyboards with the sound effects, and I would do the voiceover. I would imitate Mickey, and I would imitate Bruce.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “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. And we shot the movies so fast in record time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year. I shot Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl with kids that came out two months after Sin City the next year within less than a year since city was out.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “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 Killbill 2. That's how much stuff was going on. Yeah.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “First name on the screen Bruce Willis. And I go, Hey, look, you're in the credits. You have to do it now, manifesting it, right? He's like, shit, man, this is great. I'm in. He's in. Go get everyone else from that was just easy to get. And we were filming the movie, so February. Building the few little sets we had, like the bar. I told Frank, we don't need to build a bar, but I'm going to go ahead and build a bar so we have a place to go have script meetings. Everything 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, the beginning of March. And I remember because my son was born March 3rd.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Like directing any of these short ones? I thought about directing the Big Fat Kill maybe as a short film. You should come direct that one. Shit, you should direct all of them with me because I'm really copying to write out a book. You should direct it with me. All right, let's go. So then January, okay, so remember I met him in November. I wrote it in December. January, we shoot the test. It took me a couple weeks to do the effects. He loves it to make a meeting with Bruce Willis. Show it to Bruce Willis. What's 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. Let me show you the book what it looked like before I turned this test into a test. He watches it, Josh Arnett Voiceover, music, titles come on.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “The visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen because that's how it reads when I read the book. It's like if this was movie, it would be the most phenomenal movie. In fact, asked him, do you ever?”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Be really cool. So he's like, all right, there's nothing on him to do. It's all on me. I write the script in December. January, Josh Arnett, Marley Shelton come down, fly Frank in, shooting for ten hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence. Incredible opening sequence. Record his voiceover right then in my little voiceover 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, as I tell you, Frank, I used to be a cartoonist. It's the same thing. You'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 beyond any DP has ever done. And the visual look, we've never seen that. I want to just take this and make it move. I just want the comic to move. Any other studio would just go make it look like any gritty crime movie and they would miss the point that it is.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Going to go write the script myself next month. It's going to be unremarkable because I'm going to write it right out of your book. I'm going to just edit through the stories down. I'm going to just take stuff out, really. It might add a few things to connect it, but I'll write the script in December 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 Watch it together. Like what you see, we'll make the movie. You give me the rights then. If you don't like it, keep it as a short film to show your friends.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “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 is going to have notes, all that shit he's been through before. And it's not like that. I have a whole different setup. I got my own studio in Austin. This is how it's going to be. If you like this idea, you're not going to have to take any risk. Let me take all the risk.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “He's like, wow, why did you do that? I said, I got my own studio and all this. And then I started telling 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 Brothers 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, let's make a great movie. So I show them how we can do it. And I go, I know you don't know me and you're not going to, you're going to have to, I have to earn your trust for you to give me your baby.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Was like, oh shit, I know how to do this now. Sin City. I'm going to do a test. I went 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, put it black and white. Looks just like the comic, but it's moving. So I call a comic book artist friend of mine, Mike Allrid, and I said, do you have Frank Miller's number? He goes, yeah, I do. Okay, I'm going to call him up. So I call up Frank Miller. Robert Rodriguez, I have a test I'm going to show you for Sin City. I'm going to be in New York tomorrow. He's like, tomorrow, okay, yeah, sure. Come by, meet me at this bar. Okay. Book a flight for New York. I fly up there, have my laptop just like this. That's good. I go to the bar, I show him what looks like an image from his comic and it starts moving.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Now. I just did it on the green screen. 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. So 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. I'll show you how fast we go from development. at troublemaker. Was October Upon a time in Mexico, it came out.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “The green screen, shoot him to lunch. Okay, now go away, put on your desperado off it because we owed some shots for once upon a time Mexico on the green screen. He finished two trilogies in the same day. That's got to be a first if ever no one's ever finished two trilogies in the same day. And it's just kismet. You know, it's just how it happened to happen that day was just luck or the universe or whatever. But I needed to make something new now. So I was looking through my bookshelves of inspiration. And I picked up my SinCity 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 home and go, oh, I already have this. I got like three copies of this already. It would just always grab me by the throat. And I liked 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 or 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.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Bike is three. Remember, I showed you how fast they came out. That was in the summer of 2003. A few months later, once upon a time, Mexico came out. Number one movies both were finishing trilogies of mine and each one starred Antonio, Danny Trejo, Chich Marin. When I was editing those at the same time, you'd be like, whoa, one movie they're killing people and the other ones are like with the kids going like, hey family. So it was really, you know, 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? Oh shit, how crazy is this? Okay. So Antonio is on the set. I'm going to shoot him out in half a day. For Spike is 3D because he's only in the last scenes”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And 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 green screen for all the game stuff. And we could do a lot of 3D stuff coming at kids' faces when they're reaching. My 3D is not like the kind they have in theaters where it's very polite. Mine's like theme park 3D where kids are doing like that trying to grab. That's why it was such a big hit. Nobody does 3D like that. But I wanted that. I want shit falling in people's laps, you know. So you remember so you go, okay, this is why I'm wearing the glasses and I'm wondering why. And when I went to go make my next movie, so this is how crazy this is what we shot.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “This is why you just got to follow your nose and go do something. Jim and I were both into 3D early on. Like I visited his set for the Terminator 3D ride. Dust till Dawn, I wanted to be 3D. Actually, when they got to the bar, Watched this from that point on, everything's kind of set up for three, everything's shooting into the camera and all this, 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 3D 3 So when I did Spy Kids 3D, I thought, oh, if I get Jim's cameras that he's done for these underwater 3D documentaries, I can make the first digital 3D film for theaters.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “No, but it's not a bad one. It's a cool, it's one of the few, like usually I made kids family kids movies or R-rated action horror movies. And that was the first time I got to do a PG13 movie, which was kind of like it had a lot of action, but it was for families could watch it too. And it was kind of like the best of all worlds.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it, but usually when we meet, we talk about it. I gave him something to read. You know, he's a little busy with his avatar movie, but I'm going to get him again soon, and 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. And 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, you know, and then they weren't really making Fox movies because they had enough work with their Disney movies, but now they've started 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 Alita.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “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. I'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 it 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, let me 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 where 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, God, well, I've only got this camera. I was like, that camera's 10 times better than anything I had for my first 15 years of filmmaking. So you have no complaints. This is like, you can just start now just start making stuff.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, just be creative. It's just a tool. It's just a tool. And it's like, it doesn't matter which 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 are 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 would need to be fixed, but not for what I'm doing. I mean, I can still do what I need.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Have a couple monitors, and then one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene back because the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, if I ever designed my own system, I'd probably design 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. I don't use the mouse for shortcuts. I'm just like,”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Premier was still in its early stages, then. I think Soderberg looked at it and it said, yeah, I can't afford to have it for this movie. I'm going to go do it. I think he started cutting on Premiere. But I'm sure it's all better now. I just have always used an avid because I just always rent it back to the same production. I don't have to buy a new one, but there's lots of good. I've heard about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “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 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. It's part of, you kind of come up with it as you do the process.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Jim comes over and he goes, I hear you have an avid in your living room. And I go, Yeah, come check it out. I'm just like, I roll out of bed. It's like sounds unremarkable because this is what you do right now. But back in 94, it was unheard of. I'm cutting three movies at the same time myself. I roll out of bed. I come here. I can cut Desperado. I can cut Desila. And he went, 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 edit room at night on the weekend to cut it in and show them the next day. It's like, that's your own movie. You can't give that kind of power to people. He said, I hate working with this. I'm going to tear down a wall in my house. I'm going to put it in an haven. I'm going to cut my next movie.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Okay, you know what you're doing, but I was cutting desperato in my house that I rented there, and then we shot Dust Tilda Dawn at the same time. So I was cutting Desperato four rooms and Dust Tilda Dawn myself. I'm the editor. I don't have an editing other than the ones who import it into the machine. So Del Torio came over, Soderburg came over. What can I borrow for schizophilus? No one had heard of somebody having an avid in their living room.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Like, shots are too short. Oh, because I was shooting my cuts. They're used to seeing footage on Tony 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. He walks in, cut, move the camera. Let's get over here because we want it to, because I'm not going to use it for the rest of the scene. I know we're going to get into coverage because I've already cut it. So I was like, huh, that's interesting. So I cut the first scene. Have you ever seen Desperado? The first scene is the best scene. Steve Mussemi's telling a story. He's talking about the myth of the Mariagi. He's doing that. It's crazy.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “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 in LA, because 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. Not we've never had a director edit its own movie here. So we don't want to set a precedent in case they thought it would give you too much power. This is a power of precedent, I said. You bought Mariachi and I edited that. So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit an LA so we can watch it 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.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Submarine that can break the world record. He engineers a movie that can break the world record. He has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rare. So that's very rare, and he's capitalizing on both. He had this submarine model like this big on his desk, the one that he broke the world record going and just seeing it and knowing him having kids and stuff and wife. And I'm like, weren't you afraid going down? With something had happened, no, I wasn't afraid. Like, why not? I designed the escape vehicle. Yeah, if it was any other bozo, I'd be afraid, but he designed the escape vehicle. That kind of confidence, that's him. He just knows if some other bozo had designed this scape vehicle, I would be afraid, but total confidence because he did it”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, we bounced 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, whoo, I'll go this way. And then I'll go that way. And he likes that about me. But I like, I put, I want to be like, I think about things too much. You think about things like... What makes a movie a billion dollar hit? What are the elements that you need? I'm going to analyze that and I'm going to make sure my movie does that. And he engineers.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Show him the trailer for Grindhouse and he sees the machine gun leg and all that, he just goes, Who That's unbridled filmmaking from the id Makes sense only the second you're watching it, not a second, but the second you're watching it, you believe it. But he's really interesting in that. So prolific. I walked into his writing studio. And it'd be like one of the tables Do you have those papers there? Imagine them that thick, that thick, that thick, all script, script, script. What are these? He goes. Is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like he's just cranking out stuff. Like, again, can I take this and go?”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Can't get really creative with a physics or anything. They're like, no, that's not how it would work. And they're just wow, super great at what they do. Bar is sky high, and they're all like that. Because yeah, if you're not part of, if you're not like that, you can't hang with those guys.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Bounce off each other in a funny way. He goes, Man, he came down to visit my studio. Before he did Alit You only surround yourself with people for like you. Like, you exude creativity from every poor. And so does everyone at your studio. And I go, yeah, I didn't hire them that way on purpose, but I think if you're not that way, you kind of don't belong there and you kind of leave. And then I went to his studio, and there are a bunch of Jim Camerons there. They're like, oh my God, they're all very technical. You can't get all kind of fuzzy with the logic or the. You can't get.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “My technical capability was so little I'm literally calling the guy on the phone. How do I use this camera? 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 think those guys, George Lucas, very technical and very creative. John Lasser, 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. Read 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 installable. 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.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Little as possible because 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 me. 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 that remember that script analogy where the guy said, throw away three scripts? I said, no, I'm going to write three scripts and then shoot each one so I get better at each one of those jobs so I can learn to be technical.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “That don't, you can't unhear. And he goes, 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 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, stoppable. Wow. So here I want you to learn zone photography. I want you to learn this, the technical part of it. So that's why I didn't take a crew, Mariachi, because I knew if I'm just the 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.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “Think that any of those guys, George Lucas, you know, him, John Lassiner, when he did Pixar, it's a mix of I got really lucky. My first job was a Photoshop because my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop. He said, your summer job at 16, go work for my friend Mario. So I owned a Mario's Photoshop and I'm, you know, developing pictures or, you know, think you develop photos from film He said, Here, take this camera home. Give me one of his cameras. Take this camera home and some film. I need you to learn how to use the camera so you can help me sell the cameras. So I went home and I have a bunch of siblings. Stars of Bedhead, taking all these pictures of everybody, I take it back and he looks at the pictures when he develops it. He's like, whoa, these are really creative. You're a creative person. So sometimes people tell you something”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “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 it here, a Jim Cameron movie here in Austin. That was the best haven here. And my whole crew, who's worked with me 25, 30 years, everyone had an extra spring in their step because they're like. 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.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “We put so much of the world around them. Like when you see the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town, we built the real set, so everything was very tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was all done in CG, well, then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge. And that really helps them in avatar because that whole place is created an 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 to the next level. So it was cool to be able to help, you know, knowing that you're being helpful to him in his process and not just distracting him. But then also he liked that his artist had something else to work on besides just avatar to just work on something, you know, different.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “I just knew she had to be her. It was going to be just so easy with her. She's just so great. Everything was just so real and everything was like she's that character. She becomes that character who's seen this world for the first time. No special effect's going to help you with that if the performance isn't there. So it was all about getting the performance and casting the right actors. That's why you get Christoph Waltz there and you get Jennifer Connolly, you know, these masters are all in the set. Mershal Ali, you know, you've got an amazing cast of people. That's really the heart of it so that the technology kind of goes away.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Acting with all that, but it just disappeared. It's not even there. Like, we don't notice that this is a year. It's like that. She just performed through it.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “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 remoting. 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 need to 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 its heart. She was the heartbeat of it.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Then you realize you can do it too. But we thought, let's 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 audition the first time. I was like, oh my God, this person has something. 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 and Weta because they got to try out a bunch of things. That's why Avatar, the second avatar, Way of Water, looks so much more refined than the first avatar because of that middle step of doing Alita. It was training ground for them.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “You gotta come see. You're not going to believe it. All my props, all my stuff from all my movies. So, people who are investing in brass knuckle, that's why they say it's like a Willie Wonka movie because they're going to get to come check out all that stuff and be in proximity and see, oh, like me with that painter. Not a trick, he's just doing it.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “90,000, it's the biggest largest standing set in the country because sets are always mowed down for the next movie, but I just kept it there. So we usually shoot it all the time for Mexico or South America or Europe or whatever. It's seven streets and we add it digitally above it. The ceilings are 20 feet high. You got to come see. You won't believe that it's here. It's unbelievable”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, it was shot here. So when you go see my city, I built it very resourceful. And this is weird. It looks just like the town from Mariachi. It's in my backyard. I'm like, it looks better than the town from Mariachi.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “So I've just seen 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 going to do it. We're going to start. And anything that I would come up with on this movie and his team, because he had all his wet of people working on it, he had them all working on it too. I do a fast version of his process because there's a lot of live action. Avatar is mostly CG. I have live action sets. You have to come to my studio because I still have the whole Elita City in my back lot.”

    2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source