YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Rodriguez

lines on the record
320
first
2025-04-17
most recent
2025-04-17
sittings or episodes
1
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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. “You can get away with, I just don't, I'm just particular about that. I just don't like seeing a dub movie where it just feels canned. It makes you not believe in it anymore. So I just cut away where the lips are just way off. I just didn't want any of that.”

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

  2. “I didn't allow it, but oh, yeah, I would let it if I just didn't have a way to cut away. I would try to sink it as best I could”

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

  3. “They're in sync with themselves. And as soon as it cuts away, they're out of sync. And it created this really fast cutting style that I probably wouldn't have had on such a 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 shots of like the dog or a stuffed cat or something just so I'd have something to cut away to to get him back in syn”

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

  4. “That'll probably sink. Now, if you were going on and on, 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 cut back when you were back in sync. And since these were non-actors, they say everything the same way each time. They would say their line just like they weren't performing it to where they didn't remember how they performed. So, a lot of the times it's anytime you see anyone on camera talking.”

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

  5. “The camera sounds like this It sounds like all your money is going away, first of all. So I would go like this action, you'd start running And I shoot my They're still running. I'm only using this part, and there's no slates. There's no guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of roll. Like, this is real seven for just a few frames so I know which 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. Your last name.”

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

  6. “All the modern technology. So I didn't have Sync I had a camera that was not a sink 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.”

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

  7. “It's better to 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 cameras, right? Or do you have it to system?”

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

  8. “You just got to be the hands. And 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.”

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

  9. “Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduced themselves as aspiring. I'm aspiring filmmaker and I wonder how, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say stop aspiring. If you call yourself that, you are that, and you're always going to feel like you're not ready. And you just jump in before you're ready. You don't feel like you're ready till I didn't feel like I was ready to do Mariachi 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 process and going, I never knew how my dad did Mariachi until we did this project together. And I realized he didn't know either. He didn't know I was going to do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge got thrown at him. He had to figure it out. And that's the biggest lesson. Most people never start. And that's the biggest thing. Don't wait till you're ready or they'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.”

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

  10. “Needs your hands. It's not going to reward you for sitting there waiting for you have to jump in and do it. And people, when they say, oh, well, I'm not ready, how pissed off is that 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 life, you'll be blessed with this never-ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it and know that if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it because this thing's got endless ideas.”

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

  11. “When I was 19, when I had a daily cartoon strip, I had to draw a comic strip every day to get paid. And I would be like, I'd have to draw like one drawing, draw another drawing. Then it's like, okay, these kind of go together. It was a process, you know. And sometimes I just felt like I wish I could just envision it, sit back. I'm going to try that method. I went home and I would sit back and just try to get in my sofa. I try the sofa method. I'm just going to try to picture the comic strip. And then as soon as I get on, I think it's funny. Then I'll just go draw that, right? Be done in half hour. Why it's 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. It's like, okay, got this drawing's kind of, oh, this kind of goes with that. If I make another drawing, I'll have my strip. That's the only way to do it. If you don't get up, the creative spirit ain't going to come visit you if you're doing this.”

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

  12. “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. It's like, dude, just open up. Let me pick up the fucking pin. And I learned this.”

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

  13. “I go, I really feel like something else is taken over. So, this is what my belief is, and because I hear it in different realms. Like you ask Keith Rogers, 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. As, you know, Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar those solos? He goes, it's like a radio. Once you get tuned just right, you can't even believe what's coming through. So I believe, I call it the creative spirit. There's a spirit assigned to all of us that's creative that doesn't have hands. It needs you to pick up the pen, pull out the cards. And then when you start getting in a flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing. 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, 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,”

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

  14. “I'm writing music for an orchestra. I'm like, how did I? I don't even know what I'm doing. Why's that coming up? 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.”

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

  15. “When I do so many different jobs. Sounds crazy when they would introduce me, hey, Robert, he does this, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I get tired just hearing that list. But when I think about it, there's really only one thing I do, and I live a creative life. And when you live a creative life, that means anything that has to do with creativity, whether it's filming or piano, guitar, sculpting, you can just do it. You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I become a better director by doing all those jobs. Because when somebody just does one job, they barely know that job. You have to do more to learn about creativity. And this is the main thing I learned was that”

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

  16. “That kills most of the echo. Like, I don't understand. And they're like, no, this is all. The corners are going to have. And”

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

  17. “I was reading them through one of them was like really speaking to me. Yeah, that's it. That's the process. And then it says gels and mediums. And I'm like, oh, this is a book specifically about painting. But it applies to music, editing, cinematography, writing. It's all the same. So that's when I realized that creativity is 90% of any of those jobs. The technical part of setting up the cameras, of writing a script, in format, or reading or writing music, that's 10% of that. How many musicians, you know, don't read or write music and they're fantastic because 90% what they do is creative. Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music, could literally jump from job to job creativity and do a superior job than most technicians.”

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

  18. “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 how come the answers just keep coming like this? I believe because I do so many different jobs. I've learned this over the years. America when I was in 2002, I was like, how is it that I'm the production designer, the composer, which I don't even know how to read or write music and I'm writing orchestral score and I'm doing the editing and I'm doing the cinematography. I haven't been trained for any of these. I never went to school for these specifically must be something about creativity. So I went on Amazon. It's 2002. I look up creative books. Anything that has to creativity in the title, I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on creativity.”

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

  19. “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 going to make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the Road Warrior guy. But the Road Warrior, he lost his family. So really to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So he needs the ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a character. Well, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents have to die? Well, no, but it's not going to propel him. It's not going to drive him like that thing. So it 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.”

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

  20. “You 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 betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. The other ones will come.”

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

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

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

  22. “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 visual visually, you can start seeing your movie. And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff.”

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

  23. “The way to town, and now it's his story the baton gets turned to Mariachi. Mariachi's doing a voiceover. It's easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. We don't have to sing sound. Even a scene when he walks into town where we saw these coconuts, a guy cutting coconuts. And we go, Oh, let's go film over there. So we filmed the guy giving him a coconut with a straw in it. And he walks out. I'm like, shit, man, you forgot to pay the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, that's one take. I'll just put in the voiceover that they give away free coconuts in this town. And for years, people in other countries would go, they really give away free coconuts. I know just because we forgot to show in pain, you know, little happy accents. So now look, you're already building a movie.”

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

  24. “Who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I had read a story. Crazy story about a guy who was in jail in Mexico and he was running his drug business from the jail as protection. He could walk out anytime. But it was to have the cops be enforcers basically. So introduce that guy. He's in jail making phone calls. 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.”

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

  25. “Won't come up with three. You'll come up with 15. I'm like, wow, because you're asking yourself and you'll see him. So when I was doing that movie, I thought, okay, he's a guitar player. For real. And he gets mixed up with the guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar? So I write down that. He walks into a bar trying to get work. Bartender looks at him. We don't hire Mario just get the hell out of here. So he leaves After that whole scene explaining who he is and what his story is, then the shooter comes in with a guitar case full of weapons. He's also dressed in black, and he shoots the place up. That was a short film. That's how you'd start a short film. But this is a feature movie, so shit. I got to figure out how to tell a feature. I'm going to need a few more cards before that. So I'm going to need.”

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

  26. “I've made a million dollars with one of these before. You know, it's like this is the key to your next success cards. 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, but you don't have the questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering questions like, why am I such a loser? 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 to that, take out your cards and start writing them down.”

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

  27. “Yeah, the idea was that I thought a guitar player, real generally what I want to do was a road warrior. I said, I want a guy with a guitar case full of weapons going from town to town like Road Warrior. But that don't have enough money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie I do We do a Genesis story how he became that guy. So let's do Mad Max basically, how he becomes that guy. So maybe he is a guitar player so that you start writing it out. I was going to show you my writing method. I write on index cards and I carry one of these, a little packet of index cards. I keep one always in my bag. And I smile when I run across it because I go.”

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

  28. “Is amazing because I got a video of her. I said, I want you to just do this one line. Pretend like you're just talking to your boyfriend. And I showed her I showed her the video. That was cool because I couldn't show her the film because we'd have to develop it. But I showed her a video test of herself doing it. And she saw herself doing it. She suddenly had the confidence. We went through her closet. This red dress you can wear that and everyone just brought their own clothes.”

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

  29. “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, I had this one girl. I forgot she's in town. Maybe she would work because we tried to get a soap star and she backed out. So we got this gallop over. She goes, but I don't know how to act. And I said, here, let's watch. I want to show you some on Mexican TV, a telenovela was on. You see someone, you know, all over Agnes. I said, that's acting. Want you to do that. I want you to just talk like you're”

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

  30. “And because you don't think anyone's going to see it, you end up doing something remarkable, which is well, I'm just going to make something for myself. Because if I was making a movie that was going to go to Sundance, I wouldn't have made that movie. I would have thought, okay, I got to get serious. But because I made this movie that was just entertaining myself, like Bedhead, it entertained audiences. So that naivete is really important when you're starting out or at any point in your life. Be naive about what things going to and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson because I didn't want anybody to see it. I just thought one take, one take, when I got back home, a bunch of stuff didn't come out, but I'm like, I'm not going back to Mexico. I'll figure out a way to edit around it and make the movie shorter.”

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

  31. “Stop, we come back, then I send it off to develop because we're shooting two weeks consecutively to get film shipped back and forth from Mexico to see if it came out. You just couldn't do it. I just had to, you know, double down on it, do it. One take everything. I remember one time I was still an actor. Man, I told you to run through that shot. And you go, oh, let me do it again. No, one take, dude. Just think about next time. Do what I say. Think anyone was going to see it, so you're.”

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

  32. “You're learning how to make a movie. So that was my idea. I'm going to make three of these, hide it on Spanish video, but make money back. That's like my own film school paying me, paying me to learn. So, the first one I thought, let me just shoot it one take each because my friend Carlos lives in Mexico. If we shoot two takes, most of the cost is to film, I've just doubled my budget. So let me just shoot one take. Some of it's going to not come out, but I'm not going to know what. I'm not going to shoot a safety one. That doubles my, let me 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? I just went, let's shoot.”

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

  33. “I thought it was going to be a test film It's the only movie in history ever made. The filmmaker did not think anyone would see it and expect it and even set it up that way. I mean, why would I make an action movie for the Spanish market called basically the guitar player promises no action? No one's going to watch it. But I thought if someone actually picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're going to be surprised I put a lot of action in it. It was just to learn from. I just needed to make it for as little as possible, see how much I could sell it for. If I could double my money, great. I can make another one and just get more practice. It was just, I was so intrigued by this idea because you've heard advice about screenwriting. I heard a revise back then that I thought was ridiculous. It said, it's going to take you a long time to be a good screenwriter. So write three scripts and throw them away. The fourth script will be the good one. It's like, it's so hard to write a script. Who's going to write three full scripts knowing they throw them away? Wouldn't it be better if you write three scripts and then shoot each one and be the cameraman, be the sound guy, be everything? Because that way you're learning not just right.”

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

  34. “Was so relieved. Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around that. It's like, oh, yeah, because I'm doing everything, like right here. You're doing everything. Imagine if you forgot to stop down and it's open all the way and one shot is blown out. I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it all my time.”

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

  35. “One has a bunch of numbers. Oh, that's a variable speed motor. That means you can do different speed. I can shoot slow motion with this. Oh, wow. Do you have a torque motor? I don't know what is that. Is there something on the side of the magazine? Yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to use it. I was doing it by phone that way. And then I went and shot the movie right then. 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? Just hoping something exposed. And when I saw it come back and the tape, you know, they transferred it to a tape so I could edit it, deck to deck again.”

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

  36. “I did stuff like that, and then just her getting the hose. And then I just do stop motion for this 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 take chicken shit, turn a chicken salad. Take this camera that everyone was like, what's this? And I go, I can do so much with this. But I tell you, today I look at that camera. I can't believe I ever made a movie with that thing. It's so ridiculously primitive. I'm just like, how did I even think I could get anything done with this? And it even exposed. And Mariachi, the same way, you have to think about it. I shot Mariachi on film with a bar of 16mm camera. I didn't know how to use it. I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment and I said, I have an Ari 16S here.”

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

  37. “So let's start here with a camera upside down. I have the strings in the back because you're not going to be looking at the back. And as it goes back, you pull it back. And then when you reverse it, it goes. And it looks so good. You can't spot the strip. If you look close, you see the strings are in the back, but your eyes”

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

  38. “Not doing this for grades I want people to see what I can do now, and I want to see what I can do now with this. So, a lot of the story came from the limitations or actually the freedoms of that camera. I couldn't have done that story on video. So when I saw, wow, okay, I can do reverse photography. I can do stop motion. She has to have special powers because if she has special powers, then I can utilize, I can really milk this camera for all it can get. There's one of my shots I love the most is where she's standing there in the chair. She makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face. If I did it normally, where would I even put the strings for that?”

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

  39. “That's a lot of work. I drew it over. 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, the camera's going around and all kinds of crazy stuff, but it's just all fake by paper. It took me all night to shoot it. I remember I walked into the film school the next day. You know, like all sleeping. I told one of the fellow students, you know, wow, I was up all night doing this animated title sequence. And he went, Why are you putting so much work in this? They're not going to grade you any differently. And I was like, grades. You get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town”

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

  40. “You start putting it together, right? So I've got this different camera. Well, what? Now I go, I don't want to shoot the same kind of movie if I got a camera now that can do that. I can do stop motion. So that's why there's an animated title sequence at the beginning. Because I go, wow, I'm a cartoonist. If I set the camera up here, I can slow it down enough. It's not 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.”

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

  41. “I was so pissed. Like, this is the camera I've been trying to get my hands on. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a bawn shop. Old Bill and Hal 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. Could do because if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focus in right. So I started with it in focus, went back, pulled backwards on a chair, and then reversed it, flipped it, and now it looks like it stops on a dime in focus.”

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

  42. “Let me tell you the trick to that. Mariachi's the same way. This really helped people. Like, even Kevin Smith from Clerk said, Wow, Robert said when Mariachi was success, I talked about how I did it. And I said, I looked at everything I had. What do I have? We have a pit bull, we have a turtle, we've got a bus that Carlos' cousin owns, his cousin is a 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's going to be in the bar. He's going to hit a bus at one point. He's going to the girl's going to have a dog and a turtle's going to cross the road. It gives you all this production value. So you write backwards. So for bedhead, Avon did that with a camera. So I'd been shooting video all this time. And one thing I wished I could do on video and I never could was slow motion or stop motion even. So when I got that crappy World War II camera they gave us in film school.”

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

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

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

  44. “Learn. And I found those things would be a winning formula. They'd win every festival I'd send them to. So Bedhead was my first time using a film camera. It was a wind-up film camera I got in film school. I went to film school for one semester and realized I already knew more than the film students because they taught you a whole other outdated way of doing it. So I thought I'm just going to use that film camera to make a low budget movie, a definitive film version that I can send to all film festivals of these action kids, which is a precursor to Spy Kids. Ben is a precursor to Spy Kids.”

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

  45. “I stumbled upon Spike Kids that way. Like I wanted to make these action movies in my backyard. But when you're a teenager, you don't know anybody who can come be your action star. And if you just bring your high school buddies, well, they just look like high school kids. So I use my little brothers and sisters. I'm one of 10, third oldest. They're just sitting around watching cartoons anyway. And I made them the action stars just to like.”

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

  46. “I would then add some sound effects to it. Remember, because I have the audio dub function. But now, if I want to add music, I take that tape, which has two tracks now, into the first deck, and put it into the VCR again, one generation of loss, but I have a little cassette player with the music. And I do a Y splitter so I can add the music. And you're right? Just like that. That's like being resourceful. What you have And I made a award winning short films that way on video. There were some festivals that would allow video. Not many, but they would always win. And they were always funny”

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

  47. “And I found that if I hooked them together, I could play on one and use that pause button on the second. And this was the limitation. This is what taught me how to edit in my head is that if I shot a bunch of footage, I needed to shoot very little footage so I could find it. Sometimes you shoot out of order. So when I cut it, I have to cut in linear order because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut, but it only holds for five minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off. So you got to find your next shot within five minutes and do that otherwise if you have to start the machine over it, added all these color bars and it would be all screwed up. So I'd have to sit there and not move for like all day while I cut knowing what the next shot was. And once I had it cut.”

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

  48. “If you want to be a rock star, right? If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and suddenly be able to play. You have to practice to your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and cutting them together. And you just can't afford that on film. Nobody can. With two minute roll costing as much as a two-hour tape. So I was moving all these, doing all these movies. First, I would cut in camera. And that VCR, that old VCR had a really great pause button that they stopped making that if 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 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.”

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

  49. “Yeah. Well, because of the means. And the democratizing of 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.”

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

  50. “And continued to be all the way to when I was using it for real in the early 2000s before everyone realized, oh, that's the future.”

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