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

“Shoot two minutes. I shot two rolls of that. It's another same amount of money that it costs 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, you know, but then my dad, who sold cookware, had a VCR. One of the first VCRs, home VCRs for the market, that he would play his sales tapes to his salesman. And it came with a camera attached, like this cable you got coming out. Imagine if that had to go into your VCR for you to even see what it's shooting. This is all 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.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going to hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor like Piano Reeves for a $20 million movie, you know. I asked Jim. I said, Jim Cameron, I said, you know, like Terminator costs $5 million. I wish we had that much. He had less than $5 million for that. So you can start a billion dollar franchise using these methods. And with the audience investing, they get to make money on them. And this is what I'm going to say now about how I started. You see that DNA of how I give out, you know, I want people to know how I did things with Rebel Without a crew or with these methods that I started with. You see, that's how we kept going. Hollywood spends way too much. And when you can make stuff for less, your profit margin is much better. So when I first started, I didn't have any money. So I still play like I don't have money. So I had Super 8. My dad had a Super 8 camera, but I couldn't afford it. I shot two rolls that you had to get to buy the film.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see, I've met a lot of filmmakers who start a certain way, but then they finish another way. They get to be big filmmakers and all that. I still do it that way. Like, I still, I like doing things that way. I have a new company called Brass Knuckle Films, where the audience can actually participate by investing, being investors in these movies that are done the same way. They're action films like we did with Mariachi, but 10 to 30 million. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a billion dollar franchise. You know, like John Wick only cost 20 million, the first one. Second one was $40. Third one was 80. Fourth one was 100 because the audience kept growing and growing.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As much, and 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 in my way. My way had this for a vision. And it needed to do that, which you would never know. You don't know that going through. So just if you don't have the answer right away, or even in 10 years, go, maybe it's coming in 20 years. Don't let anything slow you down. Just keep plowing forward, committing to making your thing happen. Don't get shook up by something that you might not have an answer for.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the time, I'm laughing. 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. So 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 wasn't even going to 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. And then Colombian ended up buying it for like 10 times.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes it's right there, and then sometimes you come back revisit it 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.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some will succeed, some will overperform, some will underperform. It's not your job. You just want to be a creative person. Just create, just create, stop thinking about movie, promoting, and worrying so much about each one or project to project if you're a business person. Just commit to making a body of work like an artist would do. And you don't know what the masterpieces are going to be or which, you know, someone's going to come and say, oh, that one that bombed, there is some really creative stuff in there. And it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But like I said, I would say, well, it was successful because even Roger Ruby said, Hey, you furnished my favorite room. I was like, hey, I could take that. But now that I think there's something else still there, I keep sifting and it's like, oh, yeah, two big successes came from that. That's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about failure. Think of like the thing by John Carpenter. You put that movie out the same weekend as ET. I think bombed. Critics were calling it pornography, you know, because of all the all the weird special effects and audiences didn't go either. And he thought he made a great movie. So, you know, it makes you question your instincts. Well, 10 years later, turns out, oh, it's a class. So sometimes it takes the audience a while. So if you have some kind of failure on something you don't let it knock you down, just go, maybe in 10 years they'll think it's great. I'm just going to commit to making a body of work, a body of work.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really want this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories like a three extractor, not four, same director, not four different directors? I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again? Well, because I had already done one and figured out how I could do it better, and that's Sin City. Those are by far two of my biggest successes that came directly from that failure. So I always say follow your instinct. If it doesn't work, just go. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. So what is, where's the key in the ashes of the failure? Because if I had an instinct, that means I was on the right track. I didn't get the result I want. That's because the result might be something way bigger that I don't have the vision for in the universe is pushing me that way.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Why did I sign up for it? Did I raise my hand because I thought it was going to go be this big financial success? No, I did it to work with my friends to do something creative, to try something. But that's still not good enough. I need to really sift through the ashes. And if I look through the ashes of that failure, I find two keys to my biggest successes in there. While I was on the set, they said it has to be New Year's. So I thought I'm just going to do like bed ed. I'm going to have two little kids that are running around in this room. And we have to use the bellhop as a babysitter. Well, it's New Year's. Let's dress everybody in tuxedos because it's New Year's. They're all going to go out, but the parents leave without them. When I saw Antonio and his wife, I thought, wow, they look like a really cool international spike couple. What if they were spies? And these two little kids, one of them keeps falling asleep on the set he's so young. He barely tie their shoes. They don't know parents are spies. They have to go save him. Okay, there's five of those movies now, right? The other one was, I really love making short films.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That to work. Yeah, the audience can't quite rep their end, and then it feels like the movie's starting three times. So I make that movie. It bombs. Now, I could feel real bad about that. But if we really think about it, you go, well,”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They bomb because people can't quite rip their hand. What is it? Twilight zone. I don't want to go see that. But that's not, I still said, yeah. I think I should still go by instinct. So my instinct was to raise my hand. We go make that movie because I love short films. I made like bedhead and short films, and I thought, oh, here's a way if this works, I can make short films in anthologies and I can have the best of both”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It didn't make any money, right? When Quentin asked me, hey, do you want to make a movie with me and two other filmmakers? It's an anthology. It's on New Year's Eve. It's in a hotel. You have to use the Billhop. We're not going to know what each other's making and we make it. We put it together. My hand went up right away just instinctually. Jane, that sounds, yeah, I'll do that. I'll go make that with you. Now, should I ask the audience? I like to throw it to the audience and her. Should I have not raised my hand that quick? Shouldn't I have done a little studying first? Or should I just go blind instinct? Or should you do instinct with some studying? Okay, well, I could have gone and studied, and I would have found that anthologies never work. Like even when it's coppola, scorsese.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say, when you follow your instinct, like if you follow your own instinct to go start a business or go make this movie or that, it wasn't someone saying, go over there and you'll make a million dollars. You know, it was your instinct and you fail. Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. You fail. You have to really sift through. It's like the silver lining, but I call it sift through the ashes of your failure and you'll find the key to your next successes in there. But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it. I'm going to tell you one and I tell them the four-room story. I said, I made a movie call four rooms.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I call it, and it's one of my favorite stories. I was doing one of these talks and I said, come talk about creativity. I go, I understand because a lot of people were in my book, Rebels Had a Crew and told me, oh, it made me be a filmmaker, but a lot of people said it helped me start my own business because they just see how you can go be entrepreneurial like that and go where no one else is going. And I'm giving all this talk about this kind of positive stuff. And this one woman goes, you're real positive. But what do I tell myself when I just wasted a year and a half of my life doing something that didn't work? I was like, Well, that's a real negative way to ask that. Can you just rephrase the question a little more positively before I even attempt to answer it? Because already her point of view is exactly what you're saying. She's not looking at all. She's just concentrating on what didn't follow her plan and not seeing the gift of everything else that's there. So she goes very reluctantly. It was so perfect. I wish we had filmed it. She goes, I learned a good lesson the hard way. And I said, that still sucks.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're also writing the story of your life at the same time. Like, how are you going to react to things? Well, how do you make your character react to things? You make him kind of superhuman. Why don't you just make yourself that way? You're writing your own story. And you start really seeing the more you get into storytelling that life imitates art and art limitates life, but the process is also the same.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You go scout your location, figure out what your project's going to be, and you go try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Then you go to dear project. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up. You watch this thing network. Everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves and creatively figure out a way around it. You turn chicken shit into chicken salad. And by the end, you have a result that's better than what you sought out. But that's the process and that's life. And that's wash rins repeat the rest of your life. That's what everything's going to be like. It's just like a movie because when you think about it, you're writing a story for a film.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got to roll with it because you don't know what the grand plan is. You have your plan. Just know it's probably all going to fall apart. It's just like the movies. You come up with your plan of what you want to accomplish. That's like your script.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then the next week, when we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they had repaired it and we shot all the night stuff, which is the majority of the stuff in front of it. So sometimes you got to roll with it and then look at the blessing you get because of those mistake. You probably actually got a better take by doing it later with them. And then you had this incredible look for the end of the movie that looked apocalyptic. If it had looked just clean, you would have actually seen that it was kind of a foam set. This made it look better. So I kind of let the universe push you where you're supposed to go.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I go over to him Guys came out with the fire hoses, the fire hoses weren't even adding water. The thing was just scorching, the whole production design team was in tears because they had just spent weeks building this thing and it was up and smoking charred. I said, let's just keep shooting. Let's just keep shooting because it looks really kind of cool like this. Yeah, they're going to have to come repair it and we'll have to come back. But it's all black and chart. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheech and the building's black. We didn't go over there and touch that up. That's real flame that burned. And it ended up looking great.”
2025-04-17 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #465 – Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source