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

Robert Rodriguez is a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dusk Till Dawn, Alita: Battle Angel, The Faculty, and his newest venture Brass Knuckle Films. Thank you for listening ❤ Check out our sponsors: https://lexfridman.com/sponsors/ep465-sc See below for timestamps, transcript, and to give feedback, submit questions, contact Lex, etc. Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/robert-rodriguez-transcript CONTACT LEX: Feedback – give feedback to Lex: https://lexfridman.com/survey AMA – submit questions, videos or call-in: https://lexfridman.com/ama Hiring – join our team: https://lexfridman.com/hiring Other – other ways to get in touch: https://lexfridman.com/contact EPISODE LINKS: Robert’s X: https://x.com/rodriguez Robert’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/rodriguez/ Brass Knuckle Films: https://brassknucklefilms.com/ Rebel without a Crew (book): https://amzn.to/3G7gtQJ Rebel without a Crew (audiobook): https://amzn.to/3Ri5wyc SPONSORS: To support this podcast, check out our sponsors & get discounts: Invideo AI: AI video generator. Go to https://invideo.io/i/lexpod https://lexfridman.com/s/invideoai-ep465-sc Brain.fm: Music for focus. Go to https://brain.fm/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/brainfm-ep465-sc NetSuite: Business management software. Go to http://netsuite.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/netsuite-ep465-sc Shopify: Sell stuff online. Go to https://shopify.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/shopify-ep465-sc LMNT: Zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix. Go to https://drinkLMNT.com/lex https://lexfridman.com/s/lmnt-ep465-sc OUTLINE: (00:00) – Introduction (10:04) – Explosions and having only one take (17:39) – Success and failure (26:28) – Filmmaking on a low budget (38:41) – El Mariachi (50:10) – Creativity (1:12:06) – Limitations (1:18:22) – Handling criticism (1:34:32) – Action films (1:45:53) – Quentin Tarantino (1:55:52) – Desperado (1:56:54) – Salma Hayek (2:01:40) – Danny Trejo (2:06:55) – Filming in Austin (2:13:05) – Editing (2:22:35) – Sound design (2:27:43) – Deadlines (2:31:14) – Alita: Battle Angel (2:39:36) – James Cameron (2:52:39) – Sin City (3:06:48) – Manifesting (3:18:12) – Memories and journaling (3:27:56) – Mortality PODCAST LINKS: – Podcast Website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast – Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr – Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 – RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ – Podcast Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 – Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/lexclips

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Robert Rodriguez, a legendary filmmaker and creator of Sin City, El Mariachi, Desperado, Spy Kids, Machete, From Dust Till Dawn, Alita, Battle Angel, The Faculty, and many more. Robert inspired a generation of independent filmmakers with his first film, El Mariachi, that he famously made for just $7,000. On that film and many since, he was not only the director, he was also the writer, producer, cinematographer, editor, visual effects supervisor, sound designer, composer, basically the full stack of filmmaking. He has shown incredible versatility across genres,

• 0:44Lex Fridman?

  including action, horror, family films, and sci-fi, with some epic collaborations with Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, and many other legendary actors and filmmakers. He has often operated at the technological cutting edge, pioneering using HD filmmaking, digital backlogs, and 3D tech. And always, through all of that, he's been a champion of independent filmmaking, running his own studio here in Austin, Texas, which in many ways is very far away from Hollywood. He's building a new thing now called brass knuckle films, where he's opening up the filmmaking process so that fans can be a part of it, as he creates his next four action films.

• 1:30Lex Fridman?

  I'll probably go hang out at his film studio a bunch as this is all coming to life. His work has inspired a very large number of people, including me, to be more creative in whatever pursuit you take on in life, and have fun doing it. And now a quick few second mention of our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got InVideo AI for video generation, Brain FM for focus, NetSuite for business, Shopify for e-commerce, and Element for hydration. Choose wisely, my friends. I do try to make these ad reads interesting and personal, often related to stuff I'm reading or thinking about, but if you must skip them, please still check out the sponsors.

• 2:15Lex Fridman?

  Sign up. Buy whatever they're selling. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will do. Also, if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexcom.com/contact. And now onto the full ad reads. Let's go. This episode is brought to you by InVideo AI, a video generating app that allows you to create full-length videos using just text prompts. Perhaps, obviously, InVideo is the perfect sponsor for this conversation with Robert, Robert Rodriguez. He has been for decades, the guy willing to use cutting-edge technology, digital HD, VR, 3D. And now we're in a time and a space where AI is not quite used by the big filmmakers,

• 3:00Lex Fridman?

  because they're not really sure how to leverage its power. And so I think it's really the role of the independent filmmakers to start playing with the video generation.

• 3:12Lex Fridman?

  Start playing five seconds, 10 seconds at a time, seeing what you can do in a storytelling art form. I do think it's a skill. I've used InVideo a lot. There's some aspect of it. You have to kind of nudge the system into that direction. I mean, it really is like having two directors. And there's things that humans are really good at, and there's things that AI is really good at, and the dance between the two is where the art form is. Anyway, you can try InVideo AI for free, saving you lots of time and money you'd otherwise spend on editing, animating, and other production costs. Go to invideo.io/lexpod. That's invideo.io/lexpod. This episode is also brought to you by Brain.fm, a platform that offers music specifically made for focus.

• 3:56Lex Fridman?

  I remember thinking that focus or the lack of focus was 100% the consequence of your mind and nothing else. That you should be able to shut off the world and deeply focus on a particular thought or line of thought or on nothingness or on your breath, you know? Like you do in meditation, you should be able to do that just with the power of your mind. And in some sense, I still believe that. But I think there's just some things that make it easier. I first discovered that, I don't know how long ago now, but listening to different kinds of noise, white noise, brown noise, and realizing, whoa, something is happening

• 4:38Lex Fridman?

  here. The mind is just much more naturally, much quicker, much more efficiently able to achieve that state of focus where you shut off the rest of the world. And so, brain.fm takes it just to another level. There's just so much variety for any working environment where you want to optimize the kind of audio landscape. Increase your focus and try a brain.fm free for 30 days by going to brain.fm/lex. That's brain.fm/lex for 30 days free. This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. Boy, are we really getting to understand the inner workings of individual businesses

• 5:23Lex Fridman?

  and the interaction between those businesses within the supply chain domestically and internationally now with the new evolving trade policy. I probably have several conversations with the top leadership on this topic soon. The economy is both an incredibly resilient and a fragile system. Whenever you have these centralized, big, giant hammer type policies, they can have an impact that reverberates not just through the direct consequences of those policies, but just second, third, and fourth order effects. Plus, they create the psychological effects within human minds

• 6:06Lex Fridman?

  of uncertainty, of fear. And based on that, they make decisions which are often suboptimal for the economy. So you get to see the inner workings of businesses and how they function in response to those, almost like an immune system within each business to see, how can we survive? How can we turn a profit still? And all of that comes into play, all the HR, all the inventory, all of that. I'm deeply grateful for the wisdom and the power of the market.

• 6:36Lex Fridman?

  We should be careful not to mess with it too much. Download the CFO's Guide to AI Machine Learning at netsuite.com/lex. That's netsuite.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. Speaking of capitalism, I've also been reading a large amount of literature on China to understand the culture, the peoples, the mechanism used by the government, all that to help me understand and break through some of the propaganda, the Western perspective. Of course, there's truth to it, the skepticism and the caution that the West has.

• 7:17Lex Fridman?

  But I think there's a lot of interests at play here and a lot of warmongers that want to wage war instead of make peace. I do think that the economy and economic relationships and trading and buying and selling, all of that is a fundamentally peaceful action that protects us from escalating military conflict and otherwise. I continue to hope we're past all that military conflict. But anyway, the thing I love about America is the companies, the huge number of entrepreneurs building stuff, creating stuff, dreaming, buying and selling for each other. I don't know. That just fills me with hope that individuals can dream and have the power to bring their

• 8:01Lex Fridman?

  dream to a reality. Anyway, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/lex. That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar delicious electrolyte mix that I'm drinking now as I'm traveling in the middle of nowhere. Barely know where I am, barely know who I am, barely know what time it is. I've been feeling lost and out of balance for many reasons, hoping there'll be a sign of some sort.

• 8:37Lex Fridman?

  Some sort of little miracle that'll help me find my way. This conversation with Robert was an inspiring one. He really did everything he's done against all odds. Fearless and bold. When shit goes wrong, he just figures it out. There's something about him, just being around him, the energy of urgency, of creative excitement to just take on the problems of the day. You know, it's not like excitement to create. It's excitement to take on the problems that will for sure come when you try to create. The different angle is a more honest one.

• 9:21Lex Fridman?

  It's a more inspiring one, more energizing one. Yeah. Anyway, what we're talking about, Element, watermelon salt. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drink element.com/lex. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Robert Rodriguez.

• 10:04Lex Fridman?

  Has there been a time when there was like one take and you only have one take to get it right?

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Oh, all the time where you're just like, or just you know how long it'll take to reset and you're just, but then you know what you, you, you gotta just work with what you got. You know, you gotta look, work with your results.

• 10:20Lex Fridman?

  You get nervous or no in that moment?

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, you're, you're nervous going like, just, I hope it goes off. Cause then to fix it, I'll have to go do a bunch of other steps, which we don't have time for. But a lot of times, you know, I've just learned that if something happens, it's just meant to be that way. And, uh, and I got used to doing things in one take and, and just living with it. It didn't bother me. One movie, it was even a low budget movie. They had, um, Rigged a car to implode because I was gonna throw a guy at it. So we needed a car to implode and then we're gonna throw them and marry it together, right? And the stunt and the car guy goes, yeah, we're gonna have three cars rigged. Three cars, why you not, well, in case one doesn't work and then we have a second one after. And we said, we don't have all night to go shoot take after take. We're doing just, just carry one car.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  And if it doesn't work, we'll figure it out. If you don't have time to do it again, sometimes it's such a long setup. So I go, no, I'm, I'm good with just go, what, in a greenhouse movie, they only had one take, so that'll make it more authentic.

• 11:17Lex Fridman?

  When it all goes to shit, when it fails, you just, what's the next thought?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So I'll tell you, two things happened on Dust Till Dawn. First was, okay, you know how those explosions when somebody walks away in slow motion from an explosion? It's become kind of, you know, it started with Desperado. Desperado is the first. If you look at all the montages.

• 11:35Lex Fridman?

  That's right. That's right. That is the meme.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Because it was an accident. It was just supposed to be, it was just two grenades, not a nuclear bomb. He throws them over the side. I just wanted like some body parts or, you know, something to fly up some shrapnel. It said, literally says shrapnel. And my effects guy was so ragged, running so ragged. We get to there and I go, do you have any body parts or stuff we can throw up? Or, or something you can shoot up? Pat, I didn't realize it's so high to get past that second floor. He's like, no, I don't. I can give you a fireball. I can give you a nice, you know, fireball with propane, but it burns away really quick. Like how fast? Like that, but it'll be big and orange. Okay, we'll, we'll shoot it in slow motion. So it lasts a little longer because it just goes poof. So I told the actors, I know how big this fireball is gonna be, but just walk really fast and just look real determined and then just keep walking.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Don't stop and turn around because you might get your eyebrows singed. So they take off and boom, it goes. And in slow motion, it looks great, right? I remember showing it Jim Cameron before it came out and his hand went up like, you've never seen that before, you know? Six months later, Dust Till Dawn came out. So I, I liked how much it looked so much that in Dust Till Dawn, I did it again. So those movies came out within six months of each other. That's why it turned into a thing because people saw it. And so I thought, how about for the opening of George Clooney and Quentin walking out of the gas station? That we have the whole place just blowing up and they just keep talking like it's not happening, you know, like take it another step further. So I'm not just doing the same thing. Okay, that one, it's like, okay, you're gonna walk out and it's all in one takes.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  We're only gonna do one take. We're gonna blow the thing up. We're gonna start with just, you know, some smaller explosions. Then when they're further away and it's safer, then we'll do the big fireballs. So we're going and you're nervous because like if one of them trips up a line and you know, the pressure's on them, it's not just you that's nervous, you're nervous for them. They're the ones who got to walk out, do that whole speech, get in the car and drive away. What if the car doesn't start? What, you know, there's a lot of things that could happen. Well, guess what happens? The thing you would not expect.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  They go in, they come out, they start talking, shoot it. It's perfect. Great, we can move on. And the camera guy comes, I don't know what happened, but just like you had a little snafu here. He goes, we have, we have an autofocus on the Steadicam. I mean, we have a focus thing. It just went like this. No. I, I felt it go whack all the way out of focus and whack for a second back. Like it just reset itself. I don't know why it did that, you know, because it's radio controlled and we can't tell because we're shooting film, you know, sort of like, oh shit, let's watch the dailies. Sure enough, let's see if we can, maybe I can scratch the film right there. No, it goes completely out of focus and back in focus within a second. Now we gotta reshoot it.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  So we had to wait till we're back in that location. We rigged it for two more takes, just in case. So that thing that was supposed to be the one take is three takes. The other thing that happened was the front of the Dust Till Dawn bar.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  That same guy that did those explosions, he packed a bunch of explosives behind the actors. When the actors come running out of the, of the bar at the end of the movie, and there's an explosion through the door because all the vampires are blowing up. He didn't just, he put like 10 times. So it blew out. You see it in the movie. You see this huge fireball going up. And if you watch closely, you see it already start to catch the whole place on fire. The whole front of that, which is foam, catching on fire. And I cut just before you see that it's on fire.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And we, that was the first shot at that bar because we weren't going to start shooting the other stuff till night. So the first shot is that and the set's ruined, burned to a crisp.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  The neon lights blew up, so we couldn't even shoot. Cheech goes, I guess I'm not doing my speech tonight. And but right away, this is what this is what happens. My first A D Doug Ernikowski comes over to me and I go over to him. Guys came out with the fire hoses. The fire hoses weren't even adding water. It was like 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 in smoke and 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 charred. That's why that whole scene with George Clooney and Cheech and that the building's black. We didn't go there and touch that up.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  That's real flame that burned and it ended up looking great. So then the next week, when we came back to shoot that other shot that didn't work, we came back and they 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 and look, look at the blessing you get because of this 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. Roll with it. You 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.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Then you go scout your location and figure out what your project's going to be, you know? And you go try to make it as bulletproof as possible. Then you go to do your project. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up. You watch this thing not work. 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, rinse, 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. And 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.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  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 imitates life, but the process is also the same.

• 17:39Lex Fridman?

  So you write the story, the script, and then you have it collide with the chaos of reality. And in that moment, when you said you see the chicken shit, like, you have to be able to keep your eyes open.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  You have to do that. You have to do that.

• 17:53Lex Fridman?

  Wait a minute, okay, stuff change.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Discipline.

• 17:55Lex Fridman?

  Where's the, not to be cliche about it, but where's the silver lining of this? Where's the path to actually make something good out of this? And that's a skill, right?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  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 read 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? And I was like, 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? 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.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  So she goes, very reluctantly, so perfect. I wish we had filmed it. She goes, I learned a good lesson the hard way. And I said, that still sucks. And 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 it. Sift through the ashes of your failure and you'll find the key to your next success is 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 called Four Rooms. I didn't make any money, right?

• 19:32Speaker 01

  When Quentin asked me, hey, would 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 bellhop. 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, Woody Allen, they bomb because people can't quite wrap the hand. What is this Twilight Zone? I don't want to go see that.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  But that's not, I still said, yeah, I, I, 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.

• 20:32Lex Fridman?

  And by the way, anthologies is when there's multiple.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  More than multiple one story.

• 20:35Lex Fridman?

  In one movie.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, one movie.

• 20:37Lex Fridman?

  So if you did the research, you would know that very few people ever got that to work.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, the audience can't quite wrap their end and then it feels like the movie's starting three times, you know? So I make that movie. It bombs. Now, I could feel real bad about that, but if you really think about it, you go, well, 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 Bedhead. 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.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  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 spy 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 them. Okay, there's five of those movies now, right? The other one was, I really love making short films.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  I really want this anthology thing to work. What if it's three stories, like a three act structure, not four? Same director, not four different directors. I'm gonna try it again. Why on earth would I try it again? Well, because I'd 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 that, 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. And the universe is pushing me that way.

• 22:32Lex Fridman?

  By the way, a lot of people that look back to Four Rooms see a lot of creative genius in there. So you say it flopped.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  It flopped financially.

• 22:39Lex Fridman?

  Financially, but you know, there's so many ways to measure.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Totally. Oh, yeah, yeah. But like I said, like, like I would say, well, it was successful because, you know, even Roger Rupert said, hey, you furnished my favorite room. You know, I was like, hey, that's, 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. It's an amazing lesson to have because it makes you feel better about failure. Think of like The Thing by John Carpenter. He put that movie out the same weekend as E T. That thing 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 classic. So sometimes it takes the audience a while.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  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 gonna commit to making a body of work, a body of work. Some will succeed, some will overperform, some will underperform. It's not your job. You just wanna be a creative person. Just create, I tell you, just create, stop thinking about movie per movie 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, and you don't know what the masterpieces are gonna be or which, you know, someone's gonna come and say, oh, that, that one that bombed, I, there is some really creative stuff in there. And it's not for you to decide. You just go and do it.

• 24:08Lex Fridman?

  And sometimes I think it takes some time to process the failure to make sense of it. Like, at least for me, don't rush making sense of what didn't work. What lessons do I? Take from it, how do I sift through the ashes? As you said.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Lex Fridman?

  Like, it takes time. You have to sleep on it a bunch of nights.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's right there and then sometimes you come back, revisit it, you know, later. Cause you may 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 audio book for Rebel Without a Crew.

• 24:40Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, thank you for that, by the way.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  I hadn't read it since I wrote it.

• 24:43Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  So I didn't remember a lot of the details.

• 24:45Lex Fridman?

  And you actually, it's voiced by you.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  I voiced it. So I was reading it real time.

• 24:49Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I highly recommend people, cause you comment, you add additional comments to it. It's great.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Most of the time I'm laughing.

• 24:55Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  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 of 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, 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.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Now, you know, with time, you look back and you go, wow, I got an agent the next month. He wasn't even gonna help me sell it. He said, oh, if you can get 20,000 for it, take it. I chased those people down for those contracts, the Spanish market for months. And they never answered me back. And then Colombian ended up buying it for like 10 times as much. And we made it, we released it and, and did a sequel and did another sequel. If you look back in time, good thing I didn't get my way. My way had, had this for a vision. And it needed to do that, which you would never know, you know, you don't know that going through. So just, if you don't have the answer right away, or even in 10 years, go, well, maybe it's coming in 20 years. Don't let anything slow you down. Just keep plowing forward, committing to making your thing happen.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Don't, don't get shook up. By something that you might not have an answer for.

• 26:27Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, every aspect of your journey is super inspiring. We'll talk about it. Let's go to the beginning.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:31Lex Fridman?

  A few technical things that are fascinating about your beginning. So you started making films when you were very young.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:38Lex Fridman?

  With an old Super A camera and you were editing on a VCR.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  You see, I've met a lot of filmmakers who, you know, they start a certain way, but then they finish another way. They get to be big filmmakers and all that. I still do it that way. Like I still, I like doing things that way. I have a new company called Brass 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 ten to thirty million. It doesn't take a lot of money to start a billion dollar franchise. You know, like John Wick only cost twenty million, the first one. Second one was forty, third one was eighty. Fourth one was a hundred because the audience kept growing and growing.

• 27:17Lex Fridman?

  By the way, you say, you know, twenty million, like it's not a lot of money. We should mention.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  For an action film.

• 27:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's right. But also we should say that El Mariachi, the film on which the book Rebel Without a Crew is seven thousand dollar movie. So let's put it all in context.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  But you know, you're going to hire bigger actors. You can get a big actor like a Tiana Reeves for a twenty million dollar movie. You know, I asked Jim, I said, Jim Cameron, I said, you know, like Terminator costs five million. And he goes, I wish we had that much. He had less than five million for that. So you can start a billion dollar franchise using these methods. And 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.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  So I had Super A, my dad had a Super A camera, but I couldn't afford it. I shot two roles that you had to get, you had to buy the film, shoot two minutes. I shot two rolls of that. It's another same amount of money that it cost to buy it, whatever that was, twelve bucks or whatever, to develop it. You get it. There's no sound. Most of this 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. If you'd even see what it's shooting. This is old camera, manual focus, manual iris,

• 28:59Speaker 01

  and 12 foot cable. And I would start making movies with that instead. Now I have for $8, I have a two hour erasable tape of sound and picture. So I got into digital, basically, really early. I was doing, which was really frowned upon back then, and, 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.

• 29:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's fascinating because you were redbull in that way too, using digital.

• 29:24Speaker 01

  Well, because of the means and the democratizing of that. The elite didn't like that. You could just go make a movie like that. But I started practicing and it's much easier to practice when it doesn't cost any money. Like if you want to be a rock star, right? If you want to learn how to play guitar really well, you're not going to just jump on stage and suddenly be able to play. You have to practice till your fingers bleed. Well, the same with movies. You got to keep telling stories and coming 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 when you hit pause, it stopped right there and it stopped with a clean cut. It didn't have all this

• 30:07Speaker 01

  color bars like the later ones had. So I, that was my, and it had an audio dub feature where you could add another second soundtrack to it. So if I have people talking, I could hit audio dub and add sound effects. So I could have two tracks on the same one. So I, 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. 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

• 30:49Speaker 01

  you shoot out of order. So when I cut it, I have to cut in linear order because if you push pause, it's a nice clean cut, but only it only holds for five minutes. You have five minutes before the machine shuts off. So you got to find your next shot within five minutes and do that. Otherwise, if you have to start the machine over it, edit 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, 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 tape player

• 31:32Speaker 01

  with the music and I do a Y splitter. So I can add the music and the, yeah, right? Just like that. That's like being resourceful with what you have. And I made 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 is, uh, I stumbled upon Spy 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. They're old. They're just sitting around watching cartoons anyway. And I made them the action stars just to

• 32:14Speaker 01

  like 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, 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, a low budget. Movie, a definitive film version that I can send to all film festivals of these action kits, which is a precursor to Spike Kids. Bet, Bet is a precursor to Spike Kids.

• 32:47Lex Fridman?

  And we should say that Bet Head was an award winning short film that was probably a big sort of leap for you that probably opened the door to you to then make El Mariachi.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  It opened up your, your, your brain especially because those video festivals, I would win like a trip to New York and a director's chair with a video of shorts that I would put in festivals. But I knew the film festival, if I could get into film festivals, I could send that 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. And it was eight minutes. I bet I can make an 80 minute movie for $8,000 if I'd use the same method. So that movie I did, six months later, I was making

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Mariachi because it opened up my mind that I could try it in a feature.

• 33:43Lex Fridman?

  Can we actually pause on that? Because I think Bet Head has a really great, really unique story, shot in a really unique way. I think what I'm trying to say is like, it's very important to write, write the right script, write the right story.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  So let me tell you the trick to that. And Mariachi is the same way. And this really helped people. Like even Kevin Smith from Clerks said, wow, Robert said when Mariachi was a success, I talked about how I did it. And I said, I, I, I looked at everything I had. What do I have? We have a pit bull, we have a turtle, we've got a bus that Carlos's cousin owns. His cousin is a brother, has a brother in law has a bar and he owns a ranch. So the bad guy lives at the ranch, the fight scene is going to be in the bar, he's going to hit a bus at one point, he's gonna, the girl's gonna have a dog and a turtle's gonna cross the road. It gives you all this production value. So you write backwards. So for Bed Head, I even did that with a camera. So I'd been shooting video all this time. And one thing I wished I could do on video, I never could, was slow motion or stop motion

• 34:43Speaker 01

  even. So when I got that crappy World War II camera they gave us in film school, I mean, I was so pissed. Like this is the camera I've been trying to get my hands. I could have bought this for 50 bucks at a pawn shop. Old Bill and Al wind up, you couldn't even see through the lens. You were seeing through an approximation of the lens. But you could shoot slow motion. I could do reverse photography if I filmed upside down. I could do, because if I do a fast push into her, I'll never get the focus in right. So I started with it in focus, went back, pulled backwards on a chair and then reversed it, flipped it, and now it looks like it stops on a dime in focus.

• 35:21Lex Fridman?

  The number of times I've seen you shoot backwards is incredible. Like to achieve a certain feeling, a certain experience, a certain, uh, certain effect, sometimes shooting in reverse plus the sound effect layer, you can create this reality that's surreal.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:39Lex Fridman?

  That then results in the story that you wanted. Like you have, you have to be functioning in some kind of different space-time continuum.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Well, you start putting it together, right? So I've got this different camera. Well, what, now I go like, 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. Cause I go, wow, I'm a cartoonist. If I set the camera up here, I can slow it down enough. It's not, it's not a frame by frame, but if I get it down like two frames a second, I can just tap it and it'll maybe get one frame off. So I did 300 drawings by hand for that opening title sequence.

• 36:16Lex Fridman?

  Holy shit, that was, that was you doing it by hand?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you watched that and this is a throwaway title sequence, but I really want this thing to win awards.

• 36:26Lex Fridman?

  Okay, hold on a second. How long did that take to draw? That, that's a lot, that's a lot of work.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  I drew it, 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, it's the cameras going around and all kinds of crazy stuff, but it's just all fake by paper. It took me all night to shoot it. Cause I remember I walked into the film school the next day, you know, like all sleepy. And 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, they're not going to grade you any differently. And I was like, grades? Get an A walking in here. I'm trying to get out of this town. I'm not doing this for fucking grades. I got, I want people to see what I can do now and I want to see what I can do now with this.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  So a lot of the, 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.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  She has to have special powers. Cause 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 and the, and the chair. She makes a chair come all the way up to her and it goes all the way up to her face. Now, if I do that normally, where, where would I even put the strings for that?

• 37:47Lex Fridman?

  Right, to pull the chair, yeah.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  So let's start here with the camera upside down. I have the strings in the back, cause 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.

• 37:59Speaker 01

  And it looks so good, you can't spot the string. If you look close, you see the strings are in the back, but your eyes not.

• 38:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  So I did stuff like that and then just her like getting the hose. And then I just do stop motion for the hose turning on, you know, the faucet. That's why I gave her special powers so that, and it made the story better. So sometimes the limitations you have with equipment or location, you can use it to make, you know, take chicken shit, turn it into 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 was like, how did I even think I could get anything done with this? And it even exposed and mariachi the same way. You have to think about it. I shot mariachi on film and with a bar of 16 millimeter camera. I didn't know how to use it.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I called up a place in Dallas that rented that kind of equipment. And I said, I have an airy 16S here.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  Two motor looking things. One has a 24 and one has a, 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. Yeah. Oh, wow. Do you have a torque motor? I don't know. What is that? Is there something on the side of the magazine? Like it does, yeah. Now you can just look up on YouTube and it shows you how to do it. I was doing it by phone that way. And then I went and shot the movie right then.

• 39:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  And I didn't know if any of it was exposing or if the film camera was working until I finished the whole movie. So imagine you have to go down to Mexico, shoot for two weeks, come back, send it off to a lab. You want to talk about being nervous?

• 39:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  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. I was so relieved. Some things didn't come out, but I can cut around that. It's like, oh yeah, cause 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. You know, I'd have stuff like that because I'm moving fast and I'm doing it all.

• 39:57Lex Fridman?

  Wait a minute, you shot, I'm gonna actually the whole thing without knowing if some of the footage is damaged, wrong, without any of it.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  That's why I only did one take. So my idea was this.

• 40:09Lex Fridman?

  How gangster is that?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Well, it was a test film.

• 40:12Lex Fridman?

  Right, right.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  I thought it was, I thought it was going to be a test film.

• 40:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  It's the only movie in history ever made where the filmmaker did not think anyone would see it and expect it and even set it up that way. I mean, why would I make an action movie for the Spanish market called basically The Guitar Player? Promises no action. No one's gonna watch it. But I thought if someone actually picks it up and has the balls to watch this thing, they're gonna 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 gonna 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.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I was like, it's so hard to write a script. Who's gonna 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? Cause that way you're learning, not just writing, you're learning how to make a movie. So that was my idea. I'm gonna 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 gonna not come out, but I'm not gonna know what. I'm not gonna shoot a safety one. That doubles my, I mean, let me see, some things might come out.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I expected like 70% of it to maybe be okay, but 30% I might have to come reshoot. Which is fine, I just drive back there and then I just reshoot just those shots, right? So I just went, let's shoot. We stop, we come back, then I send it off to develop. Cause 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 filming the actor, man, I told you to run through that shot. And you, and you go, oh, let me do it again. No, one take, dude, just think about next time, do what I say. I didn't think anyone was gonna see it. So you, and because you don't think anyone's gonna see it, you end up doing something remarkable, which is, well, I'm just gonna make something for myself. Cause if I was making a movie that was gonna go to Sundance,

• 42:30Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have made that movie. I would have thought, okay, I gotta 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 gonna, and just do something for yourself. That taught me a very valuable lesson because I didn't want anybody to see it. I just thought, one take, one take. When I got back home, a bunch of stuff didn't come out, but I'm like, I'm not going back to Mexico. I'll figure out a way to edit around it and make the movie shorter. And that's just gonna be the movie. And then that's the one that went one Sundance.

• 43:07Lex Fridman?

  That was your first feature film? That's the one you made for $7,000? You mentioned your friend Carlos as the star of the movie. Everything one take. And, you know, I highly recommend people go back and watch that movie. It's, it's just incredible movie. It's fun and it's, it's an action film, moves really fast. The story is really interesting. So the script is really interesting. All the actors, you could tell. They all kind of stepped up and played their own.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  They were in actors.

• 43:33Lex Fridman?

  That's right.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  Friends of ours, which is why and because, um, 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, we're just here.

• 43:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Me with my one camera. In fact, the gal, uh, Carlos 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 gal over and she goes, 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 and you see someone, uh, you know, all over, over acting. I said, that's acting. I don't want you to do that. I want you to just talk like you're.

• 44:10Lex Fridman?

  Wait, that, the love interest, the woman in that, that's what you're talking about?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:15Lex Fridman?

  That's what you're talking about?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:16Lex Fridman?

  She's amazing.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  She's amazing because I, 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.

• 44:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  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 and that, and everyone just brought their own clothes.

• 44:39Lex Fridman?

  She really had like a sexuality, a tension, like a romantic tension that was real. Those is, it was a, it was in part a great love story that, I mean, as ridiculous as it is to say.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:49Lex Fridman?

  And yeah, in part, like a dramatic love story.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. The idea was that, you know, I thought a guitar player, you know, the real usually what I wanted to do was like Road Warrior. I said, I'm going to guy with a guitar case full of weapons, going from town to town like Road Warrior. But I don't have enough money for the first one to do that. That'll be the second movie I do. How about we do a genesis story? How he became that guy? So let's do Mad Max, basically how he becomes that guy. So maybe he is a guitar player. So that you start writing it out. I'm going to show you my writing method. I write on, on index cards and I, 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. I've made a million dollars one day before. You know, it's like this is the key to your next success. Cards.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Cause 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 other questions. A lot of times we ask ourselves very unempowering questions like, why am I such a loser? You know, I can think of 10 answers right now. But if you could, but if you go, what three things can I do today that'll not just change my life, but everyone around me? Take steps to that. Take out your cards and start writing them down. You won't come up with three. You'll come up with 15. Like wow, cause 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 a guy with a case. So how about he walks into a bar? So I wrote down that he walks in a bar, bar, trying to get work.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Bartender looks at him, we don't hire Mariachi, 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. Now, if that was a short film, that's how you'd start a short film. But this is a feature movie, so shit, I gotta figure out how to tell a feature. I'm going to need a few more cards before that. So I'm going to need, well, who's this bad guy? How about he's in jail? I'd read a story, it's a crazy story about a guy who was in jail 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 his enforcers, basically. So introduce that guy. He's in jail making phone calls.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  And someone puts a hit on him. So we have action right away. There's a hit on him. He kills those guys because it's his operation. He's not in jail. All the cops are working for him. And he tells that guy on the phone, the main bad guy, I'm going to come to town. I'm going to kill all your guys and I'm going to come kill you. So then he gets in his truck and you see them bring him a guitar case full of weapons. He passes the Mariachi.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  On the way to town, and now it's his story. The baton gets turned to Mariachi. Mariachi's doing a voiceover. Easy to shoot. We can do the voice later. We don't have to sing sound. There was 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 and I'm like, shit, man, you forgot to pay the guy. Well, let's shoot that. No, it was 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? No, it's because we forgot to show him pain. You know, little happy accidents. So now, look, you're already building a movie. So it's like now he goes in the bar. Now he's mixed up and the bad guy says, find the guy with a guitar case full of weapons. Then he goes and meets the girl.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  So you just start, your movie visually, you can start seeing your movie. And I've used this for business things. I've used this for ideas, for manifesting stuff.

• 48:30Lex Fridman?

  It's brilliant. Are you doing this alone usually? Or you bring?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  It's coming and it comes so fast. It's like free association. Maybe I have the ending. Oh, I know I want his hand shot. He's going to get his hand shot 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, if it's going to be a tragic song for his songbook, each movie should be like a tragedy.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  That's going to be over here. You know, you now you got the ending and then your brain starts filling in the rest. Cause 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.

• 49:08Lex Fridman?

  It's kind of a puzzle that you're figuring out. What happens if you get stuck? Like this doesn't make sense. Like some aspect of the structure doesn't make sense.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  You leave all there. You won't. Yeah, you just start, you just start writing in the ones you do know.

• 49:19Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Like, okay, I know, I know at some point she's going to betray him. Or he's going to think she does.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  She betrays him. Okay, that's in the middle somewhere. Uh, the other ones will come.

• 49:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, those are all like crossroads for the story. Doesn't that like, how do you know she has to die? Can that, can you change your mind about that?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  I can, yeah. But for now, I felt like if I really want, the story's telling me now what it is. I didn't know I was gonna make a Genesis story. I wanted to do the road warrior guy. But the road warrior, he lost his family. So really, to propel him to become a guy who has a guitar case full of weapons, he has to lose everything. So that he needs a ghost. So this is a Genesis story of a character. Well, look, Bruce Wayne lost his parents. You could say, well, does the parents have to die? Well, no, but it's not gonna propel him like, it's not gonna, it's not gonna drive him like that thing. So it just kept, it's just coming to me. So this is my other trick. And this is the main thing you gotta learn about. If you take any way, this isn't me doing it. I totally believe that because when you start doing this, you go, where are these answers coming from?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  I'm asking the right question, but why, 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 creativity in the title, I just ordered it. And I've got a bunch of books on creativity.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  And I was reading them through, one of them was like really speaking to me. Yeah, that's, 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? It's because 90% what they do is creative. Now, I believe that that same person, even if they only do music,

• 51:47Speaker 01

  could literally jump from job to job creatively and do a superior job than most technicians.

• 51:53Lex Fridman?

  And there's also something to say there about the learning, the technical aspects of an art. You collide with the, uh, with the experts. What happens is, I've experienced this a lot with like, with using cameras and so on. I don't know shit about cameras. And then you roll in and then there's all the experts almost talking down to you and telling you how things are supposed to be. Everything is wrong. I talked to somebody about like soundproofing a room and they said, they gave me prices that are insane. And like the amount of effort is insane and this, the, the.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, they're selling you something.

• 52:28Lex Fridman?

  The dynamics of this room are all wrong. I'm like, why can't I just fucking hang up some curtains? Like what, it seems like that kills most of the echo. Like, I don't, I don't understand. And they're like, no, this is all wrong. There's, the corners are gonna have some, and I'm like, fuck it. I'm just gonna try and I see what it sounds like A and B. Okay, here's audio with curtains, here's audio without curtains. Seems like this is fine, move on to the next thing. I think that when you say creativity, some of that is being a rebel, like not listening to the experts.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you're going on your creativity, which is, what is that? That's like an, do you consider yourself a creative person? I think you play guitar.

• 53:04Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, guitar, piano, yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  You play piano, good. But would you call yourself a creative person?

• 53:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Good.

• 53:12Lex Fridman?

  I think that's a positive.

• 53:13Speaker 01

  I would just suggest to anybody is just own it, own it. And just say, like, when I do so many different jobs, it sounds crazy when they would introduce me, hey, Robert, he does this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 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 or guitar or sculpting, you can just, you can do it. You can take it on and do it because it teaches you more about your main job. I've 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. I'm writing music, you know, for an orchestra. I'm like, how did I, I don't even know what I'm doing.

• 53:57Speaker 01

  Why is that coming out? 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. I go, I really feel like something else has taken over. So this is what my belief is. And cause I hear it in different realms. Like you ask Keith Richards, how do you come up with these riffs? He goes, I don't, I don't, they're floating around the sky and I pull them out first. You know, yes, asked, you know, Jimmy Vaughn, how do you play guitar? Those solos, he goes, it's like a radio. You know, once you get a tune 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.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  And then when you start getting in the flow and you're like, whoa, it's writing, it's, that's that. And if you can have that mindset, you take your ego out of it and go, all I need to do is be a good conduit for this thing. Be a good pipe and it's going to come through. So you don't ever have to get hung up on that question you had. Well, well, what happens when you can't come up? It wasn't me to begin with. If it's not coming out, it's because I'm blocking it. And if I were to do this and I'm flowing, and if I were to say, wow, I just wrote 10 cards. I don't know if I can write more. How did I do that? You just shut the pipe because your ego got in the way. You just clogged it because it gets pissed off that you think it's you. It's not you. It's like, dude, just open up, let me through, pick up the fucking pen.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  And I learned this in, uh, 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. Try the sofa method. I'm just going to try to picture the comic strip. And as soon as I got one, I think it's funny, then I'll just go draw that, right? Done, be done in a half hour. Why, why, why it's three hours? I'd sit there, sit there, sit there. My deadline would be coming up, got like 30 minutes. I'm like, oh shit, gotta go sit and draw it out. And it's like, oh, okay. I got this drawing. It's kind of, oh, this kind of goes with that.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  If I make another drawing, I 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. Yeah. It needs your hands. And it's not gonna fucking reward you for sitting there waiting for it. 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 gonna come through. And the ideas will come and the answers will come because it's not you. And if you can take your ego out of like, you'll be blessed with this never ending flow of ideas because don't take ownership for it. And know that you're, if it's not coming out, it's because you're just clogging it. Cause this thing's got endless ideas.

• 56:48Lex Fridman?

  And you give that same advice for, for making films, which is, you know, don't plan. If you want to be a filmmaker, don't plan like the movie. Don't think about making them. We just go in and start.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would meet a lot of people who introduce themselves as aspiring. I'm an aspiring filmmaker and I wonder how, what would you tell an aspiring filmmaker? I'd say, stop aspiring. Cause if you, if you call yourself that, you are that. And you're always gonna feel like you're not ready. And you don't, you just jump in before you're ready. You don't feel like you're ready till, I didn't feel like I was ready to do mariachi till 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's 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.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  He didn't know I was gonna do it. He figured it out day by day. Every challenge that 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 that'll be on your tombstone. Here lies so and so, he was never ready. And you don't want to be that guy. Jump in, know it's not you. You just gotta be the hands and that, that, that relieves a lot of pressure from you. Cause then you don't have to, ever have to do anything, really. You just have to be the hands.

• 58:11Lex Fridman?

  Can you talk through some of the hats, some of the many hats you wore with the El Mariachi? That's an interesting case study and you've done the same thing over and over in completely different innovative ways in all the films, but Mariachi is such a.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  Radical leap for you. That was crazy. That was, that thing's held together with Scotch tape and rubber bands because of the camera I borrowed. You directed, you did cinematography, you did the sound. It's better to just say what I didn't do. I didn't act in front of the camera. Everything else I did, everything else, I was the whole crew. It's just like you're doing here, except you've got sound recording.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Right onto the cameras, right? Or do you have it to the system? Separately, but it synced. I mean, all the modern technology. I didn't have sync camera. Yep. So I had a camera that. Yep. It was not, it was not a sync camera. And the thing was it was so loud, I would have had to blimp the shit out of it if I didn't have a blimp. And then I would have needed a sound guy. Just to be clear, so if people don't understand this, you're shooting basically no sound. Cause the camera sounds like this.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  It's like, it sounds like all your money is going away, first of all. So I would go like this, action. You'd start running. Yeah. And I shoot my edit.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Cut. Yep. You know, they're still running, you know, like I'm, I'm only using this part. And there's no slates, there's no, there's, there's guys holding up their fingers at the beginning of rolling. This is real seven. For just a few frames. I know which reel it is. And then that 10 minutes of film is just one shot after another. And I use almost every frame of those shots because I was cutting in the camera. Now, after I shoot, like, let's say, you know, tell me your name. Lex. What's your last name? Friedman. Where do you live? Austin, Texas. I would do the whole scene. Then I would get the sound, bring the mic in close like that. Say it again. Lex Fridman, Austin, Texas. That'll probably sync. Now, if you were going on and on.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  There's a place where it'd go out of sync. I hate rubbery lips. So I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the girl. And then I cut back when you're 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, they weren't performing it to where they didn't remember how they performed it before. They were just talking in their own rhythm. So a lot of the times it's the, anytime you see anyone on camera talking. 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 of shots of like the dog or a stuffed cat or something, just so I'd have something to cut away to to get them back in sync.

• 1:00:55Lex Fridman?

  That's so brilliant.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  And it's, if I call it, it's just resourceful. It's just being very resourceful.

• 1:01:00Lex Fridman?

  You allow it to get maybe a little bit out of sync sometimes?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  I didn't allow it, but oh yeah, I would let it if I just didn't have a way to cut away.

• 1:01:06Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  And I would try to sync it as best I could.

• 1:01:08Lex Fridman?

  But we as the audience, like, do you understand where the threshold is where we notice something?

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Lex Fridman?

  It seems like you can get away with a lot.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  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. I just felt like I wanted it to just be believable. And they could be really believable if they're in sync, but I didn't shoot two takes of film or even two takes of audio, but just one take. We just went to the, and what's cool is that because I just had him go through the whole scene again. So I would go ahead and record them like grabbing the bottle or any action they did, opening the suitcase. I'd have all the sound effects too. I just had to sync it by hand. That's a lot of work for me, but I got great sound that way. Cause if I had had a sync camera,

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  the mic would have been so far, we wouldn't have, we would have had to go get new sound effects, but because the camera is off, I could record everything close up. So there was some blessing to that.

• 1:02:10Lex Fridman?

  You and Quentin Tarantino had a great conversation about a lot of topics, but one of them is how to bring out the best in the actors. What in that Emery Archie, how do you bring out the best in these non-actors? And then maybe what's the thread that connects to your future work too?

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  What really helped for those non-actors was that they just look across and, and it's me filming. They didn't feel like they're, so they're being so natural. And like the guy who played the bad guy, I met him in the research hospital where I was sold my body to science. He was my bunk mate and I said, dude, you look kinda like Rudger Hauer. And then it's like, we saw another movie. Man, you look like James Spader. Shit, you should be the bad guy in my movie. And it'd be cool to have you as the bad guy. He goes, but I don't speak Spanish. So that's okay. All right. And I'll teach you phonetically and you're going to wear sunglasses. And if you look close, he's holding the. He's holding the lines here and he's looking at the lines like that and just smiling. So can't believe he's getting away with this. He's smiling and he's got the sunglasses on.

• 1:03:04Lex Fridman?

  I read that somewhere in the pool. There's like a scene in the pool.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  He's like this.

• 1:03:08Lex Fridman?

  With the sunglasses on with an, oh, man.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  But, but he was doing it phonetically. And I tell you what, he was so great, that guy, right?

• 1:03:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  When we do Desperado, I brought him back. Didn't even have to do any dialogue. Watch that movie when he shows up in the opening scene when Desperado, he's playing the guitar in the opening with the credits. To tie it into the first movie, he shows up again. And all he has to do is light a cigarette and you see this.

• 1:03:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Cause he's so nervous, cause now there's a crew behind me. Now it's real. Before it was just me and him and it didn't feel like a real movie. So everyone gave a great performance. So how do you recreate that later on a big movie? Is just building a report, making a safe zone for your actors. Quentin once told me, sometimes being, you know, we're talking about directing. He says, yeah, sometimes being a great director is just being a great audience. You know, being a great audience for the, cause you're, you're the, you're taking the place of the audience for the actor. They try something and if you're enjoying it, they know that the audience is going to enjoy it. Or if you're, you know, makes you cry, you know? So sometimes you just, you don't have to tell them a lot sometimes. And if you do have something very specific to tell them, they usually, you know, go with it. But I always just like to see what they do. And a lot of times they just are in the zone.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Cause again, they're, they're getting that flow too. You create the right environment, everyone's getting this inspiration. That's all tied together that you never could have directed. It's just like, you just create that space where we're all going to be open to it. And it's going to drop in our lap and I'm going to point it out when it does. Because you may not feel like you know how to play this role yet. But I say not knowing is the other half of the battle and the more important part. That's the part we're going to discover. And when it happens, I'm going to point it out and it's going to be like magic. And we're just going to go, okay, we're accepting it and we do it. And it gets people in that kind of headspace. And then we're all open to it, to where the character's supposed to go. What the, what it's supposed to sound like, instead of me being very, you know, manipulative to get a certain thing. I don't know. It's, it's just whatever feels good.

• 1:05:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there's such an intimate connection between the actor and the director. I've seen some of the behind the scenes footage with you. You are just a fan enjoying the scene when it's done well. But I think there's an aspect, if I were to put myself in the headspace of the actor, they want you as the audience like to earn that happiness, you know? It's when a director approves.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you're a performer and you want, and there's no other, you know, it's not like a live show where you get the approval of the audience. And you're like, oh, wow, they they like that joke. Let me do more, you know, really, the director is it. And a lot of times the director's way behind a monitor somewhere. That's why I still like to operate the camera. So when I'm operating the camera, it's like this. We can have a hundred people here. We wouldn't know because they go away. It's just us. They just disappear when it's the camera guy is the director. And we're going, let's do that again. So there's a shot in, I'm lighting, sensing myself, there's a bad, my crew setting lights. And I have this great shot of Clive Owen where he's holding down Benicio's head in the toilet. You know, Benicio's not there. It's just a close up of him at this point. And I'm practicing my shot. I'm zooming in slow in his face and people are still walking behind him on the green screen setting lights.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I'm rolling. We're ready to go. We're getting this. I can already tell. We're already in the moment. What you're doing right now, just keep holding that look now. One jolt like you're like, he's starting to fight back, but you don't even flinch. Cut. Okay. Never mind. You guys can stop moving that shit. We already got.

• 1:06:17Lex Fridman?

  Holy shit. Wow.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like that because you're so.

• 1:06:21Lex Fridman?

  That's a great scene, by the way.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Great, right?

• 1:06:23Lex Fridman?

  And it's.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Holy shit. Feel as if I wait for these guys, this moment will be gone. And then another one was Mickey Rourke, you know, he had so much freaking dialogue. He had just done this whole big dialogue scene. He had another one that said, let's go ahead and start with a wide shot. Where the two actors, if I'm the camera, you know, Mickey and Elijah are here. Let's get a two shot. And we'll come around on Mickey close up. We don't turn Mickey around for the close up. But let's start with the wide thing, get used to the lines and most of it's going to be sold in a close up. We sit down, Mickey starts delivering the take. I'm like, hold on, hold on a second. I brought my camera over, zoom in, just adjust that light real quick because I'm the DP. Because if I had another director of photography, they're like, oh, no, no, we have to relight and all this stuff. It's like, no, no, let's just do this, this, let's go. He's doing it right now.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  And I go and that performance is just right then. And so you can feel that when you're also you're operating and you're the camera guy and you're the DP. It's like high tech guerrilla filmmaking. Yeah, run a green screen, but it's like all the crew needs are, you know, marching orders. Just put a light back there. Hitting them harder, like that's a, this is a 5K, make that a 10K. It's gotta be stronger. They don't need to know that I'm gonna make that a lamppost later. They just need marching orders for the moment. So I can just kind of tell people, do this, do this, do that. And then I know what I can accomplish with the actor and then everything else falls into place later because I'm gonna put all that in later. You know, things, once you know how to do a lot of jobs like that, you can just move at the speed of thought, which is where the actors love being creatively.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Cause they, nobody knew what green screen was back then. They're like, what is this again? So I explained it as, well, it's kind of like doing theater. But instead of a black curtain behind you with a prop, it'll be a green curtain. And you might just have a cup or just a steering wheel. But it's just you and the other actors, just like this. And everything else will be painted in later. We're just talking, we're locked in. If we stay locked in, we'll look great when there's rain coming down and we're on a ship later. But it comes down to this, right? And the more, it was so fun to do those kind of movies.

• 1:08:19Lex Fridman?

  To this day, you try to be close to the action, connected with the actor that's.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Cause it's like a dance. You end up.

• 1:08:26Lex Fridman?

  That's so good to hear.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  I remember on Dust Till Dawn, Michael Parks in the opening scene, he's talking about the two guys that are running around killing people just before he gets shot. And there's a, I just start doing this slow zoom. I remember it was take eight. Start doing the slow zoom on him and I'm like, I hope I get all the way up to where it stops zooming when he finishes that speech. Cause there's no set way and I don't know how he's gonna say it, but you're just locked almost telepathically. And has he delivered? There's no edits. He's just going, yeah, they killed four Rangers. Two hostages.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  It's just like, wow. And you're just so pulled in. I'm just like, oh my God. And then it stopped. It's like I ran out of zoom, right? As he finished that speech.

• 1:09:08Lex Fridman?

  So how can a director, cause there's a lot of great directors that stay in the.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  In the bag. I know.

• 1:09:14Lex Fridman?

  In the back of the battlefield.

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  They just trust that whatever they get from their crew, they just, you accept it. Just like, you know, you would get a take to.

• 1:09:19Lex Fridman?

  There's so much intimacy to that connection.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  I like that intimate connection because I could not be behind a monitor. Even if I had communication with my cameraman, okay, now start zooming in. You're not gonna know. You have to feel it. You have to be in there. It's like a dance. It's like trying to do a dance with a partner in your across the room. You know, it's like, no, you gotta be there up close, feeling the energy and, and it's the, the creative spirits whispering to your both. You know, it's not your own idea. It's, you're capturing a moment that's magic. And there's true magic that happens on a set and that's what brings you back. Cause you know. I didn't direct that and they didn't act that. That came through us and we just had the cameras rolling and we captured a ghost.

• 1:09:59Lex Fridman?

  Just like you said, you had a pen in hand and you were there.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  It's like that. It's crazy.

• 1:10:04Lex Fridman?

  All right. Your friendship with Tarantino is just fascinating and just the whole timeline of the history of movies and the two of you collided and met is just a fascinating part of the story. You first met him in nineteen ninety two at the Toronto Film Festival. Can you just talk about meeting Tarantino?

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we both had films at the same time with first films, Guys in Black, action violence. In fact, I had seen his movie already. My first film festival was a few months before that, the Telluride Film Festival and Reservoir Dogs was there, but Quentin couldn't be there. He was at Sundance earlier that year. And the guy who became my agent, he saw it. He said, hey, you're gonna like this guy, Quentin Tarantino. I told him about you. You're gonna meet him. He's gonna be in Toronto. Oh, cool, cool. Okay. And so I went ahead and saw his movie and Telluride. And I was like, holy shit, this Guys in Black again, just like the Mariachi's dressed in black and action. I said, oh, we're gonna like each other's movies. He's gonna like my movie when he sees it. So then in Toronto, we met and we met first on, because I knew I was gonna be doing a panel discussion with him.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  They asked us to do a panel discussion about violence in movies in the nineties, even though it was only ninety two. So we're on a panel together and that's where I met him and he's like, hey, Robert, your agent told me about you. And I was like, yeah, I saw your movie, Reservoir Dogs. And he goes, oh, you gotta come to my screening. And I'm gonna come see yours. So he came to Mariachi and I videotaped the audience reactions because they were insane, insane reactions to it. But I have the first screening. He saw Mariachi sitting next to me laughing. He's laughing and everything. He was just the best audience. I have his recording of the first time he saw Mariachi.

• 1:11:36Lex Fridman?

  Oh, no, really?

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I taped it. He's so loud because he's right next to me.

• 1:11:41Lex Fridman?

  Well, just like you, but even probably even more than you. He's a fan. He watches, he just loves movies.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  He loves movies. In fact, I, the, the next time I heard him laugh that way was at the, his own premiere for Kill Bill. We're watching Kill Bill and he's laughing like it's somebody else's movie. He still enjoys the movie. It's so, he loves what all the actors did. And it's like, that's the kind of energy you really love. But I tell you what, why, what happened. Um, I'm not a very shy person, you know, very shy. I'd have to go talk. I'm sure you probably feel like you're not an orator or anything, you know, just have to go do it. I thought, well, man, I'm gonna have to introduce my film and talk about it afterwards. I'm afraid of that. What am I gonna do? I don't, I've never talked in front of more than five people before. So I went to see this other movie.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  And it was good. And I was watching and, and then the director comes up at the end and he goes, yeah, well, that was my movie. And, um, you know, uh, yeah, here's the writer. And it's like, oh man, I don't like the movie anymore. This guy's kind of a dick. So I cannot do that. I'm gonna have to go be who they imagined made that movie. So I wrote out my whole intro. It was like a 20 minute intro because no one had ever heard of anybody making a movie for no money, much less without a crew, much less. You know, the way I did it was just very new. Nobody knew it was possible. So my whole intro is like, you'll see the Columbia logo slapped in front. It's probably cost more than the whole movie.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  And then I go through, this is how I made it with a wheelchair for a dolly, a turtle, you know, I rode around things I had. I mentioned the turtle, the pit bull, the bus, the ranch, all that stuff, right? So then when they see the movie, in fact, I think my wife was in the audience. She said, at Sundance, people were laughing so much at your intro. They just wanted to hear a story like this so badly. I heard someone next to me say, I'm gonna vote for his movie. They hadn't even seen the movie. Just because the story was so good, they wanted that movie to be great. And when they see the turtle. Big cheers when they see the pit bull. Big cheers when they see the school bus cheers. But then when they see how we use it and he slams into it and falls in it. They fricking lose their minds because they know how I put it together. They know that the rubber bands and the popsicle sticks, I already set it up.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  And so that's why that audience, I just hate the reaction. They're so with it. The context is so key. Like you can watch mariachi and go, hey, yeah, this looks like a $7,000 movie. But if you know the story behind it, suddenly I was curious. I hadn't seen it in a long time. I was watching it for the 20th anniversary. We did a screening and the first few shots come up and I'm like, oh yeah. Well, it looks like a $7,000 movie. And then it keeps going and it's in the, once we're in the jail cell and the shooting is happening. And I, and I realized, oh my God, we had these blanks that only fired one shot and it would jam. So I had to show it going, use the sound effect, cut to the other guy, cut back, have another one go. I had to do these editing tricks to make it look like, and then repeat a few frames.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  So it goes, so it looks like a machine gun. All these stuff that I'm start sweating as I'm watching it going, I can't believe I made this movie with that fricking camera. I don't know how I did. I couldn't even see. I'm there with this long lens pulling my own focus. When I finally had to do a real movie, I was operating the camera on my first real movie with a crew. I get the camera and a guy comes over and he focuses for you.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  That's your job. You focus shit. I had to do my own focusing on the last movie. I didn't have so hard. You're trying to focus on a guy while you're filming. You don't know where you are. And it's just, I was couldn't believe how much easier it is when you have a crew.

• 1:15:15Lex Fridman?

  It's extremely valuable to know that the pain of that, the, the spectrum of creativity that's allowed within that, even just the focusing.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:24Lex Fridman?

  Like how focusing fucks up on all the cameras and your cameras. What, what are the different artifacts that come up? Just to know.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Lex Fridman?

  The battlefield. In order to be a great general, you have to know how to be a soldier in the battlefield.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's good to know all that stuff, but you know, it's like, at the end of the day, you could shoot something on a phone. And if you have a great story, no one's going to even notice. I'll be, oh, we shut that on a phone. I didn't notice. You know, so sometimes people get cut off on what kind of camera should I have? It's not the camera. That's, that's just the tool. That's just the pen. That's just like, yeah, you can have different paintbrushes, but you can go, I'm going to, I'm going to limit my palette. I'm only gonna use a fan brush and a detail brush and I'm gonna make a painting. Do you think that painting is gonna suffer? No, it's gonna take on an identity that you wouldn't have had if you had all the other tools. So sometimes the limitations help you because when you can do anything, you come, it can be crippling. When I knew I could only use those things for mariachi, it's like, all right, well, it's very, it's very simple now. Let me show you how cheap skated I was. Like, I did not spend on anything.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  So when you see him walking around with a guitar case, it's a shitty cardboard one, you know, like I got from home. I had to get a heavier one to put the guns in. So we borrowed one, but it had this material ripped off the top. So you could see the wood. It's just the wood on top. So it didn't match the other one because it wasn't all black. And I was too cheap to paint it black. I didn't want to spend money on paint. So you see that cardboard case, he puts it down. And when he goes to open it, I cut to the other one. Once the wood is, is, watch the edits, you'll see it. Now it's a completely different case for the guns. And when he goes to cut it, when he closes it, it cuts to the other one. And he goes up, that's how I did that whole movie. Again, it was a practice film. I don't want to waste any money on it.

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  I don't know if it's gonna be able to, I will be able to make five bucks from it.

• 1:17:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, but you, you're one of the, one of the few great directors where both the movie's genius and the process of making it is creative genius. It's like fun to watch both, to know of both.

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  You know what I believe.

• 1:17:20Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  It's like, it's not me. I have to say, that thing is freaking, I, I didn't get in its way. This is basically what, what helps. And, and people say that, you know, don't get in your own way. This is a little bit easier to understand. It's like, keep the pipe clear. Don't block it with your ego. Don't say, you're gonna be shocked, but don't ever say, oh shit, how do I do that? I don't know if I can do that. You didn't do it to begin with. Accept that it just came through you and try to get back into that headspace. Especially when you go to make a second film or a third film or follow up a success. That's when artists get really crippled. Cause sometimes they start tiptoeing around as an artist going like, oh shit, now it's my second film. My first one did really well. They might not like my second one so much.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  That's not the headspace you were in when you made the first one. You weren't hesitant like that. You were just, so try to keep that very naive. And, and that's why I say commit to a body of work. Cause I know a lot of filmmakers get stuck on their second one and then go further. Because they get crippled by the success of the first one. And they start asking, oh shit, how did I do that? How can I do that again? And you get deeper and deeper in a hole you can't get out of.

• 1:18:23Lex Fridman?

  I think you've spoken about that filmmakers, especially early on in their journey. Critics and the audience can destroy them. Meaning like it creates too much of a burden, too much.

• 1:18:35Lex Fridman?

  Just wear them down to where they're almost scared to be creative. Can you just speak to that? How to ignore the critic?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  I'll tell you something that I, my best advice I ever got. Early on, I was so fortunate.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  From an unlikely place.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Because he's such a, he sounded like Clint Eastwood when he said, when you said that.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  But I got, uh, Desperado. And Antonio Banderas, I brought Antonio to be in it from Europe. Big action movie. And so Spielberg saw it and he said, um, hey, I want you to do Zorro with Antonio.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  So we're working on it for a while. I did, I was working on the pre-production. Got to work with Spielberg doing that. It ended up stalling me as the, there was like two studios involved and Amblin was moving or it was some weird thing where. But I got to work with him for about five months, you know? And I started getting really nervous because it's like, oh shit. You start thinking about even movies of his that people would say, oh, you know, Temple of Doom is not as good as Raiders. Have you seen Temple of Doom? I'd kill to fucking do that movie. If I can make Zorro as good as that one, the one that people said it's like, people don't know how good they had it with that guy. But I started thinking, I even said, man, I just rewatched Temple of Doom last night. I don't know how I'm going to do this horror movie. Like I'm just never done anything like that. You start getting, you know, afraid because you go.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  The second thing, he said, all right, just, just, you're going to do fine. But then I started thinking, God, this guy at that time, you don't know the era, but this was like mid nineties. He was making the biggest, best movies of all and people would shit all over this guy. They would throw so much, they were so jealous. Press, audience, everyone was just like hits at him, just throwing rocks at him for everything. Spielberg? Yeah, you can't imagine it now. You had to been at that time. Now everyone has respect for him, but they made him run a fucking gauntlet. And they were like drastic power, man, you can't even imagine it now, but you should have seen the climate. It freaked me out because I'm like, maybe I should just stay under the radar where I've been, you know?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  Not poke my head out so much. Yeah. Because this guy has a head out and they're unwarranted. You can't even fathom it now because you weren't here at that time. It was crazy. You would never even think of him that way. I'm glad it changed because back then it was just, it made people not want to be successful. And I made me be worried, like, maybe I shouldn't be go making a movie that has his name on it. It's going to put my head out in a whole different realm of filmmaking at a studio level.

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  Because if I make, even if I make a good movie, if I make a great movie, he's making great movies and he's getting this dog shit. I don't know if I could take it, you know? So I asked him, because you don't know how resilient you can be. So I said, Jim and Ben, how do you do it? How do you, how do you, what do you do when people just throw rocks at you all day long? He goes, oh, Robert, you just don't blink. And I was like, whoa. Now I see how he got through it. Just don't blink, just like, you know it's coming? Don't blink. And to him say it, it's like a Clint Eastwood line, right? But it was like, you could see he was telling the truth. And you could see that's how he did it.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  He just avoided all criticism by just not blinking. It's like, it's designed to make you blink and you're just not going to blink because you're committing to a body of work. He just keeps cranking out movies. Whatever he feels like doing, he does. And that was like the most powerful, and it never bothered me again. I just like always kept that in mind. I tell that to my actors. I tell that people that story has traveled. I even had some little actors who were like starting to get a bit, I said, remember, tell you a couple of things. Some people have told me, you're never as good as people say you are. And you're never as bad either. George Clooney told me that. So remember that. And then the second one, Spielberg, don't blink. Don't blink.

• 1:22:26Lex Fridman?

  But there has to be a kind of vision for yourself of what you're reaching for, what you're trying to do.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Again, yeah, sort of, sort of like, I think if you told me what would be my vision for the future, just committing to a body of work, which I've just kept doing. Like, that's, it's about as far as you can see.

• 1:22:44Lex Fridman?

  Do you have a sense, do you have a vision of the body of work you'll make in the next 20 years? Like, or is it just this fog?

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Like, I wasn't sure because you don't always know what the, you might not have the vision yet because you don't have the information yet. So if you just commit to a body of work, you'll start figuring out more reasons to keep doing that body of work. So when I turned 50, I was like, I guess I could just keep making movies. I mean, I guess that's been good for me. Yes, I guess I could just make more. I kind of done that already, but it's always fun and it's always new. And I guess I can make, but it wasn't a lot of drive, right? It's like, that's not, it's like, well, I guess I could just keep doing the body. You know, that's not as much as I can't wait to keep doing another season. But I didn't know how to get to that point. So I thought, you know what? I got this job so early, I was in the early twenties. I bet there's some other job out there that exists that I don't even know about. Cause I don't know other jobs.

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  So I looked up, you don't believe it, but I literally bought jobs for dummies.

• 1:23:41Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  It was just like, I don't even know what, I just have basic jobs are even out there. Turning the page, oh yeah, don't want that job, don't want that job, don't want that job. I'm just going through and it gets to filmmaker. And there's a little icon, but that is job. This icon is a guy like this.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Literally, you look it up, it's a, and it says, this is the best job ever. You get to just be creative with your friends, sit back, watch the money roll in across the desk. And I said, but 99% of film students don't get this job, so give up that dream. So I was like, I guess I got the best job. But then I started working with my kids when we did a. Had a TV show called Rebel Without a Crew, based on that, right? I found filmmakers that only made a short film, they hadn't made a feature. I picked this diverse group of filmmakers, gave them $7,000 and we documented them making a feature two weeks, like I did. You can bring one person, like I had Carlos Ghadot, the producer and star of Bariachi. Bring one person, you can be your cameraman, we can be your sound guy, whatever. But it's only that for the shoot and you'd have to do the whole thing.

• 1:24:41Speaker 01

  And I saw those guys, by the time they're, they're like, I don't know how we're gonna make this movie. By the first week of shooting, they're already talking about their next feature. They, they became so confident because their idea of what impossible is drops really quick when you take.

• 1:24:53Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, anyone interested in unlocking their creativities, not even just filmmaking. I highly recommend that show and I highly recommend this, the kind of the follow on show, which is where you make Red 11.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Yes, that's the one I did. So then it came time for me to do one. So I made a movie called Red 11, based on my experiences in the medical hospital. But I'll turn it into a sci-fi thriller, just to use that as, so that I can use like somebody getting stabbed in the eye. So I'm still gonna have more elements to show how you can do camera tricks and stuff with no money. And, and the whole day is make it for less than $7,000, which I think we're like $5,000. Many, because you had a lot of actors I wanted to pay. But the movie itself can make it for nothing. But I brought my son aboard as my number one, who hadn't been working with me in a while. I mean, he wrote Sharkboy and Lava Girl when he was seven, but then he hadn't really been at, working on my crew. So he didn't know how to operate the sound equipment, the separate sound system and all that. I didn't show him until the day of filming, because I knew we're documenting it, it would make a better tutorial.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  So by getting them working on the movies together, they came to be super excited by the end of the day. I thought for sure, oh, they're gonna hate this, even though it's only two weeks. They've got other interests, they don't wanna be filmmakers. I thought they were gonna be like, all right, I'm outta here after one day. But instead he came to me and his brother who acted in it, and he went, dad.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  The actor didn't show up after the first day. The location didn't match the script at all. We asked you how we're going to solve the problems and you're like, I don't know. Figure it out. We thought that stump for once, is he stumped finally? But then by the end of the day, his eyes were all white. We figured it out. I went, oh, they don't realize this is the creative process. Every day is like that. And in life too. Every day you don't know your machine's going to not work or you're going to get a flat tire or you get fired that day. So life is very unpredictable, just like a movie set. So I realized I'm going to make them all work on my movies now because it's teaching them about life. I'm teaching them very little about the film make. It's about life lessons, about how you take on something impossible.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Turn chicken shit to chicken salad and make it work. And that's the strong, that's life. That's the process of life. So many people say, well, I'm not ready to make my projects. Like you're not ready for life either. You're like this all day. You're dodging shit that's going on. How come art has to be perfect? It's like, it should be the same. Life and art should be the same.

• 1:27:14Lex Fridman?

  And I think filmmaking in general is full of unpredictable things.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  And in a short little microcosm too, within one project, you've got a whole blueprint for how you're going to solve life because you've just done it on a creative level.

• 1:27:27Lex Fridman?

  I think of all the art forms, of all the art mediums like that, it just has so many different components.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  A lot of components to it.

• 1:27:33Lex Fridman?

  And so like, there's so many ways to fuck things up, to learn from.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  But any of the disciplines, if you add those to it, like I teach my actors to paint in between takes, we'll go and we'll, I'll take a picture of them in character. I show them a canvas. I show them paint. You don't need to know how to paint. This is to show you, the brush is going to know where to go. You just got to pick it up. Pick the colors you want. Doesn't matter how crazy they are, whatever's speaking to you. You lay it down. I'll show you some of the pictures. You're not going to believe the masterworks these actors did like in a day. They just start doing it. Lady Gaga had her fingernails in there. You know, Josh Brolin's doing his thing. Then I take a picture of them in character, do a line drawing of it. We project it on top. And mostly it's the painting coming through, their line drawing with a little bit of their eyes painted in. You're not going to believe these things. They couldn't believe it.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  But it teaches them that, that thing about that the creativity is going to come through. So even though they're already acting, they're already being creative, we're already making a movie. Like you said, that's already a really great creative endeavor. When we would sneak off and paint, you could tell it's firing a whole other part of their brain. It was funny. I think Josh Brolin's girlfriend said.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Josh said, hey, my girlfriend just said, she said, he's wife now, but at the time,

• 1:28:45Speaker 01

  are you guys doing drugs? You leave the set and you come back and you're all like, and I go, no, we're painting, we're painting. But that makes sense that you say that because it creates, when you get your creativity firing, it's more powerful than any drug. And we would come back and he'd be on the set going, is it bad that I'm still thinking about the painting? And I'm like, no, I think it's good. I think it's all good. But it's, you can tell it's opening a whole other part of the creative brain. So you can be doing acting in a movie and the painting is still going to tap. It shows how much untapped potential your creative brain has. So the more you can do, the more you're firing off. And it was so cool. Like I remember we did one with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was painting. We came in and the table was like this and they said, we have a problem.

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  You want them to throw the cards out, the playing cards out, but it's so slick, they go sliding off the table. And we both look at it and we both got the solution at the same time. Oh, we just, just, just have them, just have them throw them wherever they go. And then we'll place them. And then digitally, it's even better that he looks like he gets them all perfectly laid out to show what a card shark he is. That's, but that's what we have to do because we're not gonna, we can't, we'll be here all day. We're trying to get, if we're gonna worry about where they go, just go bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump. And then we'll place the cards down and everyone will pick them up. And then we'll marry the two in post. You know, you're just, you just come up with creative solutions better, easier because you were just solving crazy creative solutions. And the other one, like what paint medium do I use?

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  What kind of gel am I going to use? So when you come back to your main job, which is filmmaking, you're like, oh, I can figure this out in two seconds. You know, so it helps you creative problem solve. So that basically working with my kids made me realize, oh, now I know exactly what I want to do for the next 10 years. I only want to make movies with my kids because I'm mentoring them, but they're teaching me shit because they're the age I was when I made mariachi in Desperado. And their, their ideas are really sharp. So the mentoring goes both ways. And it's like the greatest parenting that you can do because you're building a project together and in the same boat together figuring it out. And it's family time. We like checking all the boxes. So I thought my filmmaking going forward is going to be checking all the boxes in life. So I'm not, not spending time with my family. We're actually giving them lessons that they

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  can go do anything they want in life because they're going to have different interests. But now it's kind of like going to college and this college is like the best college because it pays you to learn. You get to do these crazy skills. Like my son is, you know, conducting the orchestra, the James Bond orchestra in London for the Spy Kids score and a score he wrote because I can't write at his level because he was always our best piano player. And they get, you get the charge out of working with them. And then, and by making a label, there's a, there's a weird phenomenon that happens. If you guys want to take your game to another level, I stumbled upon this idea. My son, that was my counterpart on that movie Racer, he was my sound guy. Like I said, came up with Sharkboy, Lava Girl and these

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

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

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  like Double R, we're going to come up with ideas. We'll call up VR companies and say, hey, we have a company, a VR company. Would you like us to make you a film for your, sell your headset? So yeah, they gave us a budget. They, they, they're dying for content. They gave us a budget. We shot a 20 minute action movie called The Limit with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus, where you're in an action movie with them. And it was killer. We, they made us a big Double R logo, animated logo. Later that year, we did Red Eleven, same logo. That movie went to director's Fortnite in Cannes. Festivals were paying us to come talk about how we made that movie. That's when we're doing the cards, throwing the cards out because they wanted their audiences. They knew they would love that.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  So we could have had a whole gig, just continuing to get paid to go to the Fed. Usually paid if I go to, you don't get paid. That's how, what a success that was. But then we had to make We Can Be Heroes. So we had to stop. But We Can Be Heroes was a Netflix movie where they asked me to make a Spy Kids type thing. And so I thought, oh, okay, I'll just do it with superheroes. That's there, I wrote it with my kids, based it on some of their personalities. It's the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history. Like nothing can touch it because kids just keep watching it over. Because this kid was super powered. No one's ever done that before. And they, they couldn't believe it. Like I'd heard anecdotally, that's how the Spy Kids, people said, oh, that kid's watch it over and over on video. But you can't keep track of that.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  You can't on Netflix because their biggest thing is people completing the movie. A lot of people don't complete a movie and it still counts as a view. They may watch five minutes and change the channel. So do you complete a movie? That's really where they, you know, really value, not only able to complete, but rewatch, rewatch, rewatch per household so many times. Wow. That one has a double R logo as well. And my kids are like, Dad, it really worked. I was like, I know better than I thought. I didn't know, I didn't know that me manifesting that company was going to turn into that. And we've just keep making stuff. So I want to do that with brass knuckle films now with the audience because it works. So I said, as soon as you have a logo and a company, your brain starts coming up with all kinds of ideas. And it's a filter.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Like, like I said, sometimes the freedom of limitations is all freeing. When I had to do four rooms and it's like, we have to use one hotel room. Oh, well, then there's going to be a dead body. There's going to be, you can do a lot with limitations. If they said you could use the whole city, it would have been harder to come up with something. Well, Brass Knuckle Films has a filter, only action. Action movies, because that's the stuff that there's always an appetite for. If you ask Netflix right now, what do you need more of? They'll say, action, action, action. We don't have enough action. The last regime didn't leave us enough action. We need action. They'll pay a premium for an action film that we can make at a lower cost. A $20 million action film is very cheap. Studios don't know how to make them that cheap. That's why they'll pay for an independent to go do it. And right now, that's the key is to be independent.

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  Because a lot of studios, they can't even greenlight anything. Things are so expensive, they don't want to lose their ass. But they need action films. So let's make something that everybody needs. And let's make it at a price. And we'll make it in my studio, because I got my own studio. And I can keep all the costs down, because we have all the costumes and props and sets from 25 years of filmmaking to keep the cost down. And we'll have the audience gets to invest. It's not crowdfunding or Kickstarter. You're actually an investor. Anyone who puts money in can pitch their idea for an action film to me. And I'm going to make one of the four films in that slate from one of those ideas, because I want the audience to win. I want the audience to win and be a part of it. Because the audience is an afterthought in Hollywood.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  They make a movie, they show the audience the movie. Go tell your friends now, so y'all spend money on our movie. Where's your cut of that? So I want them to be successful. So if any of the movies in the slate do well, they make money off that one and then sequels or anything. But they're all going to do well, because everyone needs an action movie. We're going to keep the cost down.

• 1:36:15Lex Fridman?

  Can I actually ask you, just to focus in on action? You've created a lot of epic action films. What makes for a great action film?

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  It comes down to the character. You know, like if you think about, what are the best action films? What are your favorite films? Like Die Hard. He's a cop, so he's still capable, but he's not Superman. The fact that he's like in over his head and you're rooting for him, that's a great character. You know, John Wick, he is Superman, but he's retired. And now he's pissed off and he's going back into a job, you know, so the character is comes down to the character really being very important because the action will then have a character to it.

• 1:36:54Lex Fridman?

  I think Leon the Professional.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  That's what's.

• 1:36:58Lex Fridman?

  I mean, that's all about character.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Now that, when I say we're going to do action movies, I mean, movies that are really action first. Like there's some movies that are more dramas that have action.

• 1:37:06Lex Fridman?

  Where's the boundary? So John Wick is action.

• 1:37:09Speaker 01

  That's more action, but it has character in it, but it's action driven.

• 1:37:12Lex Fridman?

  What about like Predator?

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Predator is a sci fi action film, so that's kind of a hybrid, which I like. But sometimes it's hard for the audience to know what they're buying into. Like they focused a lot on the action in the trailer, you know, and then they felt there was some other worldly thing, but you didn't really know. But it's a great movie.

• 1:37:28Lex Fridman?

  So Die Hard is a, is a good example.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  It was a good example, right? I can think of right off where there was a character that really made the difference. And then everyone repeated that, you know, for a while, there was like under siege, I was like a regular guy who's really actually has some training on a ship now, and then on the bus, you got a cop, he's a cop, but he's not super cop. So that's why you root for him, you know, that became an element that people repeated a lot.

• 1:37:50Lex Fridman?

  What about Taken?

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  That's a great one. That's a great character who is superhuman. Who's also retired, you know, so there's like a superhero type character in an extraordinary circumstance, like that's now his daughter's taken, right? And then there's ordinary people like the Terminator, that's a great character, not the Terminator, he's a villain, but Sarah Connor, who is a waitress, doesn't think her life's going anywhere and she finds out she's the mother of the guy who's going to save the, the human race. And she's got to train him, you know, suddenly she has to become someone else. Those are cool movies because it's a genesis of a character. And you see a character go from waitress to revolutionary.

• 1:38:28Lex Fridman?

  Step up, yeah. What about mob movies? I mean, some of them, like Godfather is really not about, is not action.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  Not an action movie, drama that has some action.

• 1:38:36Lex Fridman?

  Right. I mean, John Wick is a mob film in some sense, Goodfellas. I mean, there's a lot of dynamic action, but there's really not action first.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  That's really a character type piece. Great, freaking amazing. And it feels like action, by the way, he does it, it's just like that, it's like fast paced, fast talking, fast moving. Like Escape from New York is one of my favorites since I was a kid. Cause every movie, you'll notice this now that I tell you, even like a romantic comedy, there's a timeline. Every movie has to have like a ticking clock. So the audience knows the story is not just going to take over a period of years. So suddenly someone in the movie around 20 or 30 minutes in will say, we've got to go find the groom before the wedding this weekend. You know, it'll be just like that. Escape from New York has the best example of a ticking time clock because he's literally got bombs in his neck. And he's got a watch that shows him. He's constantly clocking it, how little time he has.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  And he gets you so like, oh my God, is he going to make it? That's like the best use of that. And no one's ever topped that ticking time clock. All the other ones seem artificial in comparison, you know, aliens, you know, we got to get off this planet now. Cause this whole thing's going to blow up. You know, they're like, there's a timeline. It's already urgent, but now there's an extra timeline on it. Yeah, this is what happens.

• 1:39:52Lex Fridman?

  You may, as you're talking, you're just making me fall in love more and more with action films. I, I sometimes you forget how much you love action.

• 1:40:00Speaker 01

  A really good action film.

• 1:40:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  In fact, like the Terminator, the original Terminator just came out in 4K. I've been watching it again. It looks like better than most movies look today. And that's a $4 million movie. It looks incredible. You can see every bead of sweat in this movie. I was watching it again with somebody, a female. And there's always a point when you're watching that movie where she'll turn and say, I love this movie. You know, a point that is, it's a point where Michael Bean tells her, I came across time for you, Sarah. I love you, which is, you know, I always have. And you're just like, oh my God, there's like a real emotional love story there that he put into Titanic, that he put into Avatar. He figured out that thing that makes those movies work.

• 1:40:44Lex Fridman?

  By the way, I should say that, I mean, there is an aspect of El Mariachi that is a love story to me.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  There was a rough.

• 1:40:51Lex Fridman?

  I don't know if you see it that way, but I, when I just rewatched it, I was like.

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  Tragic love story.

• 1:40:56Lex Fridman?

  But I was like heartbroken that she's dead.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  I got heartbroken twice. Let me tell you the second time it happened. One, you're making that and you go, okay, this is how it has to go. But then now you're invested in this person, you go, oh my, she has to die. It's going to be really sad. In fact, the studio even, when they said they were going to remake it, a good thing I put that ending on. That's the only reason they showed it to an audience. We're going to remake it. They weren't going to put that movie out. They showed it said, we need to show this movie to an audience. Cause they might not like the fact that we killed a girl before we remake it. All right. They showed it to an audience. Audience liked it the way it was. So they said, we want to take this movie to some film festivals. And I was like, no, not this movie. This is my practice movie. No one's supposed to see this movie. And they go, no, no, you got something. No, no, dude, if I knew anyone was going to see this, I would have shot it completely different.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Give me $2,000. I'll go reshoot half of it. Just knowing people are going to see it. I want something. And the head of the studio was really smart. He said, um, you don't know what you have here. It's very, it's very real special. Let's just take it and tell you right, see what happened. Tell you right, Toronto did great. Like I said, and it won Sundance. So now we had to put it out. But I was like, I would have said, don't show that movie. But they also questioned the ending and didn't come into play because we ended up making Desperado. And the girl in Desperado doesn't die, you know, we didn't do that. We didn't kill Salma. But that's what needed to happen to Mariachi. I'm Quentin called me one time. People would always saying like, oh, reservoir dogs. He, he borrowed from this movie, Hong Kong action film called City on Fire. About these guys that are all criminals and they kill each other, whatever.

• 1:42:25Speaker 01

  And um, he said, hey, they're showing a double feature called East Looks West and West Looks East. They're showing reservoir dogs with City on Fire, the one they say I borrowed from. And they're showing Mariachi with a Hong Kong film called Run, where they ripped off Mariachi. Like they just took the whole story. It had two, you know, Chinese actors in Mexico with a guitar cases, ones that they just followed it beat by beat. So we're watching it and it was like scene by scene. They just, they just rebate it without even getting the rights or anything. It was so fun to watch. So we saw Mariachi first, then we watched that one. And I'm like, what's this big brothel scene though? This isn't my movie. Oh, the bad guy. Oh, there's a scene in my movie where the bad guy has two girls in bed with him. And they figured that was a whorehouse, but it was just his apartment. Yeah. So they got this whorehouse built up.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  And they have helicopter shots and all kinds of big thing. And the action was awesome. But then, and the girl's really good. And then midway through the movie, I'm like, oh shit, she's going to die. Cause I killed her in mine. I don't want her to die. I like this actress is really great and they have a really great love story. I go, well, I hope they change that part. No, they kill her. So I, I felt bad twice. Cause I sealed, I sealed her fate. I sealed her fate because. Yeah. I have a line in Spy Kids too, because I started thinking, when you create stuff, you start thinking.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  I wonder if that's how our creator is. He's like, oh shit, I just kinda threw that in a memo and now that whole town's gonna get wiped out.

• 1:43:51Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:52Speaker 01

  You know, I didn't even think about the implications of that. Cause there's a line, I was making a character that Steve Buscemi plays in Spy Kids 2 and he's a creator. He just wanted to make a little miniature zoo for kids. And then he saw, well, what if I put some together, like a lizard with a snake and it's a slizzard, or you have a spider monkey, which is like literally spider legs and a monkey top. So he makes that and then he thought, hey, why don't I make them a little bit bigger for kids that have big hands? And it got out of control and they turned into these huge creatures and now they're trying to eat them. So he's hiding and the kids find him hiding. And he says this one line that people keep coming, it's on the internet a lot, this meme about this, why is this line in this movie?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  It's so wild. I thought, I wanted Steve to come up to the camera and like, he's just, he's lost in his own creative world. And he says, I can't even go outside because my own creations are gonna eat me. Then he comes up to the camera and he goes, do you think God hides in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he created here on earth? It's like really, just for a moment, this thing and it's like, cause you feel like that way when you're, when you're creating stuff, like you're creating something and then now it's taking on a life of its own and like, oh no, now this character has to die. I didn't want that, you know, this, this domino effect of creation. And you start thinking, well, that must be what creation, maybe he is hiding up there because look at, he didn't expect all this shit to happen, given his free will and all that.

• 1:45:22Lex Fridman?

  I mean, this particular context that you are the creator of this story and it for some reason makes me feel good to know that you feel the pain of this character dying.

• 1:45:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Cause like if I'm, I'm writing it, but if it's not coming from me, I'm as surprised sometimes. And Quentin would say that, you know, he'd say, you just get two characters talking when I'm writing my script and then suddenly they're just talking to each other. And I was like, what does that mean? And now, now I know what that means. It's like, he just gave them life and now, now the dialogue's coming through them.

• 1:45:53Lex Fridman?

  Let me just ask you, you're the perfect person to ask about the genius of Quentin Tarantino. What makes him special? As a director, as a creative mind, what do you see in him that's beautiful, that's brilliant?

• 1:46:05Speaker 01

  He, he's just, since I met him, he was just like this. Brilliant ball of energy. And, you know, like if you see him, I walk around his house and I'll see like a few sheets of paper, all handwritten out. I'm like, what's that? He goes, oh, that was something I was starting to write and like, you know, not going to finish. I'm like, can I take these? And go turn it into like a whole trilogy of films, you know, like what he throws away, all us mortal men would kill for. You meet people like that. I tell people, you know, your parents say, watch out who your peers are, you know, when you're younger, that means one thing. But once you get older, surround yourself around people who who swing much

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  farther than you, you know, that's just like, but that's really true. I mean, just by being around him and working with him, you get by osmosis, you learn stuff and it just ups your game because they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that. So like, when I first met him, I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know, because I was such a big fan. I was about to go do this parado and I went, hey, I just took a three day steady cam course because I can't afford a steady cam operator. So I'm going to operate steady cam myself on this parado. Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, oh, I did the same thing and I'm gonna do the same thing. That that would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk, but you don't, you want somebody who's above that. You know what he said? He goes, I bought a steady cam, but not to operate it. I'm going to

• 1:47:31Speaker 01

  take it apart and design a better one. Us mere mortals trying to learn how to operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy you want to hang out with, not someone who's doing what you're doing. So surround yourself by those kinds of people. And that's where you learn things like, don't blink, you know, like somebody who's like really swinging for the fences and accomplishing so much. And Quentin was like that. So I met him at the festivals. He saw Mariachi, he loved it. We came up, we talked and he said, you're gonna like my next film I'm writing right now, Pulp Fiction. So I thought, man, I'm gonna put this guy. He's so, he's so fun. I'm gonna put him in, I'm gonna write him in my Desperado script, which I was writing. So that was before Pulp Fiction and all that, when I had cast him. I didn't know he was gonna go become such a household name. I just was

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  drawn to his energy and I'd already written him in and I met Steve Buscemi there and I was like, I'm writing a character for Steve Buscemi. But then I went back to the Sony lot where I was working on Desperado and Quentin and I ended up having offices right next to each other on the Sony lot. By accident, I didn't even know that. I just met him and I go back and he just, because originally Pulp Fiction was for Tristar, because Danny DeVito was a producer and he was gonna make it for Tristar. So he was there writing Pulp Fiction and I was writing Desperado. So I'd go show him like storyboards from Desperado and he'd come act out scenes of Pulp Fiction. And we got to be really good friends that way. We'd go eat lunch at Versailles across the street, the Sony lot. And then Sony passed on Pulp Fiction. It's too weird, it's too long, eight million dollar

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  movie or seven million. They're like, eh, we're gonna go make the next Polly Shore movie instead. You know, like, we don't understand this thing. And Miramax got it. And they'd just been bought by Disney. So they produced their first film was Pulp Fiction. And then that thing went to Cannes and it was a whole thing. But what I loved about his story is that when he made Pulp Fiction, he had a director screening. He showed it to some directors and I wasn't able to go. But anyway, I had dinner with him once and it was in my journal, because I keep a journal. At 2:40 a.m. when after he had, I dropped, I dropped him off at his house. I said, oh wait, how did your movie come out? You know, Pulp Fiction, he just finished it and he went, nah, it's still feels like a movie Quentin would make. Doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was like, that's fine. What do you

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  mean? It feels like one of those movies I would make, like Reservoir Dogs. It doesn't feel like a real movie. And I was trying to be the supportive friend going, oh man, he was so excited about this movie. Now he's bummed about it. And I was like, well, it should be different. It should be like, he's like, wouldn't have it. Drove off. So I thought, oh, I guess that wasn't the one. So I went home and I called some of the directors that were at the screening. And they go, yeah, this isn't the one for him. It's not. They, none of them saw it. None of them saw it, but that, you know, you're like surprised. Yeah. But that happened with George Lucas too, with Star Wars. Everybody saw that movie and was like, poor George. They showed it to all his director friends. Poor George, what did he waste all this time with this for? Only Spielberg was the one who said, it's naive and it's going to do really good because it's naive and kids will like it.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  But everyone else was like, what's he doing? We're artists. We're making art films. What's he doing this garbage for? Cause nobody knows. It shows no one knows anything, not even the filmmaker. When you're being groundbreaking, you don't know what groundbreaking is. Not you or anyone around you, except maybe one or two people. So he said, there was one person like, oh yeah, who is your Spielberg? Goes Catherine Bigelow, without a doubt. She's the only one who said, there's something here. No one else was seen, was saying that. He said, in fact, because he remembered suddenly, he'd forgotten the story, but it wasn't in my journal. I would have forgot it too. He goes, in fact, one of my friends, Simon said, I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with your movie. But I'll wait till you get back from the Cannes Film Festival. And he goes and he wins the Palme d'Or. Then his friend's like, oh, what the hell? I know. I've only made one movie myself. So nevermind. I guess, I guess we're all wrong.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  So even he didn't expect that at all. So that was a shock, you know, even to him. So think about that. Yeah. That means, what do you do? Commit to a body of work. Just do that. You don't know. You don't know what's going to be a pulp fiction. What's going to be a Jackie Brown? What's going to be, you know, you don't know. And they, and you like to think they know, but they don't know either. They feel it. Like I asked Jim Cameron and said, do you see your movie really clearly? Like, can you see it like with, with hyper focus? Cause it seems like that. And he goes, it's like really far. It's out of focus. And you work on it, you work on it, it starts coming. I said, okay, good. So that's, that's normal. I thought maybe he had laser vision or something, but no, even him, he doesn't really know, but he feels it and he can make decisions and he understands

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

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

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  than I will by watching another director. Cause that's just now, I know how creativity works. You're gonna learn lessons outside of the box by doing that. And I tried to practice before going out there. I was doing a Danny Trejo. I'll show you the before and after. You're not gonna freaking believe what you see. But this is, it really tells a story of how important proximity is. So I do this painting, it's like, ah, it's fucking looks garbage. I should, it looks like garbage. I'm not used, I can't do paintings that are just like, see, I never should say I can't. You just cut your leg off. But I couldn't at the time, paint, just paintbrush into paint and then write on the canvas like that without using some kind of medium, which this guy Sebastian Kruger would do.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  So first I did a digital painting of Danny Trejo, like just to get the framing and all that.

• 1:53:28Lex Fridman?

  Nice. How's that created?

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  That's just like, that's like on a Wacom tablet. But then I did it with paint and it's like, ah, it's all cruddy and it's too thick, the paint. And it just looks, it looks, and I just gave up right away. I was trying to pre-practice so I wouldn't be a total buffoon there. Cause I was going the next week and I thought, he's using a different brush, obviously. He's using a better paint. The stuff just is clogging up and it's crap. I'm sure when I get there. So I get there and he's doing a Mick Jagger. And he starts with a mid-tone. He starts blocking in the face with a little tiny drawing of where the face goes. He starts doing that. He starts adding some highlights. There's the photo, his reference. And I'm like, why, why you, why are you concentrating so much on the cheek first?

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  And he's like, it's different every time. And I go, why do you, what, what paints are you using? And he's like, it was regular acrylic paint. What brushes do you have? Regular brushes? I'm like, how come mine doesn't look like yours? Let me try what he's doing. I mean, you start with a mid-tone, I'm gonna do that Danny again. Start with a mid-tone, I'll start adding some highlights. And I did that. And everybody kept coming over going like, did you just do that? And I was like, yeah, I don't know how, but it's very cartoony still. He's doing a very realistic Mick Jagger.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  How real that is. And you're just watching and he doesn't teach you anything. So he just starts painting. So this is the photo he had as a reference, but then this is his painting. Right?

• 1:54:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  And because I'm there, he's not teaching you how to paint.

• 1:55:02Lex Fridman?

  Through osmosis, you're like learning some of.

• 1:55:04Speaker 01

  You're seeing that there isn't a trick.

• 1:55:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  I thought he had a trick and that's why I couldn't get any further. He's using the same brush and the same paint. Well, how come I can't do that? And you go, you do it and I go, I'm going to try and do something realistic. I've never done realistic before because I'm a cartoonist and everything I was cartoony. And that was just easier for me because I thought I would need too much training. I did another Traho. I started doing a realistic. I finished out just one section of his face and put the pen down because I did that.

• 1:55:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  The same day.

• 1:55:34Lex Fridman?

  Nice.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  I got out of my way because seeing him get out of his own way. I think that's why sometimes people need to go to school for stuff like that. Cause then now, well, I just did four years of school. So now I must know. Now you've given yourself permission, but you could give yourself permission right away and it's going to come through.

• 1:55:52Lex Fridman?

  And drawing Danny Trejo of all people is like, there's so much going on there. It's like, he's so expressive.

• 1:55:57Speaker 01

  So expressive.

• 1:55:57Lex Fridman?

  And you've, I mean, you've worked with him a lot and you've, I mean, he's one of those badass humans on the screen. You've created that. Can you just talk about what it's like creating those characters?

• 1:56:10Speaker 01

  What was exciting about Desperados, I went to go make it and there were no Latin actors working in Hollywood because no one was creating roles for them. So I thought, wow, I gotta go create my own stars. We'll bring Antonio from Europe because they kind of know his name from the motivar movies. And I saw him in tie me up, tie me down. When I was in the hospital riding mariachi, we're watching TV while I was a patient. And there's a scene where he like head butts Victoria Abilil, you know, he just gives her head, but he goes like that. I was like, whoa, I bet that guy would want to be in an action movie. He's got something inside. So I called them when we were doing Desperado and I said, would you ever consider doing an action? Oh man, I'd love to do action. So I said, I got a movie for you. I had a movie for you. It was sequel to mariachi and so.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Salma, I found in Mexico television, you know, doing, she couldn't get work in the US because of. Yeah, how did you find her? I mean, this is one of the greatest actors in the world. It was one of the best stories. I was really determined to hire a real Latin, especially Hispanic, and then she's Mexican actress to be the Mexican character that's like as authentic as you can get. And there was no one who was getting any jobs because no one was creating any. So there was no one that had any movies be under their name because there was no one. It was a whole systemic problem, right? This was ninety four, ninety three.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  So I was watching a Paul Rodriguez show on Univision because he, I was trying to practice my Spanish because I was having to do all these Spanish interviews because Mariachi was in Spanish. That was the other part I didn't tell you. I didn't speak Spanish when I made that movie. We didn't grow up with it. So I never, I left that part out of the Mariachi story because I thought people already didn't believe I made the movie by myself. They knew I made it in a language I didn't speak. I should have said it because it'd be even more inspiring. Like now you have no excuse. I would wrote the English subtitles, basically. I wrote the titles, what became the subtitles. And then we take it to the actors and the actor would translate it for me. And I was like. That is so inspiring. I'd be like, I would try to speak Spanish and say, vamos a recordar, like, let's record.

• 1:58:13Speaker 01

  And they'd be looking at me like, that means, let's remember. The recordadad doesn't mean record. That means grabad. Now I know, back then I didn't know. So I'm watching Univision and then there's Salma as a guest. And she's a big soap star down there in Mexico. And she comes out, she's beautiful, she's funny, everyone's laughing. She's Salma, everyone that we know now. And she starts talking about, you know, what I gather from what she's saying, that she's having trouble finding any work in the US because of her accent. And then Paul Rodriguez says, well, say something in English. And then she says, then she sounds just like she does now. And he goes, that's great. She goes, I know, I know. And I went, I think this is the girl. So I called her in my office and I videotaped our first meeting together. So I have that somewhere. Oh, that's awesome.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Her just telling me about, and it's Salma, it's Salma. It's her, with her energy, with her passion and funny. She became instant friends with my wife, you know, before they walked over. Your wife and I are best friends. She already was like part of the family. She's godmother to my kids.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  And I thought, I'm gonna help you, you're gonna help me. I need to have a Mexican actress in this, and you're gonna be phenomenal. The studio didn't see it. They were like, what? She hasn't done anything. Why don't you just hire somebody else who, you know, already has a name? So if we just give her one movie, then she'll be someone who's in a movie, and then you can keep casting. So I made a whole other movie with her in English called Road Racers. It was my second film for Showtime. Really cool, a little rebel without a cause type movie. And she's, and I gave her a role, and that's we have an example of her doing English. And they still were like, we need a screen test. We need to have a screen test with a bunch of other actresses, you know. So I said, sure, let's do that. So I went

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  over to her house the night before, before the screen test, and we worked on the scene, which is the best scene, where she's operating on his arm, and they've got all this chemistry. And I was just directing her through it, like, completely down to when you pick up the water, and you hand him the water, don't scream, oh, hot water, just be like, hot water. And while he's spitting it out, and it's gonna be a big dramatic action with like, a very light delivery. And so we got it down to a science. The next day, we show up, Antonio does a scene where all the girls come in. He does it with her. Clearly, they've got amazing chemistry. She just nails it. He's great. He loves her, too. Studio's like,

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  okay, you can hire her. Reluctantly, like that, right? But, once they saw the footage come as we're shooting, and they saw it on the big screen when they're watching the dailies, then they were like, oh, my God. And then they saw it. Then they saw what I saw when I met her. But they, it sometimes, you, like you say, what do you do when people are like, hey, why come you're using this? Just know that not everyone's gonna see it. You may have the only vision. Just keep going. There's an instinct that tells you to keep going that way. You'll get proved right or wrong, or maybe you're slipping on the first two rocks, or whatever. But follow your instinct, because you can, everyone's gonna have an opinion. And it's not necessarily the right one. And when you're an independent filmmaker, you can make those decisions to change people's careers, that changes the world.

• 2:01:20Speaker 01

  And that's why you want to remain independent. That's why what's happening now in the industry is great because I have to make movies like the way I started, which is what I've always liked to do, which is just doing it where we create our own destiny. We go, hey, we're going to make a movie. We're going to make it for this budget so we can make it. And the story is going to be so character driven and cool. We're going to be able to get big actors to be in it because they're going to want to be in it. So Danny Trejo, you asked me about Danny Trejo. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, Danny Trejo. We're doing Desperado now. I'm casting all kinds of people. Now I have this character that I want to have a bunch of knives. He opens up his vest and there's a bunch of knives. So bring me all the coolest looking, you know, Latin actors we can find. And before he even walked in, there's a picture of him. He already looked like the guy, but he was younger. He always just played prison inmates.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  It was a picture of him as an inmate in a prison. I want to give him a cool role, you know, this whoever this actor is. He walks in and I see him, it's Danny Trejo. He sits down and I had the prop knife already made. And I say, you need to have this in your hand and look like you sleep with it. Like just practice flipping it around your hand. And I gave it to him. You got the role, just start practicing with that. And he gets up and walks out. He didn't have to say anything because there's no dialogue. He walks out. We get to the set and he kept saying, put me in, coach, give me a line, give me a line. It's like, no, no, you're such a nice guy. You're going to blow the whole mystique. I want this guy to feel like the most evil scary guy of all. And you're such a nice guy. I didn't let him talk till dusted or not. But one thing I noticed was that the town we're shot in, the Mexican town,

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  which is the same town I shot Mariachi, we went back there because I wanted to pay back the city. And so we had this big movie there and um, they didn't really know Antonio because he was in European movies. Salma hadn't come to the set yet, but they saw Danny Trejo there in his vest, looking like a Mexican icon. They would go like this. Everyone thought he was the star. And I just know magnetism when I see it. And I went, this guy's got something. So I went to him and I said, I got a movie we were going to do someday. This was 94. We didn't make this movie for 15 years. Machete, you're going to be machete. I had, I had an idea for machete then. It wasn't the same story.

• 2:03:29Speaker 01

  I'd seen a story, actually Mariachi, the guy from Mariachi, sent me this funny story. He said, hey, look at this story that the USDA and FBI sometimes would hire a Mexican federali to come do a job for 25 grand that they didn't want to get their own guys killed on. I said, that's machete, the guy that they pay.

• 2:03:49Speaker 01

  But he's not doing it for the money. It turns out he has to get this guy that escaped Mexico. And that's the twist. So that was the original story I had. So we're going to do this someday. And we talked about it for years and never did it, never had got around to doing it. So when I did Spy Kids, I put him in Spy Kids and I said, hey, let's pay tribute to that character. We never got to make and you'll be Uncle Machete. He's a gadget guy, but he's got a mysterious past. But then a few years later, Quentin and I were doing Grindhouse. And he'd already done Dustle Dom and me, you know, I was building my own Latin star system. Salma showed up in a bunch of my movies. Cheech shows up in every movie. Danny shows up. I brought Cheech out of retirement, put him in my movie. I needed to create my own Latin star system because all my scripts, because when you write in your own voice, you're going to write probably somebody that's Latin, you know?

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  So you need to have a star system that matches that so that you don't have trouble casting. And people will, well, you can't hire this person. So I built up my own star system. So Danny was one of my stars. So after we're doing Grindhouse, we had to do fake trailers for Grindhouse. And I told Quentin, I know what trailer I'm going to do for the movie I never had to make with Danny Call Machete. That'll be so fun. Finally get that out of your system and doing a trailer is so fun. It's two days of shooting, just still being that resourceful guy. We asked this company that had a digital camera we wanted to use. Can you let us send it to us for a couple of day screen test? I mean, camera test. Instead of shooting a camera test, we shot the trailer. So we got a free camera, shot the trailer with him. And it's just the money shots, him opening his vest full of machetes, you know, him aiming that gun,

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  him in a waterfall with two gals. And I just came up with this really funny trailer and we shot it. People were screaming at the premiere. You couldn't even hear it. They just wanted that movie so badly because there was blaxploitation in the seventies. There was never me exploitation. It felt like this should have existed, but it didn't. It's Mexican superhero. They just never seen anything like that, you know? Now you know, but like even his mom calls him machete. Like he just became this guy and about 250 movies that he's been in, Machete is his most famous one. So for five years. Five years, people would come up to us and say, where's Machete? Why ain't she, where's the, when's that movie coming out? We're like, it's not a real movie, but when it looks real, we want to see that movie.

• 2:06:04Speaker 01

  So we finally made the movie because people just asked for it. And I used, I wanted to, I was adamant about being resourceful again. All those shots that are in the trailer are really great. I got to reverse engineer the trailer into a movie so that I can use that shot that's in the trailer. Like this girl in the waterfall, why would this girl be in the waterfall? I thought of a really clever way that he gets the bad guy. Her hair's kind of, her face is kind of covered by this hair. Well, cast Lindsay Lohan there, or the senator will switch it out for Robert De Niro. Well, I just reversed engineer it. So every time there's a shot in the trailer, it's in the movie. But I shot all the footage around to lead up to it. That's another fun creative exercise is to reverse engineer something. You just did like this on the day. You just threw a bunch of cards out basically with that trailer. And now you gotta go make a movie using all those cards.

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  That's like a creative exercise that I thought so satisfying, so fun.

• 2:06:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that was beautiful. You're, you're actually known in part, maybe you can correct me, but do pretty unexpected, surprising, kind of interesting casting. So Robert De Niro is an example of that, and that's just a great role. The second aspect of that, I heard the story that you can just get an actor in and out in just a few days, really fast. The, the Robert Rodriguez experience, as they call it. How do you make that happen? Like, can you just tell the story?

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  Well, I'm the editor, I'm the cameraman, I'm the DP. And so when I call him and say, I, I've got you as the villain in this whole movie. But I'm gonna, I swear, I'm gonna shoot you in four days. You come down in four days. In fact, there's a scene where he's in the hospital. He's just smiling, he's having such a good time because he couldn't believe it. I said, guess what? When you wake up from your hotel room at the Stephen F. Austin, you just crossed the hallway. That's the set. The room, the room next to yours, we turned into the hospital set. So you're just gonna come laying there in your pajamas.

• 2:07:47Lex Fridman?

  Really? That's what you did?

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, we had to save time. We only have four days. So everything had to be very thought out to be like, boom, boom, boom, let's shoot the money, get him out of this. We don't have to spend a lot of money on him.

• 2:07:56Lex Fridman?

  Book a room at a hotel, set up to look like a hospital room.

• 2:07:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's our set. And it's real, you don't have to dress it and it's just right there. All you do is put like a little tube there, you know, like a for his IV. And then you have a couple of nurses and it looks like.

• 2:08:09Lex Fridman?

  You're genius. It was Robert De Niro. Resourceful, resourceful.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  But, but I said, you're gonna think about me when you're on your next Meet the Fockers movie. And you're on there for six months where they have you sitting in a trailer. I don't like to do that. So, you know, I gave Lady Gaga her first two movies. Because after Machete, she said publicly, she said, I saw Machete and my song Americano should have been in Machete. I thought she saw Machete. So I called her up and I said, hey, I'm making a sequel and I would certainly use your music. But have you ever thought about acting? Cause you're an amazing performer. I think you'd be, I've worked with a lot of actors who are also musicians and they're always great. Cause I already know how to be a persona, be on stage, be in front of a bunch of people, which most actors can't do. And she said, actually, I studied acting before I became a singer. So, well, you'll never be able to be in a movie. Cause you know what? They don't know how to shoot people out.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  They want six months of your time and you've got, and you're always on tour. But if you come be here, I have a part for you. I can shoot you out in half a day. This whole section of a movie and I'll shoot your movie poster. She's like, okay. So she shows up, I had all the sets like a conveyor belt right next to each other. Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. She's in the car. That's why she had me do her music video for Rain on Me later. She said, we should just go to Austin. Robert put me on a grease. I was throughout that whole movie. I don't know how we did that. It was half a day. She was there half a day. I did the same for Sin City two. I was like, I have a set here waiting for you. If you're on tour in Houston, just driving to Austin, I'll shoot you out in half a day. You get to be in a scene with Joseph Gordon Levitt. Sure, she came down.

• 2:09:36Lex Fridman?

  So wait, how do you take Robert De Niro? How do you take Lady Gaga and like, solve the puzzle of all the scenes that have to be in? How do we shoot them quickly, efficiently, conveniently?

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  You have to edit your own movie. I, I have this analogy, a food analogy that works really well. Script is like your grocery list. Filming is like grocery shopping. Getting the best performances, getting the best beat, getting the best ingredients, right?

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  Editing is like the cooking. Too much of this and not enough of that. You fuck the whole thing up. So so many filmmakers do not edit.

• 2:10:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  And they give it to some other guy. Who might look at all your ingredients and go, this is all great, but I'm gonna go make a fucking souffle. And he makes something else. So by doing that job, I mean, like I've worked on some big stuff and I realized finally after many years, because I've always edited, I realized this is why movies cost so much. There could be 150, 200 people on the crew. And I swear not one of them knows how to edit, not one. So they're getting the wrong stuff. They're having to reshoot shit. The editor is in a room somewhere useless, calling after the fact. We still need to get this close up. Or you gotta reshoot that because it doesn't match. Because no one knows editing. So if you just know that, you're already miles ahead of 99% of Hollywood.

• 2:10:55Speaker 01

  But that's just how I learned by accident. So I kind of stumbled upon it. But and I realized that's what the problem is. Because across the board, I'm watching them going, that's not gonna match. You guys are just spending money, sending crews out, shooting stuff for this. It's just, it's a clusterfuck. Let me show you. And that's how it's in city. Bruce Willis, nine days.

• 2:11:15Lex Fridman?

  Whoa.

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  Brittany Murphy's in all three stories, one day. Benicio Toro, three days. It's just like you're just shooting this stuff. Mickey Rourke is in a sequence with Rudger Hauer. We shot eight months apart. I didn't have Rudger Hauer until I was doing Sharkboy and Lava Girl. So I just shot Mickey acting with me and then I shot Rudger acting with me and I just cut them together.

• 2:11:34Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 2:11:35Speaker 01

  What's weird is like editing exercises are like, I used to do these editing exercises where I would do my VCRs together. And I would cut my movies, but sometimes I would just cut a music video. And I cut a music video once because I was a big fan of Rudger Hauer and a big fan of Mickey Rourke. So I said, I want to make it look like they're in a movie together. So I cut this music video together. But and so it shows like lightning on Rudger in the hitcher and then lightning on Mickey from Rumblefish, but Rumblefish is black and white. So I made the whole thing black and white. I was like 19, I was 19 years old when I did that. And then years later, I'm making Sin City. I shot Mickey not knowing who the other actor was gonna be until I cast him eight months later and it was Rudger. I'm cutting them together to look like they're in the same movie and it's in black and white. And I'm like. Done this before.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I found that old video. It's like, oh, my God, I already made a movie them in black and white. That's weird shit, right? That's the magic of creativity. It's like, sometimes when you have a vision, it's not clear, but it's coming to you from the future. So you gotta just follow the voice. No matter what anyone says about your curtains, just follow the voice you got in your head. Because you don't know, and you're not smart enough to know. And you don't need to know. You just need to do. You just need to be the hands. So this is like, what you can do with no time or money when you know all those jobs. It's the benefit of knowing those jobs. Like I said, the more you know those jobs, the more you know your main job. Which is being creative, but on the day, thinking on your feet. So I'm going to show you this, um, this test.

• 2:13:04Speaker 01

  Okay, so for Dust Till Dawn, the TV series, I would always shoot the first episode and the last episode. It's like a seven or eight episode season. There's three seasons. By the time we got to the third season, I was doing Alita, so I couldn't do the big finale episode. And my actor who plays the George Clooney character, DJ Katrona, he's somebody who fucking wanted to be a writer, was writing. He wrote Fight and Flight. It's this movie that's gonna come out with Josh Hartnett. That's his, he wrote it. After doing this, he was like, man, hearing you talk, you know what? I got, this is what I love about you inspire people. The feedback loop inspires you back. He said, man, hearing your talk for Red 11 and the cards and a, I've got a script that's partially written.

• 2:13:43Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna go, I'm gonna go crank it out in 3D. I'm gonna cut off the phone in 3D. I'm gonna finish that thing in three fucking days. And he came back and he said, I finished the script and I read it and I go, when, you read it in three days? And go, well, I wrote something before, but I just kept thinking I wasn't ready. And then you told me the thing about not being ready and you said that it really resonated. I went and I finished it in three days. I go, man, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna go do the DJ method. I call it the DJ method. I have a bunch of half baked ideas that I'm just gonna go turn off the phone and finish the thing in three days. And I'll, I'll fix it later, but those three days, it's gonna be pure pipe. It's just gonna be coming through because you're just gonna be picking up the pen. So anyway, he went, he came to me with this idea. He said, oh, man, I was hoping you'd do the last episode of Dust Till Dawn.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  Cause I had this great idea for a scene. We're in a zombie town, western town. We have those ones, those guns where you have to. Pull the trigger, you know, the hammer back before you can fire. So I thought, what if I have a gun that's empty and I got bullets in the other hand? And I bump into a zombie, the bullets go flying. I jump and I catch all the bullets and shoot the guy before I hit the ground. Okay, that's kind of a real cool, like desperado type thing, but dude, this is a seven day shoot. For these episodes.

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  Every one of the crew will have a different idea on how to do that. Stunt guy will put you on wires because you have to do all that action or the DP isn't even operating the camera. It's a camera guy. The director doesn't know how to shoot. He's not operating the camera. Your editor is in a room somewhere. VFX guys aren't there. You're not going to be able to ask them how to do it. But I, in my own VFX, I came up with how we do it, all the shots in Sin City and all this by giving me that.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

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

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  So if you were on the set, this is what it would look like. So I get there. They said, we're ready for that scene. So I get over to the set and I go, okay, where, where are you coming out of? He goes, this building. Where are you getting the bullets from? That body, okay, bring that body closer. Okay, stunt guy, bring a pad over. I want to see you just jump and start to twist as if you're turning. I just want to see how much airtime you can get to get any action then before you hit the pad. He starts to jump, he's barely starts jumping, he's already hitting the pads. I was like, okay, that ain't going to work. You get out of here. DJ, you're going to do it. I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I hadn't thought about it before, but now you're there.

• 2:16:30Lex Fridman?

  This is so awesome.

• 2:16:30Speaker 01

  And now the options are very limited.

• 2:16:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:33Speaker 01

  You're very limited. Look at the sun. You're going to see the sun not move. You see, that's the point where the sun starts getting lost. I have to shoot this in 20 minutes.

• 2:16:40Speaker 01

  You're gonna do three jumps and I'm gonna cut it to look like one jump. All the bullets are gonna miss, only one's gonna go in. So here, just follow what I'm saying, we don't have time. What cameras do we have? What's on the A camera? A long lens. Oh yeah, that's my camera. I'll operate that. What's on the B camera? Steadicam, leave it on Steadicam, no chance, no time to convert it. At one point, I wanted to lower it. So just flip it upside down, we'll flop it later. Give me the main camera. Okay, DJ, start running towards that bullets and grab it and pretend like you get shot out of your hand. I shoot it in slow motion, but I'm showing you how it would look on the set. Okay, now the bullets are flying. I'm gonna add those digitally and I'm gonna hold the bullets up to the light in each angle so that they know what it's supposed to look like, so they can match that. Otherwise, it'll look phony.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  Now, first jump, I just want you to commit to just jumping out and just look at the barrel. Just look at the barrel on your hands when you're jumping, cuz that'll look like you're looking at the bullets. And just don't even think about that you're gonna catch a bullet. Don't think about that you're gonna start turning. Just stretch your body out, get a really graphic look, how cool that looks. Yeah. And then the side view, shot this at the same time. You can already tell it's gonna look like bullets are missing, right? Mm hmm. Okay, now I need, now I need this part, though. I need the part where he's catching the bullet. This little window there. Mm hmm. How am I gonna do that? With a lens that long, it's gonna be all out of focus. It's not gonna be slow motion enough.

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  He even knows me and he's like, what the hell am I doing? So just lay on the pad and rock up and down. And as you're coming down, that'll look like you're falling as I'm zooming in. Cuz I'm operating the camera and I'm cutting this in my head. Yeah. And I'm saying, just do it again. He's like, what is it? Rock up and then as you go down, it's gonna look like you're falling. Well done. Bullets, okay? Well done. You've caught a bullet, one went in. Now, second jump, when you do the next jump, as if we just passed those other moments. You've caught a bullet already, so now you're gonna snap it closed and start your turn. It's all you'll get before you hit the pad. Snap, turn, right? So like, okay, this is, I want the cameras to feel like they're dropping with them. That'll give you more of the sensation.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  So let's actually lower that Steadicam shot, flip it upside down and get a low angle. See, I look at the sun's right there, hasn't gone behind the building yet. That, and then my camera, I lowered my camera down and I got that.

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  Right? Okay, now, last jump, I bury a thin, I said, just bury me, bring me a thin mattress, because I want him to do all the stunts. I don't want a stunt guy, because he does this himself. He just did it in three jumps. But the audience will know, they'll just be like, we believe that this guy can do anything.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  I want you just to finish by turning and cocking the hammer back and firing before you hit the ground. I'll give you two takes for that. Almost gets it there. Then we do a second take. Boom, that, that other one was probably a little better, even though you don't really see it. I've got to go do everything now. I got to cut it. I got to add the sound effects myself. I got to put the music in myself, because music guys would just end up filling it with music and ruin it. Sound effects guys would just fill it full of sound effects and ruin it. I want all the sound to drop out. So as he's jumping, all you hear is the wind, in his jacket, the clinking of the bullets as they're bouncing off. So you have this breathless moment, no music, cut the music. And that moment, you cut it. So that you're like, I wonder if he's gonna make it, right? So I go home, I cut it. Before I even

• 2:20:03Speaker 01

  have the visual effects in, I just cut it that night. Because I cut my own sound effects. I cut my sound effects in. You can already tell it's gonna work. You can already see, even with the bullets not there, you can tell by the sound where they're gonna be, it's gonna work. I call him up, said, dude, this is gonna work great. So then I go to the effects guys, and I go, okay, there's bullet in this frame, and the next frame is here, because I used to animate. And the next frame, it's there, then it hits the barrel, and then it starts bouncing this way. I want it that clear, so we can follow that a bullet was supposed to go in, and that it bounced way over there. And then this bullet bounced way over there. And then they send it back, and a bunch of bullets come down. No, guys, listen to what I say, I'm gonna show you again. I'm gonna draw it to you again. Just, the sound will play like there's multiple bullets flying. I don't need to see all those

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  bullets, or the eye's not gonna know where to go. So then they got it right. Brilliant. And then, check this out. I'm gonna show it to you twice, because you're not gonna believe it.

• 2:21:09Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  Changes direction.

• 2:21:11Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 2:21:15Lex Fridman?

  Wow.

• 2:21:17Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 2:21:17Lex Fridman?

  Well done.

• 2:21:18Speaker 01

  You don't even see that in a feature film, much less a TV film.

• 2:21:21Lex Fridman?

  Just as a director, well done.

• 2:21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. Here, just one more time, and I'll show you something you didn't notice both times.

• 2:21:47Lex Fridman?

  That's amazing. Just those decisions coming together perfectly.

• 2:21:50Speaker 01

  Coming together and like this, you got, you got minutes.

• 2:21:53Lex Fridman?

  Just, uh, moving the camera like you decided to do really worked really well, the balancing of the matches, whatever.

• 2:21:59Speaker 01

  And it's not like you have this whole plan figured out ahead. You're literally in the moment, you're, it's coming through you.

• 2:22:04Lex Fridman?

  But you're seeing it though, right?

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  I'm seeing it because I've done it enough. That's why you really want to learn all those jobs because it comes, it comes to a moment like this when the shit's fucking hitting the fan. You gotta know how to pull it out. You could have gotten all those people together and they never would have figured that out. You had, one person had to see it all the way through.

• 2:22:19Lex Fridman?

  You're seeing the bullet, how it's gonna go in the, in the result.

• 2:22:22Speaker 01

  I've done it enough times to know that if you don't do it just right, you're gonna, you're gonna lose the image. You're not gonna know where to follow and you'll miss the point.

• 2:22:29Lex Fridman?

  And also, yeah, I love that you're thinking about where the, the eyes of the audience will go and that's like, like, I, I feel like too many people might think about some more general, uh, concept of a scene versus like the audience, where's their eye?

• 2:22:44Speaker 01

  Where's their eye? Well, you're drawing, you're drawing it through sound, through picture. I'm gonna show you. If you notice, without the sound, you don't really see him click that thing back.

• 2:22:53Lex Fridman?

  The sound is so essential here.

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  Watch this. You, you, you don't really.

• 2:22:57Lex Fridman?

  Right. I thought I saw it.

• 2:22:58Speaker 01

  You, you think you saw it, but you hear it and so you feel like, see, but watch, it's actually, he's already finished. You don't really see him do it, you know? But you swear you saw it in a close up because the sound is in a close up. I put the sound in a close up. Now here's another thing you didn't notice. He hits this ground in the first shot. Watch. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You didn't even notice it because I didn't play the sound there. So if you don't hear it, you don't see it. And if you don't see it, but you play a sound, you hear it and you see it in your mind, right? So check that out now with the sound on. And you'll see both those parts play completely different now.

• 2:23:41Speaker 01

  Right. Now you hear it.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  Like, I know you can get away with that because I know editing and I like, if I don't play the sound, I can go ahead and milk that shot as long as I want. I'll make him be in the air longer, even though he's actually touching the ground by not playing the sound. And that comes from, you said directing, but it's not directing. Like, people can direct and say, this is what I want. But to actually execute it, you need to be a craftsman. And to be a craftsman, you have to learn all those crafts.

• 2:24:09Lex Fridman?

  And not just with the visuals, but with the sound.

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  With the sound too. Sound is so important. Sound is half the picture. Sound, and if you cut sound, you realize how important sound is. I would learn so much by doing those movies, like Desperado, action movies where you go, wow, the sound, I can add an extra sound effect of an extra punch he didn't even throw. And it sounds like he's beating the shit out of this guy. And you only need to see one or two hits and you can hear five. You know, you know, you know where you can push your limits because you've done it. You've done it and you've got the experience.

• 2:24:36Lex Fridman?

  It's so amazing that you can use sound to make a person believe they saw something that wasn't actually there on the screen.

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, your brain fills it in.

• 2:24:45Lex Fridman?

  That's crazy.

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  And that's why that's so important because if you don't know that, you'll be on the set shooting 10 takes of that. Because you're like, no, he didn't, no, I didn't see him click it back. I didn't see, I didn't see him click it back. That's really needed. I can do that with sound. Let's just go, let's just keep moving.

• 2:24:59Lex Fridman?

  When you say sound close up, was that?

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  The sound, all the other sound dropped away and all you hear is, like the sound, like the mics right on that thing. So that you hear it so big in your ear that you swear it was in close up too, but just the sound was close up.

• 2:25:14Lex Fridman?

  How do you, sorry, just to give an insight into like that process of sound design? What, are you like listening to the sound? And just like experiencing the feeling that creates and then you're like, that's just right.

• 2:25:27Speaker 01

  I'm playing in post a lot. So I have a whole library of sound effects from all my movies. So I can pull up like the gun sound we created for Bruce Willis in Sin City and use that and mix it with Antonio's gun from Desperado. You know, I remember in Four Rooms, there's a scene where the bellhop goes into the hotel room, jams his key into it and clicks it. And I used all gun sounds for the sound of the key instead of key sounds, because it wasn't sound close enough. So if you listen to it, you hear, you hear like all these sounds from gun to do the key is it's like that conveys the sound better. You know, I'll use different kinds of sounds that just have impact and put it somewhere like when he hits the ground or. So I like playing with all that in post when I'm editing, because it makes my editing job easier.

• 2:26:11Speaker 01

  Sometimes it's like, oh, the sound is covering me. I don't, I don't need to keep trying to massage this. The sound is actually selling it. And so I keep those sound effects into the final movie. So it's just all part necessary. It's like, it's like being a chef, you're there cooking and you're going like, I know the recipe says this, but I think it really could use jalapenos and some extra pepper or maybe a little more salt. And then it needs an acid of some kind. So I'm going to add some lemon juice.

• 2:26:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You made me realize, I'm not sure where I saw that, but you were, you were talking about making sort of almost like home films for fun. And I think you mentioned how exciting you can make a very mundane scene by just adding sound.

• 2:26:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:26:47Lex Fridman?

  There was, I think there was like a.

• 2:26:48Speaker 01

  My little kid with this car, you have one of those little, but I added a motor sound to it. And it's like, wow.

• 2:26:54Lex Fridman?

  And it sounds realistic somehow. Like I don't.

• 2:26:56Speaker 01

  And then we're playing.

• 2:26:57Lex Fridman?

  Doing that.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  And then we're playing with these little cars, filming ourselves playing with the cars.

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  But then I replace it with real car sounds.

• 2:27:06Speaker 01

  And it just, your brain links the reality of the real thing.

• 2:27:09Lex Fridman?

  Crazy.

• 2:27:10Speaker 01

  And you realize how unimportant the visual is and how important the sound is actually. Sound is everything. That's what I was really lucky in mariachi that my camera didn't work for sound. Cause then I got really good sound that I would have gotten with a shitty mic out of frame. Because that's the first telltale sign of a low budget movie is bad sound. Bad sound right away. You can already hear all this hiss and all this, mic was too far. And you're like, low budget movie. Before your eyes even tell you, the sound gives it away. Isn't that amazing?

• 2:27:37Lex Fridman?

  The audio is first, sound is first, really, even though it's a visual medium. That's so crazy. Just on the, what's the plan with the? With the four action films, like what, what, what are the next steps?

• 2:27:52Speaker 01

  I'll probably direct more than one because there's already several that I want to do, but I was, I'm going to direct at least one, but I'm producing all three, all four there at my studio.

• 2:27:59Lex Fridman?

  It does draw you in.

• 2:28:00Speaker 01

  It draws you in and it makes you go now think of ideas you never would have thought of for mainly because it has a filter. Well, now I, I don't have to think of all these ideas. I can only, I actually have like that, like me on that set. There's only very few things I can actually come up with that are just action driven first, but have a great character. You'll get to it a lot faster with a filter. That's the beauty of a filter is that now you've just shrunk your, your target. And now you can hit that target and people are coming up with ideas because now they've got proximity and they've got a reason to come up with the idea. And they've got a deadline, which is the best thing you can do is have a deadline. Because when you have a deadline, you can freaking move mountains. You know, I had a Spike is in the theater every year, three years in a row, not being pre-planned.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  Every year there was a Spike is now the third one was the biggest one, biggest cast, mostly green screen, video game. And the first digital three D movie ever. So getting visual effects companies to make that, we realized, oh, I shot it with two cameras. That means each effect shot has to be done twice from a different angle. So I went to the studio midway through that and said, there's not going to be a movie in the theaters in time. You're going to have to push the date back. And they said, okay, we've never heard you panic. We'll push the date back for you. They called back 10 minutes later. I was like, oh, thank God, because it's really complicated. I know it was going to be this complicated, but I wanted a challenge. And they said McDonald's will sue us for $20 million if you move the date. You have to have a movie in the theater.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  We started shooting that movie in January of 2003. It was in three D in theaters by July. That's the fastest any effects movie has ever been done.

• 2:29:41Lex Fridman?

  That's insane.

• 2:29:41Speaker 01

  Because you had no choice. So deadline makes you do things and make decisions really quick. And it was the biggest of the three. Deadlines are good and it's hard for us to self impose a deadline sometimes because we know it's a bullshit deadline and your brain knows it's bullshit. But why do deadlines work? Because when the deadline's coming up, what do you do?

• 2:30:03Lex Fridman?

  You can't, you start, you start to put the pen to the paper and it starts just flowing, right?

• 2:30:07Speaker 01

  You have no choice. You have to get out of the way and open the pipe. And it just comes out and you're shocked. You're like, oh my God, I should do everything at the last minute. Well, no, you don't have to, but if you just learn how to open that pipe earlier, you wouldn't be in a rush, but you had to get out of your way because your deadline was up and you had to come up with it. So many people are going to come up with all these extra great ideas at the last minute. They've already, I, I, it looks like everyone who's already signing on. Cause they didn't, it's cool. They don't know when the deadline is. They keep writing in saying, when is the deadline for this? And we say, well, when, when we close the funding in May, but we didn't say when still. So I think that gives them like a sense of a deadline, like shit, it might be May 1st or maybe May 2nd. So we better get my idea going. So I think it works in your favor because then you come up with stuff.

• 2:30:53Speaker 01

  And you're going to feel so enriched by doing the idea that you're not going to care if it gets picked or not. You're going to love this idea so much, it could turn into 10 other things you never even thought about. That's the beauty of doing a project. Nothing ever goes to waste. So many ideas that were sitting around that I'd come up with and put a lot of time in are now like, oh, I can do these now. I have, I know how to finish it now.

• 2:31:15Lex Fridman?

  I have to ask you about Alita. So you've done so many incredibly innovative projects. This is one of them. It turned out to be this visual masterpiece. There's a bunch of complexity, beautiful complexity about it in that it started out as a film that James Cameron was supposed to make.

• 2:31:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:30Lex Fridman?

  And then you started to collaborate with him on it. And these two, I would say brilliant directors, but with different styles like you were talking about. And so, but plus there's the complexity of, for people who haven't seen it, you're putting this artificial creation, this beautiful photorealistic, artificial creation of a human being into a real world. So you have to capture the, the performance, not just the motion, but the performance of this actor. Put them into this with the power of technology into the real world to convey all the emotion, the richness of the human face. Can you just speak to the process of bringing that world to life?

• 2:32:09Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, one, I never would have attempted it if it wasn't Jim, because Jim has, has figured a lot of this out. So just to get you, again, remember like I said, hey, Jim, I'm operating a steady cam. What do you think of that? Well, I'm designing a new system. That's always how it is between him and I. So when I went to show him Desperado when it was done.

• 2:32:26Speaker 01

  He said, you might not want to sit through. If you don't want to sit through it while I'm watching it, it's fine. Do you want to read any of my scriptments? My treatment, treatment scripts, you know, called scriptments? Said, sure. He goes, I have Spider-Man and I got Avatar. So this was in 95. He was showing me the scriptment for Avatar, which there was no technology for that. He was already doing stuff that didn't exist. Yeah. And I was reading it going like, this is a great story. And he was like, I don't know how the fuck he's gonna do this. It's impossible. It's not even, he'd just done, you know, Terminator two a few years before. It's like, that was the thing of the art. So Alita was going to be the movie he did first to prepare for Avatar. And so he had already done some prep work on it. It was based on a manga.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  But before they did that, they just started doing some tests for Avatar. And then as they got deeper into the test for Avatar to prepare for Alita, they went, I guess we're making Avatar first. So Alita got kind of pushed to the side and they ended up doing it, which ended up becoming such a journey to make that movie, to get the technology to build it, to make it. So I remember visiting him on the set. I mean, I've known him so long, I was on the set of Titanic. That's how long I've been around this guy. I was on the set of Titanic. I was on the set with Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger and Eddie Furlong for the 3D ride he made for Universal a few years later. So, I mean, I feel like I've been around him a lot of his career. And to be able to visit the set, you know, of Avatar and remember him showing me like

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  artwork they did, very photorealistic. And he goes, curious to see how photoreal it'll be when we're finally done with this process. Cause you don't get to see it till it's almost done. And I was like, wow, he's just shooting blind. He's really, talk about me shooting mariachi, not seeing the footage. He's making this whole movie, not even knowing what the end result's gonna look like at all. Cause you're not gonna know till you get there. And when you get there, if you don't like it, there's not a lot you can do. So I 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 people working on it.

• 2:34:43Speaker 01

  He had them all working on it, too. I do a fast version of his process because it'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 Alita city in my back lot.

• 2:34:56Lex Fridman?

  Well, here, the troublemaker studio?

• 2:34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:58Lex Fridman?

  That's where it was?

• 2:34:59Speaker 01

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

• 2:35:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:11Speaker 01

  Ninety thousand, 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 should shoot it all the time from Mexico or South America or Europe or whatever. It's seven streets and we added digitally above it. The ceilings are 20 feet high. You gotta come see, you don't believe that it's here. It's unbelievable.

• 2:35:31Lex Fridman?

  Where is it? North of Austin?

• 2:35:32Speaker 01

  It's where the old airport was. So it's like on 51st street, you know, it's like really close to town.

• 2:35:37Lex Fridman?

  I would love to.

• 2:35:38Speaker 01

  You gotta come see, you're not gonna believe it. All my props, all my stuff from all my movies. So people who are, you know, investing in brass knuckle, that's why I say it's like a Willy Wonka movie because they're gonna get to come check out all that stuff and be in proximity and see, oh, like me with that painter. It's not a trick. He's just doing it. 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 in 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

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  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.

• 2:36:38Lex Fridman?

  Can you actually educate me on the Weta process? Is this like a performance capture technology?

• 2:36:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have her in a suit before. Capturing her body movements, but also facial capture. It's performance capture of all her performance, all her emoting. And we have witness cameras around everywhere to pick up where she is. And everything else is real and we're just replacing her. But with someone even smaller in size, so you have to erase everything behind her. It's like a bunch of technical things you do. But the idea is to whatever performance she gives, she's such a great actress. Is to capture all of that. Cause then this character that doesn't even exist will feel very emotional and you have to, you have to be tied to it. You have to feel its heart. She was the heartbeat of it.

• 2:37:19Lex Fridman?

  So she's acting with all this.

• 2:37:20Speaker 01

  Acting with all that, but it just disappears. You know, she's not even, it's like, it's not even there. Like, we don't notice this is here. It's like that. She just performed through it.

• 2:37:28Lex Fridman?

  What was some interesting, unique, challenging things about you directing her performance in this, in this kind of world?

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

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

• 2:38:11Lex Fridman?

  How hard is it to get the actors to act when like the full world is not around you?

• 2:38:18Speaker 01

  We put so much of the world around them. Like when you see the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town, we built the real sets. So everything was very tangible and real. And that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. 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, cause that whole place is created in Avatar. You could get away with a lot, but they wanted to commit to that kind of detail. And on the next Avatar, that's why it just feels like you're really there. It's just stunning. And you get there by having something to work on like this, to take the technology to the next level.

• 2:38:59Speaker 01

  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 to freshen up their 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, having him here. And that my whole crew who's worked with me 25, 30 years, everyone had an extra spring in their step. Cause they're like, wow, we're working on a Jim Cameron movie. I mean, that's just like a high bar of achievement for everybody, you know, working on it.

• 2:39:36Lex Fridman?

  Since we talked about a few other directors, can you speak to the genius of James Cameron? Like what, what makes him special? You talked about some of the difference in your approach and his. He's created some of the most special movies ever also. What's behind that? What would you say is interesting about the way his creative mind works?

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  I think any of those guys, George Lucas, you know, him, you know, John Lasseter, when he did Pixar. It's a mix of, and I always got really lucky. My first job was a Photoshop, cause my dad had a friend who owned a Photoshop. He said, your summer job when I was 16, go work for my friend Mario. So I go to Mario's Photoshop and I'm, you know, developing pictures or, you know, think you develop photos from film. And 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.

• 2:40:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:25Speaker 01

  So I went home and, you know, I have a bunch of siblings. So like, well, the stars are bed head, taking all these pictures of everybody. I take it back and he looks at the pictures when he develops, he's like, whoa, these are really creative. You're a creative person. So sometimes people tell you something that you don't, you can't unhear. And he goes, that's a gift, which you need to know now, now you need to become technical. Because most creative people need technicians and technicians always need creative people because they're not usually the same. You're born with creativity. It's against your nature to be technical, but you can learn if you apply yourself. And if you're both technical and creative, you'll be unstoppable. And I was like, stop, wow.

• 2:41:07Speaker 01

  So here, I want you to learn zone photography, you know, like, and so I want you to learn this, this, the technical part of it. So that's why I didn't take a crew of mariachi, because I knew if I'm just a creative person and I, I need a crew to go actually technically make the movie, I'll always need something. And when you want to really change your life, you want to get your I need list down to. Little is 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 light it. Your, your I need list keeps growing. That's further and further and further you will be from what you need to accomplish. So I kind of went down there without any help. So 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.

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  So I get better at each one of those jobs. So I can learn to be technical. My technical capability was so little, like I'm literally calling the guy on the phone. How do I use this camera? You know, that's how little I knew about it, but I knew by doing the job I would learn by being both. That's really the key. So Jim Cameron is like that. Jim Cameron, when you think of those guys, George Lucas, very technical and very creative. John Lasseter, 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. And 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.

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  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 unstoppable. 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, we bounce off each other in a funny way. He goes, man, he came down to visit my studio before we did Alita. And he went, you only surround yourself with people who are like you. Like you exude creativity, you know, from every pore. 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 know, you 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.

• 2:43:21Speaker 01

  You can't get all kind of fuzzy with a, with a logic or the, you can't get. You can't get really creative with a physics or anything. They're like, no, that's not how it would work. It would be like, and they're just, wow, super great at what they do. Bar is sky high and they're all like that. Cause yeah, if you're not part of it, if you're not like that, you can't hang with those guys. You can't hang with him very long.

• 2:43:44Lex Fridman?

  I heard a story where the guitar case being a rocket launcher, where to you, you create this surreal world where everything is possible. The magic feels real. And for James Cameron, he has to know how a guitar case would work. That would actually be able to double as a rocket launcher.

• 2:43:57Speaker 01

  When I show him the trailer for Grindhouse and he sees the machine gun laying and all that, he just goes, whoa. That's unbridled filmmaking from the id. It makes sense only the second you're watching it, not a second after, but the second you're watching it, you believe it. But he's, uh, he's really interesting in that he's so prolific. I walked into his writing studio and it'd be like on one of the tables. Like, do you have those papers there? Imagine them that thick, that thick, that thick, all script, script, script. What are these? He goes, this is a whole, you know, space opera version of this movie. We're not making that one. It's like, he's cranking out all this stuff. Like again, can I take this and go?

• 2:44:37Speaker 01

  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, woo, I'll go this way and then woo, I'll go that way. And he likes that about me, but I like, I, I want to be, because I think about things too much. Like you think about things like, what makes a movie a billion dollar hit? What are the elements that you need? And I'm going to analyze that and I'm going to make sure my movie does that. He engineers a submarine that can break the world record. He engineers a movie that can break the world record. You know, he's like, he has that engineering mind, but the creative part, that's very rare. So that's very rare and he's capitalized on both.

• 2:45:18Speaker 01

  He had this submarine model like this big on his desk, the one that he broke the world record for going. And just seeing it and knowing he even have kids and stuff and wife. And I'm like, weren't you afraid going down? There with, you know, something could happen. It's like, no, I wasn't afraid. Like, why not? Because I designed the escape vehicle. Yeah, if it was any other bozo, I'd be afraid, but he designed the escape. That kind of confidence, that's him. He just knows if some other bozo had designed the escape vehicle, I would be afraid. But total confidence, because he did it.

• 2:45:51Lex Fridman?

  The confidence of extreme competence is brilliant.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  Just to get you like excited about how creative this stuff is. So Desperado was the only movie on the Sony lot being edited digitally.

• 2:46:05Speaker 01

  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 they were. 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. Why not? We've never had a director edit his own movie here.

• 2:46:24Speaker 01

  So we didn't want to set a precedent in case they thought it would give you too much power. So this is the power of precedent. I said, well, you bought mariachi and I edited that. So I said, okay, but you're going to have to edit in LA so we can watch you. 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. I was like, shots are too short. Oh, because I was shooting my cuts. You know, like they're used to seeing footage of Antonio walks into the bar and it'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 wanted 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. If you've ever seen Desperado, the first scene is the best scene. Steven Seim, he's telling a story. He's talking about the myth of the mariachi. He's doing, it's crazy.

• 2:47:09Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 2:47:10Lex Fridman?

  Great scene.

• 2:47:11Speaker 01

  So then they come over, I say, hey, come see my first scene. So they come over to my house, they watch it. Okay, you know what you're doing. But I was cutting Desperado in my house that I rented there. And then we shot Dust Till Dawn at the same time. So I was cutting Desperado, Four Rooms and Dust Till Dawn myself. I'm the editor. I don't have an editing team other than the ones who imported into the machine. So Del Toro came over, Soderbergh came over. We're going to borrow it from Schizophrenia. No one had heard of somebody having an Avid in their living room. Jim comes over and he goes, I hear you have an Avid in your living room. And I go, yeah, come check it out. I'm just like, I roll out of bed. It's like, some's unremarkable because that's 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.

• 2:47:56Speaker 01

  I come here, I can cut Desperado and cut Dustalot. He went, that's it. I hate working with editors. You know, when I was doing Terminator two, they wouldn't even let me put the Bad to the Bone song in Terminator two 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 then 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 editors. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna tear down a wall in my house. I'm gonna put it in Avid. I'm gonna cut my next movie.

• 2:48:22Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:23Speaker 01

  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 do 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.

• 2:48:48Lex Fridman?

  Just a small tangent about the different software and the technologies involved. So you mentioned Avid as Premiere Pro.

• 2:48:54Speaker 01

  Premiere was still in its early stages then. I think Soderbergh looked at it and it said, yeah, I can't afford an Avid for this movie. I'm gonna go do it. So I think he started cutting on Premiere, but um, 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 think I've just, I don't have to buy a new one, but there's lots of goods. I've heard about all kinds of systems. I just use the same one.

• 2:49:14Lex Fridman?

  I guess that's the question I have for you is, it's just interesting for people. It's very interesting to me, just the, the details, use Avid, like what do you like? Multiple monitors, one monitor?

• 2:49:23Speaker 01

  Have a couple of monitors and then a one big monitor to watch it if I'm watching the scene back. Cause the monitors are still a little wacky. I mean, if I were to design 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. Just I don't use the mouse for shortcuts. I'm just like.

• 2:49:46Lex Fridman?

  So you found your way, preferred way, the workflow of using it and now you can. Sort of let go of the technical and be creative.

• 2:49:55Speaker 01

  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? You know, 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.

• 2:50:15Lex Fridman?

  It feels like part of the artistry is every system has limitations and you learn how to work around those limitations. I mean,

• 2:50:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, well, my first VCRs, like those things, those things were, I was always known for taking what little basic equipment and milking the shit out of it, what it could pushing 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, you know, 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, and we splice these two sound things together. And it was so hard to get it to do. People

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  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, I've got, 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 and just start making stuff.

• 2:51:25Lex Fridman?

  I have a lot of friends who are huge fans of your movies. So one of them asked me that I absolutely must ask you, do you know if there's a sequel of Elite coming?

• 2:51:33Speaker 01

  We're working on it. We're definitely working on it. Jim and I both want to make it. That's usually when we meet, we talk about it. I gave him something to read, you know, he's a little busy with his Avatar movie, but I'm gonna get, I'm gonna see 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 so they weren't really making Fox movies because they had enough had enough work with their Disney movies. But now they're starting to make some Fox movies like they did Deadpool and some Fox movies are starting to get made. So. Time might be wry for us to come back and do it, Alita.

• 2:52:15Lex Fridman?

  Well, I hope you do soon. It's a, but it is. I mean, you do so many different kinds of movies. That's a whole different kind of puzzle, right?

• 2:52:23Speaker 01

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

• 2:52:40Lex Fridman?

  Have to ask you about Sin City, one of my favorite films of all time. It was a visually stunning world. What are some maybe interesting detailed aspects about you creating that world?

• 2:52:53Speaker 01

  This is why you just gotta follow your nose and go do something, you know? Jim and I were both into three D early on, like I visited his set for the Terminator three D ride. Dust till dawn, I wanted to be three D. Actually, when they got to the bar. If you watch from that point on, everything's kind of set up for three, everything was shooting into the camera and all this. But the cameras they had for three D and film were still old shitty ones. They were so bad. Then I went, okay, we can't do it. But I really wanted people to have to put on glasses when they got into, into the bar. And it was going to turn into a three D different movie. I got to do that on Spike it's three D. So when I did Spike it's three D, I thought, oh, if I get Jim's cameras that he's done for these underwater three D, you know, documentaries. I can make the first digital three D film for theaters.

• 2:53:38Speaker 01

  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 three D stuff coming at kids faces where they're reaching. My three D is, is not like the kind they have in theaters where it's very polite. Mine's like theme park three D. Where kids are doing like that, trying to grab. That's why it was such a big hit. Nobody does three D like that. But I wanted that. I want shit falling in people's laps, you know? So you remember, so you would 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 is where we shot. Spy Kids 3, remember actually how fast they came out? That was in the summer of 2003. Few months later, Once Upon a Time Mexico came out.

• 2:54:22Speaker 01

  Two number one movies, both were finishing trilogies of mine. And each one starred Antonio, Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin. When I was editing those at the same time, you'd be like, whoa, one movie they're killing people? 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 gonna be? Oh shit, how crazy is this? Okay, so Antonio is on the set. I'm gonna shoot him out in half a day for Spy Kids 3D, cause he's only in the last scenes on the green screen. Shoot him to lunch. Okay, now go away, put on your desperado outfit, cause we owed some shots for Once Upon a Time Mexico on the green screen. He finished two trilogies in the same day.

• 2:55:05Speaker 01

  That's gotta 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 it something new now. So I was looking through my bookshelves of inspiration and I picked up my Sin City 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, cause he would not just wrote the comic, but he drew it too. A lot of times it's a different writer or a different comic artist. He's like a real, like a kinship, you know, this is someone who writes and directs his own thing.

• 2:55:48Speaker 01

  But I was looking at it and I went, oh shit, I know how to do this now. I just did it on the green screen. If I shoot this on green screen, the actor's 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 streetlight and that looks just like the book. So I'm gonna bring the book to life. So I'll show you how fast we go from development at Troublemaker. It was October, Once Upon a Time Mexico had come out.

• 2:56:27Speaker 01

  I was like, oh shit, I know how to do this now. Sin City, I'm gonna do a test. 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 Allred. And I said, uh, do you have Frank Miller's number? And he goes, yeah, I do. Okay, I'm gonna call him up. So I called Frank Miller. Hey, it's Robert Rodriguez. I have a test I'm gonna show you for Sin City. I'm gonna 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 didn't know. I fly up there, have my laptop just like this.

• 2:57:06Lex Fridman?

  God damn, that's good.

• 2:57:07Speaker 01

  I go to the bar, I show him what looks like an image from his comic, and it starts moving. And he's like, wow, how did you do that? I said, I got my own studio and all this. And then I started telling him, man, let's make this movie. Cause 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 gotta 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 gonna go back and draw a comic that's so raw that can never be made into a movie. So Chris, I call him, hey, let's make a great movie. So I show him how we can do it. And I go, I know you don't know me and you're not gonna, you're gonna have to, I have to earn your trust for you to give me your baby.

• 2:57:51Speaker 01

  Uh, but we can make this right away. And he's like, uh, he's all excited for about two seconds. And then he goes, oh no, then we gotta write a script. And then the studio's gonna 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 gonna be. If you like this idea, I'm gonna, you're not gonna have to take any risks. Let me take all the risk. I'm gonna go write the script myself next month. It's gonna be unremarkable, cause I'm gonna write it right out of your book. I'm gonna just go do, I'm gonna edit through the stories down. I'm gonna just take stuff out, really. You 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.

• 2:58:36Speaker 01

  I'll do the effects myself. Do the sound, do the music, I'll do fake credits. We'll watch it together. If you like what you see, we'll make the movie. You give me the rights then. If you don't like it, keep it. It's a short film to show your friends. Let's 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 10 hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence. Incredible opening sequence. Record his voiceover right then in my little voiceover booth. Marley 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.

• 2:59:21Speaker 01

  He's already, I was like, 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 are phenomenal. The shots you do are like 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, they would miss the point that it's, the visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this because it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen. Cause that's how it reads when I read the book. It's like, if this was moving, it would be the most phenomenal movie. In fact, I asked him, do you ever feel like directing any, any of these short ones? I thought about directing The Big Fat Kill, maybe as a short film. You should come direct that one.

• 3:00:05Speaker 01

  Shit, you should direct all of them with me because I'm really copying and writing a book. You should direct it with me. All right, let's go. So then, uh, January, okay. So remember I met him in November. I wrote it in December, January, we shoot the test. Took me a couple of weeks to do the effects. He loves it. I 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 them 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. Watches it, Josh Arnett, voiceover, music, titles come on. First name on the screen, Bruce Willis. And he goes, hey, look, you're in the credits. You have to do it now. Manifesting it, right? He's like, shit, man, this is great. I'm in.

• 3:00:50Speaker 01

  He's in. Wow. Go get, everyone else from that was just easy to get. And we were filming the movie. So February, right?

• 3:01:02Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:01:20Speaker 01

  And I was in LA for his birth because I was also recording the orchestra for the score I wrote somehow in the past few months for Kill Bill 2. That's how much stuff was going on. Yeah. You know, 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 like urgent, there's always the deadlines are just pushing you to create stuff and we shot the movie so fast, America Time. Now, not only that, I shot a whole other movie that year. I shot Adventures of Shark, Pouring Lava Girl with kids that came out two months after Sin City, the next year, within less than a year since it was out. You're shooting that in parallel with Sin City. That's hilarious. Is that correct?

• 3:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, like sometimes we'd be shooting with the kids and then the afternoon Rudger Howard would come and some of the Sin City girls to finish, you know, shooting stuff that we needed to film. It was just insane how fast we had to move. I was doing it in my head, I was editing. I just edited it and then I would scan the artwork into the computer and I would edit the storyboards with the sound effects and I would do the voiceover. I would imitate Mickey and I would imitate Bruce and lay out the 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 because I could do pretty good in Bruce Willis because I know him as Chris along. If you're doing his voiceover and he would hear my guide voice for the timing and be like, is that me? Is that you? Can't tell. That one was me.

• 3:02:49Speaker 01

  You could just do that. Oh, man, it sounds like me. First of all, why haven't films like that been made? Well, it's a very specific look because it went into that comic. The first piece of music I wrote for that was the main title and I called it Descent. I wanted the notes to descend because it felt like you were descending into this dark world and you don't come out to the end of the movie. You're just like in this world where all these layers of unreality, like water doesn't photograph that way, snow doesn't, but it's there and you're seeing and you're seeing the actors. So you're just really, it's like a dream world. Yeah. So I was really into it and I did tests for the most difficult shots first. Like, how do I get his? His tape to glow in the dark, like in the comics, so it's still in the shadow. And I realized, oh, use fluorescent tape and a fluorescent light.

• 3:03:32Speaker 01

  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 I'm like a magician. Shooting digital, nobody wanted to touch digital back then. DPs were all afraid of digital. Then you want to have to learn something new. So I had to DP it. So me photographing it, I'm like, so funny, a cut because, I mean, to light, like you have to have that light out of frame right now. But I could bring the lights in right here as long as it was, they're not crossing it. I'm just going to take it out of the green anyways. I could have the coolest lighting on everybody, cool edge lights. You could have an edge light back here, an edge light back here, a fill light here. Like you're not even erase them, I just take him out.

• 3:04:15Lex Fridman?

  Can you educate me and people curious about this? Or like what was the power of light? When you're telling a story, when you're creating a feeling and experience, like what's the artistry of that?

• 3:04:26Speaker 01

  Well, if you look at the drawings too, sometimes it's the absence of light. Like you would see this face, but then this would be completely black, but you would still see my eye. Which is like impossible, right? But you believe it when you see it because it's there. So things like that were a lot of the tricks I tried first because I liked that about it. It's like you have a guy completely backlit, so there's no light on his face. But yet his glasses are glowing white. So we'd put fluorescent tape in there, hit that with a light, then we could turn it white later. The black and white really helps. And then just upping the contrast. But I mean, it's just something that you have a feeling for, but you're able to try it. In fact, when I took it to George Lucas, who, George Lucas said this to me early on because I was, we're the only guy shooting digital. He said, man, it's so good, you live in Austin.

• 3:05:09Speaker 01

  That's why I'm in Marin County. Because when you live outside of this box of LA, Hollywood, you think outside of the box automatically. You're just going to stumble upon innovations. And he was right, it was like, yeah, why, why are we shooting digital? Let's shoot digital. Why are we shooting digital 3D? Let's do that. Why don't we just use green screen for the background? You just start innovating because you're away from anyone saying, hey, you can't do it that way, which they would say if I was in LA. So we just came up with a whole other method. So I took him to Sin City to check out the first thing I was going to show at Comic Con. He said, um, Now this will really show people what digital is capable of. This really shows how on guard you can get with that shit. That you could never have done that on film, you know?

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  And so by me versing myself in that technology early, I was able to make a movie like that. And then everyone had to play catch up, you know? So you should always just follow your, that's why. If some people say, don't use those currents, that's not going to work. Just blow past those guys. Go innovate your own thing, because sometimes not knowing is better, you know? Being too naive to, like, don't you know you shouldn't have been able to make that movie that way? People would, people would say like, how did you make marriage for $7,000? Just, you know, it's impossible. It's like, why do you keep using that word? Because it can't be impossible if I did it, because I'm not that smart. And it's like saying, how did you get to the top of Mount Everest? It's impossible. Well, I just kept walking. I didn't realize it was kind of at a slope. I didn't really realize it was going up that high.

• 3:06:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, you, you've talked about like a big part of your approach to filmmaking to life is manifesting. Manifesting the reality you want. In fact, I should sort of comment, and I'd love to ask you about manifesting. But like, you asked me at the beginning of this conversation, do you consider yourself a creative person? I should, I should sort of reflect on that because I was very uncomfortable answering that.

• 3:06:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I noticed a little bit and I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to free you up so that you're never uncomfortable again.

• 3:07:01Lex Fridman?

  It's scary to, to say that about, about yourself.

• 3:07:04Speaker 01

  Because you think there's a lot of, there's a lot of people who go, well, you're not an artist. You're not a creative person. But no, you're not saying I'm an artist. I'm saying I'm a creative person, but that's an artist too, isn't it? Artist isn't necessarily the guy with the French mustache and the funny hat. That's not necessarily what art, artists are regular people.

• 3:07:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:19Speaker 01

  And regular people relate to art that's imperfect. If you can make art that's perfect, don't want to relate to it. So when you think about it like that, you go, well, I can make imperfect art. So yeah, I'm an artist. And if you have doubt, you're an artist. That's an artist, artists, real artists always wonder if they're good enough. So you are an artist, just by the fact that you had uncomfortable saying it, you're a real artist.

• 3:07:39Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, and there's some degree, I don't know if you could speak to this, but.

• 3:07:44Lex Fridman?

  You know, there's a fear of creating shitty things. You know, I've, I've created a lot of really shitty things in my life. And it always feels like that's really important to do.

• 3:07:55Speaker 01

  Okay, but you're judging something that, that you have no business judging.

• 3:07:58Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 3:07:59Speaker 01

  Like, I have so many people, that's why I like making movies on purpose that have less money and less time. On purpose. Like, the biggest movie, it said, of all time on Netflix is We Can Be Heroes. I told them, I don't want to spend more than fifty million dollars. I know you all want to give me eighty. But I want to be a hero and come in at fifty, because one, it'll make it better. And then, two, you'll, you'll make three of them instead of just one. I don't want to just go spend the farm. And how many filmmakers do that? Don't try to get as much money as they can. But when you're spending less, it's a win-win situation. And you have more creative freedom, because they're going to leave you alone. You can do whatever you want. So I, I like the creative limitations that come from less money. That's why I like brass knuckle films. Like, we're going to make them for less so that they are better. Not because they're, not to make them shitty.

• 3:08:42Speaker 01

  So many people have come up to me and said, um, you know what part I love in your movie? And they'll tell me some scene. And I'm like, oh, well, that's because we ran out of sun. And we had to, like, do that jump with just him jumping on a pad three times or whatever it is. It's something that you fumbled together. And that's what they're drawn to. They're drawn to that imperfect thing. And so I wouldn't judge it because somebody's, you know, if you called your movie shitty, that's like John Carpenter saying, yeah, nobody liked the thing. And it's a shitty movie and everyone hated it, so it must not be good. And then ten years later, it's a masterpiece. So don't judge it because of you, words we use on ourselves are very powerful. So if you say, well, you know, I'm kind of an artist sometimes and I make a lot of shitty stuff.

• 3:09:26Speaker 01

  Well, that's going to, that's going to be your lot in life. You know, I, I'm, I'm pretty good shape for a director. It's not because I'm operating the camera, because I work out, right? But I always hated working out. I was not into sports. I was a filmmaker. I was a cartoonist. In high school, I was really tall. They would say, come work, come be in our team. We need it's a small school. We need you. I don't know how to play any of these things. I'm an artist. There's a line in the faculty that was my line to my coaches when I would say, you gotta come run with everybody. I would say, I don't think a person should run unless he's being chased. I gave that to the to Elijah Wood character because that's the guy I identified with. He's there with his camera and that was me. So I hated it. And then because I had, I was a cartoonist, you know, drawing like this for hours, four hours.

• 3:10:10Speaker 01

  My back would go out, like out for a month. It would just go out from being so tall and crunched over. And then when I started making movies, operating the camera and doing Steadicam. Every year would go out to where I would need cortisone shots to get up again if I'm filming or just be out for a month. And on Spy Kids two, Ricardo Montalban had bad back surgery that that went wrong and he was in a wheelchair. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm in a walker. And he's like, I'm eighty four. What's your excuse? And I was like, I don't know. I just was operating steady. He goes, you have to work out, Robert. You have to work out. And I was like, yeah, okay. Yeah, I know, I know. And so then I thought, okay, next year I'm working with Stallone, last Stallone, last Stallone. How do you get in shape?

• 3:10:52Speaker 01

  Cause I need to get in shape. My back's always going out. He goes, get the trainer. Anyone who ever saw in Hollywood got in shape, they had a trainer. I say, even you? Oh, I need a trainer. He has a trainer. So I don't know. I need a trainer. I can't train. It's like, well, shit, if you can't even train on your own, then what, what do us mortal men have? So I got a trainer and guess what happened? Hated it. I would feel sick when he's coming over because I hate, I hate working it. And then some years of doing that, I just, I can't stand it. But I know it's good for my health. So the desire is there. So if you can't accomplish something in your life, it's not a lack of desire. Like if you want to be more creative, it's not a lack of desire. It's a lack of identity. Like you're like the fact that you went, you were comfortable about saying creative. It's because there's a lack of identity there. You have lots of desire.

• 3:11:38Speaker 01

  You gotta get the identity up and then suddenly you're you're making you're making shit. So I a friend of mine from Mexico, she comes over, I have to stop smoking. My doctor said I have to stop smoking for my health. So I have to, I'm not smoking right now. So I've been smoking since I was eight years old. So what you're gonna go back to smoking because you just told me your identity is a smoker. So right now you're a smoker who's not smoking. What's gonna happen eventually? You have to say I'm a nonsmoker, you know, like just that that lesson I had forgotten. You have to say I'm a nonsmoker. I'm a nonsmoker. What does a nonsmoker do? If you believe you're a nonsmoker, you hate smoke, start choking at the smell of smoke. Okay, I'll try that. She walks off. I go, shit, I forgot about my own. I wonder where in my life I could apply that.

• 3:12:21Speaker 01

  Working out, of course, my God, I hate working out. No wonder I am so miserable. I'll tell my trainer and anyone who will listen, I can't stand working out. I don't understand sports. So that day I said, I'm an athlete. I'm an athlete. That's the last thing I would ever call myself all through my entire life. This was 2012. I'm an athlete. By the next day, not only did my life completely change. And it's easier if it's opposite day. Like if you're just doing it by degrees, that's bullshit. You gotta go complete opposite. Because if there's like a donut, you know, if you say, well, I'm gonna only half of it.

• 3:13:00Speaker 01

  You gotta go, no, I'm gonna get an apple. Opposite day is much easier. Not only did I change my life working out, I didn't ever needed a trainer. I have not had a trainer since all those years.

• 3:13:10Speaker 01

  Because I'm an athlete, I'll just do it. What does an athlete do? An athlete loves working out. An athlete will make time to work out and they'll eat right. I was, I would never be the person that would call themselves an athlete. But that's how much it can change your life by changing your identity. So if you want to be more creative, you've you've already got that in your that desire. You've got enough of that. You don't need more desire. You need more identity. So you gotta say I'm a creative person. With a straight face.

• 3:13:38Lex Fridman?

  With a straight face.

• 3:13:38Speaker 01

  So when I say, hey, are you gonna be, are you a creative person? You go, yeah. Cause then if you say that, what do you do? You're gonna do more creative stuff, cause that's what a creative person does.

• 3:13:46Lex Fridman?

  It doesn't make sense to me how manifesting works, but it does seem to work. Like basically visualizing, visualizing a path towards a certain kind of future. I guess everything around you, everything within you, kind of makes way for that. Makes way for the possibility of that. It's weird.

• 3:14:02Speaker 01

  It's weird, but it kinda, it's a kind of a nice to know that you can do that. But you have to just have that conviction and just say, start with a label.

• 3:14:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the R.

• 3:14:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. The double R or the label you just gave yourself.

• 3:14:14Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:14Speaker 01

  Like I changed my label. My label was, I hate working out.

• 3:14:17Lex Fridman?

  I'm an athlete.

• 3:14:18Speaker 01

  I, I'm an athlete. I'm not a non-athlete anymore. I'm changing my label. And you get so inspired, cause now you know what to do. Cause you can't help but conform to your identity. You're always gonna conform to your identity. So just change your identity and you'll change your life. But, and it's not that hard. I didn't have to go get hypnotized or anything. It was literally, I just told myself, if I could do that, go from a guy who doesn't wanna work out, hates it, hates it. I had the desire, I was already hiring the guy. I lacked the identity. As soon as I changed my identity, boom.

• 3:14:47Lex Fridman?

  Well, one of the things for me like that is probably music, just playing guitar.

• 3:14:51Speaker 01

  Are you a musician?

• 3:14:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, music.

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  Look at you, you pause.

• 3:14:55Lex Fridman?

  I would definitely not, I mean, I'm, I'm going along with it now, but if we're honestly, if we're just in.

• 3:15:00Speaker 01

  You wouldn't have said that.

• 3:15:00Lex Fridman?

  I wouldn't have said.

• 3:15:01Speaker 01

  But I heard you rip on fucking guitar.

• 3:15:03Lex Fridman?

  And I've heard you play kind of amazing in all different kinds of contexts.

• 3:15:07Speaker 01

  Oh, but I, I should be like freaking Santana by now, cause I've had a guitar in my hands since I was a kid. But since I'm not a full-time musician, I don't get to play it that often. So I'm not as good as I should be. But you know, when you apply yourself to just rehearse for, you know, a couple of shows, you book some shows. Look at this, this is me just like playing our first arena show, opening for George Lopez. That was crazy to be on the stages where you're heroes that you saw them. Now you're seeing what their point of view was. It blows your mind. You need to get on stage. You get on stage once and you'll see that it's not as bad as you think.

• 3:15:42Lex Fridman?

  You're not, you're not like terrified because you're playing pretty complicated things. I've seen you play live.

• 3:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I messed up a bunch of times, but you don't want to focus on that. And you just go like, okay, I got it through it. Because when you're up there, it's not that you're like screaming nervous, but your hands just won't work anymore. Something will happen, but that happens to everybody. If you really watch even the best in their live performances, watch really close. And you see they screw up a couple of things, but you just want notes, they just go right through it. It's like, it's about the live performance and that's how you know it's real. So I think if you can really just lean into it more, really work on the identity part. Cause you've got the desire, you want to play guitar. But as soon as you say, yeah, but I can't play live. You just chopped off your leg at the start of the race. You say, I, I don't know. You just chopped off your.

• 3:16:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:16:30Speaker 01

  Doing this to yourself.

• 3:16:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:31Speaker 01

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

• 3:17:10Lex Fridman?

  But here's the thing, like sometimes you fail and there's audience.

• 3:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, then you get four rooms. Yeah.

• 3:17:16Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:17Speaker 01

  And then what happens?

• 3:17:18Lex Fridman?

  Right, don't blink is the.

• 3:17:19Speaker 01

  Don't blink and then you go sift through the failure.

• 3:17:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:17:21Speaker 01

  And you go, wait a minute, what did I get out of that?

• 3:17:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I've done that a bunch. It's great.

• 3:17:25Speaker 01

  Look, what's the worst that can happen? You go on a stage and you bum. It's not going to be the first stage. And it's one of those you can talk about so that when you do the next one and it all, sometimes they all go right. I've had a couple of shows, we did, we did a couple of shows where we had video cameras set up for the second day. They said, let's not film the first day because we're going to be figuring just finding our feet. Let's film the second day. First day was fucking flawless. Flawless because no cameras, it's like you just go. Second day, we weren't as into it as we had just done it. It felt like the second take, you know, it just didn't have the magic. And that's the one that's recorded. And we're like, oh, kicking ourselves. We didn't film both nights. We should have filmed both nights.

• 3:18:07Lex Fridman?

  I love how much of a mess this human existence life is.

• 3:18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18:13Lex Fridman?

  You've talked about the importance of journaling because living is reliving. I love that phrase.

• 3:18:19Speaker 01

  I came up with that because it's like, wow, I see so many people who get after you for like filming a concert and they go live in the moment. I'm like, dude, it's counterintuitive. The moment goes by like this.

• 3:18:30Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:30Speaker 01

  We're not going to remember any of this. The fact that we taped it, thank God. Because later on, it's going to be a file photo of me remembering you, three pound me computer. All I'm going to have is a file photo of you maybe in a suit. And you picturing me in maybe a black T-shirt and the metadata narrative is going to say, had a great talk about if we remember creativity, you know, like their brain doesn't remember. But when I pull up old home movies, like show my kids that I just found. And they're like, they don't remember it. I don't remember filming it. And it's like new adventures of, it becomes iconic and it sticks in our head. And all their jokes are based on old things that we used to do and say, so relive, living is reliving. So keeping a journal is very important because I found that anything in the past 15 years,

• 3:19:14Speaker 01

  it's like I'm reading someone else's journal. I'm like, I didn't even know that's where I got that guitar. I thought I bought that guitar. It was given to me at $10,000 Santana. It was given to me my birthday by the studio that I made that movie. How did I not remember that? It's like crazy what you don't remember. And it's the brain is very, it's not, it's not a very reliable computer. It's, it's made out of fucking butter.

• 3:19:35Lex Fridman?

  That's a really profound idea that so much of our life is lived. Through replaying our memories and then watching stuff is one of the ways to sort of refresh, give some more, you know, texture and details.

• 3:19:50Speaker 01

  Makes it iconic. It makes it iconic in your life and part of your life. Otherwise it just went by. It went by. Like I'll ask people, like, we just had a really, what did we do last week? What did we do last Wednesday? And they're like, I can tell you because I wrote it down, but I'm not gonna remember. And then when you see, when you go through your journal, like I go back and I find, wow, life-changing thing happened Friday. Another life-changing thing I didn't know at the time. Until now, I know that that really sent me on, happened Saturday. And another big freaking thing happened on Sunday. Like they come in threes sometime. You start being able to predict the future a little bit because you, you see the patterns. And it's pretty wild to do that. And I, I've, I've talked to people, big group of people, five hundred people. How many people here journal?

• 3:20:37Speaker 01

  Two hands, three hands. I couldn't believe it. It's like, man, you kind of, if there's anything I'm gonna part on you is journal. Your life is way more interesting than you think because it's not gonna feel like anything while it's going by. But in retrospect, you look back, like I can just go through, I keep a journal. One file per year. So I started a new one in 2025. If I'm gonna look up, like I'm gonna do a director's chair episode. I look up Michael Mann, Michael Mann, Michael Mann. All the conversations we had since ninety-four that I wrote down that I felt, and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe we said that. That's how I knew about that thing with Quentin. I'd forgotten about that story with Quentin saying, ah, Pulp Fiction. I'd forgotten that because from the moment I asked him that question to the success it can was very quick.

• 3:21:18Speaker 01

  So it was a lost moment in time where I had it recorded down to the time, down to the hour. When I asked him that question, he thought it wasn't, he didn't think that was the one for him.

• 3:21:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. And there's a, I don't know, when it, when it's private journaling, there's an honesty, there's an innocence that about like the dreams you have about the future, the conceptions you have about the future. I mean, that's what this thing is journal, is a journal.

• 3:21:40Speaker 01

  It's just a journal. It's like.

• 3:21:42Lex Fridman?

  But the profundity like comes out of it.

• 3:21:44Speaker 01

  It's crazy. Yeah. You didn't, and so much I figured it out then. I was, I'm talking like a professor by the end of that. Like people come up to me and they're asking me all these questions about stuff I wrote in there. And I'm like, I wrote that in that book? Shit, I was smart back then. What happened? I don't remember half of that, but I think that it's the same thing. When you go to teach someone.

• 3:22:04Speaker 01

  Your mouth opens and stuff comes out. I'm always taping myself like when I go to give a talk because that's also the pipe working. Someone else is talking to you sometimes. So the act of sharing, that's why I've always liked to share information because the feedback loop is insane. Like me inspiring Daisy DJ to go, right? He writes the script in three days, comes back, tells me now I'm doing that method. And it's like, wow, people come back with their version. And I love telling my kids

• 3:22:32Speaker 01

  stuff that I learned that I wish I could tell myself, but I can't take a time machine. Closest thing is telling your kid because then they can take that information and process. So many times they've come back and said, wow, Dad, the lesson you taught us about this is really, it's really become big in our minds. Yeah, what was that? And they tell me, I'm like, I never told you that. They say, yeah, you told us. Well, I told you maybe 10% of that. All the rest you added. Oh yeah, well, we embellished it. They turned it into something else. And it's like, wow, that's so cool. But yeah, that thing about reliving, like that was one of my favorite ones is just, yeah, my mom turning 75 and not wanting to do anything for her 75th birthday. I said, why not? And she goes, the whole family's going to, she has 10 kids. They're all going to want to do something for your 75th birthday.

• 3:23:16Speaker 01

  Nothing can top my 65th. I was like, what are we doing your 65th? I didn't even remember even. I'm the one who orchestrated it all. She goes, oh, you flew everyone in from all over the country. You gave me a car. I gotta have a journal of that. So I'm sure I have video. I go back 10 years. I see what tape I had it on, find the tape, pop the tape in. Forgot about all this stuff. So I cut together a 10 minute version of it, showed it at her 75th birthday. Just watching the old one. Everybody was like, oh my God, look how young everybody was, like how small the nieces and nephews were. She starts bawling as soon as she gets the key, the gift of the key in the video because she realizes now what it's going to mean that she's going to get this car.

• 3:23:58Speaker 01

  And so it's like, wow, let's just play the old tapes. We don't even have to do anything anymore. We banked so much amazing stuff that we've all forgotten that, you know, my kids just love watching their old home movies. They they hardly remember any of it, but

• 3:24:16Speaker 01

  Even a VHS to them is virtual reality because compared to our memories, it is virtual reality. They're like leaning into the screen to see what's around the corner and they're remembering the place and the sounds. And they say, oh, we left the, we left the living room. It's like we're there. It's like, wow, I was always afraid they would see this old footage and go, ah, that dog shit. What kind of camera was that? This is the limitations of, you know, you put up one of those files on your screen, it's like this big on your laptop now. That's how low res shit was back then. But that didn't matter. It's like compared to our memories, that stuff, living is reliving. Like pull up that, shoot as much as you can, take as many pictures, but write the journal because you'll have a picture, swear, you're not going to know what it's from. Even 10 years from now, you want to know what that picture's from.

• 3:24:59Speaker 01

  You read the diary, you go, oh, that's what that is. Oh my God, you can piece together all these things that are important to you or that become more important with time, actually. And you know what's important later compared to what's been happening at the time.

• 3:25:12Lex Fridman?

  To add on top of that, so journaling is a kind of raw or like home films is a raw projection of what's going on in the moment. I think it's also really powerful because I've, I've done that. It's to do a high effort description of where your life is for you, just for yourself. So sometimes journaling is like low effort.

• 3:25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes it's just, I just want to mark that, you know, we had this conversation. I had to go do something at five, I did that. Met somebody that I know last night I met somebody that's going to be life changing. I'm going to write a little bit more on that because I could just, now I know. But I, I'm going to just record it so later if I look it up.

• 3:25:43Lex Fridman?

  So one of the cool things you could do is, you know, like for example, somebody, Jimmy Mr. Beast does, does these videos, which are great. I think, I think it's a great exercise to do for yourself, which is a video he records for himself that he doesn't look at to be published 20 years from now. This is a message to myself 20 years from now. Here's where I hope you end up. You're, you're basically a younger version of yourself speaking to an older version. And then you get, you know, time flies and like you get to a point where it's like, holy shit, it has been 10 years, it has been 20 years. You get to listen to a younger version of yourself. Like you, it would have been hilarious if you shot videos like that to yourself. Cause it was just like the incredible journey your career has been on.

• 3:26:26Lex Fridman?

  And just to think about that, like the delta, the difference between what your dreams were, where you ended up, usually you outdo yourself in many ways. Sometimes your life goes in a totally different trajectory. That's, um, and the result is kind of funny. It's a, it's a, it's a nice.

• 3:26:46Lex Fridman?

  It's a nice illustration of the non-linearity of life.

• 3:26:49Speaker 01

  I would film stuff like that with my kids. I couldn't do it, but I would film my kids saying, hey, turn to the camera now and say, hey Rebel, it's me Rebel. I'm gonna rebel in the future.

• 3:26:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. So you have shots like that?

• 3:27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then they show them like, cool, like that 10 years later and they they're like, whoa. To see it talking to them and saying, yeah, and I would do this thing where I would film them watching it. And then pan off. So that 10 years later, I could get. Hey Rebel, him reacting, pan off to the new rebel watching it. It's just like, keeps going. So I have one like that where it just keeps panning. And they're watching themselves within the movie, within the movie, within the movie. It's like an ongoing project, you know, it's just so fun to just play with memory and make you realize how fast time moves. And to go. They go like. I kind of remember that, but I don't remember being that tiny.

• 3:27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had that memory. It's like wild how time moves and it makes them feel. Much more precious about how quick time moves and how important every little moment is because you see the fragility of it too, you know?

• 3:27:56Lex Fridman?

  Does it make you sad, break your heart that, you know? The number of memories we get to create is finite, that this life ends. Eventually the story is over.

• 3:28:06Speaker 01

  I had this theory, I'm gonna put this in a movie. I don't think I've ever seen this before. Cause I was woke up from a dream and it was like, trying to remember it, you know, you're like, God, it's so, so real. If you don't write it down right away, right? It kind of fades away, but you, while you're dreaming it, it's really real. It's like. I must see the walls. By the time I went to go tell somebody, it's like, shit, I forgot most of it. But I wonder if that's what it's like when you wake up in your consciousness after you die. You wake up in your next consciousness, getting ready to move into whatever your next body is. You're like, wow, I was a filmmaker. Had five kids.

• 3:28:45Speaker 01

  And, oh well, I'm gonna be a fish now. It's like, it's like a dream. It's like that gone that way. And it's like, that's what past lives are. They're like distant memories, like a dream that's faded away. That's why you barely feel remnants of it. Do I feel sad about that? When I tell people, they flip out when I tell them that. Like, I say, I want a character to be like that. Like, he's dying. He's like, I don't want to forget this dream. I don't want to forget. Don't let me wake up. Don't let me wake up.

• 3:29:10Lex Fridman?

  But you forget, especially the moment you try to tell somebody. You tell the next fish.

• 3:29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, the next fish, I'll be a fish next. But, uh, uh, yeah, yeah, like, it feels like I almost sad about it, but then it just makes you even more double down to be precious about the life you're in now.

• 3:29:25Lex Fridman?

  What do you think is the meaning?

• 3:29:26Speaker 01

  Recorded, recorded.

• 3:29:27Lex Fridman?

  What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing of life? Why are we here?

• 3:29:32Speaker 01

  I mean, I really feel like, uh, my kids and I were just talking about this last night. We were just blown away. We did this astarian astrology thing. It was the oldest form of astrology. Just nails each person.

• 3:29:48Speaker 01

  And it's like, yeah, because when you have a kid, you realize right away, this isn't my kid. This is not my, I'm just in charge of him. It's a completely different soul. He's a different soul that ended up in my hands. It's not, there's physical characteristics that get passed on because of just how biology works. Even sometimes posture and movement is the same. But the actual person is somebody else. And all the kids, I have five kids and I had nine brothers and sisters. They're all different. And you realize we made a pact in a past life to gather together. Cause every time it's like, it's so good. You were born in this family. Because you were given free rein to go find who you're really supposed to be. And you, and you find out everyone is doing what they were supposed to be doing.

• 3:30:32Speaker 01

  But it's cool. Almost like this clarity you get by just saying it. They now know that they were always supposed to be like this creative person or that. And now they can double down on it because they know that's who they were supposed to be. They don't have to have any doubt anymore. They don't have to wonder, well, am I supposed to be more business minded? Or can I be creative and that's some kind of frivolous? Is that a real job? Can I do that? Now they realize, no, you're supposed to be doing that for these, these, these, these reasons. And now they can double down. You can skip all that and just decide, I feel like I want to be that person. So I'm just going to declare I am that person. And as soon as you say it, you are that. And tomorrow, your, your activities will conform to that. That's how powerful that decision is.

• 3:31:15Speaker 01

  So when you walk out of here, it's going to be with a complete commitment. I'm a technical and creative person like my first boss. I'm unstoppable. Cause my boss told me that and he was right. I became technical and creative and you're just unstoppable. You can just keep going and just go, I'm unstoppable. That's me, you're going to use your powers for bad, but you've just changed your life by just declaring that. And I'm also a creative person who lives his life creatively. I'm going to find creative ways to use that technology.

• 3:31:46Speaker 01

  If somebody says, you're not the same kind of R as I was expecting. That's their own opinion. Don't blink, just keep going. You know, all these things that you've learned that people were supposed to tell you along the way. They're telling you for a reason. Anytime you got pushed, like if you go back to your life, it's your really critical moments in your life, where you went that way instead of that way. There was probably somebody there who said something to you. They kind of pushed you. I, there was a, it was one guy when I was in high school. It was like senior year, I wrote a paper and I wasn't a great writer at all. I wrote a paper for Latin American studies class, gave it to the teacher. And he said, wow, you.

• 3:32:29Speaker 01

  You're gonna be rich and famous in four years. Based on what I read. Because like, really? Flight home like seventeen or eighteen. Four years later, I did mariachi and I went to him later at a reunion and I said, you called it, you said I was gonna be, why did you say that? And he's like, I said that? I didn't say that. It looked like he would never say that to somebody. You'd think he would own it and say, oh, yeah, I knew and I told you. No, he was like, he looked like he didn't even know who I was. Asking, acting like he never would have said that in a million years. So again, sometimes things come out of our mouth that's not us, that comes through us. So if you think of it that way, why are we here? We're here for a reason. We're gonna get nudged along, listen to the signs, own who you're supposed to be. Cause you're, you are that person. Don't let your human doubt get in the way.

• 3:33:13Speaker 01

  That's like the guy closing the pipe. Ah, I don't know if I'm really creative, man. I don't know if I'm really a businessman. And you're just closing the pipe, you're not gonna let it flow. Just be a good pipe. Just say, I just wanna be a, I just wanna be a good pipe. Clean, open. And then that's when the magic happens.

• 3:33:29Lex Fridman?

  And no matter what, don't blink.

• 3:33:30Speaker 01

  Don't blink. No matter how many, that dude was getting so much shit thrown at him. I wish you knew that time period, cause then you would, you would go like, yeah, that's right.

• 3:33:38Lex Fridman?

  It's incredible.

• 3:33:39Speaker 01

  It was unbelievable. I can't even convey. There was no internet and stuff back then. This was like literal press, reviews, public. It was like, why are they targeting this guy? You know, they just did not like, he just had unprecedented success. And was a really great guy and was making amazing shit. So was the, the triple threat of make people jealous. You know, pissed off.

• 3:34:03Lex Fridman?

  Well, he's one of the great artists of all time. So are you. It's a huge honor to talk to you. Thank you for everything you're doing in the world, for creating in the world and for inspiring millions of people to also be creators in the world. And for your new project that's bringing people in. Robert, as I told you, I'm a huge fan.

• 3:34:20Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 3:34:20Lex Fridman?

  It's a huge honor to talk to you, brother.

• 3:34:21Speaker 01

  So great talking with you, great questions. You're gonna change your life.

• 3:34:25Lex Fridman?

  Thank you, brother. A million dollars.

• 3:34:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, right there.

• 3:34:28Lex Fridman?

  Thank you for listening to this conversation with Robert Rodriguez. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Alfred Hitchcock. In feature films, the director is God. In documentary films, God is the director. Thank you for listening and I hope to see you next time.