#98: The "Wizard" of Hollywood, Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez (@Rodriguez http://www.twitter.com/@Rodriguez) is a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. He is also the founder and chairman of El Rey Network http://www.elreynetwork.com/, the new genre-busting English-language cable network. While a student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1991, Robert Rodriguez wrote the script to his first feature film while he was a paid subject in a clinical experiment at a drug research facility. That paycheck covered the cost of shooting his film. He planned to make the money back by selling the film to the Mexican home video market. The film, "El Mariachi http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104815/," went on to win the coveted Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, and became the lowest budget movie ever released by a major studio. Rodriguez wrote about these experiences in Rebel Without a Crew http://www.amazon.com/Rebel-without-Crew-23-Year-Old-Filmmaker/dp/0452271878/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20, a perennial guide for the independent filmmaker. Rodriguez went on to write, produce, direct and edit a series of successful films including Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, the Spy Kids franchise, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller's Sin City, and Machete. I hope you find listening to this episode as much fun as it was to record. For all links, show notes, resources from this episode, please visit http://fourhourworkweek.com/podcast https://rss.libsyn.com/shows/52710/destinations/fourhourworkweek.com/podcast This podcast is brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, "If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?" My answer is, inevitably, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. It is my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body and did not get paid to do so. Get 50% off your order at http://Athletic Greens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim This episode is also sponsored by 99Designs http://99designs.com/tim, the world's largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover http://99designs.com/tim for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results http://99designs.com/tim. Click this link http://www.99designs.com/tim (http://99designs.com/tim) and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run. Enjoy!

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• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:22Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that, and I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases. If I can't get what I need through whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day. And you can get 50, oh my gosh, 50% off, yes, 50% off if you go to athleticgreens.com/tim. That's athleticgreens.com/tim. Check it out. It's tasty, but more important, it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning.

• 1:07Tim Ferriss?

  So for me, it just covers the bases, takes a load off my mind, puts a lot in my body, and check it out. Athleticgreens.com/tim. Thank you for supporting the sponsors of this show, 99designs, which is your one-stop-shop for all things graphic design-related. I've used 99designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world. And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project, and designers from around the world will send you sketches

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite, and you have an original that you love, or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:18Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, puppies and kittens. Meow. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers, to tease out the routines, the habits, the books, the influences, everything that you can use, that you can replicate from their best practices. And this episode is a real treat. If you loved the Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Jon Favreau, or Matt Mullenweg episodes, for instance, you are going to love this one. We have a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor, and musician. His name is Robert Rodriguez. And his story is so good. While he was a student at University of Texas at Austin, he wrote the script to his first feature film,

• 3:01Tim Ferriss?

  when he was sequestered in a drug research facility as a paid subject in a clinical experiment. So he sold his body for science so that he could make art. And that paycheck covered the cost of shooting his film. Now, what film was that? The film was El Mariachi, which went on to win the coveted Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival and became the lowest-budget movie ever released by a major studio. And he went on then, of course, to write and produce a lot, and direct and edit and so on, a lot of films. And he's really a jack-of-all-trades, master of many, because he's had to operate with such low budgets and be so resourceful. But he went on to do films like Desperado, From Dust Till Dawn, The Faculty, the Spy Kids franchise, which was huge,

• 3:44Tim Ferriss?

  Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Frank Miller's Sin City, and many others. And the show notes, of course, can be found at 4hourworkweek.com/podcast, all the links, all the resources, etc. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, forward slash podcast. And one last thing, very important. Robert Rodriguez is also the founder and chairman of El Rey Network, which is a new-genre-busting, English-language cable network. And El Rey is carried, probably, on whatever you already have. It's carried on Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Cox and Dish. And I have watched some of my favorite Kung-Fu flicks on that channel. I've also seen all sorts of other...

• 4:27Tim Ferriss?

  Action films and just these incredible gems that he has sourced and put on his networks. So check it out, L Ray Network. And without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Robert Rodriguez. We dig into so many things. His early days, how he planned for low resource, high yield movies and filmmaking. What he's learned from Francis Ford Coppola, Tarantino, et cetera. Dark times, how he's overcome them. His parenting style, his exact journaling style and method. It goes on and on. This, this was a real blast for me and I hope it is for you as well. Enjoy. Robert, welcome to the show. Hey, how you doing, man? Great to finally meet you. Yeah, it's great to finally meet.

• 5:10Tim Ferriss?

  And as I was doing homework for this and trying to digest everything that is related to you. I checked out a couple of the director's chair episodes and I'd seen clips before, shorter clips. But I hadn't sat down and really sort of taken in three to four hours. And I did that and I'll tell you, so I've, I've been not having anything to drink for the last two weeks. And I got about halfway through the Francis Ford Coppola episode and I was like, fuck. This guy's really good at interviewing. And I had to have a glass of wine. I didn't go too crazy, but these episodes are such a fascinating window into the processes of these masters.

• 5:52Tim Ferriss?

  And I just wanted to thank you first of all, for putting them together because I was planning on going to bed early and I went through three hours straight. Wow. And then I, then I woke up and I also jumped into this Amecus episode this morning, which is just fascinating. And what, what really struck me was how different these approaches can be. I mean, there's so many ways to skin the cat. And before I jump into method questions though, I wanted to ask you about your journal and journaling because one of the constants in all of these interviews. Is the journal.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  All right.

• 6:29Tim Ferriss?

  And it seems like you write a lot down. And I have a compulsive habit of note taking. I mean, I have shelves of notebooks.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  How do you use? Do you have them handwritten? Do you write them actually? How do you keep track of them if you want to access them later?

• 6:42Tim Ferriss?

  So that's going to be my question for you also. So I have a lot of handwritten notes that I will scan and put into Evernote.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Okay, cool.

• 6:47Tim Ferriss?

  Which will then allow character recognition to pull things up if I want to search for them. So I just have to keep my handwriting a little clean.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 6:56Tim Ferriss?

  But you also are really specific in dates, times, places. How do you use journaling?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Journaling, that's interesting. And I started, you know, with the word processing way back. You know, when I first started filmmaking, the first, when I sold El Mariachi and Columbia hired me, the first thing I asked for was an Apple laptop computer, which was the very first one that came out. They didn't know anything what it was. I was the only one on the plane with one. I was writing my screenplays and I would continue my journal, which I'd started by handwriting it. It really started, I think in college, my dad gave me a day planner, one of those day planners. And I started using it and you would write the things you were going to do on the left side. And then you would write what you ended up doing that day on the right. And even though I was in college, I would try to push myself pretty hard.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  I would look and I'd go, wow, I didn't have very much to write about myself at the end of that day. I'm going to have to give myself more things on the left so I have more to write stuff on the right. It really made you reflect on your day and realize I didn't, I didn't do much today. And so those got really full and I became a filmmaker right away. El Mariachi got made. And during the process of El Mariachi, I remember keeping a really dense journal because it was an experiment. It was really a test film.

• 8:14Tim Ferriss?

  And that was during all parts of the process?

• 8:16Speaker 02

  For all parts of the process. Because I thought, if I'm going to go take on this endeavor, I know a lot of things aren't going to work out. It's my first feature film. No one's intended to see it. It's really a learning experience. I'm just going to go make it and I'm going to be able to look back on my journal and see where I messed up. It was really going to be a document, so I wouldn't make that mistake again. I could go back and track. Why did the exposure not work? And I'd be able to go back and go, oh, I didn't do this and I didn't do that. It was really going to be a record of failure rather than a document of success in any way. It was really about recording a methodology for a project, a specific project. And as the process went on, right away, as I started editing it, I kept track of that. I sold it pretty quickly. And then I was in Hollywood and I was like, now I really got something to write about.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  I was writing down all the weird stuff that was happening. Finally, I decided to put out a book on just the making of Omari Ashi, and I kept journaling from then on, everything.

• 9:07Tim Ferriss?

  Which was Rebel Without a Crew?

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Rebel Without a Crew. And I would find that you meet the same people over and over again. Like, I wrote down very specifics of people that I would meet casually in Hollywood, knowing we would run into each other again, and they ended up being great collaborators 10 years later, you know, or showing up in things. And I'd be able to go back and read him stuff from the early days, and I would blow them away.

• 9:26Tim Ferriss?

  So when you write these down, for instance...

• 9:28Speaker 02

  I'll go into computers so I can find them, and I do it my year.

• 9:30Tim Ferriss?

  So do you do it by hand and then input it into a computer?

• 9:33Speaker 02

  No, I do them all on the computer. So I have a little alarm that goes off at midnight to make sure, because around midnight is usually a good time, and I'll write something down. Because I found that even when I just wrote some items down, I could go back and fill them in later because you would remember. And it always would shock me, what kept it going is when I would go back and review the journals at how many life-changing things happened, like, within a weekend. Or things that you thought were spread out over two years were actually Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that Monday. I mean, so many occurrences happen in chunks that blow you away, things that kind of define you.

• 10:05Tim Ferriss?

  And do you use Word? Do you use a different application? How do you...

• 10:08Speaker 02

  I always just used Word because that was the first thing I had on my Apple laptop. There are about 1,000, sometimes 1,000, 2,000 pages per year.

• 10:17Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Of journals, entries.

• 10:19Tim Ferriss?

  So you do it a few days, or I'm sorry, a few pages per night on average?

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, a few pages per... Sometimes, some hardly anything, some things are bigger. And sometimes I'll clip, sometimes it's a cheek, sometimes I'll clip like reviews or conversations I had that have been written down somewhere else, and I'll throw them in there too. Everything goes there in the right date. And so I could search by date and I can kind of cross-reference stuff, which is, I would just say for anyone who's a parent, it's a must. It's a must because your children and you forget everything. You know, within a few years, they'll forget things that you think they should remember for the rest of their lives. They'll only remember it if it's reinforced. And I'm a real family man, so I really love every birthday, I'll go tell my kids again, because they forget by the next year what their first years were like, because I'll just read those journal entries. And it blows them away, you know,

• 11:04Speaker 02

  or they'll say, hey, we should go camping again. I go, camping? Oh, yeah. Remember that time we went camping and I put the tent in the backyard and it had electricity going through? We had fans, we're watching Johnny Quest and we were playing. I must have journal on that and I must have video. So I would go, year by year, I just search camping, camping, camping. Oh, May 4th, 1999, we went camping. Oh, it's on tape 25 of this particular tape. I'd go find the tape and show it to them. After I'd show them the tape, they didn't have to go camping again. They just relived it.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  They relived the entire time.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  They relived it and it was better than we even remembered. So encapsulating stuff like that is really, is just really important.

• 11:43Tim Ferriss?

  That reminds me of something I don't think I've ever talked about, but my mom, when I was 15, I spent a year abroad in Japan. It was my first time overseas and I was in a Japanese school. It's the only, you know, Where's Waldo, American kid in the entire, I think it was 5,000 student school, Japanese family. And of course, I assumed at the time I was going to remember everything that happened. But my mom, to her credit, every time we had a phone call, would get off the phone and write down what I had said.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:10Tim Ferriss?

  And so she has this record of my experience in Japan that I have no record of. And of course, I don't remember any of it without that kind of queuing.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think part of that came from, I read a diary my mom tried to keep of when we were really little. And it had very few entries, but one of the most defining moments was she pushed me into a pool because I wouldn't go jump in. She knew I just needed to push and I felt totally betrayed and angry with her. It was in there, but it had her side of the story. And of course, it was correct. But I wish she had written more. So I thought, I'm going to make sure I write. And now it's become an addiction and it's just so necessary. I mean, you ask your girlfriend or your wife, what did we do last year on your birthday? They won't remember. A year goes by, you will not remember the details. You go back and you see the journals, it's even better the second time. You lived it again and you realized the importance of it.

• 12:58Tim Ferriss?

  And when you meet someone You think might be a recurring figure in your life, or you meet someone who ends up being a teacher of some type. How often do you go back and review the notes? Or do you, is it really just in time information, not just in case? So when you, when you realize, oh my God, I'm going to be meeting, say Francis Ford Coppola for the second time, you should probably go back and look at what happened in the first meeting? Or is it something that you proactively review when you were sort of?

• 13:25Speaker 02

  It's only on a need to know, because there's so many things. You mean, you're, you're really, I try to tell myself, I want to be the guy looking through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.

• 13:34Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 13:35Speaker 02

  But sometimes you can see better through the windshield if you look through the rearview mirror and look at some of this stuff that's gone on and, and seeing kind of make sense of where your relationships are going or what you've learned. And it blows me away sometimes, I'll just go ahead and look somebody up that I haven't, you know, that I'm about to meet with. I just met with Jim Cameron. We hung out, we talked like four hours. We hadn't seen each other in a few years. And I was, and I looked up old stuff and I was like, oh my God, do you remember when we did this? This, I met him 20 years ago and we'd been friends over the years. And I totally forgot that when I went and showed him Desperado for the first time before it came out, just to see what he thought, he was watching it in his screening room and he gave me two little manuscripts. Here, while I watch your movie, you go read a couple of my treatments. One of them was for Spider-Man and one of them was for Avatar.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  This was in 1994.

• 14:22Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  That's how long ago he had that and how much that was going in his head. And I thought, wow, to keep something that was that visionary in your head that long waiting for the technology to come. Those kind of things made you realize, some of these projects I've had for 10 years, I should go re-bring them back up, I wonder. And I have, I have since then dusted off something that I'd had 15 years and sold it. And now I've just finished a screenplay for it.

• 14:46Tim Ferriss?

  So you mentioned Jim Cameron. I had an opportunity to, I met him very briefly through the X Prize and Peter D. Mandis and those guys. And as part of the experience, because it was a fundraiser for the X Prize, we all got staff or crew shirts from Avatar.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:04Tim Ferriss?

  And the shirts said,

• 15:07Tim Ferriss?

  It said something along the lines of, "Hope is not a strategy. Failure's not an option. Luck is not a factor." And Jim is known for being very demanding, not in a bad way. But I thought that shirt was just, it spoke volumes, I think, in so many different ways about sort of his process, his mentality. How do you keep morale high when you're working with a crew? And maybe, like you said, you're doing like an exterior shot in Austin and people are just suffering and sweating and fatigued. Do you have any tricks or approaches that you use over and over again to keep kind of morale high and get the best out of people?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  I've worked with the same crew for, some of them for 20 years. And so they kind of know already the philosophy I tend to have. And I've learned this not through filmmaking, but through other disciplines sometimes, working with painters and with sculptors and musician friends. Because what I found, it's kind of why I do so many different jobs, is because creativity is in job-specific. I mean, if you know how to be creative, you can literally jump from job to job with no training and do them pretty well. Because the technical part of any job is 10%. 90% of that is creativity. If you already know how to be creative, you've kind of got the battle, you know, half-beat, which is you don't need to know. You don't need to know what note specifically you're going to play when you get on stage and do your solo. Everybody will go, "What did you just play?" And you're going to go, "I don't know." You ask Jimmy Vaughn then, "How do you know what you're playing just now?"

• 16:31Speaker 02

  "I don't even know what I played." It's like, "Well, it was fantastic. Did anybody tape it?" "No, that's another one that goes off into the air." You know, ask any of the greats, you know, painters. I studied under a painter, Sebastian Kruger. I went all the way to Germany to watch him paint, to figure out his trick. How does he do it? Because I tried to do what he did and it just looked like garbage. He must have a special brush. He must have special paint and a special technique. And I go, "No, he's just doing, he starts with a mid-tone, starts knocking in some highlights, a little bit on the chin, then he goes to the eye." And I'm like, "How do you know where to go next?" He goes, "Oh, I never know. It's different every time." That drives me bonkers. "What do you mean? So how come I can't do that?" And I'd go sit down and suddenly I could do it. It blows you away. So I take those lessons back and I teach my actors that. I teach my crew that. That you don't need to know.

• 17:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, I'm sorry to pause, but this is so fascinating to me. So what clicked? What did you, what was the realization when you sat down and said?

• 17:22Speaker 02

  You get it in your own way, thinking that you needed to know something, a trick or a process before it would flow. If you got out of the way, it would just flow. What gives you permission to let it flow? Sometimes if you take four years of schooling or you study under somebody, then you've suddenly given your permission to let it flow. And I know you're a guy who likes to take a shortcut in. Here's the shortcut. Just get out of your own way.

• 17:43Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  You're just opening up the pipe and that creativity flows through. And as soon as your ego gets in the way and you go, but I don't know if I know what to do next. You've already put I in front of it and you've already blocked it a little bit. I did it once, but I don't know if I can do it again. It was never you. The best you can be is to get out of the way so it comes through. So when an actor comes to me or a crew member, he goes, I'm not sure I know how to play this part, or I'm not sure I know. I go, that's beautiful, because the other half's going to show up when we're there. They say knowing's half the battle. I think the most important part is the other half, not knowing, not knowing what's going to happen, but you trust that it'll be there. When you put the brush up to the canvas, it's going to know where to go. And the further you're out of the way of it, it'll just happen.

• 18:24Tim Ferriss?

  So the trust comes first?

• 18:25Speaker 02

  The trust comes first. You have to trust first and then it'll happen. And I always point it out when it does. You know, like I pointed out, you'll see it and I'll point it out when it's just going to fall in your lap, or I'll just call upon you to come up with something and you will. And I'm going to point out, because that's the magic. You're just going to be open to it. It's all attitude. There's nothing wrong that could ever happen. I remember on From Dust Till Dawn, the film, the special effects guys put too much fire in the explosion and the actors come running out of the building. And it's in the movie, you see the building blow up, the bar at the end. And the fireball, if you were to continue, but I cut away, it just kept going and engulfed the whole set. And that was the first shot. We still needed lots of other stuff to shoot with it. And we're like, okay, everyone else is freaking out. The production designer was crying. That was all their work.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  And me and my assistant director, he came over and he goes, you think what I'm thinking? I go, yeah, it looks good the way it is. It's all charred. Let's just keep shooting. And we'll do the repair, you know, a little repair that needs to be done for next week. And we'll shoot that exterior next week. But let's just shoot. Let's just keep shooting. Sometimes you use those gifts, because nothing ever goes according to plan. And sometimes when I hear, you know, new filmmakers talk, they talk all down about their film. Oh, well, nothing worked and it was a disappointment. It's like, oh, they don't realize it. That's the job. The job is that nothing is going to work at all. And you go, well, how can I turn that in a way to turn it into a positive? And I get something much better than if I had all the time and money in the world.

• 19:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  And I love those experiences so much that I would purposely. And I talked to Michael Mann about this in the Michael Mann director's chair. Cause we talked about Manhunter once years ago and he retold me the story and he didn't have any money. He'd fired the effects crew. And some of the really cool staccato editing was really to cover up the fact that they didn't have effects. And I didn't know that. I always thought it was a stylistic choice. He goes, no, it's because we didn't have any money or time. And I had to cut it in myself and I was throwing ketchup on the guy in between. And then I put it at it. I was like, oh my God, I thought that was brilliant stylistic choice. No. And I said, I'm going to do that for all my movies now. I want all of them to not have enough money, not enough time so that we're forced to be more creative. Cause that's going to give it something, a spark that you can't manufacture.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  And people will tap in or they'll go, I don't know why I like this movie. It's kind of a weird movie, but there's something about it that makes me want to watch it again and again. Cause it's got a life to it. Sometimes art is should be imperfect in a way.

• 20:41Tim Ferriss?

  The point you made just a minute ago about creativity transferring from one area to the next, to seemingly unrelated skills and areas, I think is really important. And I, I cannot recommend highly enough that people check out the director's chair. And one of the, one of the terms that jumped out, which you kind of mentioned in your last example was the gremlins, right? And the gremlins that you kind of turned to you. How do you embrace the gremlins?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:06Tim Ferriss?

  And turn them to your advantage. And the, you know, the example of the ending of Back to the Future and how like the church tower and all of that was because the studios just refused to finance this more kind of spectacular ending.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Things that you would think that planned for, for years were created at the last moment. And you, I couldn't believe that myself. That's why I enjoy doing those interviews. I truly want to know these things because they still blow me away. The creative process blows me away. And it applies to so much that even if you're not a director or a filmmaker, you watch that and you see people talking about the creativity and creative process. You see how it applies to anything that you do, how you raise your children, how you cook food, how you run a business, you know, creativity is so much a part of that. And when people say, oh, you do so many things, you're a musician, you're a painter, you know, you edit, you're the composer, you're the cinematographer, you're the editor, you do so many different things, go, no, I only do one thing, I live a creative life.

• 22:00Speaker 02

  When you put creativity in everything, everything becomes available to you. Anything that has creative aspect is suddenly yours to go and do. There's no separation between work and play. I mean, I work, quote unquote, in my house. I mean, that's why I write my scripts, come up with my ideas while I'm playing with my kids, while I'm cooking them a meal, which is a creative exercise, art you can eat in itself, and then you go upstairs and do some editing. You edit a scene, you like, I can already hear the kind of the music for, I'll walk over to this room and I'll do music for it. I mean, then you go, hmm, I'm not sure, I'm this character, I'm gonna get into this character's head, maybe I'll paint him first and to kind of see visually what he looks like or musically what he sounds like. And you can work completely nonlinear that way because you realize I can do anything I want because everything can be creative, even the business call, suddenly you go, this

• 22:45Speaker 02

  is kind of out of my league, but let me add my creativity to it and maybe that'll solve something no one else will be able to solve. And sure enough, you can always rely on creativity to, you know, sort of win the day in a lot of areas.

• 22:57Tim Ferriss?

  And with, say, El Mariachi, I've heard numerous, a couple of different versions of this financing, but I'd love to know how you financed it because I've heard experimental medical procedures, I've heard selling your sort of body to science. So what, how was that financed?

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's one of the strangest things. The legend kept growing around El Mariachi, and it's one of the few times you'll hear a legend where it was all literally true. I mean, it was, it was as crazy as it sounded, but back then, you know, I mean, I was from a family of 10 kids, there was no borrowing from mom and dad to go make a movie, that was on me. I was already paying my way through school and I already had two jobs. I had a job as a cartoonist and I had a job working at the university and barely making rent and tuition. So to go make a movie. Even though, you know, people would say, oh, 7,000, that's so cheap for a 16 millimeter movie. Oh, yeah, you got $7,000 sticking out of your pocket? Who has that? So you had to kind of take down a score. And the only way you could actually go do

• 24:00Speaker 02

  a big number was to go to this, it was one of the biggest universities in the country at the time. They had this thing called a pharmacoe, which was a medical research facility. And it's only like the fourth stage where it's already been tested many times. And this is the final before they get FDA approval. You're not replacing the beginning. They're not, they're not like, you know, mixing a couple of things together and giving it to you and saying, okay, let's see if it works. They're really kind of seeing, they need, but they need healthy young specimens between the age of 18 and 24. And so that's college students and they all need money. So you go in for a weekend and make 500 bucks. But you're going to my pig and cushion. I would go in there for the longer ones that were like a month where you would be paid for your time rather than your pain. So I now would write scripts while I was in there and you make 2, 2,000, $3,000 in a month.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Real money when you're not having to pay for food and rent and anything. Now you have to eat. Oh, so you were housed there? You're housed there. Yeah, you're housed and you can't leave and you gotta eat and shit and pee at a certain time. Well, I guess that's another benefit though, right? Because you're, they're covering some of your, what would otherwise be expenses. Mm hmm. It was a great deal. And so I did a couple of those. And one of them was a drug that's on the market, Lipitor, the cholesterol lowering drug. That's the one I was on. So I got to eat bacon and all kinds of stuff. I got to eat a, you know, high cholesterol diet. I used that money to go and make the film because I had an idea we could sell it for at least double of what we made it if we kept the budget really low. I didn't know. So I had to just make it for as little as possible. Most of that money went to just the film stock. And I, and I really didn't think anyone was going to see it. It was

• 25:25Speaker 02

  really just a test film. That's why I did it in Spanish. I did it for the Spanish market. I was already had a bunch of award winning short films, but I needed to practice telling features. So I thought, let me just make a bunch of features for the Spanish market just to get some seasoning, do all the jobs myself because I couldn't afford a crew and that way I'll learn them all. If I can sell it for twice of what I put in, that's like the best film school. I'll earn every job. I'll do like two or three of these things, cut them all together, take out the, the best portions and use it on my demo reel and then use the money that I make to go make a real first film, English language, American and independent film. And the first one got released by Columbia Pictures and I was shocked. Now, how did that, how did that happen? And?

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

  Who took a chance on you or how did you increase the odds of that hip happening? Because I guess it was Sundance, is that, was that the trigger?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  No, it was already bought by Sundance.

• 26:13Tim Ferriss?

  It was already bought by Sundance. So how did that, how did that happen?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  I had this crazy idea. I had made this short film by myself. It was a wind-up camera. It was eight minutes long. It was called Bedhead. It's online. And I utilized it to use slow motion and all kinds of things that I couldn't use on a video camera. I really wanted to show off what I could do with that little camera. It was a World War II camera, the little wind-up ones. I mean, a piece of junk, but it could do stuff it couldn't do with video. Shot that, put it in festivals and won a bunch of festivals. And I was like, wow, I did that all by myself with $800. It's eight minutes. If I did that times 10, I could do an 80-minute movie for $8,000 or less because it would be dialogue scenes. It wouldn't be wall-to-wall action like that short film. I could pad it out. I could probably do it for five grand. I felt like I was getting away with something, coming up with this idea and thinking, how come no one's ever done this before?

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Let me go try it this summer. I mean, try it for the Spanish video market because they make them for like 30 grand. But I'll guarantee no one sees it. I'll call it a mariachi, which is basically if you're going to the action section, you won't buy a movie or rent a movie called The Guitar Player. That promises no action at all. But I just thought, you know, I had a sense of humor and I thought, let me make it kind of, I don't really want people to see it. I just want to be able to test out this, these ideas and see if it's possible. Shot, shot, shot, cut it, cut it, cut it. Went to sell it in LA because that's where the distributors were for those US-distributed Spanish-language movies. Because you would just look at the video box and all the companies were like on Wilshire Boulevard. So I drove up here with my friend Carlos. And the in I had was there was going to be a 25th anniversary of the Texas Film Commission in Austin.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  And a bunch of people from Hollywood that Governor Ann Richards was trying to invite in. And I saw the list of people and one of the agents from ICM called Robert Newman was going to be there. And I thought, maybe I can try and slip him my short film. Well, the whole thing got canceled and it fell apart. So when I was in LA, I called ICM up cold. I looked them up in the phone book, called them up. This was in 1992 and got, and asked for Robert Newman's office and they put me right through. He was a new agent there. He didn't have any directors yet. I called up his assistant and I said, hey, can I talk to Robert Newman? He was gonna, he was gonna come down to this 25th anniversary thing. And they said, oh, I hooked up on the phone and he said, yeah, what happened with that? I was already to come down. I go, wow, I don't know, but I was going to show you my film and I'm here in town. I wanted to drop off my award-winning short film and a trailer for a movie I made for $7,000. Okay, drop it off. I couldn't believe it. Dropped it off.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  He called me back up the next day. Hey, the machine ate my tape. He actually watched it. I couldn't believe it. I went and made another tape, gave it to him. Waited over the weekend and I got the call and he says, I love the short film, but I love the trailer. The trailer for this movie, the mariachi movie, it's, it's, I mean, it's like a world-class trailer. Cause I kind of, I knew people couldn't watch the whole thing. So I was, I'm a pretty good editor. I cut this really snazzy trailer that just made you want to watch the movie. And he said, how much did it cost again? I said, $7,000. Well, that's pretty good. Most trailers cost 20 or 30. No, no, the whole film costs $7,000. He said, oh, come on. I said, no, the whole thing. I shot it, I shot it really low budget, but I'm gonna, can I come up and talk to you? So he had me come up and I told him, I, I plan on making two or three of these, like a trilogy of these guy with a guitar case.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  As just a test and I'm wondering what else I should put on my demo tape because you know, my award-winning short film's been doing well. I think it's all kind of like a dollars trilogy. He goes, I can get you work right now off of this. I said, really? He goes, yeah, I'd send this to the studios. Just put subtitles on it and I'll send it to him. So I subtitled it, sent it and he got me a two-year deal right away at Columbia Pictures. Not to remake, not to even release mariachi. Mariachi was just a calling card, but it happened too so quick. I mean, I was really young. I was what 22, 23. Um, I really thought I was going to make some test films first and have a chance to come up with what my big idea was. I mean, and I was in no rush. I really wanted to be prepared. I really wanted to learn every job and really know what I was doing. So this suddenly caught me by surprise.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Cause now they're asking, well, you're a filmmaker now. And he even wrote me down as a writer-director. And I guess a writer-director, I guess I wrote the script. So I guess I'm a writer-director. I never really thought of myself that way. And I was suddenly, this young kid plunged into this world. And I suddenly had to come up with a bunch of original ideas because this was my shot. I've, it was, you know, too quick. I was not prepared. So I thought, well, look, you guys liked the mariachi. Why don't we just remake that? Remake it with like Antonio Banderas in Spain and we'll, we'll just cast it up and just remake. And they said, okay, that's a good idea. But we want to test screen on mariachi first to make sure people aren't, think it's a downer ending when the girl gets killed. So they made a film print, they tested it and people liked it the way it was. They decided to take it to festivals.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  And I completely protested. I was like, this is my practice film. No one was ever supposed to see this. Give me $2,000.

• 30:42Tim Ferriss?

  This is my debut platon ball. Don't put this out for the world to see.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Don't put this out. If I knew people were gonna see, give me $2,000. I'll go reshoot half of it. Just knowing people were gonna see it as my first film. And they said, no, you don't know what you have here. It's very special. And they took it out and it went to Telluride, Toronto. And the head of Sundance came to me at Toronto and said, don't show it at any more festivals and you can bring it to Sundance and put it in competition. Cause you know, he knew it would do really well there. And it won. So I was already bought by Columbia. So I was one of the few films usually that's already had a distributor. And we took it and I had a great little talk I would do before to set it up. Cause I had to disclaim why it was the way it was. And I said, well, when you see the Columbia logo come on in the front, that logo probably cost more than the whole movie. Everything you watch after that, just know that I, how I did it.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  I wanted people to know how I did it. I really wanted to deconstruct how it was done. Cause I would have wanted to know that. As a film student who felt, coming from a family of 10 kids, living in Texas, people constantly saying, you want to be a filmmaker? Oh, you need to move to LA. That you could stay where you are and come up with something that could be sold. I wanted others, I just wanted to get on top of a mountain and tell everybody. So that's why I put out a book and that's why even before each screening, I would explain how it was even possible. Cause I knew they would be wondering, cause nobody had really ever done it. It wasn't that it was impossible, just nobody had done it before. No one ever thought that way. People kind of forgot that that's how movies really started. It was always like a couple of guys with a wind-up camera and Buster Keaton in front. It wasn't a business yet. When it became a business, suddenly everyone had a job and you needed 200 people because it was now an industry. But that's not what the art form was originally.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  It was just the manipulation of moving images and you can do that with two people. One person. That was a breakthrough idea. And so Bianca would tell them, I just took stock in what I had. My friend Carlos, he's got a ranch in Mexico. Okay, that'll be where the bad guys at. His cousin owns a bar. The bar is where it's going to be the first initial shootout. It's where it'll be all the bad guys hang out. His other cousin owns a bus line. Okay, there'll be an action scene with a bus. At some point, there's a big action scene in the middle of the movie with a bus. He's got a pit bull. Okay, he's in the movie. His other friend had a turtle he'd found. Okay, the turtle's in the movie. Because people will think we had an animal wrangler and that'll suddenly raise production value. See, I wrote everything around what we had. So you never had to go searching. You never had to spend anything on the movie. The movie cost really nothing. It was really just the fact that I wanted to shoot it on film.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Instead of video so that it would look more expensive. And try and tell people, you know, made it for seventy thousand, tried to sell it for like seventy thousand. Instead it ended up going to Columbia, getting released. And that story really, um, when we won Sundance, the audience award, uh, my acceptance speech said, you're gonna get a lot more entries next year. When people find out that this is the one that won, a movie made with no money, no crew, everyone's gonna pick up a camera and start making their own movies. And it's been flooded with entries since then. It was really, um, a real change in the paradigm. And it was only out of necessity. It wasn't my big idea that it could be done. I really just thought, I, I don't wanna take anyone with me. Even my best friend wanted to come help on my movie shoot for Mariachi. I said, no,

• 33:40Speaker 02

  'cause I gotta go to Mexico and this camera I borrowed, you know, it's probably gonna break down the first day. I don't wanna, I'll jinx it if I start bringing too many people down. And I don't mind failing. I just don't like failing in a bunch of other, in front of a bunch of other people. So where they go back and they say, Robert tried to make a movie for no money, you idiot. He got stranded in Mexico. So I really didn't think it would work. And I go surprised. And that's the best I tell people is just be naive. Stay naive, throw it away, don't overthink it. I didn't overthink it at all, 'cause I, I would've treated it completely differently had I thought I would ever even show it to anybody. Had I thought it would go to a festival and I would've submitted, I would've spent ten times as much. I would've gone and borrowed money and done all. Instead, it was like one take, one take, one take. Everything was one take, even if it didn't work, 'cause I had the film so expensive.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  So I would go, and it was a noisy camera and it was a soundless camera. I mean, it would make so much noise, you couldn't record sound. So I had to record sound the way you're doing right now. So I would shoot a take, put the camera away, get the sound out, put the mic up close. So for those people, yeah, we, we have two mics attached to a little recording device. I would put the mic as close as you have it. So I got great sound, but it was out of sync. But you kinda talk in your own rhythm. So if you say, hi, my name is, you know, Robert, you put the camera away, you, okay, now do the audio. Hi, my name is Robert. It kinds of, you can pretty much get it to sync. I don't like rubbery lips. If you look at Mariachi, it's all in sync, except where it started to get out of sync, I cut away to the dog, or I cut away to a close-up. And it created this really snappy, uh, editing style. But it was really just to get it back in sync, 'cause I couldn't stand that.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  But that was the whole idea, you know, it was like, let me just try and do all these things myself and, and see if we can put it together. It reminds me of, um...

• 35:17Tim Ferriss?

  Jack Ma, I mean, it's very consistent among these people who seem to come out of nowhere and build something very big. Of course, there are exceptions, but Jack Ma of Alibaba, he said, you know, we had a couple of advantages when we started. We had no experience, no money, and no plan. And so every dollar we spent, we had to consider very, very, very carefully.

• 35:35Speaker 02

  My plan was, I had a really good plan. This was the plan was, I'm gonna go shoot one take of everything, because a film is the most expensive item. If I just shoot two takes, you know, one just in case, I've just doubled my budget. So one take, I'll cut it together. The stuff that I need to come reshoot, we'll only reshoot that. We'll only get those shots. You never come back and reshoot. By the time you get back up there, back to Austin, you figure out a way to cut around things that were like not done right, or a little slow, or... And I never came back and reshot anything. You end up just working with what you got. But it left me off, it got me off the hook from being too precious. Because by knowing I had that safety net, which I never ended up using. So if you can do that for yourself, you know, in any area that you're in, try to just go

• 36:19Speaker 02

  free with abandon. And sometimes, you know, they say that for writing a book or writing a script. Just write. Don't, don't keep rereading each page and going, oh, it's not good enough, and then tear it up and throw it in the trash can. You'll never get anywhere. You gotta just have, get momentum.

• 36:31Tim Ferriss?

  Get it down.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  And keep going, and then come back later with fresh eyes and look at it again.

• 36:34Tim Ferriss?

  Now that you have access to so many resources, how do you, what are practices you have, or principles for maintaining that scrappy creative mindset, right? Because if you, you don't have to have many constraints if you don't want to.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:50Tim Ferriss?

  At this point. So are there ways that you try to simulate that?

• 36:54Speaker 02

  There's a couple of things with that. There's this freedom of limitations. You know, there's almost more freeing to know, I gotta use only these items. Turtle, bar, ranch. You're almost completely free within that. You know, you almost can do, not anything, because that would be almost too many options. But you're, you're just put into a box. It's one of my favorite movies I did with Quentin was called Four Rooms, where they said, we're all doing short films, we all have the same criteria. It has to be set in one room, it has to be New Year's Eve, and you have to use the bellhop.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  The freedom of limitations was enormous. I mean, you watch that short and it goes all over the room. By the end, we burn it out of the room. I mean, it's, it's almost was some more exciting to know that you were in a box and you could be creative within that box. So now that so many things are available to you, you want to limit yourself in a way. So I try to limit time. I try to limit money so that we can really get still keep that essence of creativity and deliver on the screen, something that just looks much bigger. So that you can retain your freedom, creative freedom, because if you start spending more money, suddenly the financiers, rightfully so, the studios or, you know, the executives will be over your shoulder constantly questioning every move you make

• 38:07Speaker 02

  because they want their money back. But if you keep the budget low, it's a win-win situation. If the money, if the movie does great, it's a great success. If the movie doesn't do great, it's still a success because it didn't cost very much and it'll make back its money over time. That's kind of where I've kind of lived and breathed. I'm about to jump out of the box a little bit more and do some things that are a little bigger just to, just to learn more because you just learn more when you go and do other kind of assignments. But where it's really the most fun, and that's why you ask, how do you keep the morale high? The morale is always high on the set because they know we're just being creative. That's the name of the game. It's not looking for a result. It's like, how can we just keep ourselves jazzed about this?

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  If you were to go back and rewrite Rebel Without a Crew at this point, what would you change? What would you add? What would you remove?

• 38:57Speaker 02

  You know, I haven't read it since I wrote it, actually. It's really funny that you say that because people come up to me a lot with copies ready for me like to sign it. It's a lot of people have read it. And, and they say that to help them, not even if they weren't a filmmaker, you know, help me open my own business to help me do this. And, and they would mention a quote and I'm thinking, I don't remember ever saying that. I gotta go reread it. I was smart back then. What happened? I said some really good stuff. They'd say, give me these quotes that sounded like, I gotta follow that. I need to go reread it just so I can go follow what I used to tell myself. Because there's something that happens and you know, when you go to lecture, when you go to teach, it's kind of like you're opening up that pipe, you know, you, you go to talk with the intention

• 39:40Speaker 02

  and it's all intention based of giving people who are looking for answers and looking for strategies, something they can use and out of your mouth will come. Things that you are then going and scribbling and writing down yourself going, well, that's pretty good advice. Where'd that come from? You know, that's because you're letting it flow. It's not you.

• 39:58Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  You know, you've gotten out of the way at that point. So that book was very much like that. You know, there's a lot of things in there that even I'm surprised popped out that seemed right at the time that were very knowing without me knowing anything.

• 40:10Tim Ferriss?

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  You know, so I really do like that about it. I wouldn't think I would rewrite that book. What I've been trying to figure out is how to write the ones after because so much happened after that.

• 40:19Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And the diaries are so dense that it's almost hard to know how to focus. I think I figured out how to do it by doing a creativity-based book where anytime some of these events happen to do particularly with creativity or the process, then those things like hanging out with Jim that time or doing this with this person would fit into it. And then you could get some of those journal entries in a way that was organic to the whole creative processes. That seems to be mostly what I'm about now, not specifically film-related. You know, because if film died tomorrow, I would be sculpting or painting or doing music or something else that involved creativity. So really, what I am is a creative, someone who lives a creative life, not even just in work, but it's also in when he's not working.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  And you mentioned earlier you had two jobs in college. One of them was cartooning.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:09Tim Ferriss?

  And was that Los Hooligans?

• 41:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:10Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so you had Los Hooligans, which then became later the name of your company, which was changed. So I've kind of two questions. One is how did, how has cartooning helped you in your various creative endeavors, but maybe specifically film? And, you know, did you use your kind of drawing ability for, say, El Mariachi or any of these others? And then the second question, which we can get to, but is why you changed the name to Troublemaker Studios?

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Well, maybe that's the first one first. Los Hooligans, yeah, was a name, these little troublemakers. It was about these little kids, based on my family in the comic strip. And Los Hooligans was to show that they were Hispanic, you know. It was with a few Hispanic strips in that paper. It was a very big paper and we had a big comics page. It was very popular. Very famous people came out of there. Berkeley Brothers came out of there. Chris Ware, who's a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, has amazing books out. Most of that, a lot of that first early work he did was from his college work. I mean, he is just bonkers great. He made everyone around him good. That's the other thing is if you surround yourself with masters, which is I still try to do, that's my trick, is even when we're filming, I'll have master painters and master sculptors and master come visit

• 42:20Speaker 02

  so the artists can just get off on what they're doing and apply it to their area. Cause it's like, your mind explodes and you want to always be training and always be learning. And that's kind of what that page was for me. The cartooning made me realize a lot about the creative process. I remember I used to come home and I'd have to do a strip a day and it would take sometimes three, four hours. And I would, sometimes it just not feel like facing the blank page. I would go lay down and go, I'm trying to figure out if I can create this method where I can just come, lay down and stare at the ceiling and it'll just appear fully formed. Then I can go and draw it. And I never could get that to work. I'd be running out of time. I'd run back to the table and I'd realize the only way to do it was by just drawing. You'd have to draw and draw and draw. And then one drawing

• 43:03Speaker 02

  would kind of be kind of funny or cool. That one's kind of neat. This one kind of goes with that. And then you draw a couple of filler ups and that's how it'd be created. You had to actually move. And I applied that to all my other work, filmmaking and everything. Even if I didn't know what to do, you just had to begin. And a lot of people, that's the start, the part that keeps them back the most. It's like, well, I don't have an idea, so I can't start. It's like, no, you only get the idea once you start. It's this totally reverse thing. You have to act first before inspiration will hit. You don't wait for inspiration and then act, or you're never gonna act, because you're never gonna have the inspiration. Not consistently. You can consistently perform and act and get there and sit and draw till it comes out. And it comes out. And if you trust it and you get out of your way, and that started teaching me that too. You don't have to ever sit there

• 43:45Speaker 02

  and go, well, I don't have any ideas. I don't know if I can draw one today. Get your ego out of it. It's not you anyway. The sooner you shut up, the sooner it'll come through. Get out of the way. Let the pen glide where it needs to go. And it'll be there and you'll be amazed and you'll be going, how did I do that? And the creative spirit will be like, bastard taking credit for it again. But that applied to that, to everything that I do. And sometimes it helped to be able to draw to show somebody really quickly. This is the shot I have in mind. Let's go get this. And I'd be able to sketch it out. So that would help. But mostly, it was really just the process, the creative, what I learned about the creative process that early, I was like eighteen, nineteen at the time. I'll show you some of the strips. They're pretty,

• 44:26Speaker 02

  I look back at them, and I'm like, oh, my God, I drew better then than I do now. What happened? But because I was practicing every day. And that was the other thing. It showed you mastery. You know, if you, you spend four hours a day on anything, you're gonna get pretty freaking good. Even if you have zero talent. I mean, one of the cartoons that Chris Ware came to me one day, he goes, oh, my God, my teacher told me this. Your drawings have jumped in leaps and bounds within a day. It's not a gradual up. It's like suddenly from one day to the next. And I just saw that in yours. I had done a strip that was really different from anything I did. And it went to that level. So I apply that a lot to people. Like, don't get frustrated. Keep going. Keep practicing. Keep at it. Put in the hours, and then it'll come to you. And then, at one point, suddenly, you'll

• 45:08Speaker 02

  be, and it happened everywhere, in sculpting, in music, in filmmaking, where it's suddenly, it's just jumps. You just hit this inflection point. It just jumps. Yeah. It jumps by a lot, and it blows you away. And you're like, what's different? Nothing's different. I just kept applying myself. And it finally, and it finally clicked. Troublemaker Studios came from, I had this studio, I didn't know what to call my production company. I was an independent filmmaker who was getting to put his company in the front of the credits. So I had to come up with a company. I didn't have one. So I just used Los Hooligans. So people would know it was the same guy who was making cartoons. And then, but the sentiment was kind of cool. I hadn't quite figured it out. And then one year was in nineteen ninety-seven, I was gonna go to Europe to do some publicity. And I went into this place where Stevie Ray Vaughan used to get his cowboy

• 45:49Speaker 02

  hats, to get a cowboy hat. And I walked into their place, and I said, I need a cowboy hat, because I'm going to Europe. And every time I go to Europe, they always ask, you're from Texas? Where's your cowboy hat? So I'm gonna go in there this time with a cowboy hat. And so the guy said, what do you got right now? And the guy ran to the back, and he looked at me, they kind of size you up, and they, Texas hatters, and they fit something to your head. And he goes, this is called a troublemaker. I said, a troublemaker? Wow, that's a cool name for a hat. Shit, I'm gonna call my studio The Troublemaker Studios. It's kind of the same as Los Fugas, but done in a really cooler way. So yeah, my thing of wearing a cowboy hat and the name of my studio was born that one day.

• 46:26Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. When I've made companies like LLCs or whatever, and I'll be on the phone with a lawyer and they'll say, well, what do you want to do if such and such name isn't available? And I'll just look around where I happen to be sitting, kind of like the Kobayashi moment in Usual Suspects. And I'll be like, it's pillow serious, you know? You're just tagging things together around you. And that's all be like, try that. No one's gonna have, I've already.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  One of my favorite LLCs, and this is the sentiment that sometimes why you go and you probably can relate to this. Sometimes when you try to get help from people and they don't quite see the vision. And there's negativity involved. One of my companies is called Nevermind, I'll Do It Myself Productions. And it always motivates people. When you go and say, hey, can you bring me this or bring me that? And they go like, well, I don't know if that. And I go, nevermind, I'll do it myself. Productions. Like, okay, okay, okay, I'll go do, I'll go do. They don't want to be labeled that, but it's like a great motivator.

• 47:20Tim Ferriss?

  I love it. So, speaking of Troublemaker, and just being, say, a rabble rouser. One of the things that I wrote down from your conversation with Francis Ford Coppola, who by the way, so he owns a bunch of, obviously he spends a lot of time in NorCal. He's got the winery. He also has some restaurants. And so every once in a while, for about a year, I was writing and I just went to his restaurants hoping that he would walk in.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  Which restaurant?

• 47:45Tim Ferriss?

  It was in North Beach. It was right at the corner. I think he owns the entire building. But the restaurant that I went into most was actually in Palo Alto. And I'm blanking on the name. I want to say Blanco Erosso. I thought it was like white and red, but I would go and I'd sit in there just in the off chance that he would walk in. Never, it never ended up happening, but I never gave up hope. And that's why I wrote, actually, I probably edited half of the four hour work week in that restaurant.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 48:09Tim Ferriss?

  Drank way too much coffee. But one of the things he said was, failure is not durable. And the segue, or the next thing he said was the things that they fire you for when you're young are the same things they give you lifetime achievement awards for when you're old.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  And so I wanted to know, like, what did you get and how did you get yourself in trouble in the early days? Were there? Were there ways that you got yourself, sort of created friction or conflict in ways that you don't regret, or that you do regret?

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, anytime you step out of line, you know, like that, it wasn't even that you get in trouble, but you would just have people not understand exactly what you were going to do, and with good intentions, not want you to go like down the wrong path. So I remember one of my teachers, who became a great friend of mine, he asked me, "What are you doing this summer?" I go, "I'm gonna go make a movie." It was all mariachi, you know, "What are you gonna do?" "I'm gonna go make a movie." "Oh yeah, who's gonna be your DP?" "Well, I'm gonna be the DP." "Oh no, the actors will hate you, you'll be there setting up the lights the whole time." You know, right away, started to tell me all the disadvantages to trying to do something yourself. And so I just like, "I'm not gonna tell anybody what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna go do it, because I have a feeling it'll work, and if it doesn't work, no one will know." And it worked, when I came back and I showed them, you felt very embarrassed, but you

• 49:19Speaker 02

  go, "Well, you know, you hate to see these kids go out there, you know, with good intentions." But you know, anytime you just did something that was against the grain, because you'd just go, "I don't know, I have a feeling I should just go this way, you should just go and try it." And it's just, it's good not to follow the herd, you know, go the other way. If everyone's going that way, you go this other way. Yeah, you're gonna stumble, you're gonna stumble, but you're also gonna stumble upon, you're gonna stumble upon an idea no one came up with. This is my favorite quotes, I say, "That's gonna be my book." I do that in talks, and people get all excited, because it's like, you're gonna stumble, but you're gonna stumble upon something no one ever else came up with, because freaking lined with gold over there, no one goes that way, it hasn't been picked clean yet, and you're gonna stumble upon something. And you'll stumble a few times, but you're gonna consistently stumble upon an idea no

• 50:04Speaker 02

  one's come up with, by going that way. And so, I tend to just kind of always been that way. I was like, if everyone's going that way, like they know what they're doing with purpose, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just gonna go this other way, that way at least it's a new frontier. And I always found success that way. I always found success by just going the opposite way, there was too much competition over there. If everyone's trying to get through that one little door, you're in the wrong place. You know, and I hate saying that, sometimes I go to a film festival, and people say, "How do we break in?" I go, "Well, the problem is, you're at a film festival, nothing wrong with a film festival, but everyone else here is trying to get through that same door." And it's not all gonna fit. So you've got to think bigger than that. There's less competition up there. So instead of everyone, I always wanted to get into TV, but instead of going

• 50:48Speaker 02

  and competing with everyone else trying to get on 7pm on NBC on a Friday night, own a network. You know how many other people are trying to own a network? Nobody. You're competing with no one. And you're competing with, you know, literally when that network that I got was up for grabs because of this, El Rey, there was a hundred other applicants. Now, that sounds like a lot, but out of the whole country, a hundred, really? How many actually had probably a solid business plan and an actual vision of something that could be implemented? Probably five. So you're not competing with the top five instead of the top, you know, 20,000 trying to get in on NBC Friday night, on Saturday night. So I always say, you know, try to, try to just look, you know, bigger than that. And I feel failure. That's what I talk a lot about in director's chair, why I was bringing that

• 51:33Speaker 02

  up with Francis. I like talking about mistakes and failure a lot with these directors because people tend to think they just make no mistakes ever and or think that that's bad. Because I used to think the same way when I went and did, that's why I did mariachi by myself. I didn't want to see people make me make mistakes. I didn't want them to see me make mistakes because I thought it was a bad thing, but it's not. You learn so much. No matter what, even if I didn't sell mariachi, I would have learned so much by doing that project. That was, that was the idea is I'm there to learn. I'm not there to win. I'm there to learn because then I'll win eventually. You don't have to win right now. You just have to know, I'm gonna go to follow my heart, go that way. And sometimes it'll work for you. Sometimes it'll be the godfather. Sometimes it'll be one from the heart. Sometimes it'll be, you know, apocalypse now. Sometimes it'll be Jack. You know, no, but you gotta

• 52:18Speaker 02

  keep going that way. And that's kind of what he was saying, you know, sometimes failure, if you have that attitude, well, maybe in 10 years, this will be a success. It helps a lot to have that kind of history. You know, when I'm to make a movie, if it didn't do well, I would go, hey, maybe it's the thing, you know, John Carpenter made the thing and it bombed. Everyone thought it was terrible. They called it pornography. They thought it was, he went and buried his head in the sand for 10 years until 10 years later, they You know, announced that it was a classic and it was a masterpiece. Of course, he was wallowing in despair for 10 years. Thanks, but you know, it came late. But eventually it would come. And if it doesn't, you're already on to better things. So as long as you always think it's not a bad thing. I try to always look at failure as a good thing, you know.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  Failure, Winston Churchill quote I like, "Success is moving from one failure to the next with great enthusiasm." You should just be willing to go fail, because that means you're going out that way. That's different. You're going into uncharted territory. And that's where you'll find eventually, you know. As long as you're learning something. You learn something. And sometimes, the only way to get across that river is by slipping on that first rock. That's the way there. And when you get to the other side, you look back and sure enough, "I could only have gotten here had I done those things." And people sometimes say, "I remember when I was giving a talk like that and a gal, she holds up her hand, "She goes, 'Okay, well, you're real positive, but what do I do, what do I tell myself "when I just wasted a year and a half of my life on something that didn't work?"

• 53:40Speaker 02

  I said, "Well, it's a real negative way to put it. Can you rephrase that for me?" He goes, "I learned something the hard way. I learned something good the hard way." "That still sucks." You know, you gotta be able to look at your failures and know that there's a key to success in every failure. If you look through the ashes long enough, you'll find something. I'll give you one. And I did Four Rooms. Quentin asked me, "You want to do one of these movies, one of these short films called Four Rooms? The one with the bellhop, the one in a hotel room." And my hand went up right away, instinctually. "Yeah, I want to do that. It's an experimental film. I'm there." Now, should I have answered so quick? Should I have been a little more studied? Should I have gone back and researched and realized anthology movies never work? Even when it's Scorsese and Woody Allen and Coppola, they bomb miserably. They never work.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Should I have researched, come back, given a different answer? No one can answer that. I go, "No, I would still go with my instinct." The movie bombed. In the ashes of that failure, I can find at least two keys to success if I look back on it. On the set when I was doing it. I'd cast Antonio Banderas as the dad and had this cool little Mexican kid as the son. They looked really close together. And then I found the best actress I could find was this little, you know, half Asian girl. She was amazing. So I needed an Asian mom. I really wanted them to look like a family. And I got this great little family and it's New Year's Eve because I was dictated by the script. So they're all dressed in tuxedos. And I was looking at Antonio and his, and his Asian wife and going, wow, they look like this really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and these two little kids who can barely tie their shoes didn't

• 55:08Speaker 02

  know they were spies, they get captured, they have to go save them. I thought of that on the set of Four Rooms. There's four of those now and a TV series coming. So that one. The other one was after it failed, I thought, I still love short films. Anthologies never work. We shouldn't have had four stories. It should have been three stories because that's probably three acts and it should just be the same director instead of different directors. We didn't know what each person was doing. I'm going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again if I knew that they don't work? Because you figured something out when you're doing it the first time. And that was Sin City. So Spy Kids and Sin City came out of that. So you can always look back. If you have a positive attitude, you can look back at what you're, that's why what Francis is saying is correct. Failure isn't always durable. You can go back and you can look at it and go, oh, that wasn't a failure.

• 55:50Speaker 02

  That was a key moment of my development that I needed to take and I can trust my instinct. I really can. Because what is success? It's not necessarily measured in dollars. It could be measured in knowledge. You know, what did I learn that I can now use later? And I mean, it'd take me 10 years to figure it out, but it'll be there when I need it. And then I'll be able to look back and check a journal and go, oh, yeah, this, this and that equal together. I'm going to keep that, I'm going to keep following my gut. And Zemeckis said the same thing. He should not have even hired Eric Stone. He knew it was supposed to be Michael J. Fox. Except your intellect tries to tell you different. Your intellect tries to tell you, you can make anything work, but your gut is harder to explain to people because it's just a feeling. You can't always go to a studio and say, I know, but I just have a feeling.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  They'll be like, what does that mean? But that's the dilemma of being an artist, which is why I've always kind of chosen low, low budget movies so people don't have to ask me those questions. I'm in charge. So I can just go, you know what? If it feels good, it is good and that's what we're going to do. What books?

• 56:49Tim Ferriss?

  Or book do you most frequently gift to other people?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  That's right, not that recently, it's been some years, but for a while, when that book, Start With Why?

• 56:56Tim Ferriss?

  Start With Why?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  I liked that one a lot, because I'd seen the little talk on Ted Talk.

• 56:59Tim Ferriss?

  Simon Sinek, I think.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And I would send that to people and go, "Look, this is so important." You know, I realized better what I was doing when I read that book. And I gave it to people to show them how to clarify what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. And it was a very simple approach that they should kind of take every day. Like, if you go to an actor and say, "Hey, I'm a filmmaker, and I'm making a low-budget movie, and I kind of need your name as a marquee, to kind of help sell it. I can't pay you very much, and it's gonna be probably a lot of work, but if you want to be in it, you know, you're thinking about all your stuff." He's like, "No, get the hell out of here." Because all you're talking about is what you do and how you do it, which is, "I make a low-budget movies." "Yeah, so what? It means you got no money, all right." Instead, I always start with a Y. I go to them, "I love what you do."

• 57:47Speaker 02

  Always been a big fan. "I've got a part that you never would get. I believe in creative freedom. I don't work with the studios, I work independently. I'm the boss there, just me and my crew. It's very creative. Ask any of your actor friends, they'll say, 'Go have that experience. You're just gonna feel so invigorated.'" "I shoot very quickly, so you'll be out. Robert De Niro in Machete in four days. I'm gonna shoot you out in four days while you'll be on your next movie for six months. You're on my movie for four days. It's gonna be the most fun you've ever had, and probably you'll get probably great reviews. Your performance is gonna be just really free, because I'm gonna give you that freedom. That's why I do it. How do I do it? Well, I work very independently, have very few people on my crew. We all do multiple jobs. We do it with less money so that we have more freedom." "What is it that we do? Well, I'm an independent filmmaker. Do you want to come make this movie?" They're like, "Yes."

• 58:31Speaker 02

  Because it's all about what they can do, what they can bring to it, how it's gonna fulfill them. You don't have to mention, "Oh, and by the way, I need your name as a marquee to sell the movie." Because really, you really are interested in their talent, and it does bring, you know, a level to the picture. You really gotta think about, "Why is it that I'm even doing what I'm doing?"

• 58:51Tim Ferriss?

  One of my favorite things that I read, and I hadn't realized this backstory, but was your experience with Sin City and Frank Miller and the, well, maybe "battle's too strong" a word, but the decision to insist on the co-directing.

• 59:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:06Tim Ferriss?

  And could you just elaborate on that for folks? Because as context, I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I have about 10,000 comic books at home, all poly bags. So I was a comic book- Addict for decades and I wanted to be a comic book penciler. So I was actually an illustrator in college for one of the satire magazines. But I wanted to be a comic book penciler for a very, very long time. Could you, could you give a little bit of the context around Sin City?

• 59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:34Tim Ferriss?

  And, and

• 59:35Speaker 02

  Well, you have a little context in just in the battles that you normally have with, with, when you try and step out of line, like, how do you get in trouble? Like, you're asked, how do you get in trouble all the time? It's never intentional. It's just sometimes you're just ahead of people's time. So Quentin and I were making these movies like for, even after Del Mariachi, I went and did, you know, some other films and, and I didn't know if I need, I wanted to join something like the director's guild. And there's nothing I dislike more than organizations because they're usually the most disorganized. It's called an organization, you already know. Okay. They have other things in mind that probably doesn't involve me and it's suddenly I'm in a box and I want to be in a box and George Lucas is in the director's guild and neither is Quentin. So I'm just stay out of the director's guild. And then they'd come after you after a little while and go, it's embarrassing that you're

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  out making films and you're not in the guild. So I said, okay, well, I can't, I can't really join because I want to do low budget movies. Y'all don't have low budget agreements, you know? This is kind of my lifeblood. This is, I can just kind of go do whatever I want. And I said, well, we're putting some paperwork in and we're putting some new rules that allows that. And so I did a film and they made me, you know, join. So I joined and the very first film I go and make under it was Four Rooms, which already didn't fall into their guidelines. So I already had to quit again. It's already cost me like five grand to get into the damn organization. So it's like, okay, so I'm in, now I already get out. All right, I'm out, I'll just stay out. I knew it and it's not going to fit me. So we go in and make movies for years and years and they let me go. They let me go because it was like, all right, really? How long is this guy's career going to last?

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And then like four or five films later, they come back because it's becoming embarrassing that I'm working and no longer in the guild and they, and you know, it's all about their face and I'm an Hispanic filmmaker, which they had very few. And I'm not in the guild. So they, they, you know, coaxed me back in. I said, but I, I'm only going to go back in. And I said, if you don't go back in, we're going to make it harder for you to get a job, you know, with the other ones. So I was like, ooh, so I was going to get to that. Okay. Well, I ain't freaking paying against you guys. You guys are going to have to pay me in because you're all, you know, you're welched on your deal. So I went back in and I was always getting in trouble because I would be like, These organizations don't like hyphenated. So if you're like a writer and a director and editor, they like having their name more prominent than the other. So the Writers Guild would be upset at Directors Guild

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  of me as a writer wasn't more prominent than their. I mean, this stuff that you just don't care about at all. You know, you're just trying to make your movie. And so I remember I had to leave like the Writers Guild, actually, after Spy Kids, because they demanded all kinds of stuff. And then the Directors Guild, again, was giving me hassle over having a credit that said, "Shot, chopped, scored, and directed by Robert Rodriguez." And once upon a time, Mexico. So I just had to separate the... I didn't want my name to come up 20 times, because I was doing a bunch of jobs, but you know, by each guild, that makes you put your name in there. So I tried to combine them. You didn't want 12 consensual screens with your name on it? And they kept wanting me to separate it, so my name would keep coming back up, and it just looked like, you know, really egotistical. But I was like, "No, no, no, no."

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  So here. And plus, I did the movie so fast, I didn't really... I'm not the cinematographer. Man, I just shot it. And I wasn't thoughtfully editing it. Man, I chopped it. And I did the music. Yeah, I can barely play. And it's an orchestra, but I scored it. And music composed by Robert Rodriguez. And so I cut out all the lofty things. They didn't like that. So I was always having to go in front of the board for something. And then when Sin City came around, that was like the final straw. Because I thought, and it happened very organically. I went to Frank Miller, and I showed him this test that I did for Sin City. And I said, "I know what it's like to create original characters and not to trust Hollywood, but this isn't Hollywood. This is something totally different. I made this on my own, and I'm going to offer you a deal. How about, I'll write the screenplay.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  It'll be unremarkable, because I'm going to copy it right out of your books. It's in November. I'll have the screenplay by December. We'll go shoot a test in January. We'll shoot the opening scene, and I'll have some actor friends come down. We'll shoot it. I'll cut it. You'll be there. You'll direct with me. I'll do the effects. I'll do the score. I'll do the title sequence, fake title sequence with all the actors we want to be in it." And a lot of those ended up being in it. Like, we put Bruce Willis, you know, Mickey Rourke. Started putting names in the fake titles. And if you like what you see, we'll make a deal for the rights. And then we'll make the movie. If you don't like, you keep it as a short film. You can show your friends. So we did it. And he went for it. And I'd say, is there any, you're an amazing director, but you're using a pen instead of a camera.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  I mean, the performances you get out of your paper actors, I would love to have you there. In fact, do you want to direct one of them? And he said, I've always wanted to do Big Fat Kill. I said, man, you should be there for the whole thing. You and me, we should direct it together. I'm really just copying your thing right out of the book. I really want that just to move. So we should direct this together because you are, I used to be a cartoonist. I know it's the same freaking thing. It's the same thing. You're telling stories visually. You're already doing it. When you go to Hollywood, they think of you less because you're, come from the comic world. They don't realize you're telling stories visually better than a lot of them. So I want to put you where you belong. You're at that same level. You walk in and you're already going to be directing at the same level as another director. I'm telling you, that's what it is. Cause I know I jump around all these jobs. They're all the same. Creatively, they're all the same. So he came and did it and we're getting ready to go.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  And like a week before production, director's guild calls, oh, here I go. I'm in trouble again. I don't even know why. I don't even know why. Getting called to the principal's office. Big time. They call and they say, you're very aware of our rules. What rules? They have a book like this thick. Like I sit there and read this thing. It's like a phone book. What rule is that? That you can't have two directors? How's that? I see two directors all the time. The Wachowski brothers, you know, the Coen brothers, uh, you know, the Hughes brothers. No, they were a team before they joined the guild. What? What does that mean? Well, one of you can't direct this movie and one of you has to produce. And the next movie you do together, you can direct together because then you would have already established a working relationship. You have to be, it's called a bona fide team.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Really? I mean,

• 1:05:29Speaker 02

  I don't think that's going to fly. I mean, why do I even go into the guild? They're already just going to tell me what to do. Yeah. You know, they said, we think, I think they thought I was doing it on purpose. I really didn't know that was a rule. How could you know? It's just so convoluted. It seems like so selective. I said, I don't think anyone will know that we, me and him have never worked together. And couldn't you qualify it somehow and say, well, if you're also the writer, director, editor, composer, you can also do this.

• 1:05:54Speaker 02

  So I, in the day, was there suggesting that I should leave? Cause I think they thought I was a troublemaker. They said, we think you should, you should leave the guild if you're going to do that. Cause we would not allow you to do it. We'd have to shut down the movie. Right. So I was like, well, let me go ask Frank, because I know we don't want to shut down the movie. Frank, what, how about you just be the director? I mean, they don't care if I direct. I can direct. I just can't be a name a director. They don't care. I mean, some movies like, you know, Peter Jackson does the Lord of the Rings. Five directors, but only one person. They only want one person credited.

• 1:06:25Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  You know, because he can't be in all the sets. He has to have other directors out there. Um, with actors, you know, but they want the illusion that there's only one director, which isn't always the case.

• 1:06:35Tim Ferriss?

  This is interesting. I just, I just realized, is that why when someone guest directs a certain scene in a movie, that's why you only see one name?

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:42Tim Ferriss?

  In the credits?

• 1:06:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  So, but people don't know that. The audience doesn't know or care about their stupid rules. So I said, no one's gonna know. But anyway, okay, whatever. So I asked Frank, how about I just produce and you direct by name? You know, I'll be there. We'll direct like always. They don't really care that we both direct. They even said, you can both direct if you want, but only one of you's gonna be credited. And I just don't like people giving you rules that are just made up in a box somewhere, you know? I just always rub against that. I just, I just don't, I just don't like that. I just get, breaks down the freedom and the spirit of what you're doing. And they don't understand. And they're just usually behind the times. Like when we did that Four Rooms movie, they didn't have, they didn't know low budget movies were gonna come in like a storm like that, and they weren't prepared. Eventually, they came around, but they weren't ready then. So you just have to leave until they can get their shit together. So, um, this was another case

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  like that. They came back many times begging. It turned out very bad for them. They got so much bad press. So anyway, they said, um, you know, hey, you should just leave. I said, okay, Frank, what do you think? How about I produce, you direct? And he goes, well, that doesn't seem fair. So what should I do? And Frank said, well, on my, on my tombstone, it'll say, does not play well with other kids. And I said, me too. Oh, yeah, I'm just gonna quit. So I called up, said, all right, I'm out of here. I'm quitting. I'm gonna stick by the artist. We're gonna do this together. And, but we don't have to tell anybody. We'll just keep it under the radar. I'll just leave quietly. I was always out of there, you know, several times and make any noise. They leaked it to the press. They leaked it to the Hollywood Reporter that, right, my production, you know, I guess to screw up my production. They did, because I didn't tell them.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  I don't, I'm not in Hollywood. How else would they know unless they went, you know, leaky faucets and told everybody? And it flipped on them.

• 1:08:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Speaker 02

  It turned really bad. Suddenly, everybody wanted to be involved in this movie that was a renegade, where the director was, you know, supporting the artist's vision so much that he gave up residuals, every chance of getting an award. You know, you just give up so much by leaving the guild.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  And, and they got beat up in the press for, for years about that, that for the same reason you said, hey, you left, it became such a badge of honor to have left for the sake of this other artist. And when I'd go to get actors, I would show them that opening scene and the fake credits, like Bruce Willis, his name was already in the credits, you know, Benicio Latour was in the credits. And they would go, I gotta be in this movie. I'm already in the credits. And then plus, what's going on with the guild and Frank's really co-directing? I mean, it sounded so exciting. You know, actors get so into something that's pure and passionate and about the product only and the business, damn the business and all, I can go to hell. Oh, man, they just jump on that train so fast. And so we had so many great actors jumping aboard and it was, you know, a big, oh, so then

• 1:09:18Speaker 02

  this is the big joke. Here's the topper. It's now I could do anything I want with the credits. So not only is it directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, I had Quentin come direct one scene. Special guest director, Quentin. Now that looks like an official title. It's not these guys over there like, oh, their whole illusion of a single director has just been squashed by a big movie called Sin City because they wouldn't play freaking ball. So now people think that's a genuine title. They go, but wait a minute, is it special guest director a real title? I said, no, I made that up. That's my creation. And because it went to Quentin of all people, because he wasn't in the guild either. So that turned into this really funny thing. So for years, you know, they would come back and say, you really should rejoin. And I haven't, I haven't had to rejoin since. What they don't want, and this makes sense, is they don't want like

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  some producer to go to a director and say, well, I'm going to be your co-director. I won't finance the movie. You see how somebody could abuse that?

• 1:10:09Tim Ferriss?

  That could be turned around.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  That's, but that's clearly not what this was, but that's why their rules were so strict. And that's why they didn't want to bend the rules. And they thought, you know, I was such a troublemaker, better to let him leave. And I thought so too. Why, why fit me in that box? I don't belong in that box. I'm always going to be doing something weird you won't like. Just let me go, you know, fly free. So that's really, you know, why that happened, but. Again, you'll run into resistance. If you're gonna go that way, everyone else is trying to get in the guild. You're actually trying not to get in the guild. You end up on the island of misfit toys along with George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino. I remember Jim Cameron came over to a table, I was sitting with George Lucas, talking about, like, I'm out of the guild. I'm like, George, George left the guild long ago. They were bashing him for credits and things that he was doing in the Star Wars movies that were really cutting edge,

• 1:10:53Speaker 02

  that they all ended up changing their roles to later. But back then, he was just so pissed, he left.

• 1:10:58Tim Ferriss?

  It's just not a fit for everybody.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Sometimes it's not a fit for everybody, especially if you're really odd. You should just be allowed to go out, because it is odd to do that many different jobs. But that's kind of how I started. Even when I went to do Desperado, I remember telling him, I want to edit this movie as well. And they said, no, we've never had a director edit his own movie. Just not done. And I said, well, I edited Mariachi, and you bought that. And they're like, okay, you can edit it, but you have to edit it here in LA so we can watch you, because we don't think you know what you're doing. And it's up to precedent. And I showed him the first scene to cut, and they were like, okay, okay, you know what you're doing, you can cut it. So they were really supportive after that. But at first, it was, anytime you do something new, you kind of have to break a precedent in order to.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  And once you got the precedent set, then you can do whatever you want. So now you go into a studio and they go, oh, that's that guy. He shoots his own movies, he edits his own movies, he scores his own movies, that's just how he works. It would be harder later in life to be an established director and say, suddenly I want to edit my own film, all right? And they'd be like, no, no, no, no.

• 1:11:59Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're gonna have to set that precedent.

• 1:12:00Speaker 02

  You're gonna have to set that precedent. That's what really was the great thing about Al Mariachi, is that it set a precedent for me doing every job if I wanted to. So all those became available to me later.

• 1:12:09Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I'm known as, I could say affectionately, but I don't think it's terribly affectionate. I'm known as a problem author in publishing, because I have, I've sketched out and then hired my own artists and designers to do the covers, for instance. I mean, that's like one of several dozen examples, but you kind of have to start fighting early. And then, even though they might not accept your terms, all of your terms.

• 1:12:36Tim Ferriss?

  The expectation is set, so it's not, the resistance is not futile, but it kind of lessens over time, it seems.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've done all, I've done all my posters since Desperado. Because on Desperado, the same thing, they send, and it's not like the studio is doing it, they send an agency down anyway.

• 1:12:53Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  It's like, it's their guys. Agency shows up, Antonio was sick that day, and they're like, oh, we're only here only one day, so we'll just, we'll put his outfit on one of the other crew members, and then we'll paste his head on later. Like, that's not gonna look right, nobody moves like him. Oh geez, this is gonna be awful. So we shot our own poster on the set, the famous one of him with a gun.

• 1:13:11Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Speaker 02

  Decided, because I saw him doing that one day on the set, and I thought, well, that's kind of a cool, I went, took a little snapshot, and that's kind of a, that would be a great poster right there. And when we went to go show the studio the posters, they put up, they looked like DVD covers, the ones the other guys did. And I put mine up there, too. And Lisa Henson, president of Columbia, looked at all of them, and she looked at the one that I had there, and she went, we like that one. And I go, that one's mine. And then she looked at me like, oh shit, had I known it was yours, I probably wouldn't have said that. She goes, really? Oh, we didn't know. I'm glad I just put it up there along with the others, didn't say anything. And then that set a precedent. From then on, I could go to every studio and go, I do my own posters, too.

• 1:13:49Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  So you guys can go ahead and try and make one, but we'll try and make one. And the key is also to do it early. Do it like while you're still shooting. First impression is everything. I'll cut a trailer while I'm still shooting and send it to the studio. They'll go and try and make their own over and over, and they can't get that first thing they saw out of their head. They go, still not as good as the one we saw.

• 1:14:08Tim Ferriss?

  Right, right.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  You've already, already stuck it in there, it's jammed in there, and it's never gonna be right. And it's happened consistently again and again that way, that you put in that first, you know, it has to be a good idea first, if it's a good idea. If it's terrible, they'll do better than it, and you'll agree. You just thought about who's winning, you just don't want to be stuck with a bad poster. So at least you have something that you really like, in case with all their team, they don't come up with something. And that's always kind of been the case with us. Because you're just coming from it, from a point of view that's different. I mean, I'm shooting the poster. While I'm shooting the movie, I have a setup on the side. So if we have Robert De Niro there only for four days, we're not gonna get him later to do a poster. That's what they all do. That's why they don't look anything like they do in the movie in the posters, because they haven't thought of that concept yet. They do that much later.

• 1:14:50Tim Ferriss?

  Interesting.

• 1:14:51Speaker 02

  I do it right then on the set. I'll pull him over to the green screen, shoot amazing photos of him, like in, in character with all my actors. And I have him. So when I go to make the posters for like-

• 1:15:00Tim Ferriss?

  And he's not in the middle of another movie.

• 1:15:01Speaker 02

  It's like, from the moment of they were filming, and it's like, they're in character, and it's, and it's perfect. It's really great. And you couldn't get a better performance out of them. They're not trying to remember later where they were. So that's been a big plus, is just having my own production studios in Austin, where I can just have it, a studio that just makes sense. You know, it's just like streamlined, and it's outside of the business, so it's really, you question everything that doesn't work, come up with a new way that works better for today's times. And that's kind of how we've been able to pioneer a lot of things, like digital photography way before anyone was shooting digital. First digital 3D movie was Spy Kids 3D.

• 1:15:39Tim Ferriss?

  Spy Kids 3D.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Doing like full-on green screen movies like Spy Kids 3, or Sin City was really, we pioneered a lot of that down there.

• 1:15:46Tim Ferriss?

  When I was reading, reading up on your bio, a couple of times, in, in a few different sort of versions of your bio, it said, "And then he took two years off," or then like a few paragraphs down, "And then he took three years off and came back with X." Were you actually taking time off?

• 1:16:02Speaker 02

  I don't think so.

• 1:16:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, if so, just what, what, what takes place? What do you do in between big projects?

• 1:16:09Speaker 02

  Sometimes, some, some years are more active than others. I remember one year I did, I shot Once Upon a Time Mexico, Spy Kids 2, Spy Kids 3, and then Once Upon a Time Mexico came out. I had shot all these movies that are all like sitting there, kind of at the same time, because they weren't due yet. Some of them have release dates that are later. So even though I shot Once Upon a Time Mexico in 2001, it wasn't released till 2003. So sometimes it'll look like there's an activity. When you're actually working on something, and then sometimes the movie's done-

• 1:16:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a different part of the process.

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  And it sits there, and then it's, you know, they, they think the release date's better six months later, and then that pushes it. So sometimes it'll look like there's a bigger gas. But usually consistently, I'll shoot between one and two movies a year.

• 1:16:49Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. That is very consistent. I can't eke out books at any faster than like one per three or four years. I just don't have the stamina. What, this is a question I'm, I'm stealing from your interviews in the director's chair, but-

• 1:17:05Tim Ferriss?

  What scene have you taken the most takes of? Or shot?

• 1:17:08Speaker 02

  What scene have I taken the most takes of?

• 1:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, takes, excuse me, yeah.

• 1:17:13Speaker 02

  You know, it's different. I don't, I don't shoot, um, I shoot very differently because I've always thought as an editor, because I started that way. In fact, that's why they didn't want me to cut desperado. They'd saw the footage and it didn't look like daily footage they normally got. Where usually someone walks in the room, they come and sit down, they do the whole scene, then you cut. Me, I would only shoot him walking in the room, then I would cut. Cause I knew that in a wide shot, that's all I was gonna use. Cause I was already seeing how I was gonna edit it. And so, um, it almost couldn't be edited by anybody else. Cause I kind of only shot it one way. So, um, and that's just, cause that's how I learned. I mean, I used to cut in the camera. I know Mariachi, the camera was so loud. It'd make a sound like that. It sounded like all your money was going away. So I would call, "Action."

• 1:17:55Speaker 02

  The guy would start running, then I would start filming. So, cause the first startup, I'm not gonna use. "Action." He starts running.

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  Cut. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't shoot through the action and cut. I would just shoot the little portion of it. So I was literally shooting my edits. So I, I don't, I'm not as extreme now, but I won't, I will never do more than a certain number of takes because as an editor, I'm already seeing what I'll use. Um, where sometimes somebody will shoot thinking, "I gotta make sure the editor has enough to work with."

• 1:18:23Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  And so you're covering, you're way over covering it. Where I'm getting only specifically what I need. I can move so much faster. Cause I don't, I don't need that.

• 1:18:30Tim Ferriss?

  Let's say it's a problematic shot, like the, the one that Quentin brought up that was 34 takes or whatever it was. He was trying to get like the blood in the Chinese condom to like pop up over the shoulder.

• 1:18:40Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:41Tim Ferriss?

  With the sword fight.

• 1:18:42Speaker 02

  Well, Quentin's very old school. He wants to try to do as much in camera and no CG, where I would just do a CG fix.

• 1:18:47Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  So like when I showed him, uh, Sin City first time, um, and he sees, uh, Miho, she cuts a guy's head off and the blood sprays her face and her eyes don't blink. He goes, "That's an impossible shot." And I go. And I said, I know, but I shot it twice. So I shot her once with her eyes open, no blood on her face. And then I had her close her eyes and we sprayed her with blood. Of course, she flinches. He goes, she didn't flinch at all. He goes, well, she flinched, but I cut that out. And I left her eyes open from the take from a few seconds previously. But that's impossible. So well, it's impossible, but not for her. She can do it. A normal person can't help but flinch when they get something thrown in her face. But she, that

• 1:19:29Speaker 02

  character can. The actress can't, but the character can. I said, see, that's what I'm talking about. We can do things like, we can actually be more, you know, more true to the character using the technology. Cause you're trying to tell a particular story and give a story point across that if you don't, sometimes embracing technology is good. But he likes trying to get it old school. I would never have done that. I would have been like, one take. All right, we got that. Here, go ahead and spray the blood. So we have a real reference of what it looks like. And I can either combine it or to really see, cause I don't want it to look like CG. Let's shoot it, the real blood. So we can see what it would look like in this light. And then we'll, you know,

• 1:20:05Tim Ferriss?

  You just don't have to have all the components simultaneously.

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 1:20:08Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:20:09Speaker 02

  And that's why I sometimes deal with a squib. You put a squib on somebody.

• 1:20:12Tim Ferriss?

  What's a squib?

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  A squib is an explosive that makes it look like a bullet hole. And you never get that timing right, especially if you shoot in slow motion or something. Cause by the time the actor reacts to the fact that he just got shot and then does the body movement, it's delayed. So you never see it on camera. Cause you, when you're editing, you'll cut to the point where it's going back. So you have to put that in digitally anyway, or something, you know? So I, anything, my crew already knows, Robert doesn't like anything that requires a countdown. You have to go like, all right, everybody, ready? Three, two, one, pop. That means it's some kind of an explosive or some kind of a squib or some kind of gag that's probably not going to work. And you're going to end up doing, having to rewire it, do it. That's why he was there so long. Cause then once you're just going and going, now it's like pointing over a term, we might as well keep going. We're committed now. And

• 1:20:57Speaker 02

  then, uh, no, no, I just can't, I don't have that kind of money.

• 1:21:00Tim Ferriss?

  What, um, actually, let me, let me, let me pause on that question. So one of the things I really enjoyed reading about, or reading, this is just my reference. I read so much, uh, watching and hearing about in the Quentin, uh, in the Tarantino interview, I think it might've been part one, was talking about how he, in the novels that he enjoyed, like the Elmer Leonard, I think it was, uh, they were non-sequential, right?

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:21:24Tim Ferriss?

  And that you would start into, you have something like Reservoir Dogs, they, uh, that starts In media rest, they would say, in, in writing, like, write in the action, which is something I do a lot. And in my, in my own writing. And then, you know, seeing how he would sort of take the best elements of a novel and create a cinematic version of that. I was just so happy to see the way you did Sin City. I mean, just, like, I love graphic novels and they're so, like you said, I mean, so, uh, so beautiful in some cases from a sort of cinematic standpoint, even though they're on the static page.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  Bold, bold shots that I never would have thought of as a filmmaker. Like, wow, I never would have put the camera there. You know how to shoot, too, you know, I would give them that credit.

• 1:22:13Tim Ferriss?

  But with Sin City, why did you gravitate to that so much so that you would do the, the test and approach Frank, who's, I mean, very well known for not wanting his stuff to be adapted?

• 1:22:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:22:27Tim Ferriss?

  Why did that, like, what, what was it that got you so determined to make?

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  It was a book that I would buy, buy over and over again. It was one of those things that, that's when you know something means something to you. When you, and it's like, I'm really that dumb, you know? I really was buying the book over and over for like 10 years before I realized, wait a minute, I should be making a movie out of this. I keep, I'm gravitating this for a reason. Cause that style in particular, that black and white style. And I'd wanted to do Film Noir for a while, but it felt like it would be too nostalgic. This felt so modern, post-modern Film Noir. And the style of it just was so stunning in black and white. The absence of information, you know, seen less was so captivating. It's like, there's hardly anything there. And it's amazing how little you need to recognize a human face or a window or, and I loved the, the basic quality of it.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  And I thought, that would be so amazing as a movie. And I know that they're gonna screw it up. Someday, they'll try and make a movie of Sin City, cause they're captivated and they won't realize it's because, half of it's because of the visual. And they'll go shoot it like a regular movie. And they'll wonder why it sits there and doesn't have the life that it did in the book. Cause they're not gonna shoot it like that. And after I did Spike It's Three on the green screen. I went back looking like I usually do for my next project. I looked through all my, my stuff that I have and I look at the Sin City again. I go, whoa, I know how to do this now. If I shot this on green screen, I could make it look, I bet I could make it look just like, well, let me test it. And I'm real protective of like test stage. Not even my crew knew what I was even shooting because I have my own stages. I had a green screen. So I just went and asked a few

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  crew members to come and I didn't even show them what I was filming out of. I was filming out of the book and I staged a few shots, took them back, did it in Photoshop, kind of plied it in 3D. And it worked. It was like, it looked like you're looking at a static image of his and suddenly it moved. And so I took it to show him and he flipped out. And I said, this is how we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it exactly like your book. We're gonna make your book move. Instead of taking your book and adapting that to film, we're gonna take film and adapt it to your, to your book. So we're gonna switch it and we're not gonna change it. So cool. Because everyone who gives you, you hand them that book and they say, oh, well, now it has to be adapted into a screenplay. And this is fine for a graphic novel, but it's not the same

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  as a movie. They're wrong. Visual storytelling is visual storytelling. I don't see why this should not work if it's just on the screen and we're gonna prove it. And that was what I was so excited about. And everybody who got involved in it was so excited about it. It just felt new and different and fresh and vital. And it, and it got you so jazzed. And I didn't think it would even be successful because he didn't care. You're like, you know what, I can attract big stars to this because it's gonna be so pure. And yeah, it's probably, it's gonna look so weird, black and white anthology, all voiceovers are the three things you're supposed to not do. Probably no one will get it when they see the first trailer. They'll go too artsy or too weird, but maybe they'll catch it later, you know, on DVD or whatever. I'm fine with that. Let it be the thing. You know, John Gardner is the thing. And let it be 10 years from now, people figure it out. I just really need to make it.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  And then it was successful the first time, but that might not have happened.

• 1:25:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  You know, it easily could have, you'd easily could have gone the other way. People just think it's too weird and that's it, you know?

• 1:25:35Tim Ferriss?

  It was just, it was such a vindication for me to finally see it done right. So I was, I remember when the first Punisher movie got made and announced and I fought my parents tooth and nail to not go to summer camp because I wanted to see this movie so badly and like, and I was such a petulant pain in the ass. Cause then I got to summer camp and I knew the movie was coming out. I wouldn't see it and so I would send, we were required to send these daily letters or either daily or weekly letters home to our parents to tell them about summer camp. And I was just bitching and moaning in every letter because I was still not going to see the Punisher movie, but then it came out and it was, it was, they didn't preserve the integrity, the beautiful aspect of what drew me to the comic in the first place.

• 1:26:19Tim Ferriss?

  So anyway, I mean, kudos to you. I was just so thrilled to see that.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  No, it was exciting, especially after all that, but it felt like that kind of the thing. It felt like it was the one, it was the fastest movie ever got going. I literally had the idea to go show Frank that test as soon as I saw it. I literally met him in November. I gave him the script in December. We shot the test in January.

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Showed it to a few actors like Bruce Willis and that, and we're shooting the real film by March. That's the fastest any Hollywood movie has ever taken off by far because it was already written in the book and we weren't going to adapt it, you know, really.

• 1:26:51Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  And the drawings were already done. So, um, and, and you'd only cast per episode. So I would shoot the first episode with Mickey Rourke. And if I didn't have another actor like the bad guy, Edgar Hauer, it's like, it's okay. Shoot it with me and replace me later because it's green screen. Shot him eight months later.

• 1:27:09Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:27:09Speaker 02

  And him and Mickey swear, they had a scene together. He goes up and even kills the guy, puts his hands on his face and crushes him and they never met. You know, things like that you could do. You were just so excited about all the things that you could do, all the possibilities, all the people you could put in the movie. And I would shit shut down for a week after each short story, cast the next one quickly. They would come down, we'd shoot their part, shut down again, cast the next one, they'd show up. So we just do it like in three segments. It was fantastic.

• 1:27:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's amazing.

• 1:27:34Speaker 02

  It was the most fun shoot.

• 1:27:35Tim Ferriss?

  What is your?

• 1:27:38Tim Ferriss?

  When we were talking about starting with why and you mentioned kind of starting your day, what is, what is the first 60 minutes of your day look like? Do you have any particular?

• 1:27:47Speaker 02

  It kind of changes if I don't, if I don't go through my list of things I want to do for the next day, the night before, which I try to do so that, and I have a, I have, I have long lists of things to do.

• 1:28:00Tim Ferriss?

  This is in your phone?

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  It's on my phone and I use notes, the notes that comes with it because it's faster. If I have to open another program, like I never know anything and it's got to load, it's too late. Idea is out of my head already. I need a scratch pad that's really fast. So here, this one's called bullet list 2015.

• 1:28:18Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, you have a whole list for the year?

• 1:28:20Speaker 02

  No, no, this is just, well, no, this is the year.

• 1:28:22Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I see you just add to it.

• 1:28:23Speaker 02

  Just so I know the difference, I just keep adding to it. And now that's the top portion of another list called hit list, which is a top, which has three parts, hit list one, two, and three. So this is like a, this is an offshoot of an offshoot of an offshoot. So every once in a while I'll go through, but usually I'll put at the very top and then I'll put some X's under it, stuff I need to do that day, like things that I know I need to do. And the other ones are just, yeah, the top priority thing like that was like make a show and tell for Ferris because I knew I was going to see you. So tell Ferris what time.

• 1:28:59Speaker 02

  Learn this guitar lick that I always wanted. I put it, I'm going to drop that one down eventually, but at least it goes on the top right now. But I'll check my list to make sure I'm not supposed to be doing something that I'm always supposed to do. And in the morning I'm like half waking up, usually what I like to do is try to work out in the morning because it's just.

• 1:29:14Tim Ferriss?

  When do you usually wake up?

• 1:29:16Speaker 02

  I just finished night shooting, so I'm, I'm all thrown off. Yeah, usually I don't go to sleep now until six in the morning. I'm trying to knock it back. Usually I go to sleep two, three in the morning, sometimes four in the morning. I'll get up around like 11.

• 1:29:27Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  10:30, 11, no matter what, you know, I just kind of wake up and I'll go start if I can get a nap later in the day, then I will. But I'll go down and get some breakfast, which is, you know, I'm allergic to eggs, egg whites, so that went out the door. So it's, I like those.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Um, plant fusion protein shakes that are, that are plant. Oh, so tasty. It's like 25 grams of protein or something. One scoop. Oh my God. So I drink two scoops of that and then I'll either have beans, cause I love your, your bean diet, cause I'm Mexican. So shit. Yeah, it's easy. I bake fresh beans. They're awesome for like, last me a whole week and I use instead of rice. I used to love beans and rice. Um, I, I do cauliflower rice. I just make rice out of the cauliflower with kale in it and I season it the same way I do Spanish rice. Man, you can't tell. Tastes so good. You eat that. I'll dig and eat that. And then I'll have a, you know, some other protein if I need to and then, and then that'll get me going. Um, I'll either work out or if I have meetings or sometimes if I just have to write or do something, I'll go attack, try and knock out some things that I have. And I always

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  have something to write. I'm writing like four scripts right now. So it's like usually something's more, um, you know, pressing and I'll try and knock it out during the day, if not later on during the day. And I try and limit meetings and things to, to a couple of days so that I can really have blocks of time to get some of these things done. Cause I, cause I, now that I own a television network, those are, these things keep popping up. So you can, your, your list is never going to be accurate. Cause later that day, oh, I gotta look at episode 207 for the, for the new season of From Dust Till Dawn and I gotta go put eyes on it. If it's not completely a hundred percent, I'm gonna have to go edit it myself, do some editing on it. So I gotta block out time for that. And then I'll have some other, you know, ideas for things. My own episode, I gotta be editing on. I gotta start looking at that already and thinking about music and stuff

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  and score ideas. And so that's going to take up its own time. So I gotta like really jam when I start the day, even if I think I got a full day that's going to be dedicated to whatever I have on my list, five or six other things are going to pop up, you know, that are just as important that I can't get away from. Yeah. So, um, it's really just, uh, chipping away at everything and always trying to make, um, I learned this, I don't remember where I learned this from. But I love to take on a lot of different things, you know, like take on many different projects. I mean, I'll give you a list of the projects I have on right now. There's a lot, but if you just chip away at each one, you gain momentum on all of them and then you're living your dream. By the end of the week, you're living your dream. You're doing everything that you want to do. You're not doing it all day, maybe 30 minutes here,

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  30 minutes there, but it's chipping away and it's gaining momentum and it's not, you know, just falling by the wayside. What is, what are the hit lists? I just call it, it used to be called to do list and then I needed to make another one to differentiate it. It's called hit list. So like, like things I have to do right now. Okay. And then So those are more urgent things than the main? It's just kind of like everything I gotta do. I was just like recent, more recent things that I needed to do or the most important from, from the to do list went to the hit list. And then as that just grew and became unwieldy, I just took like the top section of that and moved it to a new one. And then the top section of that and move that to a new one. It's like pouring into like a pyramid of champagne glasses, just keeps pouring. It keeps going. Spilling over to the next level.

• 1:32:39Speaker 02

  And I try to keep a separate one for my kids because all, I pride myself most on being a great father. I have five kids and I apply all this to being a father. So I'll keep a whole list just for them. Things that I want to tell them or talk to them about or show them or do, and it's jam packed. When they come over on the weekends, we go through the list, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And everything that I've thought of over the week, I've had a place to dump it and we get it all done. So you get this really concise. Dense experience. Dense experience, more than if it was just spread out, you know, here and there. You really get to feel like you've spent really quality time with them and none of

• 1:33:22Speaker 02

  the ideas that you've had that you want to share with them fly away. So really capturing these ideas is the most important thing. And then as you go through, you'll realize, okay, this one I'll never do. This one I'll never do, you know, with your to do list and stuff, or it's already taken care of itself some other way. I don't, I don't fret too much about stuff that I'm not getting done. Somehow they, they always end up figuring themselves out. So I tend to not stress at all, but it does wake me up at night sometimes and I really I gotta write that down or I'll forget it. You know, I will forget and then it'll, I'll be stressed knowing that I've forgotten something.

• 1:33:51Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  Specifically what it is. But it's just why I know it's all captured and I can get through.

• 1:33:56Tim Ferriss?

  And with your network, what is, what is the best way for people to check out the content on the network?

• 1:34:02Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Well, right now, we're just now in 40 million homes, which is amazing after a year. We're on all the big carriers. A lot of people don't even realize they have us because it wasn't something they had to buy extra. So they should just look for it.

• 1:34:14Tim Ferriss?

  So if they're on Comcast or whoever.

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner, Cox, Dish. We're on Sling TV now. We're one of the few channels in that offering where you can just buy a subscription and you can get like 20 networks or something like that. L Ray is one of them and that's doing really well for us. A lot of people, a lot more people have gotten that than we thought.

• 1:34:36Speaker 02

  And then individual programs like we have, well, it's like when you have a new network, you don't really create new shows for like five years or six years. You use, you just show old programming.

• 1:34:44Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Like AMC didn't make an original show for 20 years, you know, it was just really just old licensed programming, American movie classics. And we had four new shows first year because we had to kind of make our mark and show people, the only way people were going to find the network is if they heard of these shows. Oh, director's chair, where's that? Oh, it's on the L Rey network. What's that? Oh, Dust Till Dawn, a TV series. Where's that again? L Ray, what's L Ray? And they'd have to go look for L Ray and find it. So the only way to really draw people is by having programming that only exists there. And we only do stuff that we can do. Like no one could get the rights to From Dust Till Dawn. They wanted it, but Quinn and I controlled it. Well, he, he let me do it for my own network because he was like, oh, that's your network. It's like my network.

• 1:35:24Speaker 02

  And he loves the network. He loves all this stuff. We, we show, it's all curated content. That's what's so cool. It's if you gotta use licensed programming. Well, man, that's what's, what's my favorite movies? Kung Fu, you know, genre films, action film, brass knuckle Mondays, creature feature Fridays, you know, just license the best, the coolest stuff to show people kind of here. These are the great ones. These are the ones that you should know. And this is why we curate them like that. So it's a real curated experience and then this premier programming. And it's so fun is having a network. Sometimes you'll stumble upon an idea. Like I was going to have five John Carpenter movies in May last year. And I thought, I know John, I'll go film him introducing each one of those films, little intros. It'll be a little original piece of content to go with it.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  Well shit, while I'm there, you know, sitting, just setting up the mics and the camera, I'll just shoot the shit from about directing. I'll call the director's chair, try to do an episode of that, maybe that can be a show.

• 1:36:19Tim Ferriss?

  Uh huh.

• 1:36:20Speaker 02

  Kind of like, and let's just see it. But John isn't very forthcoming, he's very, he talks his stuff down a lot and he's always like, ah, this is, anybody can do it. And he's, he came, he, in most interviews, you read about him, they're not at all like the show I did. So I thought it'd be a good test. I did the show with him and he was so profound and so professorial and so open. Then I thought, oh my God, if this is John talking like this, imagine the other directors who are already like that. Friends of mine called and said, the new John, I've never seen him talk like that before and I've known him 20 years, you know. So there was something about a director talking to another director that was going to spark a different-

• 1:36:55Tim Ferriss?

  Very disarming.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  A different level of conversation. And now that's one of my favorite things to shoot. And it's so quick, you know, I'll research for about a week, week and a half sometimes, get to re-watch all their films, come in with like 30 pages of notes and, and ask them these great questions that I've always wanted to know. And the best stuff comes out. Just did a Michael Mann one and a George Miller one, those are really good.

• 1:37:17Tim Ferriss?

  What would have been some of the most surprising answers that you've received or captivating answers?

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  Just, you just never know. I mean, Semec is saying, he thought he was making the worst movie ever in Forrest Gump, you know, those moments of darkness where you're just like questioning everything, or that he was so punch, punchy, you know, and Back to the Future, he almost cut the Johnny B. Good sequence because he was like, well, it doesn't really fit. I was gonna cut it even before we even preview it.

• 1:37:46Tim Ferriss?

  That's when his editor was like, just leave it in for the-

• 1:37:47Speaker 02

  Just preview it, maybe it'll screen. He said, we couldn't peel people off the ceiling, you know, you never know. It shows that you don't know. And when I use an art, I want people to hear those stories because when you feel like, ah, I don't know if I'm doing it right, these other guys seem to know. No, they don't know. None of them know. That's the beauty of it, is that you don't have to know. You just gotta keep moving forward. You have to go sit down and put pen to paper. It's not gonna come to you if you just sit there waiting for it to happen. You have to act. And then as soon as you step forward, even a little bit, it starts sweeping you away, doesn't it? It's flow and you're like, how am I doing this? And you're like, it's not you. But you had to start. If you don't start, it doesn't come. It only comes if you start. So that's the main thing, you just gotta start.

• 1:38:28Tim Ferriss?

  When you think of the word successful, who's the first person who comes to mind for you?

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a good one. Successful.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  So many different ways to define the success. Yeah, that's. I mean, I always thought my dad was successful because he, he was an entrepreneur in that he,

• 1:38:53Speaker 02

  he had 10 kids and he sold cookware door to door.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  And the beauty of that was he'd come home and my mom would say to the kids, you need braces. He could calculate how many, how many sets of cookware he had to sell in order to pay that. And he'd go sell it. He, once he knew he had a target. If he worked at a job where he got just the same amount of money, no matter what, he'd be screwed. But because he could go sell harder, sell somebody on something. It's really strange, but you know, I have five brothers. None of them work for anyone. They're all entrepreneurs. They all have their own businesses. They all either, you know, my brother has his own pharmacies. He already got two pharmacies. One of my other brothers sells life insurance and he's like the top salesman in the country.

• 1:39:40Speaker 02

  My other brother sells real estate. No one wanted to work for anyone else. Partly, I think it's just part of in the DNA that you just don't want to be under someone else's thumb. It's kind of why, you know, if I go up against guild rules, I just like suddenly get abrasive. I don't know why, but it's just, it's just because it's in the DNA. You just can't work for somebody else. And I noticed that in my kids too. You're never going to be able to work with somebody else. I'm trying to teach them early how to innovate their own jobs because they're going to get more satisfaction out of riding their own ticket. As busy as I am, it's kind of fun to go back and look and go, wow, I created every job that I have right now. I find my own problem. I have all this work to do because I created every job. No one's asking me for this. I'm asking myself to deliver this stuff because I've put that responsibility on myself.

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  That's a great freedom. That feels like a great success to be able to live the life you want. Give it a carve out so much time for your family and relationships. And people can still come and say, you're the busiest person I know. And you go, wow, I'm not really. I'm really finding a way to put it all together. I really learned that from my father. So I think immediately, people that I knew, I used to go read his little entrepreneur magazines he had and thought. That sounds so cool. Wow. Some guy put video games, machines in the back of a truck and drove it around to the malls and made money doing that. I mean, I was always inspired by these entrepreneurial stories of people finding another way to go instead of following everybody else and finding success and happiness. So successful people to me are those who kind of put it all together.

• 1:41:09Speaker 02

  Because if you, you can have business success and job security and be miserable in your personal life, or have that always falling apart, or some crisis always happening. And I'm, you know, I'm eating it up. I'm loving it, you know, and I got that from my father. We had such great relationships in the family that spilled over. My kids now are getting older and I love when they call me and text me and say, Dad, can we talk? And they want advice and you get to go be Dad and you give them all the strategies you've learned and now they make sense to them, even though you've told them as they grow up now, they can apply it. And you're just like, wow, this, I wish I learned this when I was their age. And I look how far I have not knowing it.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  Imagine how far they could go. And it's really being able to give that gift back to people and your children and the next generation that's been the most fulfilling, the most exciting, the most stuff I journal is about that, you know, like, wow, really, really profound stuff. It's like, shit, I just learned last week. I'm getting to apply to them and they're getting to learn and they're like jumping ahead like 10 steps. It's like, wow.

• 1:42:13Tim Ferriss?

  If you could have a billboard anywhere, could have text, visuals, whatever, where would you put it and what would it say?

• 1:42:24Speaker 02

  This is the kind of questions when I would do interviews, I would ask the same question over and over and you get so bored with them. But then somebody gives you an original question. You're stumped because you're like, I'm not used to answering an original question. Hey, it's go back to the easy ones. If I could, what's the best answer you've heard for that?

• 1:42:41Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, what's the best answer I've heard for that? Let's see.

• 1:42:47Tim Ferriss?

  I might be conflating the two answers. I interviewed General Stan McChrystal recently, four-star general, used to run JSOC, so basically all of Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• 1:42:59Tim Ferriss?

  And it might have been his favorite quote. I might be confusing the two answers, but he said, "The purpose of life is a life with purpose." I was quite a big fan of that. Brian Johnson also started a company called Brain Tree and sold it for $800 million in cash to eBay, had a good answer to this, and I'm blanking on it at the moment. But what are your thoughts?

• 1:43:23Speaker 02

  That was one that I said earlier. He said, "Oh, I like that quote." That's one that I say a lot to people is, "Don't be, don't follow the herd." You know, go, and it's easier when people are visually can see, but I'm pointing in one direction. And I say that even when you hear me talking about the network and the network sizzle, I'll say, "If everyone's going that way, you know, like to the left, we're gonna go this way to the right." Because that's how you stumble upon new things, by just going down the unbeaten path, you know? And it's always rewarding, in any way you choose, not just business, in life in general, and everything. You just go that way and you follow your, and really cultivate your instincts, cultivating that instinct so that you can always rely on that. Because if you always have to rely on the advice of other people, which is all good, when they're not there,

• 1:44:07Speaker 02

  you're screwed. You know, you gotta be able to follow that inner, that inner voice and cultivate that, and know when it serves you and when it doesn't serve you. Trust that it's not serving you just at the moment, that it's over the long haul. It's actually in your best interest. And if you have that kind of faith, then you're never stressed, you're never worried about anything. One of the things I was teaching my son was very upset about something. I was saying, "I'm gonna tell you some secret of life. You never have to be upset about anything. Everything is for a purpose. You just failed your driver's test and you're all pissed off. I couldn't be happier. I'd rather you fail with a teacher and take it 100 more times than to go fail in front of a cop or turn the wrong, make that same mistake and hit somebody. Now you're 10 days in jail."

• 1:44:50Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  You know, I can't even think of a negative reason why you failing that test is a bad thing. You see how you, it's really how you look at it. And the way you look at it is so important. And you can have a positive attitude and look at it, "Well, let me see what I can learn from this." Why would you ever get upset about anything? And he's like,

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  Makes so much sense. I'm also excited about that. I said, damn, I gotta make sure I apply that myself, though, because I'm sure I may still get upset about something. And there's no reason why you're upset. Why? If something didn't go according to plan, it might be for a good reason. Might be for a bigger plan. Let's make something out of that, you know, let's take it, let's take the good out of that. I've always, I still try and apply that all the time. Never worry. When a friend of mine came and visited me on the set, we're shooting, it's a television season finale for Dust Till Dawn, it's huge. I mean, I had them add more and more stuff to it. I wanted it to be big, bonkers, more stunts than ever, really deliver. And he couldn't believe that I'm sitting behind the monitor playing guitar, which I do on the set. I play the guitar because it keeps me from pacing, it keeps me from getting riled up or stressed. And I'm also writing score at the same time, subliminally. Sometimes it

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  ends up being the score. People go, what are you playing? I like that. Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's the theme. Let me record it real quick. And I would be so stressed, you know, doing this if I was playing. No, there's no reason to be stressed. Why? Well, something might go wrong. So if it goes wrong, you figure out how to make it right. It's really, I mean, you being stressed isn't going to make it any better. In fact, you want to be cool breeze. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to think very well. Why not enjoy the shoot? Why, why be maniac? And I realized how it's totally the opposite of what you would expect on something that fast, where you have to shoot that quick and every dollar counts, that you would be playing the guitar, kind of softly in between soothing everybody and keeping the creativity flowing in between takes. That's why I have

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  my actors paint. I teach my actors how to paint in between takes. Because sometimes I'll say, I don't know how to paint. They're like, no, that's bullshit. You're creative already. You can paint just as easily as you can act or do anything. And I'm going to show you. Here, pick any colors. I'll show you different ways you can apply. You apply it any way you want. Then I'm going to take a photograph of you in character. We're going to transfer a line drawing. Mostly your painting will come through in the face. Maybe we'll smoke out the eyes or something. It'll be done. It'll be a wrap present. Us co-creating a character of yours. I'll have to show them to you. That's amazing. They'll blow you away. Oh, I'd love to see them. And they're blown away because, and they just trust it now because they've seen the other ones. Lady Gaga's Bruce Willis. They go like. Obviously, this guy knows what he's talking about. So, and they're free, and it's easier now. Everybody already knows they can do it because they see everyone else does it.

• 1:47:22Speaker 02

  And you don't have to train as much. It's really cool. People don't have to unlearn anything, and you teach them a new thing like that. It's a relief to know that you don't have to be hesitant. And then you want them to bring that back to the set.

• 1:47:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:35Speaker 02

  Because usually, you call cut, they have to go to their trailer, they sit, they're not being creative, they're on the phone, or whatever. Then you're having them come back to the set and suddenly be creative again. This keeps them in a creative flow. It's whether they're thinking of solving problems with a different side of their creative brain that they're not even utilizing while acting. It's amazing. It's a whole other side. So, when they come back to the set, you can tell. There's a problem here with a table. The cards slide all the way across, and it's not going to work. You figure it out in two seconds because you've already been solving creative problems in the other room, much more like what color to use, and how much brush stroke to use. So, that this like, oh, well, this is simple. Here, just toss them anywhere you want, and we'll erase it there, make it land where we want. We'll put them in the place, and they'll be fine.

• 1:48:15Tim Ferriss?

  I love it.

• 1:48:15Speaker 02

  It's like, nope.

• 1:48:16Tim Ferriss?

  That's really smart. That's very clever. I want to be respectful of your time. I'm having so much fun, I could lose track of time. But I would love to ask some questions from fans who have submitted things via the...

• 1:48:29Speaker 02

  So, how did you do that? You, uh, did you, how did you get the questions?

• 1:48:32Tim Ferriss?

  So, I gathered the questions by polling them on Twitter and Facebook.

• 1:48:36Speaker 02

  But you, you sent out an announcement on Twitter and Facebook, saying, Robert's coming, and then they...

• 1:48:40Tim Ferriss?

  I said, if you could ask anything, I think, I usually phrase it one or two ways. I'll say either, if you could ask, you know, at Rodriguez anything, what would you like to ask him, for instance? I might phrase it that way. And I think that's, that might have been what I put out. And then I will get answers back on both Twitter and Facebook. The beauty of Facebook, and I've also done this via something called Google Moderator, which is going to get shut down, but people on Facebook can upvote the questions they like. So, you basically get to see the top five most popular. So, this question is from Mike Elias. What do most people not realize, not realize, excuse me, about filmmaking until they become filmmakers?

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  How much work it is. I put out a book called Rebel Without a Crew to demystify the process, but also to say, here is a 10 minute film school. All you need to know is in 10 minutes. It's not true, but it is true in a way. It said, you just got to start. I didn't put in there the mind numbing work that goes into it, the soul crushing lows that you'll experience trying to realize your vision. Cause I know you'll figure that out on the way. And I know that it really will separate those from who are going to be doers and those who are donors. You know, you're going to either figure out this is for me, or this isn't for me. It's good. Cause it's really, I remember my short film Bedhead, it's short films, eight minutes. The credits are going and finally finished the credits. I was tears in my eyes. I was so spent. And it's a little short film. So you can imagine

• 1:50:04Speaker 02

  how, how much it takes out of you to birth something, you know, from originally from your gut, you know, it really takes a lot. You can never explain that. So I don't try. I just kind of say, send people on their way, inspire them, let them go and they'll figure it out. They'll come back with this look in their eye like, what the hell that I just go through. And they'll either be invigorated by that in some way, or inspired by that, or they'll just know that's not for them. And that's kind of what'll separate them. I wouldn't want to tell people, this is too much for you. Let them decide that. You know, this is really tough to go on. This could really, you could spend a lot of time and money on something that's never going to go off the ground. I'd let them figure that out. And they'll, they'll figure that out pretty quick.

• 1:50:46Tim Ferriss?

  This is from Kiraaz Sen. What do you have in common with the main characters in your movies? Anything from family structure to outfit, et cetera?

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the movies always, when you write an original character, very much is a reflection of who you are in a lot of ways. And I'm, a lot of the characters, I'm the girls, I'm the men. And there's this pieces of me in all of them. There's pieces of yourself that kind of, it's kind of why I, sometimes I like to do movies that I didn't write, just to get out of yourself for a while. Cause you'll tend to write similar characters. They're always kind of rule breakers. They're always kind of doing their own thing. And they always have sort of a sloner type, type attitude, but that they're, they've, they realize the greater cause and what they can bring to it. From Machete to the Desperado to even the Spike is, the Spike is probably the closest to my family. I really wanted to make a movie based on my family, the experience of growing up with 10 kids. So my uncle was Gregorio

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  Rodriguez. He was a special agent for the For the FBI, he brought down two top 10 criminals. And he based Gregorio Cortez, played by Antonio Banderas, on him. And my brother and my sister's names are in there as the two brothers and sisters. My uncle Felix, my uncle. It's like my whole family is told in the spy kind of movie. So that was very satisfying to kind of be able to tell your family story hidden in a spy film. But it's really how I got along with my siblings and that whole dynamic and my family done in a way, sometimes it's very, it's very, you know, obvious like that. And other times it's kind of just hidden, just, you know, everybody from the Johnny Depp

• 1:52:26Speaker 02

  character where, you know, he rigs the games constantly. So he wins. My kids say that's me all the time. That line where he says, hey, it's not cheating. It's creative sportsmanship. That's what my kids always say when I, when dad's not cheating, it's just creative sportsmanship. When I beat them at a game because I bent some rule in my favor. They're entertained by that. They're not, they don't feel bad. They actually look forward to the, oh, I'm going to bend the rules.

• 1:52:52Tim Ferriss?

  This is from Lawrence Favreau, I think. R O T. Sounds like Jon Favreau. He was on this podcast as well. Really fun guy. He contributed some questions to you.

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  He's a great guy.

• 1:53:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, great guy. What are you geeking out on right now? What do you think is fucking cool?

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  What am I geeking out on right now? Gosh, I'm trying to think of a good answer because there's so many different little things. Like I just figured out that all these other sounds were available, all these other patches were available to me that I never noticed before on the amp settings on my Pro Tools setting for an amp function that I didn't like at first because it replaced one that didn't get upgraded with a new system. And I was just pissed. I was trying to record some music and, and get a sound that I was looking for. And this thing seemed really limited. And then suddenly I found a button that I didn't know existed because I never read the instructions and this whole menu of things that are locked. I have to go unlock them before I have to pay some price, but it's just so tantalizing to go, oh, my God, what sounds are going to be there that I can go some geeking out over something that.

• 1:53:53Speaker 02

  I guess to summarize, when I first started, I would take two VCRs and hook them together and edit my movies that way. And I would use every function, milk it for everything that it could do. And people would be shocked at what I was able to get these machines to do, because I would take any little function that was a positive and I would use it in a way in my movies. Now it's completely the opposite. You're only scratching the surface of every one of these applications. You could go down the wormhole and stay down there for quite a while, just trying to figure out all the things that each one of these programs is capable of. It's mind boggling. And you're never gonna take full advantage of them. It's the complete opposite of how I grew up, where I was milking everything for what it was worth. And now, no matter how deep I go into it, it can do so much

• 1:54:36Speaker 02

  more and it drives you crazy. There's just not enough hours in the day. There's just not enough hours in the day to geek out over things. Stuff with my kids, just, you know, the gaming world. We love playing games together.

• 1:54:45Tim Ferriss?

  Any favorite game to play together?

• 1:54:46Speaker 02

  Right now, we're still kind of playing some of the old games again and again. We're looking forward to, we've been playing actually all the old Halos again, because they grew up. Some of the, a lot of the stuff we do is the nostalgic stuff, because they come over to the house and they want to relive the old days. And they love that some of our favorite old games are now available, like even Mario 64, which they all grew up on. It's now available, you know, better, better quality, HD. Same with all the Halos. We can go back and play all the Halo levels, you know, from one on that they learned on with me. Really clear and crystal and big screen. So that's been fun.

• 1:55:20Tim Ferriss?

  What are filmmakers, do you feel, getting better at? And what are they getting worse at? We can narrow that a little bit. Let's just not say the people who are out there at the prime of their career, but people who are just starting out. What are they getting better at? And what are they getting worse at?

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  What I think, I think is great about what filmmakers are doing today is utilizing just how quickly they utilize new technology, new ways of communication. You know, how you broke in the industry, when I started, so much different than how you do it now. One of the guys from Ecuador came and worked on Dust Till Dawn.

• 1:55:58Speaker 02

  He, uh, he said, yeah, there was no production down there. I read your book and I went and made a little short film and I put it on the internet and within, you know, a day it went viral and the studios were flying me up and I got to make the Evil Dead movies and it was, uh, Fidel Alvarez, the remake. And then I got him to direct one of my episodes and he was like, wow, yeah, I was inspired by that. You just did it with nothing and I was able to go do it in Ecuador. There was no film industry down there and we just did it. And, and I was shocked that I could just put it on the internet and they get noticed by Hollywood. I mean, it's just no, no film festival and they cut, cut all that. It actually just from, from another country, send something in, spreads everywhere, gets them noticed. You know, I've seen a lot

• 1:56:42Speaker 02

  of people do that now where they shoot proofs of concepts of whole things and then they put them out for everyone to see and they can make a deal that way with a studio who goes, this guy knows what he's doing. I mean, just really clever ways. I think that's, that's really great. Um, how's it gotten worse? Gosh, I don't know. Or skills that are getting lost. Oh, skills. Well, I mean, I was lucky in that I got to cut on film. I got to see all the, the limitations of the old system at least. Kids today, they just learn the new system. So they're off and running, but I saw the old system, um, and saw just how much better the new systems were. I mean, I was the only guy cutting digitally on the

• 1:57:22Speaker 02

  Sony lot when I did Desperado. No, no, all the other editors were afraid of it. You know, they were just afraid it was going to replace them. The same with digital photography. I was the first to start shooting digitally. You know, DPs were afraid that was going to be another job. You know, they don't realize it's just another tool. It's not the job. Isn't, isn't the old technology, the technology is not the art form. Right. The manipulation of moving images can happen on a machine or it can happen by cutting film. It's not, it's not the technology that is the art form and people don't realize. I think kids today, it's a good thing is that they know that, you know, they just know, they just accept any new thing, a new tool and they'll use it. They're not a slave to tradition, the way the older generation was that, that held stuff back. Cause you would see people shooting digital cameras way before they shot digital cameras in Hollywood. People

• 1:58:07Speaker 02

  were 10 years ahead of Hollywood, always. It's so slow. That's why I don't live there. That's why we're much more cutting edge in Austin, just because we're not. Have any tradition around us saying, no, you're not supposed to do it that way.

• 1:58:19Tim Ferriss?

  You're not that good.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  We just rethink it. We're just like, why, why, why are we even doing it that way? That doesn't make any sense. This new way makes sense. So I really, um, I think of anything people, uh, what people do wrong is when they don't embrace a new technology early enough. Like in the DPs, you know, directors of photography were wrong not to try to embrace digital photography early enough so they can get in there and help try and define what the look of it would be, how the systems would be built. Now it's too late. Now they're all switching over and complaining about it. But it's too late now because it's been adopted and you weren't anywhere near it. You went stuck your head in the sand. You went and stuck your head in the sand while everybody else was using that and developing it. And now, now you just got stuck with it. You could have developed a whole new way of photographing movies and you went stuck your head in the sand for 10 years.

• 1:59:05Speaker 02

  Makes zero sense. So instead I was the guy telling them and that's why I have a hot dog holder next to it because that was important to me.

• 1:59:14Tim Ferriss?

  What advice, last, last two questions, uh, what advice would you give to your 30 year old self?

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  Well, 30 year old self. See, did I have anything figured out by 30? God, you know, any of the advice that I've been giving my kids, I wish I had heard at 30, 35, even 40, um, 18. I mean, I, um, I always learn new, new techniques, new things, new ways to do things better. And I always try to apply them and I always wish I just knew more back then, being just more self-aware. Um, but then again, sometimes you look back and you go, being naive and not knowing was probably the best gift. Sometimes you know too much, you know, you know, too much and then you stop doing things. It's better not to know, you know, I try to, I always try to be, you know, there's this, that example of, you know, you ask a bunch of little kids who can do anything, who can be the president,

• 2:00:05Speaker 02

  who can write an opera, who can paint, who can be a filmmaker, and they all raise their hand because they don't know. They all just believe they can. You ask the same kids in 10 years and the hands start going down. No life experience. They just start, stop believing. I always try to be that kid who has his hand up in the air. It's like, can you write a score to a movie with a hundred piece orchestra, even though you don't read or write music?

• 2:00:23Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 2:00:23Speaker 02

  I still do it. And you do it and you're like, how the fuck did I do that? Well, because you're being creative. The technical part of that was just 10%. You can fudge that. Some of the best musicians don't know how to read or write music. You can fudge all of that stuff if you know how to be creative. If you keep your hand up, can you do this? Can you do that? Yeah, yeah. Who is it? How do I know I can't until I try it? Okay, maybe I'm not that good at it, but I can still do it and I can probably learn to be better. And if I surround myself by masters, I'll get better a lot faster. So, um, yeah, I guess I would just go back and follow my own good advice. More than anything, sometimes I have a, I think we all inherently know what we're supposed to do. We just don't always do it. So I think, uh, if we were just to open our mouths in a way to go teach somebody,

• 2:01:06Speaker 02

  we would end up giving some very profound advice that we would be writing down going, I need to go make sure I'm doing that.

• 2:01:12Tim Ferriss?

  I remember someone said to me, or I might've read this, you know, wisdom is taking your own advice.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  It is. It totally is. Because sometimes you give advice, but that's, but that's why. Because the advice doesn't really come from you. You know, when you go to open your mouth and you move forward in a positive way to enlighten someone, the enlightenment comes and it's not from you. It's just coming through you. So you need to write that down because it's as much for you as it is for them. That's why I love teaching, because I know I'll learn more teaching than, um, than from my students, because it's not coming from me.

• 2:01:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. The ask, I would like you to, if you could make one ask or request of people listening to this, what would it be?

• 2:01:53Speaker 02

  If I could make one ask.

• 2:01:57Speaker 02

  Well, besides look for the LRA Network and any of the programming that's on there, I would ask that you just try and live as creatively as possible, because that's the, that's the unknown. That's the gift you can bring to the table that could change everything, even if you don't think you're creative. Everyone inherently is creative and there's people who block themselves immediately by saying, oh, well, I'm not creative. And well, of course, you're not going to be creative if that's your belief in who you so far. Apply creativity and you'll see into everything and you'll see you'll just become more creative because you're applying it to everything. Everything is an opportunity to be creative. I'm creative all day. There's nothing I do that doesn't involve creativity. From making a meal to satisfy my kids in a nutritious way. It's creative right there.

• 2:02:40Speaker 02

  I'm going to figure out a rice dish that's not going to be rice. It's going to be tasty, that they're going to crave, that's going to be good for them. That's creativity in itself. And it's nutrition. I mean, you can really apply creativity to everything. Just the games we play when we're stuck at the airport. You're being creative. You know, how you journal things, how you cross-reference, how you present things to them. How you inspire your crew, how you inspire your other people around you, how you inspire yourself. It's all creative. And if you say you're not creative, look how much you're missing out on just because you've told yourself that. So I think creativity is one of the greatest gifts that we're born with that some people don't cultivate, that they don't realize could be applied to literally everything in their life. I found I'm the most fulfilled, happiest, most productive when I'm happy, when I'm creative. And that's when I'm, I've set my best.

• 2:03:25Speaker 02

  So I try to do that 24 hours a day, 24/7. Be creative. Take everything creatively. This is an opportunity to be here, sit down and be creative with you. Be creative in how we presented ideas, how we got these ideas out to the audience. And, and this was a full exercise in creativity. So I'm about to go meet with my goddaughter and go try to be creative and figure out how she can learn some skills she needs to learn and she's a little behind. And you go, this is an opportunity to creatively kind of inspire and do stuff. You know, you constantly are using creativity all the time.

• 2:03:57Tim Ferriss?

  I, I love what you do. People should also check out your Texas barbecue recipe and video instruction. It's fantastic.

• 2:04:06Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, the Sin City breakfast tacos. Did you ever see that? That one's really good.

• 2:04:10Tim Ferriss?

  Breakfast tacos as well. Where you show the, the time on the, on the screen when you're still cutting it's like 4:36 AM. I love what you put out in the world. So everybody stay naive, keep a journal, be creative because whether you, whatever you're doing in your life, you have that opportunity. And where can people find you online, find more about what you're doing?

• 2:04:33Speaker 02

  I'm on Twitter. I'm on at Rodriguez on Twitter. I'm on elreynetwork.com. We're about to start a whole digital arm of that where this segment called The People's Network, and people will be able to send in their own films, short films, ways to participate with the network, become part of the network and create content in a really cool way. Sometimes they come all the way to Trailmaker Studios and we just had three creators there getting to use all the sets, all the actors, all while we were shooting Dusk. And they get so inspired because their list of things that they have access to suddenly jumped by like a thousand. A little bit of a list of what they used to have suddenly jumped and they were able to, it was a cool experiment. We're

• 2:05:15Speaker 02

  going to do that a lot more. And a lot of things, really the digital side of Elray Network, now that we've had the brand, is really going to be where people can participate in ways that they don't get to in a traditional network and that leverage that with, you know, they were in 40 million homes. It's going to be pretty awesome. So we're excited about that. Oh, and next year, I'm going to be doing another $7,000 movie with no crew. And there's other people are going to do it too for that, for that same thing. We'll have an announcement about that later.

• 2:05:42Tim Ferriss?

  All right. Well, I'll, whenever it's ready, I will share that as well. So guys, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. For show notes, links to everything, Elray Network, everything that we discussed in the show, just go to fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:05:59Speaker 02

  I want to add, and you can cut it in there somewhere. I also wanted to thank you for what you do because demystifying the process so that others could jumpstart their lives in ways that they thought, you know, didn't have access to, was something that I just always loved doing. I've done consistently through the book, through my DVD commentary, to my special 10-minute film schools, just constantly doing that. When I saw you doing that in this realm, and in all areas, in so many areas, I always wanted to meet you because I thought there was a very kinship in what you do, which is a real gift that you give people by putting yourself out there and giving them. People would always say, "Why are you giving away all the secrets?" They go, "Well, because you'll come up with more secrets when you give those away." And it's because I would have wanted to know that. You know, me as a student, as a film lover, and someone who felt like I was outside

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  of the industry, not being able to ever get in, would have wanted to know there was a door, or there was a method, or there was something that I, and I would have appreciated that, someone telling me that. So that's why I do it. And I'm sure you're the same way. You just constantly looking for that juice and wanting, "How can I get it?" And then you go and you give that gift to people. So I think that's wonderful what you do. That's why people are here listening.

• 2:07:03Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks, man. It really means a lot. So, well, maybe we'll do round two sometime.

• 2:07:07Speaker 02

  Thanks, Ben.

• 2:07:08Tim Ferriss?

  All right, thanks.

• 2:07:12Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

• 2:07:53Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99 Designs, your one-stop shop for all things graphic design-related. I've used 99 Designs for everything from banner ads to book covers, including sketches and mock-ups that led to The Four Hour Body, which later became number one New York Times, number one Wall Street Journal. And the brainstorming, a lot of it took place with designers from around the world.

• 2:08:35Tim Ferriss?

  And here's how it works. Whether you need a t-shirt, a business card, a website, an app thumbnail, whatever it might be, you submit that project and designers from around the world will send you sketches and mock-ups and designs. You choose your favorite and you have an original that you love or you get your money back. It's that straightforward. And many of you who are listening have already used it and created some amazing things that I'll be sharing in the future. But in the meantime, if you want to see some of my competitions, some of the book covers, as well as get a free $99 upgrade, go to 99designs.com/tim. That's 99designs.com/tim.

• 2:09:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, if you could only use one supplement, what would it be? And my answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. It is your all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The Four Hour Body, did not get paid for that, and I travel with it to avoid getting sick. I take it in the mornings to ensure optimal performance. It just covers all my bases, if I can't get what I need through whole-food meals throughout the rest of the day. And you can get 50, oh my gosh, 50% off, yes, 50% off if you go to athleticgreens.com/tim. That's athleticgreens.com/tim. Check it out. It's tasty, but more important, it will help you not screw up when you're doing your nutritional planning.

• 2:09:57Tim Ferriss?

  For me, it just covers the bases, takes a load off my mind, puts a lot in my body, and check it out, athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 2:10:09Speaker 03

  If you want more of The Tim Ferriss Show, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or go to fourhourblog.com, F-O-U-R-H-O-U-R-B-L-O-G.com, where you'll find an award-winning blog, tons of audio and video interview stories with people like Warren Buffett and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park, the books, plus much, much more. Follow Tim on Twitter, it's twitter.com/TFerriss, that's T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TimFerriss. Until next time, thanks for listening.