Episode 630 - Robert Rodriguez / Jonathan Ames
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fuckadelics this is mark maron this is wtf the podcast thanks for joining me if you're new to it welcome welcome it's nice to have you i'll be uh piping into your head twice a week or however often you want to do it it could be
Marc:uh every day for hours a day if you're just getting started and you're dipping into those archives first i'll tell you who's on the show we have a couple of guests we're going to do a a shorty with uh jonathan ames uh the uh the the famous writer once a memoirist now a novelist and also a showrunner and show creator did uh a board to death series for hbo now he's doing a blunt talk that stars patrick stewart
Marc:Very funny.
Marc:I watched the first couple of episodes and Jonathan Ames has been on the show before and we catch up and we talk a little bit about Blunt Talk, but we also talk a little bit about him shifting from being a memoir guy, very graphic, very is lurid the word, provocative.
Marc:sexually perverse at times, interesting, revealing to being someone who writes fiction for very specific reasons, which I found interesting.
Marc:And you can hear me and Jonathan talk about that in his new show, Blunt Talk.
Marc:Also on the show today...
Marc:Film director, producer, empire runner and manager.
Marc:Robert Rodriguez is here.
Marc:You might know him from El Mariachi, Desperado, from Dusk Till Dawn, Spy Kids, Spy Kids 2, Spy Kids 3.
Marc:You might know him from Sin City, from Grindhouse, Machete, Machete.
Marc:But right now, he does a lot of television, too.
Marc:And he does a lot of producing.
Marc:He's now at the helm of his new TV network, the El Rey Network.
Marc:And they've just created season two of From Dusk Till Dawn, the series.
Marc:And that starts Tuesday, August 25th at 9 p.m.
Marc:on El Rey.
Marc:But Rodriguez is kind of a wizard, an inspiration, a dude who gets shit done.
Marc:Do a nice hour-long chat with him.
Marc:My driveway, I'm doing it.
Marc:Talk about change.
Marc:I've been dealing with this driveway.
Marc:Some of you who listen to me for years know that there's no drainage in the driveway.
Marc:And apparently there's going to be apocalyptic rainstorms in L.A., which it's it's bittersweet because we need it.
Marc:We need it.
Marc:My trees are crying literally on the street.
Marc:You hear like, what's that weird sound?
Marc:It's the sound of trees crying.
Marc:Because and they don't have many tears in them because there's no water.
Marc:Everything is just drying out.
Marc:Finally, I just got a contract over here to do the driveway.
Marc:So now they dug up the entire driveway with the caterpillar.
Marc:Is that what it's called?
Marc:It's just just like there were mounds of concrete and they hauled them away.
Marc:And now my driveway is dirt.
Marc:And as you can imagine, I find that charming and I'm fighting the urge to just leave my dirt driveway dirt.
Marc:That could get kind of messy, but it's rustic.
Marc:It's exciting.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Wrong.
Marc:Going to get the driveway, going to get the drain so the garage isn't threatened and I don't have to rely on a ambiguous hole to drain my water and I don't have to rely on the overflow into my neighbor's yard.
Marc:I'm being proactive, but change is difficult.
Marc:I now have a dirt driveway and I like it.
Marc:I'm going to be on real time with Bill Maher tomorrow night, Friday.
Marc:I'm going to be on the panel.
Marc:No idea what the topics are.
Marc:I don't know what we're going to talk about.
Marc:I'm not big into the politics, but I can usually get up to speed.
Marc:So that should be fun.
Marc:In terms of gigs coming up, I can tell you about them.
Marc:Tonight is Thursday.
Marc:I will be at the Comedy Store doing a short set, a 15-minute set.
Marc:I don't always announce the Comedy Store stuff because they're just short sets.
Marc:I'm just working out.
Marc:But I will be in Dublin, Ireland on September 2nd at Vicar Street.
Marc:I'll be at the South Bank Center in London, England, September 3rd and 4th.
Marc:I will be in Sydney, Australia, October 15th at the State Theater.
Marc:I will be at the Palace Theater in Melbourne, Australia on October 16th and at the Brisbane City Hall in Brisbane, Australia, October 17th.
Marc:OK, I'm telling you that because I'd like you to come if you're in any of those places.
Marc:Look, this Saturday is the premiere of Blunt Talk on Starz, folks.
Marc:Now, if you go way back with what the fuck, then you know that Jonathan Ames is somebody I know.
Marc:We had him on episode 114, which you can now get over at Howl.fm or get the Howl app.
Marc:And before stars became a sponsor, I told Jonathan he could come on for some garage time since he had blunt talk.
Marc:So here it is.
Marc:Me and the great Jonathan Ames, creator of Bored to Death and Blunt Talk and a fantastic comic writer, both novels and memoirs.
Marc:Let's talk to Jonathan Ames.
Marc:Like, yeah, it's been five years since I talked to you in your house in Brooklyn, where you were a writer with one show on the air that did not stay on the air.
Marc:That was a good show.
Marc:What happened to that?
Guest:We had a good run, though.
Guest:We were on three years.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:On cable, and it was interesting and fun and funny.
Guest:Yeah, it was kind of like, well, I don't...
Guest:It was a little bit like a baseball player who made it to the majors for a couple of seasons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hit about 250.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then what happens?
Guest:I mean, you haven't put another book out since, right?
Guest:Well, I last put out a book in 2009.
Guest:I published an e-novella, a thriller.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:Completely non-comedic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think about two years ago called You Were Never Really Here.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I was reading all those Jack Reacher novels.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And also this crime writer, Richard Stark, which was a pseudonym for Donald Westlake.
Guest:So I just wrote this very violent, you know, kind of like you're using a nail driver to write sentences.
Guest:But that was the last bit of prose I published.
Marc:As a writer guy, as a guy that wrote, you know, sort of incredibly self-prodding, experiential, memoir-style books,
Guest:books do you do you journal i mean do you like you're going through this interesting time in your life where success is coming your way in a different avenue in a different venue well yeah i mean i don't write i haven't written autobiographically in a long time you know uh i did so much of that i guess towards the end of the 20th century you know back i don't know when there were
Guest:horses but um and i so over did it and now i'm completely uh freaked out by it i i because i think i used to feel that i was telling the truth of course it was all exaggerated right or i was playing a character yeah
Guest:And now I had to write a piece of nonfiction and I just had to stop.
Guest:I'm like, I'm doing the old shtick.
Guest:It's not truthful.
Guest:And I just can't do nonfiction anymore.
Guest:And I don't write in my journal either because a few years ago, maybe around the time when you last interviewed me, I had blown up my life.
Guest:And I would read my journal.
Guest:I'd be so horrified by my behavior and the way my thoughts were.
Guest:And I just, I was, it was kind of like looking, well, I don't know why I'm immediately going scatological, kind of like looking in the toilet or something.
Guest:So I've stopped keeping a journal.
Guest:Every now and then I write down goals and then hide the goals.
Guest:Someone once told me to do that.
Guest:That's about as close as I can.
Guest:Like a magic trick?
Guest:Yeah, a little magic trick.
Marc:So is it the correct read that you finally became consumed with shame?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And could no longer face, you know, who you were on the page with your personal experiences.
Guest:Well, I think I've always been consumed with shame.
Guest:I mean, it was like consumed and then consumed again.
Guest:We consumed for the public's enjoyment.
Guest:It was like a snake that had eaten a snake that had eaten a snake.
Guest:There's so much shame going back again.
Guest:Before I even was born, I think.
Guest:So I think what it was was that if I did want to write nonfiction, I would actually want to be honest.
Guest:But the things I might say, I wouldn't want to disturb people like my parents.
Guest:So I just stay away from it.
Guest:I'd rather write TV shows or fiction or genre stuff and be completely hidden.
Interesting.
Marc:That's an interesting choice to make after you've exposed so much of yourself.
Marc:And also, I imagine, I don't know your life, but I imagine at the level you're attaining professionally that it might behoove you not to...
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Put that stuff in the world.
Guest:Well, I guess so because – well, the thing is, you know, there is the outer self.
Guest:Now, I don't derive any pleasure from any of what you might – or anyone might consider my success.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm still just as upset as I was at the age of eight when I –
Marc:was crawling on the floor with back spasms really yeah i i really am um i mean why do you think that is because i have not not quite that experience i feel better to have certain um i don't worry about certain things anymore uh so i feel better in that way like you know it's nice to have a few bucks in the bank yeah that's that's
Guest:positive i do like that you know after being broke for the first you know 25 years of adulthood and but that i don't necessarily gain too much pleasure for myself because then i think well i'm going to lose it all but and then but i i have you know actually i don't know if you know this but i have a son and a grandson i was going to ask you about your son because i know that we talked about that reuniting and and and you know that relationship my son is wonderful and and but
Guest:You have a grandchild?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's beautiful.
Guest:And but yeah, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, one shouldn't complain, you know, but it's your brain maybe gets a certain groove like a record.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, an anhedonia groove.
Guest:You don't know how to experience happiness.
Guest:Yeah, but I think every now and then I have moments like a shut-in pulling aside a curtain.
Guest:It's like, oh, there's the world.
Guest:Ah, fuck, the curtain went closed again.
Marc:Well, it must be unavoidable to have some joy when you're with your grandkids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old is the child?
Guest:That's wonderful because then you don't have a sense of self.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Once you can get away from you, then you can experience joy.
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He's 16 months.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He's a little baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's quite spectacular.
Guest:And they live in town?
Guest:No.
Guest:That case?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:oh wait are you doing granddaddy stuff like you go back and you spend time yeah i i i was there when he was born and i got to hold him about an hour after he was born which was incredible did you cry um i don't know that i cried in that moment though i i was uh ecstatic though i bet and and i was glad to be present and heard his first cries he cried yeah yeah yeah
Guest:So you didn't want to compete?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You didn't want to steal the moment?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's mature you.
Guest:You're going to upstage your kid and they're crying.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Well, it's like being a good actor, I guess, giving them their moment.
Marc:Now, the new show is called Blunt Talk.
Marc:I think I talked to Richard about it a bit, Richard Lewis, who was very excited to be playing against type, which I still have a hard time picturing.
Guest:When does it start?
Guest:August 22nd.
Guest:It comes out on the Stars Network.
Guest:For some reason, I want to say Stars backwards as Z-Rats.
Marc:Is Chris Albrecht still over there?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:He's the head guy.
Marc:Now, let's walk through the process.
Marc:So you have Bored to Death on, and then you go back to the drawing board, basically.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Bored to Death gets canceled.
Guest:I sort of... I don't know.
Guest:I wouldn't say I fell apart, but I just...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Suddenly I had work and then I had no work.
Guest:And so I had no work for about a year.
Guest:And then Jerry Stahl, your good friend.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wrote Jerry.
Guest:He and I began to whine back and forth over a series of emails about our lousy careers and all that.
Guest:And he loves to...
Guest:You know, he's great at that.
Guest:And I was trying to top him.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:And then I said, you know, we started talking about agents and all this stuff.
Guest:And I said, I don't know.
Guest:The agency hasn't got me any work.
Guest:And I don't know what's going on.
Guest:I don't know if they even care about me.
Guest:Maybe I should leave.
Guest:Not that I would because I'm very loyal and I don't do anything confrontational.
Guest:And then Jerry said, oh, what's your literary agent's email over there, by the way?
Guest:Or what's his name?
Guest:I say his name.
Guest:Jerry writes back.
Guest:What's his email?
Guest:I'm like, oh, I got to do everything for Jerry.
Guest:So I type in the email, copy, paste, then you're supposed to delete and hit send, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I do copy, paste for Jerry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't delete.
Guest:I hit send.
Guest:My agent gets these email exchange with me and Jerry Stahl where I'm saying they haven't gotten me anything for a year.
Guest:And there's also a lot of suicidal ideation in the email, like all sorts of crap.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then suddenly I'm like, oh, my God, I didn't even have my agent's number in my phone.
Guest:So I quickly look up, you know, the agency in New York, get it.
Guest:I had such an old phone.
Guest:I started hitting it.
Guest:The phone froze.
Guest:I had to take the battery out, put the battery back on.
Guest:By the time I call, he goes, he goes, what's this about not being attentive?
Guest:You know, so that was my literary agent.
Guest:I was like, oh, shit.
Guest:Anyway, he spread the word.
Guest:That, you know, this guy maybe is not happy.
Guest:And so what happened was suddenly they started sending some things my way.
Guest:And I got an email that said, would you like to get on the phone with Seth MacFarlane?
Guest:And he's looking for a writer.
Guest:I said, sure, I'll get on the phone with Seth MacFarlane.
Guest:Very cool.
Guest:What's it about?
Guest:And I said, they need an idea for comedy for Patrick Stewart.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:And you'll talk to him the next day.
Guest:So that night I happened to be channel surfing and I saw Piers Morgan on CNN.
Guest:And his head was kind of looming in front of this blue background.
Guest:I thought, wow, Patrick Stewart would look really cool as a cable news host with his head like something out of Orwell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of like a beautiful pill of a head, you know, with his electric candy behind him.
Guest:So the next day I got on the phone with Seth MacFarlane and he said, you know what I'm looking for?
Guest:I said, yeah, comedy for Patrick Stewart.
Guest:And he said, you know, basically, do you have any ideas?
Guest:I said, what about Patrick Stewart sort of playing a cable news host, you know, and we go behind the scenes kind of like Larry Sanders.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and we sort of live behind the scenes.
Guest:And he said, I love that.
Guest:And so next thing I know, I met with Patrick Stewart a few weeks later, and he very generously read one of my books.
Guest:He put himself through one of your books?
Guest:Yeah, he put himself through.
Guest:An old one?
Guest:An old one from 2004.
Guest:And yeah, he belted himself into a chair and forced himself like the guy in Clockwork Orange to read it.
Guest:And so he was happy to try to work with me, and then I developed it.
Guest:And then I emailed Patrick Stewart, what should we call this guy?
Guest:Because I came up with the first story in a sense, which is...
Guest:You know, your usual beginning of a TV show put the character in a crisis.
Guest:And I said, what should we call this guy?
Guest:And Patrick Stewart wrote back, how about Walter Blunt?
Guest:That was the first role I played in Shakespeare.
Guest:And I used to use it as an alias.
Guest:and and in the the character's role in shakespeare i think it's henry the eighth uh he delivers some news to a king but then is killed right it was like perfect the guy delivers news it's an alias used to use i love the name walter blunt and right in that moment i said we'll call the show blunt talk that you know like o'reilly factor okay so i even like within 30 seconds i'm like i love it perfect walter blunt will call the show blunt talk yeah his in the show within the show will be blunt talk and so that's that was the process
Guest:What's your role here?
Guest:Are you there every day?
Guest:Are you in the room?
Guest:Yeah, I'm the creator, showrunner, executive producer.
Guest:Were you all those things on Bored to Death?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, you were.
Guest:And so with Bored to Death, I'm there for the first shot of the day and the last shot of the day.
Guest:I like to be there all the time.
Guest:I mean, as you know, with your show, it's not like with drama.
Guest:If a scene's not working in comedy, you got to like fix it in the moment.
Guest:It's not like you're just getting information across or something like that.
Guest:If this, you know, and you don't have time to rehearse, you have one table read.
Guest:So I like to be there for every scene.
Guest:You know, sometimes you get shots at the end of the day, which are maybe, you know, not verbal or something and I could leave.
Guest:But yeah, I'm there from the beginning, you know, by 7 a.m.
Guest:home, get home like, you know, 930.
Guest:And then I have all the final edit.
Guest:I spent the last two and a half months in the editing room.
Guest:Yeah, you stole one of my guys.
Guest:I know, stole one of your wonderful writers, Duncan Birmingham.
Guest:Great writer.
Guest:Great writer.
Guest:Duncan backwards is neck nude.
Guest:Neck nude?
Guest:Do you call him neck nude?
Guest:No, I should right now.
Guest:We called him, he played a clown in one of our episodes.
Guest:We did an homage to, I know it sounds fancy, to Peter Sellers' The Party, you know, the Blake Edwards film.
Guest:And I just had all sorts of characters walking around.
Guest:So Duncan played a clown and we called it, the clown I think was called Skunkin or Skunky the Clown because Duncan's dog had gotten sprayed by a skunk and then got into bed with Duncan.
Guest:Yeah, Snacks.
Guest:And we named a character named Snacks.
Guest:Duncan is all over this.
Guest:There's a pornographer in the show named Ronnie Birmingham.
Guest:And then I had a character played by Jason Schwartzman named Duncan.
Guest:Somehow Duncan, who's very sweet and self-effacing, his name and his presence is like all over the show.
Guest:Good, man.
Marc:I'm glad it's working out for him.
Marc:Maybe I'll have to start talking to him again.
Guest:Oh, you should.
Guest:He said to say hello.
Guest:I mean, he holds you in high esteem.
Marc:Now, is it like Larry Sanders in the way that what you see when the camera's on is significantly different character-wise than when the camera's off?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think we try to, you know... I mean, the show... I mean, an obvious reference is Network, you know, a little bit with Howard Beale.
Guest:But, yeah, we get the feeling of, like...
Guest:here's walter blunt on air you know and then even the way it'll look on screen is different and you know we do the graphics below and then you know then there's a break and you know then we you know it's behind the scenes so you're you're having fun in la i mean are you getting out i imagine you are well i i don't know i went through a trauma and a breakdown recently and so how did that manifest itself
Guest:oh well what kind well just i can't i don't want to go into detail but you want to hear a kind of quick beautiful la story i was really despairing yesterday like kind of mad despair details of the breakdown oh i i know but there's other human beings involved but okay so let's say i was screaming i literally was in my house in my underwear yesterday screaming in pain right and
Guest:Physical or?
Guest:No, mental and sorrow.
Guest:And I fell to the kitchen floor.
Guest:And again, I guess I brought my eight-year-old spasming self because I began to spasm on the kitchen floor and I was crying out for help, I guess, very loudly.
Guest:What neighborhood?
Guest:um i guess it's called franklin hills yeah and i'm kind of a little bit high up or something and i was crying out for help and just spasming on the kitchen floor like my inner eight-year-old spasming self who had a bad back and they put me in a corset you know in new jersey back in the 70s yeah i guess from fear or whatever and uh suddenly there's a pounding on my door i'm like oh my god it's the cops
Guest:But it was four neighbors.
Guest:And I went to the door and they said, could you please open up?
Guest:Are you all right?
Guest:I opened up the door and they said, you okay?
Guest:And they sort of asked me what was going on.
Guest:And then one of them turned out to be a social worker.
Guest:And they asked me if I wanted to go for a walk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was like, I mean, I'm kind of agnostic and pantheistic, you know, I believe in many gods with the same amount of confusion or something.
Guest:But so here I was crying out for help and four strangers came to my door.
Guest:It was almost Christian.
Guest:That was like prophets at my door.
Guest:And there was like three races, too.
Guest:There was lots of different races of people outside there.
Guest:And then I went for a walk with these two nice guys.
Guest:They said, why don't you clean yourself up?
Guest:The guy wanted to shake my hand and literally because I've been crying, snot was coming out of my nose.
Guest:And I think there was some snot on my hand, but he's reaching out his hand.
Guest:Anyway, they were very accepting, generous human beings.
Guest:And anyway, they took me for a walk and I'm much better today.
Guest:I think I had some kind of personal primal scream therapy.
Guest:Was that yesterday?
Guest:Yeah, just yesterday.
Guest:Oh, that's sweet.
Guest:Now you know your neighbors.
Guest:Yeah, and they gave me his number and he lives right below.
Guest:Are you going to buy him a nice cake or some wine or something?
Guest:You know, he kept saying, like, let's exercise together or something.
Guest:So I don't know if he's sober or not.
Guest:Cake would be nice.
Guest:Yeah, I got to do something.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I'm going to...
Guest:Anyway, they texted me later and checked on me.
Guest:Oh, that's sweet.
Guest:You built a little emotional security network right in your neighborhood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Someone said, next time you scream like that, you should do it into the pillow.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I lost my mind.
Guest:Eventually, it'll get to the point where they hear it and they're like, no, it's just Jonathan.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I think there was a cleaning lady from next door and she saw me and she's like, she thought like someone was getting knifed in there.
Guest:When she saw it was just a guy in his boxer shorts with snot coming out of his nose, she was like, ah.
Guest:And this just was unprecipitated?
Guest:No, I had been going nuts for about 12 days now.
Guest:I'm much better now.
Guest:And actually coming to talk to you gave me purpose.
Guest:You know, I think having purpose is helpful.
Marc:Well, you know, maybe it's that sort of like the comedown from finishing the work.
Guest:Yeah, finishing the work.
Guest:Realizing you're still just you.
Guest:I know, the horror of that, so...
Guest:Yeah, so it was coming down from work and other factors, but I'm much better today.
Guest:All right, so do you want to stay here for a while, or are you going to be all right?
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:No, thank you.
Guest:That's kind of you to offer.
Guest:No, I'm all right.
Guest:I got this iced coffee, and I'm going to go in my car and be isolated.
Guest:All right, buddy.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:He's an intense guy.
Marc:I like talking to Jonathan Ames.
Marc:I always enjoy it, and I feel like I could talk to him for a long time.
Marc:Now, here's a weird thing that's happening.
Marc:I know you've noticed it happening.
Marc:Is occasionally I get people that I have auditioned for.
Marc:I do a little acting.
Marc:I don't know if you know, I have a show that that's on IFC.
Marc:I guess the third season will be on Netflix eventually.
Marc:But but I do a little acting.
Marc:And I think after the first season of the show, I actually auditioned for a Robert Rodriguez movie.
Marc:And I don't always know if they know me at all when they come in here, when they come to the garage.
Marc:I don't know if they've listened to the show.
Marc:I know now that a lot of them know that Obama was here and that's something.
Marc:But I don't know if they know.
Marc:And I certainly don't know if he knows that I auditioned for his movie.
Marc:But I'll bring it up.
Marc:I'll bring it up.
Marc:I auditioned for Sin City, A Dame to Kill For.
Marc:It's awkward sometimes because I talk to directors and it's hard for me not to go like, you know, come on, put me in your movie.
Marc:But now then I'm just a guy in a garage who hosts a podcast wanting to be in a movie.
Marc:You know, I could be like that.
Marc:Hey, there's that guy.
Marc:Be that guy.
Marc:Hey, was that that guy?
Marc:That was good.
Marc:That was like that guy had a little scene.
Marc:He played.
Marc:He was the cranky guy, the cranky old guy with the mustache.
Marc:He did good.
Marc:He had a little scene.
Marc:Just one of those.
Marc:That's all I'm looking for.
Marc:Again, Robert Rodriguez is here.
Marc:We're going to talk a little bit about the El Rey Network, about season two of From Dusk Till Dawn, the series, which is coming up on August 25th, 9 p.m.
Marc:on El Rey Network and his movies and his process and where he comes from and how the fuck he managed to do all the stuff he does.
Marc:These guys, these empire builders, you know, it's amazing to me.
Marc:And he's done it all on his own.
Marc:He's cut his own path.
Marc:I have two, but my empire is tempered.
Marc:It's not that I can't visualize an empire, but right at the beginning of visualizing it, I start breathing quickly, and my chest tightens.
Marc:So I'll have to settle for slightly panicky empires of the mind and my podcast.
Music
Marc:Yeah, so you're out there in Austin with that.
Marc:I had Richard Linklater in here.
Marc:You guys buddies?
Guest:Yeah, you know what?
Guest:I actually met him after I made a mariachi.
Guest:He called me and said, so we should meet.
Guest:We've never met because people always ask me if I know you and they ask you.
Guest:if you know me and it said yeah no we never met we were just kind of doing our own thing we both kind of hit at the same time yeah and we became friends you know right away and uh had visions of what you know we both wanted to stay in austin and it's like what can we do to build this place up so we can shoot here uh-huh we'll need stages uh-huh maybe when the airport moves we'll try and get those stages you know all that stuff ended up happening
Marc:And you guys were in conversation about that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:A long time before.
Guest:Just visions of dreams.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then we actually built a film community there.
Guest:Kept our movies there.
Guest:And one of the things early on that we talked about, too, is he said, one of us has to get into distribution.
Guest:That's the big thing.
Guest:To be able to distribute your own product.
Guest:That's the key.
Guest:You know, somebody's got to do, like, what the Weinsteins do or something.
Guest:And now I got this television network.
Guest:So I went to him and said, hey, look.
Guest:Remember 20 years ago we were talking about one of us needed to get into distribution?
Guest:I got a distribution channel.
Marc:So now El Rey, you see that as a distribution channel.
Guest:Yeah, because as someone who makes films or television, normally a filmmaker just creates a product and he's got to go to a distributor and make a deal with them so they can put it out.
Guest:What if you had your own pipeline?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What if you had a pipeline to an audience?
Guest:We're at 40 million homes now.
Guest:Who's to deal with?
Guest:Originally, it was a network I got from Comcast.
Guest:They were going to merge with Universal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they weren't going to be allowed to merge unless they gave away some networks to mom and pop type owners.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I put in an idea for the already network.
Guest:As a mom and pop?
Guest:Hispanic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It just would be like owned by, not owned by, you know, a corporation.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had this idea for the El Rey Network, an English language kick-ass, you know, visceral entertainment network, English language, you know, very diverse in front of and behind the camera.
Guest:And we got it.
Guest:And Comcast had to carry us for 10 years.
Guest:Well, with that, I was able to go to other distributors.
Guest:and get them to sign on too.
Guest:And then Univision saw what we were doing and thought, we'll fund what you're doing because it'd be a cool thing to be a part of.
Guest:And they brought us distribution that they already had with DirecTV, Time Warner, so we didn't have to go knock on all those doors.
Guest:And it got us really quickly into a bunch of homes.
Marc:And do you find that through Univision that the Latino audience is responding in a bigger percentage?
Guest:Well, they're only on as financiers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's not.
Guest:They're not like.
Guest:They wanted us to do the content.
Guest:They're right.
Guest:Because, you know, they thought English language, Hispanic skewed, but it's really general entertainment.
Guest:I mean, it's for everybody to watch.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:It's kind of where, you know, they were seeing a good direction to go into, but then they thought, well, who's going to run it?
Guest:So you guys are already doing that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We'd just rather invest in you and see what happens.
Right.
Guest:then to go try we could they could create a network like that tomorrow but who's going to program it who's going to do it and um i think that's why they they um backed us and it's been it's been so fun it's been fantastic coming up with shows to put on because you got you got a network now you got to fill it yeah
Guest:And most new networks don't put new shows on right away.
Guest:You know, AMC had an original show for 20 years.
Guest:Movies or syndicated pieces.
Guest:But I thought, you know, we really needed to kind of come out swinging so people could find us.
Guest:And through the content, people would find us.
Marc:And like the thing I was watching last night, the series from Dusk Till Dawn is on there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I thought, let me do stuff that nobody else could do.
Guest:For Dusk Till Dawn is a title that was very popular as a film.
Guest:You know, people still come up to Quentin and I saying, you know, oh, Dusk Till Dawn, the movie loved that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We controlled the rights to it.
Guest:So nobody could ever, people had wanted to do a show before, but we had it locked down, but we did it for the El Rey network.
Guest:That'd be a cool draw because people will know the name and they'll say from dusk till dawn, where's that again?
Guest:El Rey, what's El Rey?
Guest:And then they would find us.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And also the sensibility that you guys, it seems that the two of you created is something fairly specific.
Marc:And a certain type of audience, a certain type of person who is into those types of movies is compelled by it.
Marc:And they'll go find it.
Marc:And they're very dedicated, loyal people.
Guest:Really dedicated, really loyal.
Guest:They see what else we have on the network and they're like, what?
Guest:You have Kung Fu Thursdays and you have Creature Future Fridays and Brass Knuckle Mondays.
Guest:I mean, it's really these cool franchises that bring people back because all the content on the network is curated.
Guest:It's the only stuff that we genuinely love and have seen.
Marc:Now, was Quinn involved in the TV one?
Guest:Oh, he allowed me to do it, and he's an executive producer, but he just let me go make it because the original script that he had written, it had vampires in Mexico, but the whole thing with the temple and the snake cult, that's just stuff that I added because I wanted to.
Guest:So the TV show, I thought, let me explore more into that area that I was kind of hinting at in the film.
Guest:that whole last shot in the film where it shows the back of the bar being a pyramid yeah temple was something i i invented so it was um actually now i could go in and explore that and that was the pitch to him he said oh yeah go he loved what he didn't even see him in advance he wanted to see him when they aired and he watched every episode and really loved it it's good man propelled us to keep keep going with it it's good nice see don johnson for a few minutes
Guest:You know, I worked with Don.
Guest:I turned Quentin onto Don.
Guest:I worked with Don on Machete.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, you know who the biggest star that I've ever... I've worked with a lot of big stars.
Guest:The biggest star by far was Don Johnson.
Guest:I mean, as far as the crew stopping work, hanging on every word.
Guest:People loved him.
Guest:Talking about Miami Vice episodes or how they did that.
Guest:I mean, he was just like a real man's man.
Guest:Really, people just gravitated towards him.
Guest:And he went, really?
Guest:I go, yeah.
Guest:So he put him in, you know, his next movie with Django.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I thought about him to play that character that was played so brilliantly with Michael Parks in the original film, to continue that character and have him go throughout that whole first season.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He came and, man, we had a blast.
Guest:He's really terrific.
Guest:He's a pro, right?
Guest:Oh, he's a pro.
Guest:And what's great, doing television with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's in that whole first season.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I shot him in the first four days of shooting, the whole season.
Guest:And you shot him in the first episode.
Guest:He shows up in many more episodes, but I shot all his work in four days.
Guest:And he really started us off on the right foot because he told us about the days how they used to shoot Miami Vice and all that.
Marc:So he actually had production.
Guest:He had production skills.
Guest:I mean, in doing Nash Bridges, this is what you got to do.
Guest:You got to figure out how to shoot the dialogue quickly so that you have time for the action.
Guest:And he was right.
Guest:He was right.
Guest:I said, I used to put the camera on a camera car and I would drive fast behind it and get my close up, spin over and get Cheech's close up, get the two shot all in one, knock out seven pages.
Guest:And it's like brilliant, brilliant stuff.
Guest:You know, the guy's really savvy.
Marc:So he taught you stuff?
Marc:Taught us all.
Marc:Schooled everybody.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Great.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:And you're a fan of his shows, of Nash Bridges and Miami Vice?
Marc:I got to guest star on Nash Bridges once.
Guest:Cheech invited me up.
Guest:He said, hey, I need somebody to play a commercial director in this one episode.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I think the episode's called Bombshell.
Guest:I think it was like, that was probably 97, 98.
Guest:I went and I got to, and you know, when you show up on a set, there's never anything going on.
Guest:There's always like a dialogue scene.
Guest:I walk on, I turn on my little video camera.
Guest:I can't believe I'm about to meet Don Johnson.
Guest:And he comes around the corner.
Guest:They call action.
Guest:I got there right on the take.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, hit it.
Guest:And then the bullets start flying.
Guest:It was all in one.
Guest:All in one take with like three cameras.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They blew up the whole place.
Guest:And he's doing the whole Don Johnson.
Guest:I couldn't believe it.
Guest:I was so excited to be able to witness that.
Guest:And what about working with Cheech?
Guest:And Cheech, I've worked with Cheech so much.
Guest:I mean, I put him in Desperado.
Guest:He's like 10 in my movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You gotta always have a Cheech.
Guest:You know what Cheech is very savvy about?
Guest:And I tell us the other actors who get bummed that they don't get to work more in my movies, even if I've worked with them before.
Guest:I said, well, you know, you gotta remind me.
Guest:You gotta be like Cheech.
Guest:You know what Cheech does?
Guest:Cheech just calls me out of the blue.
Guest:He said, what do you got?
Guest:He just goes, how's my part coming?
Guest:i'm like apart and i go oh you know what i'm working on this thing called you know what you would be great as machete's brother you should be danny treo's you know it clicks suddenly he doesn't even know if you're working on everything he just said that's just his opening line when he calls you i had them both in here i had chiji and chon in here and it was crazy because i grew up whizzing those records so i'm sitting here with those two guys just telling stories and i'm like oh my god
Marc:Right?
Guest:The voices are so distinct.
Guest:Well, you know, growing up in San Antonio, Texas, when you would hear these guys talk, especially every Christmas, they would play that one Christmas thing.
Guest:It's like, that's three of my uncles' names right there.
Guest:You know, when you would hear your name in popular culture, it's kind of why I do what I do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:As far as...
Guest:Because it cheeched.
Guest:It really hit me in a completely different way.
Guest:That's why I wanted him in Desperado.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it made you feel like you're a part of the zeitgeist, you know, in a way.
Guest:And it really was an eye opener as far as attracting all kinds of audience through something like that.
Marc:Well, you grew up in San Antonio.
Marc:Because the movies, the way your movies are, the tone of the films and some of that B-movie stuff and the slasher movie stuff.
Marc:I mean, that, and Machete specifically, those were popular with Latino kids, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was a whole mix of things.
Guest:You liked all kinds of stuff.
Guest:When you grew up fifth generation, you liked everything.
Guest:You liked all kinds of movies.
Marc:Because I see kids around here, because this is a Latino neighborhood, is that like wrestling, like you can see kids what they're into.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, on skateboards and they're wearing metal shirts.
Marc:But there is a thing.
Marc:You know, what was the thing?
Marc:I know there's a lot of things, but I mean, we're almost the same age.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, what were you doing like when you're 14 or 15?
Guest:No, it was, you know, I grew up in San Antonio.
Guest:It's very rock and roll town.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's rock.
Guest:It's a rock town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It had that sort of sensibility.
Guest:and it just kind of permeated everything you kind of went uh even how you just lived your life it was kind of a rock and roll mentality yeah yeah i went to make films it was like you know that was the beginning of the rock stars director when quentin came out and the whole independent a new wave began where people were making movies for no money when did you get interested in it though i was doing this since i was 12.
Guest:12 making movies at 12. my dad had one of the early vcrs around on the market had a camera the big camera
Guest:Camera that you have to turn on your TV to see what you've been pointing at.
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:Or even manual iris, manual focus.
Guest:And it only had a 12-foot cable, so you could only film as far as the deck was.
Guest:I'd have to take extension cords and the TV set.
Guest:I mean, it was a whole operation.
Marc:Specifically for... But I'd make kung fu movies in the backyard.
Marc:For family events.
Marc:It was weird.
Marc:Why do you think... What was the logic on those?
Guest:Well, it was like he had it for sales tapes because he sold cookware.
Guest:He would show sales presentations on it.
Guest:oh really so he recorded i took that yeah and used it to make movies what kind of cookware it was like this um really heavy duty like door-to-door oh yeah pots and pans yeah he was able to support 10 kids selling pots and pans 10 kids because you sold it you know by um whatever you sold is what you made so if he needed another set of braces he would go all right that means i gotta sell four sets this week he would go on he would sell it
Guest:And so just about everyone in my family ended up being an entrepreneur because that was the only way you'd ever make the money that you would need to survive is if you could just work as much as you could to make whatever you needed.
Guest:There are 10 kids.
Guest:10 kids.
Guest:Third oldest.
Marc:Third oldest?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all of my early movies that I made in the backyard with that VCR,
Guest:starred my siblings because they were all younger and they were all just sitting around watching TV anyway.
Guest:And they were all sort of precursors to Spy Kids.
Guest:They were like little action comedies with kids doing the action.
Guest:So you didn't expect any great performance.
Guest:So if they acted even half decent, it seemed amazing.
Guest:And we'd win awards all the time.
Guest:And one of them is online.
Guest:It's called Bedhead.
Guest:that was the movie i made just before mariachi that made me realize it was an eight minute film cost me 800 bucks shot on film i was cutting in the camera and i thought god that won all these awards it's crazy i bet if i multiply that times 10 i could probably make an 80 minute movie for eight thousand dollars if i shot it the same way no crew what do you mean you edit in the camera you just i would just i wouldn't shoot a lot of footage because it was
Marc:So you'd lay it out narratively.
Guest:I shot it, pre-shot it on video, cut it, and then I would just go get the shots I would need.
Guest:So I would say, okay, action.
Guest:They would start moving, then I would start filming, stop filming, then call cut, so that I wouldn't shoot beyond the takes that I needed.
Marc:You shot it all on video first, so you knew exactly how it fit together.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that something you brought to El Mariachi as well?
Guest:I didn't pre-shoot it on video, but that really helped that exercise, seeing how little I actually used.
Guest:made me preserve even more the film yeah nobody cares now because now you shoot digital you just let it run and run i'm like the opposite now you just let it run because you want to capture performance but back then that was your biggest expense yeah you had to to make a movie like that for that little you had to shoot almost like a you know a one-to-one ratio 1.5 to one ratio what'd you shoot it on 16 16 millimeter a little aries 16s
Marc:Because I remember when that came out, it was like a monumental.
Marc:It was like, this guy did this for nothing.
Guest:Yeah, it was one of those things where I made it.
Guest:The reason it's even in Spanish, and it was for a Spanish home video market.
Guest:I didn't want anybody to see it.
Guest:It was really a practice film.
Guest:Because my short films were winning enough awards that I thought...
Guest:wow someone's gonna scout a festival yeah see my short film and hire me to make a feature i don't know how to make a feature i've spent the past 10 years making short films right i gotta go practice but you you were that you were career aware enough to know that that was gonna happen that was gonna happen so i needed to get that practice till in a feature so i thought let me go make one in spanish for the spanish video market no one will see it no one will see it how many robert rodriguez's are there
Guest:You know, my friends later, I can tell them, Hey, they like foreign films.
Guest:I made a foreign film.
Guest:It's over there in the Spanish section.
Guest:So I thought I'm going to go make a couple of these for no money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I turn around, if I make it for $8,000 or $5,000, turn around and sell it for 20.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As a college kid, that was amazing.
Guest:Who are you working with?
Guest:Film school.
Guest:It was just me and the guy who was in it.
Guest:It was just my whole brainstorm.
Guest:I had a really solid plan.
Guest:Make three of these things like a dollar trilogy.
Yeah.
Guest:And then sell them, make the money, invest it in the next one and the next one to get my skills done and be the whole crew.
Guest:So I would learn camera, sound, editing, everything all in one.
Guest:It's like a film school that you get paid for.
Guest:That was my brainstorm.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's funny because you still think like that.
Guest:I still think that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I would cut together the best parts and show that as a demo reel, but then take the money and make a real independent American English language first film.
Guest:That was the plan.
Guest:That was my plan.
Guest:I said, I'm going to get some practice films out of the way because it's been working good in the short film reel.
Guest:First film goes out, Columbia Pictures gets it as a demo of my work from my agent, sent it to him.
Guest:And they asked...
Guest:This is great.
Guest:What do you want to do?
Guest:What stories do you have?
Guest:I didn't have any stories.
Guest:I thought I had another five years to think that through.
Guest:And I panicked and said, well, I haven't really thought of anything yet.
Guest:This all kind of happened very fast.
Guest:I was only 22.
Guest:I said, well, you like Mariachi.
Guest:How about we just remake that with like Antonio Banderas or something in the lead?
Guest:And they said, okay, okay, well, let's test it first.
Guest:We want to show it to an audience because the ending might be a downer with a girl dying and all that.
Guest:So we want to just check that out.
Guest:All right, so they screened it, and it played great.
Guest:They played it to a mostly Latin crowd.
Guest:We went nuts for it.
Guest:And they said, we're going to take this to the film festivals.
Marc:Isn't it interesting, though, that they could handle the ending?
Guest:Yeah, they loved it.
Guest:They thought there was nothing wrong.
Guest:It fit the story.
Guest:So I thought, I told them, don't.
Guest:show this movie i can do much better i mean the only reason it was that inexpensive because i thought no one was going to say i had to shoot because look if your biggest cost is film if you shoot even one more take of everything just in case yeah you doubled your budget right so i only shot one take one take one take thinking okay i'll go back to texas i'll edit it
Guest:The stuff that really didn't come out because it was out of focus, I'll come back and just shoot those pieces.
Guest:It ended up never coming back and fixing it.
Guest:It's like, this is the first one.
Guest:I'm just going to sell it.
Guest:See how much I can sell it for.
Guest:And then it went off.
Guest:And I told them, don't show this movie, please.
Guest:Give me $2,000.
Guest:I'll reshoot half of it.
Guest:Just knowing people was going to watch it, I would probably do a million things different.
Guest:i would have spent more for one and they said no no you don't know what you have it's very special and they took it to tell your ride play tell your ride took a toronto and they said um scout from you know the head of sundance came and said don't show it any more festivals and you can bring it and put it in competition at sundance one sundance right and and i was floored it was the movie i didn't want people to see but then i realized what it was that it was made as pure as a film could be i mean no one makes a film
Guest:with the intention of not showing it to anybody.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, look at the title.
Guest:Even the action market that I was selling it to.
Guest:If you went to the action video section of the Spanish section there, you wouldn't rent a movie called The Guitar Player.
Guest:That promises no action at all.
Guest:I just did that as a joke.
Guest:I thought, I'm going to just call it Mariachi.
Guest:And if someone happens to get it,
Guest:they're going to be blown away that it's got action in it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that it's actually pretty cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's how it started.
Guest:And then I realized when I won at Sundance, what I'd said at the podium when I got the award was, you're going to get a lot more entries than this.
Guest:Because when people hear that this is the one that won, we made with no crew, no money, everyone was going to pick up a camera and go start shooting.
Guest:And they've been flooded with entries since.
Guest:That was like really the start of that independent wave of the 90s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where people could then just go and do it themselves.
Guest:Well, when you were growing, but had you gone to film school at all?
Guest:I had been making movies since I was 12 in that manner.
Guest:And when I tried to get into the film school, I made that first short film Bedhead, the one with the wide camera in film one.
Guest:It was the first film class.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that summer I went and made mariachi.
Guest:So I never finished school.
Guest:I was out of there before I learned it.
Guest:And what they would teach is how to do it the traditional way that you would do in Hollywood.
Guest:But what I was applying was something that I created myself
Guest:born out of having started on video.
Guest:Because when you're on video, you don't need a crew.
Guest:It's got automatic exposure.
Guest:It's got automatic sound.
Guest:You don't need a sound guy.
Guest:And I adopted that technique to shooting with a film camera, and that's how I got El Mariachi.
Marc:But when you were a kid, I mean, what was, like, because now you have a vision, you have a style.
Marc:But when you were starting out, when El Mariachi, who were your primary influences?
Marc:Which films were blowing your mind when you were a kid?
Marc:You know, what was coming in, you know, tonally, that was like, what the fuck?
Guest:My mom used to take, because there was so many of us, used to take us to the revival theater.
Guest:We had a revival theater near us where they played double features, triple features, old classics that she grew up with.
Guest:And I remember seeing a Hitchcock double feature once that blew my mind.
Guest:I was like nine.
Guest:Within three years, I was making movies.
Guest:I started thinking visually.
Guest:Which movie?
Guest:It was Spellbound and Notorious.
Guest:The Salvador Dali sequence in Spellbound, I thought I dreamt it.
Guest:It just really got into my head.
Guest:It was so cinematic and so well-crafted.
Guest:You could tell it was intentionally put together more than anything else I had seen.
Guest:And then I got off on things like, you know, Sam Raimi movies, John Carpenter movies, guys that that came from the independent world where they were making genre films and creating their own worlds.
Guest:But you like string budgets and doing multiple jobs that looked fun.
Marc:You like you like suspense and horror.
Guest:Yeah, I like to spend horror, action, and comedy.
Guest:I like comedy.
Guest:I started as a cartoonist, so I would put a lot of that.
Guest:That's why all the movies are really linked by fantasy and humor.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're all kind of just funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I can't take it that seriously because I come from that comedic background.
Marc:El Mariachi was a little intense, though, at the end, wasn't it?
Guest:Yeah, it's got jokes all the way through it.
Guest:We just watched it recently for the 20th anniversary of it, and it was funny to see it again on the big screen with a full house, 1,500 people.
Guest:and um yeah the first few shots come up and i'm like yeah this looks like a movie made for seven thousand dollars and then about two minutes into it i'm starting to sweat going oh my god how the hell did we make this thing it's i i don't know how just willpower i mean it's like nothing it's held together with scotch tape but story just wants to kind of happen right and it propels you along and it's funny it's funny and everyone's kind of comedic yeah
Guest:And I think it's because you're throwing it away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I didn't think anyone would see it.
Guest:You kind of were free to just do what jazzed you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You were learning.
Guest:You were just learning.
Guest:And you're in it.
Guest:And so you throw it away and it ends up being one of your best works because you're not putting anything precious about it.
Guest:I remember we took it to Telluride.
Guest:And because it was subtitled and it was in Spanish, I think they added more to its meaning than intended.
Guest:And you see some of the older audience come out going, oh, it was like an opera.
Guest:It's like a Grindhouse film in Spanish.
Guest:But hey, because of the Telluride, they kind of saw it with those eyes.
Guest:It really elevated the whole thing.
Marc:Everyone's going to come to it with their own thing, you know?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So how did you get the money to make that, though?
Guest:That one was famously made for $7,000.
Guest:And people would think that's so inexpensive.
Guest:And it was like, when you're a college kid, nobody's got that kind of money.
Guest:I already had two jobs paying barely for rent and tuition from a huge family.
Guest:I'm not going to get borrowing any money from any family members too soon.
Guest:you have to like figure out a score you had to do and that there was a it was ut austin it was the biggest university in the country at the time there was a place called pharmaco yeah that would you could go sell your body to science for the weekend because they knew they needed college kids always need money yeah and you go check into there for the weekend and then you turn into a pin cushion and you get 500 bucks right they test all the latest pharmaceuticals that are going to come out it's like a fourth stage it's not like they're mixing a couple things up
Guest:given a test this is like in fact the drug that i went in to test ended up being lipitor oh yeah so it was it was called x5 321 whatever yeah so you had great cholesterol levels well what's great is that you're locked in there for a month yeah they feed you a really high cholesterol diet so you had bacon and you ate really well and you're stuck in there yeah so you have to you know you have to shit it in a certain hour you have to pee at a certain hour you have to do everything they say but
Guest:There's only one blood draw a day, so it wasn't that painful.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I could write the whole time.
Guest:I would just get on a night schedule and write.
Guest:I wrote the script while I was in there.
Guest:I met the bad guy who played the character of Moko.
Guest:He was in there saying, you know what?
Guest:You look kind of like Rudger Hauer in a mix of James Spade and Rudger Hauer.
Guest:People will think I hired that guy, but I can hire you to be the bad guy.
Guest:And we all had dreams of what we're going to do with our money when we got out.
Guest:Ours was, you know, we're going to go make this little Mexican action picture.
Guest:And I made $3,000 that first visit, you know, while I wrote the script.
Guest:And then my star of the film sold a piece of land and he put in the rest.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:And we went and shot it.
Guest:Carlos Gallardo, the original Mariachi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we went and shot it.
Guest:Are you guys still buddies?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, very much.
Guest:And I can't believe, you know, how far that thing went.
Guest:i i imagine that being 22 and being offered this opportunity like holy fuck now all of a sudden there's millions of dollars involved and i mean how did you like make the adjustment it was um it helped i did a little movie for showtime between that that gave salma her first job because they didn't think she was right for the movie because she had never worked before yeah in english
Guest:And I thought, I'm going to make her a calling card.
Guest:I did a little movie for Showtime.
Guest:It was only like a 13-day shoot called Road Racers.
Guest:And it's a great little movie, greaser movie.
Guest:You can get it on Netflix now.
Guest:It was really a cable movie.
Guest:But I shot it like a feature.
Guest:I really wanted to test out a 35-millimeter camera shooting.
Guest:You've never done it before.
Guest:I've never done it before with a crew.
Guest:I didn't even know what they did.
Guest:I didn't know what the crew even did.
Guest:This is a gaffer.
Guest:I remember when I put the camera on my shoulder and then a guy comes over and starts focusing for you.
Guest:I go, you mean you focused for the guy in the camera?
Guest:Oh my God, this is easy.
Guest:When I was doing mariachi, I was trying to focus through this thing and operate at the same time.
Guest:It's impossible.
Guest:Oh, this isn't so bad.
Guest:You have people to help you with everything.
Guest:So yeah, I shot that and then I went and did Desperado and it was really, I was just hell bent on and showing now what I could do with the medium.
Guest:and shown to myself because I hadn't really done something purposely for an audience to see.
Guest:And so I loved John Woo action movies, but he shoots those for 200 days.
Guest:We had like a 33-day schedule on Desperado, so I had to shoot really, really fast.
Guest:And it was just exhilarating.
Guest:When you shoot fast and you don't have them...
Guest:much money was the lowest budget studio movie for sure yeah it was only a few million dollars um and which one went really far and because i went to that same border town that i'd shot the original mariachi so i went further down there but really only got us about 30 34 days or something and um and it made money right it was about yeah it's one of their whenever they would have a new medium come out whether it be dvd or blu-ray yeah desperado's the first time they put out because that audience early adoptive audience is going to get that movie when did you meet uh quentin
Guest:I met him during the El Mariachi phase.
Guest:We're both on the film festival circuit at the same time.
Guest:Because he was Pulp Fiction?
Guest:No, because he was with Reservoir Dogs.
Guest:Yeah, Reservoir Dogs.
Guest:And we were having to do a lot of panels together defending our movies because of the violence in the movie in the 90s, even though it was only 92.
Guest:I don't know what it's called.
Guest:The panels, the discussions, that.
Guest:But both our movies had guys dressed in black and they were violent and they were action films.
Guest:You were taking a task for that?
Guest:I was just so they had something to talk about.
Guest:We do a panel together and our movies with screen and their movies were popular there at the festivals.
Guest:And I met him on some of those panels and we became fast friends.
Guest:And he was like, I'm writing a script that you're really going to dig.
Guest:It's called Pulp Fiction.
Guest:And I went back to the Columbia Pictures lot to go work on Desperado.
Guest:And he had an office next to me.
Guest:Originally, he was making Pulp Fiction for TriStar.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because Danny DeVito had a deal there.
Guest:Danny was a producer on it.
Guest:So we ended up writing together.
Guest:So he would come in and read and act out sequences from Pulp Fiction.
Guest:I would come show him all my storyboards for Desperado.
Guest:And when he turned in the script, they turned it down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were like, no, it's too weird.
Guest:Eight million dollars.
Guest:Don't get it.
Guest:It's too long.
Guest:We'll go do the Pauly Shore movie instead.
Guest:And he went to Miramax.
Guest:It had just been bought by Disney.
Guest:And so he made Pulp Fiction the way he wanted.
Guest:And it was, you know, awesome.
Marc:And both of you guys have been able to maintain your sort of control and auteurship.
Guest:What's great about that place is that they were just starting as a studio.
Guest:And they'd been around for a while, Miramax, but they didn't have really any money until they got bought by Disney.
Guest:So now suddenly they had the backing of Disney, but the freedom to do whatever they wanted.
Guest:Quentin was first with Pulp Fiction.
Guest:I came joined quickly after to do from Dusk Till Dawn.
Guest:And I stayed there and they would adapt for us.
Guest:There was a horror genre arm called Dimension that I would do my movies for with Bob Weinstein.
Guest:But if I said, you know what?
Guest:These kids films that I made always won awards.
Guest:I want to do one called Spy Kids.
Guest:Do you think you could put that through your dimension?
Guest:I was like, sure, why not?
Guest:We wouldn't make even a Spy Kids movie there.
Guest:There was like no rules.
Guest:It was a perfect...
Marc:combination distributor and they must have loved you though i mean for them it was i don't have a sense of the wine scenes i don't live in the film world but you know they're sort of mythic figures but it seems to me that uh if you're making money if you're making the money they're like the thing whatever you want to do buddy yeah we're since we were the first ones there and then to entice us there we were given
Guest:you know final cut and we had all kinds of freedom to know a filmmaker really had after that which is where the problems for both any filmmaker usually complains it's because they don't have final say on their movies but we did yeah so we got to kind of do whatever we wanted there it was a great place to work and was the the impulse to do spy kids you like kids i guess
Guest:I just grew up that way.
Guest:I mean, there's 10 of us, and then I had five.
Guest:I didn't have kids at the time when I wrote it, but by the time I was making it, I had three already.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were in there as stunt kids.
Guest:Because when you're making an action film with kids, they don't really have stunt kids.
Guest:They used to use, you know, like little people.
Guest:So it was either my stunt coordinator and me.
Guest:We both had kids.
Guest:We put our kids in there, and they would get banged around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was never no backlash on that.
Guest:No backlash.
Guest:They're not going to complain.
Guest:It's like, hey, this is a family business.
Guest:You know, if we had a restaurant, you'd be pushing the broom and taking the orders.
Guest:But, you know, it's a film business, so you got to go take a hit for the team.
Marc:So you were brought up pretty Catholic?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Very Catholic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mexican family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So definitely it's about as many kids as God gives you.
Guest:That's how many you should have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You never questioned it.
Guest:I never thought it was that many kids because you knew them all by their first name.
Guest:So people would come over.
Guest:I had a friend who is an only child and he came in and he literally said, how can you stand the noise?
Guest:and i was like what noise i listened with his ears for a few minutes and i was yeah i guess it is pretty noisy here you totally block it out it's just how it's like oh my god this must be so loud to this guy yeah that's that's just how the house sounds is you didn't know any different so like you must have like dozens of nieces and nephews at this there's so many there's so many of us and you know them all they've all got great personalities very distinct
Guest:You seem to be sort of fascinated at the fact that you know your siblings.
Guest:You would think you would lose track after a while, and you don't.
Guest:There's so many, and you know them all.
Guest:They've made themselves very distinct.
Guest:Are any of your siblings in show business?
Guest:My oldest sister, Angela, went to New York to be an actress.
Guest:She actually is in Desperado and a couple of my things.
Guest:And then I have a younger brother and a younger sister who write, also write and do cinematography.
Guest:They all kind of, man, they're musicians.
Guest:Everyone kind of is in the creative arts somehow.
Guest:Even if they're a pharmacist or something, they have an art side to them.
Marc:Are they all still in Texas?
Guest:Yeah, most of them.
Guest:Really?
Guest:My sister's still in New York, but the rest are in Texas.
Marc:What is exactly the grindhouse genre?
Marc:I mean, what are the movies of that genre that define it, the older ones, when you say a grindhouse movie?
Guest:Well, grindhouse, man, it was a name for a theater that would just grind the movies out.
Guest:They would have double and triple features.
Marc:So like the one you went to when you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah, when you'd seen a kid, the prints are damaged, and it's like that same print's been traveling the country.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And they didn't make very many of them, the prints.
Guest:Were they primarily B-movies?
Guest:Some were B-movies, yeah.
Guest:Some were B-movies or genre films and lurid subject matter a lot of times because that's the only way to attract an audience with such a low budget.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But a lot of times, too, they'd be very timely.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, like, if something was happening in the country, they'd go make a movie about it right away and exploit it.
Guest:Like Corman.
Guest:Exploitation would come from.
Marc:Was it Corman types?
Guest:Corman types, New World Pictures.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:you know a number of a lot of horror movies and riffs on other movies that were popular yeah yeah that's why when i did machete it was like the first mexploitation movie i think i even called mariachi that i would call it mexploitation um but when quentin and i quentin would show me a bunch of movies in his theater he had a you know a home theater and and even before he had a theater he would string up
Guest:Movies like Burt Reynolds and white lightning.
Guest:Yeah, we check out these movies and it was such a fun experience sitting there Hearing him talk about them put them together He would put trailers in between them and show me like a double feature Sometimes we'd watch a triple feature of some movie that I had never seen before Yeah onto and his prints were damaged and that became part of the patina of the film sure I remember one time he showed me an amazing print I went home cuz I said I think I have that blu-ray and
Guest:I went home and put it on, and it was so clean.
Guest:I was like, oh, it took away from the experience.
Guest:What movie?
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:I think it was The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:His print was so damaged, it added a patina to it that it was the best screening I'd ever had of it.
Guest:And I'd seen it before.
Guest:I went back and watched it thinking, I don't like Quentin's print.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I want to get a copy of his print.
Guest:Because it's washed out from age and beat up.
Guest:And that's when I came up with the idea, like, we should do a double feature.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like two short features with trailers and fake trailers in between, and we'll mash it up.
Guest:and grind it up so it looks like one of those because you know theater going experiences are going down we got to do this one last stab at a theatrical experience where you can only see in the theater yeah and he went oh we got to collect right now yeah like right now and it works right we put it together and it was so funny it got great reviews yeah some most people didn't see it in the theater yeah because it would just seem like too long of a night in the movies
Guest:which is uh but it was uh one of our favorite failures because it just uh people to this day still really love you know that film and it was a great experience and what did you take from those like from seeing those movies because you know they do inform your tone you know in pacing some of some of the the style of those movies what is it specifically about those economical they're economical in every sense and that they don't have very much money they gotta get to the point
Guest:it's an economy of of process and story yeah so the story just comes at you really quickly right right and it's got to grab you by the nuts because it doesn't have time to sit around they don't just don't have the money for it right so that immediacy and urgency that you would get from that um it's a rush it's the rush it's the same as if you know we got to record this band with just these four tracks and we got to do it now as opposed to let's go spend two months in the in the recording studio you know one's going to have a life to it and the other one's going to feel a little
Guest:sedated but when you guys shot grindhouse you had a little more money and time than that didn't you we had more money and time than the guys that originally did it but we pushed i mean i pushed myself to go as fast as possible because um i just learned that from the early films yeah when you have less time and less money you're forced to be more creative and that's the thing someone's going to come up to you constantly and says i love in the movie when this happens yeah and it's like oh that's because
Guest:But the flight had blown out and we had to rig this other thing.
Guest:And that's always the thing that they're attracted to, the mistakes.
Guest:So you want to set it up in a way where you're constantly making mistakes in a good way.
Guest:Because there's an authenticity to that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So how did your relationship with Danny Trejo unfold?
Marc:I worked with him.
Marc:He was on my TV show.
Marc:Dude, it was hilarious.
Marc:We had a lot of dialogue.
Marc:And we had cue cards everywhere so he could wrangle it.
Marc:And at some point we're sitting in a car and there's literally cue cards on the dashboard.
Marc:And he goes, there's so many words, man.
Marc:They hire me for my face.
Marc:There's more words in all five years of movies I've done.
Guest:Guy's hilarious.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He called me from Dallas one time.
Guest:He said, hey, I'm working on a movie here with Mickey Rourke.
Guest:And I was like, ah, cool.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Man, I work.
Guest:He doesn't know what movie's on.
Guest:He goes where they tell him.
Guest:He shows up in everything.
Guest:He's in over 200 movies.
Guest:But even his mom would call him Machete.
Guest:That became his definitive character.
Guest:And when I met him on Desperado,
Guest:He walked in.
Guest:I was looking for a guy that would be this silent killer with his knives that would spin in his hand and throw.
Guest:It was a very visual idea I had.
Guest:And I saw his photo.
Guest:Ooh, this guy looks cool.
Guest:He walks in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just handed him the knife.
Guest:He got the part without having to say anything.
Guest:I said, here, start practicing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he walked back out.
Guest:I said, that's the guy.
Guest:I could face on that guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he came down.
Guest:And then you meet what a cool guy, sweet guy he is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:For sure, I'm not going to give him any dialogue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He'll open his mouth and he'll spoil it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He looks so menacing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No words.
Guest:A sweet, deep dude.
Guest:Hey, put me in, coach, put me in, coach, give me a line, coach.
Guest:No, no, no, no, Danny, don't talk.
Guest:I finally let him talk in Dusk Till Dawn, because it was funny to hear him talking, you see what a sweet guy he is.
Guest:But even on the set of Desperado, what was interesting is Antonio was the star of the film, but he was from European films.
Guest:So Mexican crowd, they didn't know who he was.
Guest:So they see a camera.
Guest:on the street, and two actors in costume, they all gravitated to Danny Trejo.
Guest:They thought, this guy must be the star.
Guest:There's cameras.
Guest:It's got to be this guy.
Guest:He had a star quality back then that I took note of, and I pulled him aside, and I said, I've got a character I'm working on called Machete.
Guest:This was in 1994.
Guest:And I want you to play him someday.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was like 20 years in advance.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I kept putting him in movie after movie.
Guest:Where'd you meet him?
Guest:He's in the 10 or 11 movies.
Guest:You just met him?
Guest:He's in casting for Desperado.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Because we shot around here and man- Oh no, you can't walk down the street with him.
Marc:Yeah, people would come out of windows.
Marc:Machete!
Guest:And they call him Machete.
Guest:He's been in over 200 movies, but he'll go from now on, he's Machete.
Guest:Well, he loves it.
Guest:Oh, he loves it.
Guest:So that's how definitive that character was for him, and that he was the lead and the star.
Guest:When I met him, he had just worked in Heat, where De Niro puts a bullet in his head.
Guest:He's one of his guys.
Guest:By the time we finish with him, he's a machete.
Guest:De Niro's his co-star.
Guest:So it's really cool to see his evolution as an actor, as a star, as a personality, as an iconic image.
Marc:Well, what do you think, like, you know, I'm not harping on this, but it seems to me that, like,
Guest:in like in in there is a different audience in the latino community they they appeal to him differently right in a way you know it's almost like a superhero it's like a latino superhero totally that was the idea is i wanted to see a mexican superhero i wanted to see like a james bond but he was mexican right i wanted to people to when i would walk out of a john woo movie you know in college sure i'd come out i would say i want to be the chinese guy
Guest:yeah had nothing to do with race right but this is a heroic killer right character yeah this guy's awesome i want to be this guy i want to model myself after this person so i wanted to do that for hispanic audiences give them heroes like the spy kids or machete as funny as that danny's actually in spy kids as machete before we did machete he's called uncle machete so he's in this weird double world where he's in a kid-friendly film as machete and then he's in the r-rated machete world
Guest:There's just not enough machete to go around.
Guest:Well, you've created this whole universe.
Guest:A whole universe that cross-pollinates.
Guest:It was really exciting just to see him step into that and put him in movie after movie to build up sort of his recognizability in these films so that we could finally get around.
Guest:and it was helping happen in the most organic way when we did grindhouse we wanted to do those fake trailers yeah i thought well you know let's do a fake trailer for that movie we always talked about since desperado and never did let's do at least get it out of our system let's do a machete trailer yeah that was amazing awesome yeah shot the trailer yeah and people loved it so much they would chase us down all the time danny too like when's that movie coming out
Guest:So five years later, we went and made a movie.
Guest:And I used every shot that I had in that trailer.
Guest:I worked it in somehow.
Guest:Because I just made that part of the creative process.
Guest:I'm going to force myself to figure out how to reverse engineer this movie and utilize every shot of that thing.
Marc:and and and that is well that's that's hilarious so you made good on it you know like it was just the trailer was the thing but then when he had to make the movie you're like you got to honor the trailer you got out of the trailer yes how bizarre is that yeah and how did uh when with sin city you know i actually um i know i'm i know make it about me sometimes but i i auditioned for the second yeah which but i was trying to remember which part you were gonna play the the rich guy
Guest:That was, we ended up using, you were actually a really terrific actor for that role.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't feel too hurt.
Guest:Yeah, it wasn't too bad.
Guest:You've got to find something.
Guest:It wouldn't have been the right fit for you.
Guest:It wouldn't have taken advantage of what you can do, the way I would like to do with somebody if I bring him in.
Marc:So what was the relationship with Miller on those things?
Marc:What made you make those movies?
Yeah.
Guest:I was a huge fan of his book Sin City.
Guest:I would collect it since it came out in 92.
Guest:So I was collecting it for 10 years straight.
Guest:And it was one of those that I would go into the comic book store and I would look for a couple things and I would look for a new Sin City.
Guest:There wouldn't be one.
Guest:I would buy a collection.
Guest:I'd go home and go, oh, I've already got three copies of this.
Guest:And I never put together that I should make a film of it because you'd have to do it visually like the book, which was impossible.
Right.
Guest:But then in 2003, I did Spy Kids 3D, which is the first big green screen movie.
Guest:And I looked at the books again.
Guest:I thought, oh my God, I know how to do this now.
Guest:If I do it on a green screen, I can make it look like the book.
Guest:So I did a little test.
Guest:It looked crazy.
Guest:So I took it to Frank Miller, met him, showed it to him, and we're shooting it within three months.
Guest:It was the fastest any movie had ever come together.
Guest:Cause his books, he had already drawn them.
Guest:He'd already written them.
Guest:So I just shot out of the book.
Marc:Just honor the storyboard.
Guest:I just wanted to see this book's move.
Guest:I knew him so well.
Guest:I thought, man, this is, it's visual storytelling in a way that no one tells in movies, but it's being done on paper.
Guest:Why don't we just make the paper move?
Guest:If we do that, I think we'll have something that's really unique.
Guest:It should still work.
Guest:Instead of adapting it to a movie, let's take the movies and technology and adapt it to his book.
Guest:So it was a, it was fun.
Guest:I made him come direct with me.
Marc:Because he knew it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was like the first that it actually worked in the way that like, because you remember Dick Tracy, you know, with Warren Beatty, that they tried to do it with colors and with sets and with, you know, sort of prosthetics, but it still didn't feel like the comic.
Guest:I mean, it's a different comic.
Guest:It's a different kind of comic.
Guest:This one is so distinct in its visual style, even on paper.
Guest:In black and white.
Guest:That when you saw it, it just didn't look like film.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because when you would look even at the comic book, it didn't even look like a comic book.
Guest:It looked like something else completely.
Guest:It made you realize how little information the brain needs to recognize a human face or an object.
Guest:It was stripped down to its bare minimum.
Marc:Well, that's the amazing thing about graphic novels is like you don't know why it's a magic that they're so compelling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because if you've got the brain for locking into them, you don't even think about it, but you're way in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for me, the whole thing was because I started as a cartoonist.
Guest:I thought I don't see the difference.
Guest:I really think visual storytelling is the same whatever medium you're in.
Guest:So traditionally Hollywood would take that book and go, oh, this is an amazing book.
Guest:Now let's go turn it into a movie.
Guest:Let's strip it all down.
Guest:Let's put it into the norm of what a film would be like instead of embracing it for what it was.
Guest:So that's what the flip was about.
Guest:And it was actors came aboard.
Guest:They wanted to be something that was that true to the art form.
Guest:And we had a killer cast.
Guest:And that was one where I was like, and most of these are like that.
Guest:You know, Grindhouse was the same way, Sin City the same way, where you go, I don't know if anyone's going to come see this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but you don't really care.
Guest:You're making it not very expensively.
Guest:It's like, they'll discover it later on Blu-ray or DVD.
Guest:That's fine for me.
Guest:I just really feel like I have to make this film.
Guest:And Sin City for sure, no one's going to show up.
Guest:I mean, they're going to see the trailer.
Guest:They're going, okay, it's black and white.
Guest:It's an anthology.
Guest:It's all voiceover.
Guest:Three things you're not supposed to do right off the bat.
Guest:And it was a big success.
Guest:It was really cool when that happened.
Marc:And no one had ever seen anything like it, though.
Marc:No one had seen anything like it, yeah.
Marc:So when you started doing this green screen stuff, so you were a pioneer in that as well?
Guest:Well, because, and I learned this from Andrew George Lucas, and he had said the same thing.
Guest:He said, it's a good thing you're in Austin.
Guest:Stay in Austin.
Guest:That's why I'm in Marin County.
Guest:When you live outside of the box, you're just automatically going to think outside of the box.
Guest:You're going to just stumble upon innovations, and you'll rethink everything.
Guest:And I was down there going, why are we shooting on film anymore?
Guest:I started shooting digital.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When George showed me those first digital cameras, I went, man, I'm going to shoot digital.
Marc:You went out, wait.
Guest:So from 2001.
Guest:He had you over?
Guest:I was there using his mix stage until around 2001.
Guest:By 2002, I had put in my own mix stage in my garage.
Guest:I still mix all my movies in my garage.
Guest:In your garage?
Guest:Yeah, that's why I love that we're in your house.
Yeah.
Guest:i do everything for my house i mean right there do the editing there i do the scores for the film it's better right oh it's the best you cook too right yeah it's being creative all the time there's no separation right work and play so he turned you on to the turn me on to the digital camera and i started just putting it through the paces to see what it could do and right away i thought wow we could shoot on green screen you know what i bet we could do 3d and i did the first digital 3d movie was actually spy kids 3d
Guest:That was the first that started that whole 3D way.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was the biggest of the spike.
Marc:But there was no part of you, because who did I talk to the other day?
Marc:Vince Gilligan.
Marc:There's no, given your sort of respect for film, even in watching Quentin's cut of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, there was no weird sort of like...
Marc:They don't like to be a slave to tradition.
Guest:That's the worst thing that can happen, is that when you start confusing the technique or the medium with the art form.
Guest:The medium is not the art form.
Guest:Filmmaking and storytelling visually is the manipulation of images.
Guest:Whether you use film or video or paper, it shouldn't really matter what you're using, but you don't want to be slave to one of them.
Guest:Especially when it's really holding you back from being able to create stuff that you would never see before, like digital 3D or Sin City.
Guest:yeah those will not be possible the other way right so you're automatically stepping into a whole nother world that you want to get into and if i wanted to make i wanted to make grindhouse look like an old film i didn't go shoot on a film camera yeah i shot it on digital and i put so much distress and grain and splices that it looks like film quentin said no no i'm going to shoot mine my story i'm going to go and shoot on film
Guest:I said, okay, you can, but I tell you, mine's going to look more like film than yours.
Guest:It did?
Guest:As much as he tried to scratch it, go look at him.
Guest:His looks like it's digital compared to mine.
Guest:Mine looks like an old film print and it was shot on digital.
Guest:Because you can put all that in post.
Guest:Yeah, I have to shoot it with the thing.
Guest:And it made it more economical to shoot.
Guest:It was faster to shoot.
Guest:You could try more things.
Guest:Every shot could be a digital shot at that point.
Guest:So it definitely freed you up a lot.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And so you don't have any desire to shoot on film anymore.
Guest:um because you don't see a point necessarily yeah you make it look like film yeah i don't really you don't get you don't get you don't get hung up on the difference between uh pixels and grain people don't realize that's a technology too yeah i mean it's just such it doesn't grow on trees you know what it's more organic it doesn't grow on trees it's a technology it's such an old technology you start to think that it's organic it's nostalgic it's it's more nostalgic and it's more yeah yeah yeah you really could get beyond that
Guest:You could get the digital cameras to look better and better, but the film cameras, they're not going to get any better.
Guest:The film stocks weren't any good anymore.
Guest:The processing was terrible.
Guest:It was just not being done well anymore.
Marc:I guess another question then is, given the option to just let a camera run, the intensity that originally defined your style, which was economy, is not necessary.
Marc:doesn't that add time onto the other side of it if you're shooting for hours to find that one bit?
Guest:No, I mean, you still know where it is.
Guest:I mean, I'm very much, I don't even shoot, I'll shoot one take, but it'll be a long take with little mini takes within it.
Guest:You may go through the dialogue four or five times within that take.
Guest:And the microphone comes after me before I call cut.
Guest:I like the first part of take two and the third part of this.
Guest:And then when I'm editing, oh, actually, the assistant editor listens to that and he marks all of it.
Guest:And they have it clipped as if I had cut it.
Guest:But what happens when you've got a big crew is when you call cut, suddenly the hair people come in, the makeup people come in.
Guest:The whole thing kind of dies in its energy.
Guest:So the reason you want to keep rolling is to keep the intensity.
Guest:It's different.
Guest:When you're by yourself and no one's going to come in and disturb the set, cutting would help preserve intensity.
Guest:It's the opposite once you've got a bunch of people in there.
Guest:Oh, it makes sense.
Guest:You want to keep them all out of the place.
Guest:It's like, no, no, we'll just keep rolling.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So someone's not picking at hair.
Guest:They're coming in and they're doing things that they think are important and you just suck the energy out of the room.
Guest:Then you got to start over.
Guest:It's almost like you start over each take where this is like, let's just run through, we'll get there faster.
Guest:the relationship with you and frank in terms of you know the co-directing thing what what's the story behind that i really felt frank was a co-director already i mean he was already because he did all the artwork did the artwork and he was directing his paper actors get amazing performances out of them so man i started as a cartoonist i'm telling you it's the same thing you sit in there drawing it's going to feel the same when you're on the set except those characters are now going to come to ask you questions about their motivation and you're going to
Guest:You're going to die and go to heaven.
Guest:It's the best feeling in the world.
Guest:Come with me.
Guest:Do you want to direct any of them?
Guest:He says, I always thought about maybe trying to direct Big Fat Kills.
Guest:Oh, come do all of them with me.
Guest:You're the one who's been to Sin City.
Guest:I'm just going to be copying your stuff.
Guest:You should be right there.
Guest:I want to get it right.
Guest:I'm calling it Frank Miller's Sin City for a reason.
Guest:It's not Robert Rodriguez's Sin City.
Right.
Guest:come direct it with me.
Guest:So we're like, oh, gung-ho, we're having so much fun.
Guest:It's great having a collaborator like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we felt like brothers right away.
Guest:I mean, we just got along so great.
Guest:And, yeah, a week before shooting, the Directors Guild called and said, you know, you can't have two directors on a movie.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's against the rules.
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:I see two directors all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I see two directors all the time.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:They were a director.
Guest:They were a group before they joined the DJ where they worked together once.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If one of you produces and the other one directs this movie, the next film you can direct co-direct together because then you would have had a directing relationship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who makes this stuff up?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Are you serious?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So one of us was not going to be able to direct it.
Guest:Oh, and in name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They said you can direct, you can both direct if you want, but only one of them, and they're trying to preserve that there's only one director in the movie.
Guest:Because some of the other guilds, you know, writers and producers, there's always like 20.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:20 names.
Guest:By committee.
Guest:So you can understand why they want to like not have, you know, 50 directors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also because what if, you know, there's say like a Harvey Weinstein who goes to one, a filmmaker goes, I'll make your movie, but you've got to make me a,
Guest:code right yeah right yeah it's to protect against stuff like sure and um so i can understand but that's clearly not what the case was but so i had to basically just leave because i asked frank i said frank how about you direct and i produce yeah because that doesn't seem very fair yeah so what would you do he goes well my tombstone is going to say does not play well with other kids i said no same here okay i'll quit
Guest:So I left the guild.
Guest:And what happens when you leave the guild?
Guest:Well, you know, there's all kinds of repercussions.
Guest:You don't get a lot of residuals and money like profits and stuff that normally would go through the guild and then come to you.
Guest:So you're still out?
Guest:I'm still out.
Guest:and then you won't get an award ever because that's the ones that you know the dga awards yeah right well even again oh really not that i'm down that track anyway it wasn't it wasn't it's not like i was like okay now i won't get the nod i wasn't i didn't have that coming anytime in my future so that was easy to give up but um uh i totally you know just wanted to support the artist and i and i kept it quiet but somehow they must have leaked it to the press because it was out in the press that i had left
Guest:And it just turned out badly for them.
Guest:They got bad press because of that because people sided with the support and the artists.
Guest:And it was great for us because all the actors suddenly wanted to be part of this movie that was like really true to art.
Guest:Actors love that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They want to be part of something.
Guest:This is the real deal?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I'm going there.
Guest:Put me on a plane.
Guest:I'm going to that set.
Guest:And it was really exciting.
Marc:So when you say that, though, when you say like you're not the kind of guy that's going to get a nod or going to win awards and stuff, I mean, do you really feel that way?
Guest:um i mean well i mean i'm not that's not i'm not seeking out those kinds of films right well you never know but i mean it wouldn't it wouldn't really matter i mean i'm not why i do what i do is always because of the fulfillment you get and working with creative people and yeah and that's the the best thing
Guest:And I've gotten awards.
Guest:I mean, I got so many awards for El Mariachi, I feel like, that's it, I'm done.
Guest:I don't have to seek the award thing anymore.
Guest:Now I can just go have fun and make movies and do cool stuff.
Marc:Is there a competitive spirit to fighting the studio system?
Marc:I mean, do you enjoy that maverick sort of renegade role of like, you know, fuck you, I just made this movie and look how good it did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you know what?
Guest:It's very satisfying when a movie that's not done in a studio does well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's rare.
Guest:It's hard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because a studio's got a lot of places.
Guest:A lot of juice.
Guest:A lot of juice.
Guest:I mean, like the White House had to buy every ad that went out.
Guest:Where if you're Fox, you can promote it on your television series.
Guest:And you can do all kinds of ways to get the word out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you're really at a disadvantage when you're an independent.
Guest:So when you have any kind of success, it's an amazing success.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it feels really good.
Guest:But mainly what I do is not anything against studios at all.
Guest:It's just that, and I learned this from George Lucas.
Guest:I mean, he tried to make Flash Gordon, but he couldn't get the rights.
Guest:So he wrote Star Wars instead.
Guest:So I always kind of adopted that philosophy.
Guest:If a studio had a film that seemed like it might be interesting and they wanted me to direct it, well, I don't really want to go be a director for hire because then I'm working for them.
Guest:It's their property.
Guest:How could I make it?
Guest:They get all the benefits.
Guest:I'd rather go spend the time inventing my own series.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, like the Desperado series or the Spy Kids series or the Machete series or the Sin City movies.
Guest:You know, very few filmmakers actually make that many franchises on their own.
Guest:It's because I stayed out of the studio system that came up with that because you had to.
Guest:You had to create your own properties, which is a lot more gratifying.
Guest:So it's more about the gratification.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And it's your own business, and you have control.
Guest:And you just have the control, and I don't need that much money to make it, obviously.
Guest:I mean, Mariachi being my first movie really taught me a lot.
Guest:I'd rather have less money and more freedom than more money, and they're suddenly, as they should be, panicking about how they're going to get their money back, saying, no, you have to cast this person.
Guest:you have to do this right it has to end like this the girl can't die yeah yeah the guy's gotta you know be the hero by the end you know you can go against all that because you're just doing what feels right for the movie because you're not spending very much and if it's successful it's a great success if it's not it didn't cost very much you'll get your money back eventually anyway right win-win situation so now like but now like you do like you have a you're producing a lot
Guest:like you know you have you you're overseeing a network right and and now yeah i would imagine that your your role as producers is is out it's surpassing your directing almost let me think yeah i guess you could say that sort of i mean like we're doing the dust till dawns and yeah but last year you're directing all those 10 no out of the 10 episodes i directed four of them yeah it's a lot in a season for a day we're director sure who's also running the network it was a lot of work
Guest:This year, I directed two of them.
Guest:I mean, I did the premiere episode and then the season finale, which is bonkers.
Guest:And brought in a lot of filmmakers, you know, trying to cultivate new voices and new talent.
Guest:So I'm not taking as many slots.
Marc:What are these short teaching videos you do?
Marc:Oh, my DVDs.
Guest:I do these 10 minute film schools showing how I made the movie.
Guest:But like in 10 minutes, I know people didn't have a long time to see a big making of.
Guest:And it would show you just all the innovations that happened on that movie.
Guest:So you could go do it too.
Guest:Where can you get those?
Guest:Those are probably all on YouTube now.
Guest:They're usually on the DVDs.
Guest:And then I started adding 10-minute cooking skills because so many of my movies had recipes in them or food that were being featured.
Guest:So many people have come up and said, I watch how to make breakfast tacos and I'll make tortillas from Sin City breakfast tacos.
Guest:And it's really good.
Guest:People love food, man.
Guest:Well, because I realized that I would give this little 10-minute talk on how to make a movie, but anyone watching in their living room is not going to go make a movie the next day.
Guest:But they can go in their kitchen and cook that thing you just showed them.
Guest:Did you grow up with food all the time cooking?
Guest:Well, my dad sold cookware.
Guest:Yeah, we cooked every meal.
Guest:We all had to know how to cook.
Guest:And I love it.
Guest:It's art you can eat.
Marc:And you talked a lot about cartooning.
Marc:How much was that type of stuff?
Marc:You know, the printed stuff, like how much effect as a young person did that have on you?
Marc:Were you consumed with comics or art in that way?
Guest:Art in that way.
Guest:I mean, I loved music.
Guest:I loved making movies.
Guest:I loved, I didn't know what I was, I loved photography.
Guest:I kind of picked filmmaking.
Guest:It was a neck and neck between cartooning professionally and filmmaking.
Guest:Because I had a daily cartoon strip at the UT paper, the same one that Chris Ware came out of.
Guest:He's a good surprise winning person.
Guest:i love that guy that's great billy what yeah yeah billy corgan yeah he um most of the stuff that he first put out was actually his college work that's how good it was yeah um it's so funny because you remind me more of s clay wilson like your movies are like that's s clay wilson man
Guest:So yeah, I picked filmmaking because all my favorite hobbies would fit under it.
Guest:I could do the music, I could do the photography, I could do the writing, I could do the storyboards.
Guest:It kind of was an umbrella over all my favorite hobbies where cartooning would have just been drawing.
Guest:But being able to visualize something
Guest:the best thing about drawing or even painting yeah especially drawing is that you take a blank piece of paper put it down right in 10 minutes you'll have something that didn't exist before yeah immediacy of being able to create something that quickly it's gratifying and that could turn into like my friend kevin eastman he sat down he drew something one night laughed and went the next morning teenage mutant ninja turtles wait that's kind of i think that's got a ring to
Guest:You can literally create a world of property from a pen and a paper.
Guest:That's still so addictive to me.
Guest:I've been getting back a lot into drawing because one of my kids wants to do that.
Guest:Come up with stories visually like that.
Guest:I said, that's smart because you don't need any money.
Guest:No pen and paper.
Guest:And it comes down to having a great idea.
Guest:Just keep knocking those out.
Guest:You'll come across.
Guest:Crank out 100 of those.
Guest:You're going to have 10 great stories.
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He's 18.
Guest:Whirled by the ass.
Guest:He doesn't even know it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You think about that and you go, man, if I could go back and do it, I know now.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:It sounds like you did all right.
Guest:I guess I did okay, but I didn't know what he knows.
Marc:I think it's what's interesting, though, about you, unlike some of the other guys I talked about, I don't talk to a lot of directors, but there is a very specific work ethic around owning your own shit and making a living.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know, which I think you earned as a kid, like this entrepreneurial spirit of this idea that like, you know, this is a product.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I think it's very much in the blood, you know, because my dad was like that.
Guest:My brothers are like they all own their own businesses, whether it's an insurance company or pharmacy or.
Guest:real estate no one could really work for someone else i think there's just something in the personality that was in the gene pool that i don't want to work for you i'd rather work for myself right and you have a chance to be more successful like that i used to go as a kid see my dad's an entrepreneur magazine yeah
Guest:laying around and look at those and go wow this guy put video game you know consoles in a truck and drove it to malls and made money that way you know just seeing how people innovate their own job right and i and i point that out to my kids i go look how busy i am i'm so busy all the time and i'm not working for anyone all these jobs that i'm doing yeah are ones i've created for myself i've created my own nightmare in a way
Guest:But in a good way.
Guest:I mean, you're keeping yourself so busy.
Guest:Does it register with them?
Guest:It does.
Guest:They get it and they want to do that.
Guest:They want to build that for themselves.
Guest:You innovate your own job and you create your own path.
Guest:It's a very powerful thing to learn at a young age.
Marc:Yeah, I think it is.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me, man.
Marc:Absolutely, man.
Guest:That was great.
Marc:He's intense.
Marc:Robert Rodriguez is intense, and I don't even know where he had the time to sit down for an hour to talk to me, to be quite honest with you.
Marc:I'm glad he did.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Check the schedule.
Marc:Get on the mailing list.
Marc:All the posters are up with artists attributed, so you can buy those posters.
Marc:Sorry the books are gone.
Marc:You can listen to the podcast there still as well.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:All right?
Marc:Yeah, do what you got to do, man.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Let me just tell you.
Marc:When I was in high school, my best friend's name was David Bishop.
Marc:Dave Bishop was a great guy.
Marc:His dad owned a stereo store, and he liked cars.
Marc:But he's passed away.
Marc:And when we were in high school, he was sort of this...
Marc:He was sort of a guitar prodigy, and he just didn't have the confidence to own it.
Marc:Like, he could effortlessly play beautiful things on a guitar.
Marc:And he'd been playing since he was a kid, and he had just sort of a completely natural knack for it.
Marc:And when we were in high school, you know, I've never been a great player, and I certainly wasn't much of one then, but we used to play together.
Marc:We had a band, and I think the band knew three songs, and we played out once or twice the three songs.
Marc:But Dave had this black Les Paul Custom, and I just thought it was just a professional guitar.
Marc:It was not a guitar that I could have.
Marc:And when I did this thing for Gibson, and instead of paying, they offered the possibility of getting one, I asked for a black Les Paul Custom.
Marc:And now I have one, and I think about Dave, and I think that I'm not worthy of it, but I have one.
Marc:And now I have it for you through the champ, through the little fucking monster.
Marc:Boomer lives!