Joe Rogan Experience #2310 - Robert Rodriguez

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. RRRobert Rodriguez0:00

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (heavenly music)

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Oh, man.

   3. RRRobert Rodriguez0:13

      Hey.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      Very, very nice to meet you, man.

   5. RRRobert Rodriguez0:14

      Incredible to meet you.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      I'm a fucking gigantic fan.

   7. RRRobert Rodriguez0:17

      Man, I appreciate that.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      I just love what you've done because, like, anybody who could start their career off and make a movie for $7,000-

   9. RRRobert Rodriguez0:25

      Right.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:25

       ... is a hero.

   11. RRRobert Rodriguez0:26

       (laughs)

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:26

       (laughs) Like, that's such a, just an incredible accomplishment-

   13. RRRobert Rodriguez0:30

       Yeah.

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:30

       ... to make a movie that people still watch and talk about today for seven grand. You know?

   15. RRRobert Rodriguez0:35

       It was, uh, an experience for sure. I- I- I had a really good plan and it backfired, so I tried to right away when it worked in a different way, I wanted to share that experience. I wrote a book called Rev Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers. At the time-

   16. JRJoe Rogan0:52

       You did the audio for it too.

   17. RRRobert Rodriguez0:54

       Just recently. I couldn't believe it. I hadn't read it since I wrote it, and I had forgotten a lot of the details, and now I can see why it inspired so many people because it- You know, when you're in your early 20s, six months feels like six years.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:07

       Right.

   19. RRRobert Rodriguez1:07

       So when you read it now and go, "Oh my God, from inception to making it, penniless, by myself, to toast of the town, it's like that." It was unbelievable, and I couldn't wait to shout from the move- rooftops to all the other filmmakers like me who thought they couldn't get in. How I did it exactly, I wrote a book about it. And I read it now and I go, "Oh my God, this is an impossible story." I keep laughing during the audiobook going, "Okay, what you're reading right now never happened before and it never happened again." It was like lightning in a bottle. And you would see every time I thought something wasn't going my way and I was really bummed about it, within weeks an upshot beyond. And it really taught you that you just gotta follow your instinct. If you have an idea, go, even if you know no one else has ever done this before, and you'll end up someplace different. I wanna ask you about that 'cause I know you end- end up doing the same thing a lot.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:55

       Yeah, for sure.

   21. RRRobert Rodriguez1:56

       Where it's not manifesting so much in that direction, you're just kind of following your nose. You're doing something that just sounds ridiculous. Even when I try to tell one of my teachers what I was gonna go do that summer, I said, "I'm gonna go try and make a movie." And he goes, "Oh yeah, who's gonna be your director of photography?" And I said, I didn't wanna tell him I'm the whole crew.

   22. JRJoe Rogan2:12

       (laughs)

   23. RRRobert Rodriguez2:12

       And I said, "I- I'm- I'm the DP." "Oh, the actors are gonna hate you. You're gonna be there setting up your lights all the time." I'm like, "Okay, I'm not gonna tell him I'm the rest of the crew." It was just because I had read this advice that, meant to be good advice, but it sounded really depressing. It was someone had written, "If you wanna write screenplays, write three full screenplays, throw them away. Your fourth screenplay will be it."

   24. JRJoe Rogan2:35

       Hmm.

   25. RRRobert Rodriguez2:36

       It's like, have you ever written a screenplay? It's very hard to write a screenplay. It's hard to write- It's like three huge meals that you're just gonna dump. Why not, okay, write the script, throw it away, but while you're throwing it away, why not also shoot it and direct it? Light it yourself, do the sound yourself so that you're training yourself on each one. So I thought-

   26. JRJoe Rogan2:54

       Hmm.

   27. RRRobert Rodriguez2:54

       ... "Where can I do this where I can get paid to do that, like my own film school where I get paid to learn?" So I discovered that there were these straight to Spanish movies that are action movies where you go to the l- You've seen the HEBs around here?

   28. JRJoe Rogan3:08

       Mm-hmm.

   29. RRRobert Rodriguez3:08

       There used to be a video section to rent movies and there was a Spanish section. And the Spanish section had movies like- They were just action movies. They had a soap star. They were made for 30 grand, 40 grand. Shot on video, no action, but it had a title that looked kind of like a US title, like (Spanish) like written like Lethal Weapon 2. And you would rent it and it'd be like just crap, people in an apartment talking. It wasn't- So I- I looked at the back of those and I thought, "We can make a better one probably for like $5,000." 'Cause I had made a short film called Bedhead by myself with a windup camera. It was eight minutes and it cost $800. So I thought multiply it times 10, I could do an 80 minute movie for $8,000, but with dialogue and everything, I bet I could get it for under eight, probably more like five or six. Let's go shoot a movie, write it, shoot it. I'll be the whole crew. So I learn all the jobs and then we'll sell it to the Spanish home video market. No one will know it's me 'cause it's Robert Rodriguez, a bunch of Robert Rodriguezes. I'll make three of those 'cause I was so young, I was winning a lot of film festivals with short films, but I thought, "If someone sees one of my short films that's winning all these awards, they're not gonna hire me to do a short film. They're gonna hire me to do a feature and I've never practiced that. So I need practice. So I'm gonna practice three films, take the best scenes from them, have a demo reel. With the money I make from them, I don't know how much I can sell it for, so I gotta make it really cheap. Let's just do the first one, then we'll know. Then I'll take that money and make my first American independent film and that'll be more serious." Because I threw it away like that- I just thought, "Well, let me just make something fun." Action movie, I guess I could do action. I started as a cartoonist, so it was more comedic than anything else. I said, "Well, an action movie. Let's make it fun. Let's make it about a guy with a guitar case full of weapons, kinda like Road Warrior who goes from town to town with a guitar case full of weapons, but I can't afford Road Warrior on the first one. So how about I just do a, uh, a Genesis story?" So I took out these cards and I go, "Okay, maybe he was a guitar player." In fact, that'll be a funny title 'cause it had this comedic sense. I thought, "I'm gonna make a movie that's got so much action and it's actually shot on film, but I'll call it basically The Guitar Player, which promises no action whatsoever, put it on the shelf, and if someone happens to be so desperate to watch it, they'll be surprised." You know, that was like my joke to myself, but I just wanna practice. So I did this method where I just got the cards and I go- 'Cause I'm used to making short films. Guy with a guitar case walks into a bar looking for work. They refuse, saying, "We don't hire people. We use a synthesizer now." He leaves. A guy with a guitar case full of weapons walks in after, shoots the place up, says he's going after the guy who owns it because he did him wrong. So I put those two cards down and I went, "Okay, that's how a short film would start, but shit, this is a feature. So let me put-" It's gonna need like three scenes before- (laughs)

   30. JRJoe Rogan5:48

       (laughs) This is how fast you write the script. Wow.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Mm. …

   1. RRRobert Rodriguez15:00

      gotta be an easier process than sitting here and working it out. I wanna come home and develop a process where I sit on my couch and I just picture it first. I picture the comic, I picture the jokes, I picture the drawing, then I gotta dr- just go draw it, right?"

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:12

      Mm.

   3. RRRobert Rodriguez15:13

      I'd be there two hours, three hours. "My deadline's coming up. Shit, it's not working." So then I have to go, "Fuck, start drawing again," then be like, "Okay, this kinda goes with that one. Then, oh, oh, here it is." And I realized something really profound back at, you know, 19, and this really carried into Mariachi, which is when you pick up the pen or the keyboard or the camera and you start, it starts doing itself.

   4. JRJoe Rogan15:36

      Yeah.

   5. RRRobert Rodriguez15:37

      You realize it's not you. It's coming through you because there's a creative spirit assigned to us that needs hands, and it's not gonna reward you if you're doing that. 'Cause it can do that. But as soon as you pick it up, it takes over. So I, I realized, "Oh, I just have to be a conduit or a pipe, and if I just start, I'm gonna be able to make..." Whoa. And, and you gotta keep your ego out of it, 'cause if you go, "Wow, how did I do that? I wonder if I could do it again," you just shut it.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:04

      Right, right, right.

   7. RRRobert Rodriguez16:04

      You just shut it right back up because you-

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:06

      Right.

   9. RRRobert Rodriguez16:06

      ... you think it's you and it's not you. And I know this works because I taught it to my kids when they were younger. I thought, "I gotta teach this to my kids." And since they hadn't learned any bad habits, they went, "Oh, we... So we don't have to do anything? We just have to start writing, and it's gonna come out?" I go, "Yeah." And they went and they wrote all this (laughs) amazing stuff, and I was like-

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:22

       Wow.

   11. RRRobert Rodriguez16:22

       ... "They don't have to be reversed," you know?

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:24

       Yeah.

   13. RRRobert Rodriguez16:24

       Reversed. But that, that was a very powerful thing, and I saw it when I did, uh, another $7,000 movie recently. I had a TV series based on Rebel Without a Crew where I, I got independent filmmakers so it only made short films, and I gave 'em two weeks. I said, "You gotta do it like Mariachi. You can bring one person to be either your cameraman or your sound guy, but you gotta do the whole movie yourself. Write it, direct it, edit it, and be shot in two weeks." That's how long it took me to shoot Mariachi. And they were all like, "Oh, we don't know how we're gonna do it." By the week they started shooting, they were already going... T- talking about their next three films.

   14. JRJoe Rogan16:57

       (laughs)

   15. RRRobert Rodriguez16:57

       Like, they changed... Their idea of what was impossible has just dropped down.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:01

       That's amazing.

   17. RRRobert Rodriguez17:01

       So I was really curious to do mine. I was doing one based on my medical experiments I did to pay for Mariachi, which is another story. And I brought my son-

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       I definitely wanna get into that. (laughs)

   19. RRRobert Rodriguez17:08

       I brought my son, Racer, uh, 'cause I knew he hadn't been working with me on the movies for a while. "I'm gonna make him my second guy. He's gonna be my co-writer, my co-lighter, and he's gonna be doing the sound." And I didn't show him how to use the sound equipment till we're filming 'cause we're documenting it. We made a documentary about it, and people really loved about how we made this movie today for $5,000. And he was fumbling around, and, and we're going, and I thought, "They're gonna... He's gonna hate this. You know, he's got his own interests. He doesn't wanna work on a movie, but I need him." And so he comes to me at the end of the day with his brother and goes, "Dad, the actor didn't show up. The set didn't ma... The, the location didn't match the script at all. Everything was falling apart. We asked you how we were gonna finish the day, and you said, 'Well, I don't know. We'll see what happens.'" And we thought, "Oh my God, is this the movie that finally, you know, he can't figure out?" But by the end of the day, we figured it out, and their eyes were all wide. They went, "Oh, they don't realize." 'Cause that's the creative process, and that's every day, in life-

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:02

       Yeah.

   21. RRRobert Rodriguez18:02

       ... and in work. In life, you don't, you don't know. You're gonna figure it out as you go.... art should be the same way. And by the end of the two-week shoot, they're interviewing him. He's all waxing philosophical about the creative process like he's been doing it for years.

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:15

       (laughs)

   23. RRRobert Rodriguez18:15

       He goes, he goes, "I never knew how my dad did Mariachi. And then now I know, 'cause I just did this project. He didn't know either."

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:22

       Ah.

   25. RRRobert Rodriguez18:22

       He just started, and he figured it out day by day. Most people never start. I mean, he succinctly encapsulate everything I tried to say in my book, which was y- you just gotta go. And identity is key. Identity is the main thing. All these people who are out there, you gotta tell them this, "If you are listening and there's something you're not getting in your life that you really want, it's not, it's not a matter of desire. You have the desire." There's a, there's a missing element that I talked about in the book and I'd forgotten myself. You know, we forget our own good advice.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:53

       Right.

   27. RRRobert Rodriguez18:53

       Over the years people would say, "Hey, in your book it says this." And I'd go, "I wrote that?"

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:57

       (laughs)

   29. RRRobert Rodriguez18:57

       "I was so smart back then. What, what happened?"

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:59

       (laughs)
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Oh. …

   1. RRRobert Rodriguez30:00

      the bellhop, it's New Year's Eve, you're in a hotel, you can't leave your hotel room. You wanna do it?" Hand goes up.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:04

      Oh.

   3. RRRobert Rodriguez30:05

      Now-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:05

      Wow.

   5. RRRobert Rodriguez30:05

      Just on instinct. Now I ask the audience, "Was I wrong to just go by instinct or should I study it a little bit?" Nobody really knows the answer. What would you say?

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:14

      (laughs)

   7. RRRobert Rodriguez30:14

      (laughs) What you study... Are you more stud-

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:16

      Me?

   9. RRRobert Rodriguez30:16

      ... are you more ins- are you more instinctual 100%?

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:18

       100%. Yeah, I'm primarily instinctual.

   11. RRRobert Rodriguez30:20

       P- I figured 'cause that's why you're here right now. (laughs) Because we're not that smart. I'm not that smart. I, I couldn't have figured this shit out. It's 'cause I was just...... had an instinct to go that way when everyone else was going that way. And you're gonna stumble, j- you're gonna fall, but you're gonna stumble upon. You're gonna stumble upon ideas no one thought of because you're going the way that's not picked clean already.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:38

       Right, right.

   13. RRRobert Rodriguez30:39

       So I just like, four rooms, I said, "Yeah." Now, if I had just studied a little bit, I would have seen that anthologies like that never work. Like, even when it's Scorsese, you know, Woody Allen and Coppola, they did one, nobody goes to see because they don't know how to wrap their head around it. "What? It's three movies? It's an anthology." It does- doesn't work. If I had studied first, should I have changed my answer? Nobody knows that answer. So, well, I'm gonna go on instinct. I'm gonna say I, I say instinct anyway. Movie bombs. Doesn't do well at all. Now, I could be really upset about that and go like, "Wow, I gotta be really careful now going forward. I have to tiptoe around as an artist." Well, that's, that's not the state of mind I was when I won Sundance. I was throwing stuff out.

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Can I offer a counter to that?

   15. RRRobert Rodriguez31:16

       Sure.

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:17

       It only bombed financially.

   17. RRRobert Rodriguez31:18

       Okay. Oh, no, no. I'm gonna, I'm not done with the story.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:20

       Yeah, artistically-

   19. RRRobert Rodriguez31:20

       No, the lesson is-

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:21

       ... this was a very good movie.

   21. RRRobert Rodriguez31:22

       There's a lot of great stuff in it.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:23

       Yeah.

   23. RRRobert Rodriguez31:23

       But this goes even better than that. My whole thing is examine the ashes of your failure, and I don't find one, I find two keys in there to my biggest movies directly from that experience. So my instinct was right, but again, sometimes the only way across the river is slipping on the first two rocks. I was on the set, had to be New Year's, so I dressed everybody up in tuxedos. And Antonio had just done Desperado the next week, he came and appeared in there. The little boy from Desperado, he had a little brother, so I hired him, and then I just found the best little actress who's a half-Asian girl, Asian American, so I cast an Asian mom so it would look like they were family. So I'm seeing Antonio and Tamlyn Tomita all dressed up to the nines. I went, "Wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and their two little kids that can barely tie their shoes don't know it? They get captured and the kids have to go save 'em." So Spy Kids, there's five of those now. The other key to success that I got on that set was... I love doing short films, that's why I signed up for it. It didn't work, but I'm gonna try it again. Not four stories, three stories, like a three act structure. Not four directors, but the same director. I'm gonna try... Why on earth would I try it again? Except that I had just done one and I figured out there might be a different approach, that's Sin City.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:38

       Whoa.

   25. RRRobert Rodriguez32:38

       So Sin City-

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:38

       Whoa.

   27. RRRobert Rodriguez32:39

       ... and Spy Kids directly came from that thing you would call a failure if you'd, if you focused on the failure.

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:44

       Oh, wow.

   29. RRRobert Rodriguez32:45

       So go back and look. Tell everybody, go back and look at something that you had a real instinct for that you did and it didn't work, and sift through the ashes of it and you're gonna find either that you've already had the success from it and you didn't realize it, what you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct, or you, you will find something that will be the key to your success.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:07

       Well, that's also the, the magical part of the creative process is that it's not always gonna work, and that's actually good.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yeah. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan45:00

      taking that chance and going out there and they're, they're acting y- uh, on their instincts and they're putting something together and they try to attack all those things as being garbage because really, they're not contributing.

   2. RRRobert Rodriguez45:13

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan45:13

      And so, it's very-

   4. RRRobert Rodriguez45:14

      And they may very well want to.

   5. JRJoe Rogan45:14

      ... it's very easy to attack.

   6. RRRobert Rodriguez45:16

      And they may very well want to, but they're getting hurt by the fear, so it's like-

   7. JRJoe Rogan45:18

      Most of them, yeah, the... Well, the same instincts that make them want to attack successful people, are the same things that hold them back from being creative.

   8. RRRobert Rodriguez45:26

      Yeah. Talk about closing that pipe. (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:28

      Yeah, I mean, doing it to yourself.

   10. RRRobert Rodriguez45:30

       Doing it to yourself and by, by doing that to the people. If they would just commit to a body of work, don't blink-

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:35

       Uh-huh, right.

   12. RRRobert Rodriguez45:35

       ... and just keep making shit, they'll get somewhere.

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:37

       That's great advice. Commit to a body of work.

   14. RRRobert Rodriguez45:39

       A body of work. Like, look at-

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:40

       Yeah.

   16. RRRobert Rodriguez45:41

       ... uh, uh, someone I mentioned this and a friend of mine, a businessman called me and said, "Wow, that really, that really spoke to me. You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses that I have created that failed instead of looking at the whole body of work."

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:53

       Mm.

   18. RRRobert Rodriguez45:53

       "And I fixate on the ones that didn't work." And it's like, "Hey, you don't ever know what's gonna work or not. Don't... That's not your concern.

   19. JRJoe Rogan45:59

       Right.

   20. RRRobert Rodriguez45:59

       "Just go make shit. Follow your instinct." 'Cause again, maybe, maybe that one that didn't work is your Four Rooms.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:05

       Right.

   22. RRRobert Rodriguez46:05

       And you've got, and you've got, you get two other great ideas out of it. I'd forgotten that Dusk Till Dawn came outta that as well, so that's the th- that's the third one outta that four rooms.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:13

       That's awesome. That thing gave and gave and gave. So-

   24. RRRobert Rodriguez46:15

       Dusk Till Dawn was so fun because it was two different movies. It was like this crime-

   25. JRJoe Rogan46:18

       (laughs)

   26. RRRobert Rodriguez46:18

       That's why it couldn't get made.

   27. JRJoe Rogan46:20

       Really?

   28. RRRobert Rodriguez46:20

       So when he first wrote it, he couldn't get made because people... Okay, so this is what happened. The effects company hires him and, um, they, they said, "We want a, a movie that'll showcase our effects in this vampire bar." It's about two brothers that go to a vampire bar. Start- Quentin starts writing it and he starts writing Quentin style where he gets way into the brothers. So much into the brothers that it turns into, like, a Desperate Hours type movie for half the movie. He, he waits half the movie to get to the bar.

   29. JRJoe Rogan46:45

       (laughs)

   30. RRRobert Rodriguez46:45

       So now, for s- for financiers, it's now like, uh, a mixed bag. It's like two movies in one, right?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:01:56

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. RRRobert Rodriguez1:00:00

      trailer and go, "Okay, black and white is not for me." It's very counterintuitive, which is most of the things I do, just like always go a different way. But they'll find it on video later and that's, that's good enough for me. But then it was a big hit theatrically.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Mm-hmm.

   3. RRRobert Rodriguez1:00:11

      Now let me tell you about Pulp Fiction, but th- 'cause groundbreaking doesn't look groundbreaking to you or anyone around you necessarily when you're doing it. I've forgotten about this, but I journal and I, I ran across an old journal and I brought it up to Quentin when I interviewed him for my Director's Chair episode. I do, I have a show called the Director's Chair where I interview writer directors. He, his was so big, we did two episodes. We talked about all his movies. And I said, "Do you remember this time I found in my diary, right down to the hour, we went out to dinner." I mean, he was so into Pulp Fiction. Ever since I met him, "My next movie's gonna be Pulp Fiction." I, I visited the set. He goes, into it, he goes into it. He finished the movie and I said, "Hey, how did..." 'Cause I live here in Austin, I don't get to hang out with him except when I go to LA. "How did your, how did your movie come out?" And he goes, "Yeah, it's not, it's not the one." Yeah, it's like, still feels like a movie Quentin would make." I'd be like, "Well...... what do you mean? He's like, he was like, "It just doesn't feel like a real movie. It feels like another movie Quentin would make." And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he put in. "Well, it should be different." He was like, "Nah, this wouldn't, wouldn't happen." It was like 2:00 in the morning, I was dropping him off at home after we'd been out. And so, I went back to Austin and he had had a screening for his, all his director friends that I couldn't be at 'cause I lived in Austin. So I called one of them, said, "How was the screening?" He was a little bummed about it. He goes, "Nah, this isn't the one for him." And I was like, "Really?" He said, "Yeah, it's, it's just too... Yeah, it's just not it." And I asked him this and he goes, "You're right." You know, he'd forgotten about that moment. He goes, "In fact, yeah, people didn't get it and in fact..." And he didn't get it either, he wasn't sure if it was a... In fact, one filmmaker even said, "I want to sit you down and tell you all the things that are wrong with this movie. But I'll wait till you get back from Cannes." (laughs) He goes to Cannes, he wins Cannes and the friend left him a message there, "Well, what, what the hell do I know? I've only made one movie."

Episode duration: 2:32:18