Robert Rodriguez: Sin City, Desperado, El Mariachi, Alita, and Filmmaking | Lex Fridman Podcast #465

I write the script in December. January, Josh Arnett, Marley Shelton come down, fly Frank in. We're shooting for 10 hours on my green screen. We shoot that opening sequence. Incredible opening sequence. And the visual look? We've never seen that. I wanna just take this and make it move. I just want the comic to move. Any other studio would just go make it look like a- any gritty crime movie and they would, they would miss the point, that it's ha- the visual is half of it. I want it to look just like this 'cause it would be the boldest movie anyone's seen, 'cause that's how it reads when I read the book. It's like, if this was a movie, then it would be the most phenomenal movie. Just by being around him and working with him, you get, by osmosis, you learn stuff. And it just ups your game, because they're just swing way beyond you. Jim Cameron was like that. So like, when I first met him, I was trying to impress the hell out of him, you know, 'cause I was such a big fan. I was about to go do Desperado and I went, "Hey, I just took a three-day steady cam course 'cause I can't afford a steady cam operator, so I'm gonna operate steady cam myself on Desperado." Now, if he was just my peer, he'd say, "Oh, I, I did the same thing, and I'm gonna do the same thing." That, that would be like hanging out with somebody of your ilk. But you don't, you want somebody who's above that. Do you know what he said? He goes, "I'll buy the steady cam, but not to operate it. I'm gonna take it apart and design a better one." (laughs) It's like, uh, us mere mortals trying to learn how to operate the camera. He's designing all new systems. That's the guy you wanna hang out with, not someone who's doing what you're doing. We put so much of the world around them. Like, when you see the city, we put like a blue screen way in the back to just make the city keep going. But we built the sets there, the town. We built the real sets so everything was very tangible and real, and that way she had to fit into that world and be as real as that. Because if it was all done in CG, well then now you can fudge everything. But if you put her in a real environment, that's a real challenge. And just like with our movies, you watch it all fall apart. You watch this thing blow up, you watch this thing not work. Everything just falls apart in front of your face. Then that's when you roll up your sleeves and creatively figure out a way around it. And by the end, you have a result that's better than what you sought out. Sift through the ashes of your failure, and you'll find the key to your next success is in there. But if you're not looking for it, you don't find it.