#2310 - Robert Rodriguez

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day! Oh man, very, very nice to meet you. Incredible to meet you.
Fucking gigantic fan. Man, I appreciate that.
I just love what you've done, because like, anybody who could start their career off and make a movie for $7,000 is a hero. that's such a

just an incredible accomplishment to make a movie that people still watch and talk about today for $7,000. It was an experience for sure.
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 Rebel Without a Crew that really inspired filmmakers. You did the audio for it, too.
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 when you're in your early 20s, six months feels like feels like six years right so when you read it now and go oh my god from inception to making it penniless by myself to toast to the town it's like that it was unbelievable i couldn't wait to shout from the 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'd read it read it now and I go, oh my God, this is an impossible story. I keep laughing during the audio book 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 got to 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 want to ask you about that because I know you end up doing the same thing a lot.

Yeah, for sure.

Where it's not manifesting so much in that way.

You're just kind of following your nose.

You're doing something that just sounds ridiculous.

Even when I tried to tell one of my teachers what I was going to go do that summer, I said, I'm going to go try and make a movie. He goes, oh yeah, who's going to be your director of photography? And I said, I didn't want to tell him I'm the whole crew.
And I said, I'm the DP. Oh, the actors are going to hate you.
You're going to be there setting up your lights all the time. I'm like, okay, I'm not even going to 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 want to write screenplays, write three full screenplays, throw them away.
Your fourth screenplay will be it. It's okay.
I've 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 going to 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, 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.
You go to the, you've seen You've seen the HEBs around here. There used to be a video section to rent movies, and there was a Spanish section.
The Spanish section had movies like – they were just action movies. They had a soap star.
They were made for $30,000, $40,000. Shot on video, no action, but it had a title that looked kind of like a U.S.
title, like Perros Rabiosos Dos, written like Lethal Weapon 2. And you And you would rent it and be like, just crap, people in an apartment talking.
So I looked at the back of those and I thought, we can make a better one, probably for like $5,000. Because I had made a short film called Bedhead by myself with a wind-up 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 because it's Robert Rodriguez, a bunch of Robert Rodriguez's.
I'll make three of those because 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, it's winning all these awards.
They're not going to hire me to do a short film. They're going to hire me to do a feature and I've never practiced that.
So I need practice. So I'm going to 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 got to 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.
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,

kind of 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 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

because I have this comedic sense.

I thought, I'm going to make a movie

that's got so much action.

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 want to practice.
So I did this method where I just got the cards and I go, because I'm used to making short films, a 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.
I went, okay, that's how a short film would start. But shit, this is a feature.
So let me put, it's going to need like three scenes before. This is how fast you write a script.
I wrote that script because it was, again, I'm throwing it away. I'm just going to make something that I want to see because no one else is going to see it.
You're getting paid to practice. If I can sell it, I'll be paid to practice.
So I thought, okay, we got to figure out who this guy is. Okay, how about he's a control player who's coming into town? But wait, who's the guy that shoots the play cell? Let's start with him in jail.
I read a story about a guy in Mexico who was running his drug business from his jail cell. And he used it as protection.
He could walk out at any time. Someone puts a hit on him in jail.
He shoots them up, tells the bad guy, I'm coming after you now. I'm coming to your town.
I'm going to shoot up your town. He passes the mariachi on the road.
The mariachiachi is a mariachi the guy who just wants to be a musician we get to know who he is and then he walks in the bar and then the guy comes and shoots the place up well now he's got to leave and go to another place so now he's got to go meet the girl now this is oh and because it's a it's a it's a you know movie about a guitar player he's got to have some kind of tragic past because road warrior had a tragic past mad max he lost his wife and kid oh my gosh she has to die because that's going to be every movie is going to be like a sad song in a songbook so it kind of just wrote that fast and went and i shot did you do it like that with the index cards i do this right on a table i do this for everything i tell people i i do this talk where i i by the end of the talk i say i, I keep these in my bag. It always makes me smile because I know I've made a million dollars with this before.
And that's a tiny little stack. This is a tiny one you can carry anywhere.
I gave this to my kids one Christmas. For people that are just listening, it's closed together with rubber bands.
Rubber bands. I gave this in a cool little leather bag for my kids one Christmas.
I thought they would say, what's this shit? They loved it. I said, you can change your life with this thing.
Because a lot of times, you know, you go to a therapy, not for answers, you go for questions. We have the answers inside us.
Usually we ask ourselves terrible questions. The therapist asks you questions like, why did that make you feel? Why'd you do that? What's up? What's going on? If we do our own questions, our own questions like what's next what goes before this your mind comes up with the answer if you ask the right question so i've used this for like we usually ask unempowering questions you know the words we use in ourselves are so important but some of the questions like why am i such a loser well i can give you 10 answers right now but if i change it to what three things could I come up with to start this week that would not just change my life but everyone around me? You don't come up with three.
You come up with like 15. You just keep coming out.
And as you look at them, you go, these kind of go together and are actionable. I can actually start this right now.
I mean, you can literally change your life, business ideas, movie ideas, stories, just with a deck of cards. By the time I build up and show all the examples of it, at the end of the talk, I hold up one of these with the rubber bands to the crowd.
And I say, who wants to change your life? Wow. Everybody's hands go up.
I toss one out. I catch it.
In fact, I remember my nephew about seven years ago caught one. And it's funny because he's on Broadway now.
It's just like, lets you map out your life. Another friend of mine, DJ Catroni, he's an actor.
He caught one and he said, wow, that talk you gave was so empowering on how you wrote it. I went home and I picked up an old script I hadn't picked up in a while.
And I just cut off the phone for three days and I finished it. And I said, you finished a script in three days? I like the feedback loop that happens

when you inspire somebody.

I go, I'm gonna try that

because I got a bunch of half-baked ideas

that I've never gone and done that with.

You did it in three days?

Yeah, if you shut the phone off,

you can do it in three days.

And now he has, that movie's out,

it's coming out, it's called Fight or Flight

with Josh Hartnett.

He wrote that.

Yeah, after hearing the talk,

he went and picked up this old thing that he thought.

And I get this a lot when I've talked to people. It's really inspiring to them to hear other people.
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How did you develop this approach? Is this something you completely invented yourself just to map out life on index cards? Writers will often put index cards up to just kind of block out a scene. It's a visual way to see your story.
Like when you lay it out when you lay it out and you go oh this works i'm missing a section here but again like this is asking you what can i put there you'll come up with a bunch of ideas and it almost gives you like an overview but i started it when i was a cartoonist i had a daily cartoon strip so i would draw on different cards different drawings and every day i had to come up with a comedic idea and a drawing and a story. And it was tough.
You'd have to draw it out. And you would sometimes make two drawings that you really liked and go, oh, this kind of is the setup.
One, two, three, pay off of the joke here. And I'd come up with it like that.
So I kind of use it for everything. It's kind of a more visual.
I'm a more visual visual kind of person so it helps you visually see something that's normally like written words and stuff so it started off with cartoons and then worked into writing but I haven't seen too many people apply it the way you're explaining it like you could actually use that to fix your life oh fix your life completely because it's another question it's. It's just questions you're asking yourself.
And the amazing thing is once you start doing stories, that's why I like doing a lot of original franchises. Probably like made the most original franchises of a film because I don't usually direct other people's stuff.
Because you realize you're creating this story. Like I just made this guy's destiny happen and I can give him a good outcome or a bad outcome.
It's in my control. And you realize you can do that with your own life.
So you're writing the story of your own life of who you're going to become, who you're going to be. And as a parallel, and you realize you've got that power.
And when you realize you got that power, you can, you can make literally anything happen. And it's, uh, I, you realize art and life should be the same.
You know, so many people, I was telling this story to somebody and they said, wow, you're really positive. And that kind of makes a lot of sense.
You know, I have a project that's pretty much all together. Almost the pieces are there, but I guess I'm just not ready.
It's going to be on your tombstone. Here lies so-and-so.
He was never ready. You can't wait to go do it like life you don't know what's going to happen yeah you wanted to work out today what happens a bunch of shit right got in the way your tires flat fires went up you just got fired you can't you're not ready for life you're like this right but for some reason people who artists think that they need to be ready to create art it's like no you got to jump in and just start just need to start.
You're not going to really feel ready until you're almost done with a project. I didn't feel ready to make that $7,000 movie until the last few days when I was like, okay, now I wrap my head around it.
I have to figure it out day by day. Yeah, the procrastination really cripples people.
Yeah, we're thinking that they need to know more. And you don't realize the answers you get that you need are not going to be figured out sitting at a desk going to be on the floor i think it's kind of a fear of incompetence and failure especially if you're undertaking something like starting a film like some people just for whatever reason they did they don't have the confidence to just potentially fail and just just try it just get moving just get you know hemingway my friend ari on his laptop he has this quote top top of his keyboard the first draft of everything is shit yeah and it's Hemingway what a great fucking it's like so you know important thing to know because he knows the process yes if you trust the process yes you don't have to worry and if you question well I don't know if you're an artist that's what an artist should think but don't let that cripple you I call it fear forward like you should have some fear going into something yes like I might screw up but that's good that means you're not wasting your time I think it's really important for people to hear someone like you who's accomplished so much say it that way because they can internalize it and go okay this is what it is I just have to do something I just actually get moving I just can't sit around waiting for the perfect time because it won't happen.
It's not

going to happen. And there's that thing like you have to, you know, I always give people copies of the War of Art Pressfield.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Amazing.
It's a great book, but it's all about that. That book is, if you're trying to figure it out, that book's the guidebook, read that book.
It's a short little book, super easy to read. And it gives you the tools to put in your head like, oh, this is resistance.
Like this procrastination, this is this weird fear of doing it. Yeah.
Because it's not like the thing you're doing is painful, which is really crazy. Like writing out cool plot lines and that's got to be fun.
It's really fun. Fun.
Now the making of it might be very painful. Tedious.
But it's a very short amount of pain versus a long-term pain if you're not living your dream.

That's the longest.

That's the longest time you can spend.

That's the longest time in pain.

So just rip the Band-Aid off and jump in.

I mean, I'm sure there's a bunch of people out there that are in the middle of that right now.

They're trying to figure out.

We have to keep reminding ourselves because we know and we got to remind ourselves.

Sometimes we forget and we don't apply it to other areas of life.

I'll talk about that.

That's what I really found success was when I took these ideas and moved it to another area. But I tried to figure this out when I was doing that other method, the wrong method, when I was cartooning because it would be so hard to come up with a cartoon strip each day.
But I needed the money and I had a daily cartoon strip here at UT we had the biggest comics page in the country it was really everybody wanted to be the next Burke brother he'd come out of there he did Bloom County he was a UT student his college art was like national stuff so we all wanted to be him so I would go like this has got to be an easier process than sitting here and working it out I want to 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 just go draw it, right? I'd be there two hours, three hours. My deadline's coming up.
Shit, it's not working. So I have to go, fuck, start drawing again.
Then be like, okay, this kind of goes with that one. Oh, here it is.
And I realized something really profound back at 19 and it's 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.

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 going to reward you if you're doing that because it can do that but as soon as you pick it up it takes over so i realize oh i just have to be a conduit or a pipe and if i just start i'm going to be like whoa and you got to keep your ego out of it because if you go wow how did i do that i wonder if i could do it again you just shut it you just shut it right back up because 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 it to my kids and since they hadn't learned any bad habits they went oh we so we didn't have to do anything we just have to start writing it's going to come out go yeah and they win they wrote all this amazing stuff I was like, they don't have to be reversed.

Reversed.

But that was a very powerful thing.

And I saw when I did another $7,000 movie recently. I had a TV series based on Rebel Without a Crew where I got independent filmmakers.

So it only made short films.

And I gave them two weeks.

You got to do like Mariachi.

You can bring one person to be either a cameraman or your sound guy.

But you got to 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're all oh we don't know how we're gonna do it by the week they started shooting they're already talking about their next three films like they changed their idea of what was impossible just dropped out 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 to that i brought my son racer because i knew he hadn't been working with me on the movies for a while i'm going to make him my second guy he's going to be my co-writer my co-lighter and he's going to be doing the sound i didn't show him how to use the sound equipment till we're filming because 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 we're going, and I thought, he's going to hate this.
He's got his own interest. He doesn't want to 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 match. The location didn't match the script at all.
Everything was falling apart. We asked you how we're going to 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.
Their eyes were all wide. Oh, they don't realize that's the creative process, and that's every day in life and in work.
Life, you don't know. You're going to 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 he goes he goes i never knew how my dad did mariachi and then now i know because i just did this project he didn't know either he just started and out day by day.
Most people never start. I mean, he succinctly encapsulated everything I tried to say in my book, which was you just got to go.
And identity is key. Identity is the main thing.
All these people who are out there, you got to 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 a matter of desire.
You have the desire. 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. Over the years, people would say, hey, in your book it says this.
I'd go, I wrote that? I was so smart back then. What happened? I got to go reread my own book.
But it was this thing where I told people, because they would come up to me a lot, because I was making films really early on, and say, I'm an aspiring filmmaker. You might hear that.
I'm an aspiring comic. I'm an aspiring filmmaker.
I go, stop aspiring. You're calling yourself an aspiring filmmaker.
That's now your identity. You're always going to be aspiring.
Just say you're a filmmaker. Take one of these cards and make a business card, even if you have to handwrite it, who you are.
I'm a director. I wrote, I did one.

I had to print it up. Director, cinematographer, editor, composer.
That's who I am. Now you're going to have to conform to that.
And you're going to start making films. That's why I started making

these films, even for Spanish video. And so you have to think it for, and I've forgotten that

lesson. So I wanted to use your gym because, you know, I like to work out now.
I never did. You started as a cartoonist.
I'm surprised. I was always an artist.
I was really tall, you know, for school. Yeah, I started.
I was an illustrator when I was a kid. I wanted to do comic book illustration.
Yeah. That was my thing.
Yeah. Yeah.
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It's fun, right? Love it. Because it's just, it's just it's not you you know you start drawing and then suddenly when did you learn that as a i don't think i knew that i think i was doing that but i didn't know it and until i started reading about it like the concept of the muse the concept oh right right right like that you just have to sit down and do the work and it comes to you yeah well it started when i 19 doing the comic, but then it kept getting repeated.
But you realized it at 19. I realized it at 19 that that was the process.
It felt like something else, but then it really hit me later on. And I'll get to that one.
It really hit me later on where I kind of put it all together around 2001, 2002, when I was doing a movie where I was, again, kind of going back to the way I did Mariachi. I was on a big movie, though.
I was the writer, the director, the producer, the cinematographer, the editor, the composer. I was doing all these things.
Plus, I was doing the production design now. And I was taking on more jobs to make it more like a handmade film, more like a lot of factory movies were being made.
I said, I want people just to feel different. I think they'll get a feeling

from it they don't get from, you know, a McDonald's process. They're still good, but, you know, there's something about a home-cooked meal.
And I didn't even know how to read or write music. And I was writing music for a hundred-piece orchestra.
And I was like, how am I figuring it out by notes going, eh, eh, there's only 12 notes. You go even less than a scale.
So you hit three notes, four notes. Ah, that's not bad.
That's a bad note. Okay.
That's pleasing to the ear. And I was just writing it note by note because it's a kid's movie.
So I figured it should sound like a kid wrote it. And I'm like a kid.
It should sound like that. And I was writing pretty complex stuff, not knowing what I was doing.
I go, how is this even possible that I'm doing all these jobs I wasn't trained in? So I went on Amazon and I looked up any book that had the word creative or creativity in it. I just ordered it.
I didn't know what section it came from. They just arrived and I'm thumbing through them.
And one of them was really speaking about the creative process, how it worked. And I was like, wow, wow, that's how it is.
That's how it is. And then it said gels and mediums.
And I was like, oh, this is a book particularly about painting, but it applies to all the other things I'm doing. That's when I realized that it's all linked, that creativity is 90% of any of those endeavors.
90% of it is just being creative. The technical part, like reading or writing music, and it's a lot of great musicians who don't read or write music they're fantastic the technical part you can fudge that like how how to shoot the movie you can you can fudge a lot of the technical stuff 90 is creative and if you know how to be creative you can literally jump from job to job and do it really well because you're coming with your own experience your own point of view that's why i teach my actors to paint on the set because they've never painted before.
And they're already being creative by acting, but in between takes, we'll go paint a portrait of their character where I take a photo of them in character and have them paint a background. I said, just pick up the paint.
You can use these three methods, any color you want. The paintbrush is going to know where to go.
Even though you've never painted before, it's going to know where to go to go and they do it and i put a stencil of a line drawing of their face over it i'll show you some you're not gonna believe it josh brown was way into it lady gaga did one bruce willis did one and it's just like magic how it comes together and it's to teach them that you don't have to know you know we always think i need to know this i need to know that what about the other side half half of the battle is knowing what about the other half not knowing I think is the more beautiful and where the magic is because you, I need to know this. I need to know that.
What about the other side? Half of the battle is knowing. What about the other half? Not knowing, I think, is the more beautiful and where the magic is.
Because you don't need to know what's going to happen. You just need to show up.
You just need to pick up the pen. You need to do the keyboard.
Yeah. Because it just starts coming through you.
And they see it. And it helps them go back to the set and solve any creative problem.
Because it was much harder in the faint room figuring out gels and mediums and all this stuff. go back to the set and they can solve any problem instantly and and you think that they're already in a creative mode by acting but it fires off a whole other part of your brain to go do something else creative at the same time remember on the set josh goes is it okay i'm still thinking about the painting i go i think so i think it's all right let's see let's see That sounds sounds like something he would say to you it's so funny that's like a miyamato musashi quote from the book of five rings right once you know the way broadly you can see it in all things yeah you start seeing and that's where i started piecing together that it was something because i really wanted to look it up because it would feel like when i would go to write the music i I don't have to write very many notes before it feels like I'm being pulled by the hand.
Like, I didn't make that. I didn't make that.
Right. And I didn't do that.
And I didn't do that. What is it? You shouldn't say that.
And a lot of comedians say that, too. Well, if you ask all the disciplines.
Yeah. I ask Jimmy Vaughn, how did you play that? That solo was amazing.
Did you have that worked out? It's kind of like tuning a radio. You know, if you get it just right, you can't even believe what's coming through.
Yeah. You know, you always hear everyone's version of that.
And so I called it something. I thought, I'm going to call it the creative spirit.
Like there's a creative spirit. Imagine the creative spirit that's assigned to you.
And if you're someone who's just like, I don't think I can

do this or that.

And they don't pick up the pen. They don't

actually start. How frustrated that spirit

must be. The spirit's just hovering over you waiting to be summoned.

Oh my God, will you just pick up?

It's not you. It's not you.
Will you just

let me through? And it's crazy that that concept

has been around forever. This concept

of the muse, but yet still

I've never heard it like that where it's like

takes, it still feels like you have to do

a lot. Well that's how Pressfield talks about it.
You just go

Thank you. I think there's something to it man and it's it sounds so kooky but if something is super successful for amazing people and they're all telling you the same thing like why do you have to nah man I'm not stupid I'm not gonna believe in the.
Whatever the fuck it is, there's something that happens when you're creative where you feel like an antenna. You feel like you just take these ideas are coming to you.
They're entering into your mind. It's not physical effort.
It's not like you're picking up bricks and stacking them on the wall. Like something is happening to you.
Yeah, you're tapped into. I had a friend of mine, Tim Ferriss Ferriss was over at my house and I was telling him about some kind of, you know, it's very creative house really because it's, that's where I do a lot of my creative work.
And a lot of creatives like coming to this place. So you have to come check it out so you can see the Frazettas I have.
Oh, you have original Frazettas? Oh my God. We'll get to that.
We'll get to that. Oh my God.
But, um, it's just totally, totally. You have to tell what your favorite Fraz for that is.
Totally a creative place. And I like people to come there.
But it's just inspiring to be in an environment where everything around you is about creativity because then you get in that headspace. Yeah.
And you're able to do more because you realize it's not you. It's just coming through you.
And you just have to witness it. And it just takes a lot of the load off of you.
A lot of people can start easier if they know, oh, it doesn't have to be me. Like my kids are like, oh, I don't have to do it? I just have to actually pick up the pen? Yeah, it's very freeing.
Yeah, it's something that everyone should learn with anything in life, anything that you're doing in life, is just to take action and trust this process that happens. But you have to do things.
You can't just sit and wonder. And it's that procrastination and the anxiety about starting that's, like, crippling for people.
It keeps them from getting off the ground. And they're doing that to themselves.
You're literally doing this to yourself. So when you say, well, I don't know if I can – you just chopped off your leg.
Right at the beginning of the race. Right, right, right.
You go, well, I tried it once before. You just cut the other one off.
I mean, you're literally doing, you're your own worst enemy. I had this one gal in fear of failure.
This is the best thing. One gal in one of the talks, she said, okay, you're real positive, but what do I tell myself when I just spent a year and a half doing something and it didn't work out? I said, well, that's a very negative way to ask that.
Can you rephrase the question first? Then I'll attempt. And she went, I learned a good lesson the hard way.
She said, oh, that still sucks. If you're focused on the failure, if you followed your instinct and it didn't work out, it doesn't mean you're wrong.
Sometimes the only way across the river is to slip on the first two rocks. It's the only way.
And if you just stay there, you're not going to go. So you have to embrace the failure.
Because if you're going on instinct, I mean, you're doing it literally on instinct, not like someone said, hey, go over there. There's a money-making scheme.
Go do that. Literally, you had the instinct.
My best example is Four Rooms, a movie I did with Quentin. Because if you study the ashes of your failure, you'll find a key to your next success.
That was the movie where there was four different stories playing simultaneously. Four different movies, four different stories.
And I love short stories because I had made a bunch of short films. I thought, oh, I want to do that.
So when Quentin asked, and I asked the audience, I like asking the audience, how would you answer this? Quentin goes, hey, I'm going to make a movie called Four Rooms. Four different directors.
You've got to use the bellhop. It's New Year's Eve.
You're in a hotel. You can't leave your hotel room.
You want to do it? Hand goes up. Now, 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? Are you more studious? Are you more instinctual? 100%.
Yeah. I'm primarily instinctual.
I figure because that's why you're here right now. Because we're not that smart.
I'm not that smart. I couldn't have figured this shit out.
It's because I was just at an instinct to go that way when everyone else was going that way. And you're going to stumble.
You're going to fall. But you're going to stumble upon.
You're going to stumble upon ideas no one thought of because you're going the way that's not picked clean already. Right, right.
So I would 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 it. They don't know how to wrap their head around it.
What is this, three movies? Is this anthology? It doesn't work. If I had studied first, should I have changed my answer? Nobody knows that answer.
Well, I'm going to go on instinct. I'm going to say, 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 got to be really careful now going forward.
I have to tiptoe around as an artist. Well, that's not the state of mind I was when I won Sundance.
I was throwing stuff out. Can I offer a counter to that? Sure.
It only bombed financially. Okay.
No, no. I'm not done with the story.
Yeah, artistically it was a very good movie. There's a lot of great stuff in it, but it 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 a family. So I'm seeing Antonio and Tamalyn Tamita all dressed up to the nines.
I went, wow, they look like a really cool international spy couple. What if they were spies and the two little kids who can barely tie their shoes don't know it? They get captured and the kids have to go see them.
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 going to try it again.
Not four stories, three stories, like a three act structure, not four directors, but the same director. I'm going to try it.
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.
So Sin City and Spy Kids directly came from that thing you would call a failure. If you, if you focused on the failure, 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 going to find either that you've already had the success from it and you didn't realize it, which you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct, or you, you something that will be the key to your success. Well, that's also the magical part of the creative process is that it's not always going to work.
And that's actually good. That means when it does work, it'll be even more rewarding.
Yeah. I mean, mariachi didn't work.
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I failed at that.

I was going to sell that to the Spanish Home Video.

This is what blew me away about rereading the book.

I went, oh my God, I was so bummed.

I finished making that movie.

And you see in the book,

clearly I'm a penniless, clueless filmmaker.

Making this movie, I think by myself,

I think it's going to work.

I don't know.

A borrowed camera.

I didn't even know how to use it.

I call a place in Dallas that rents this equipment. I I got an Aries 16s you know on the phone it has two motor looking things one has one number and one's got many oh that's a variable speed motor it means you oh can I do slow motion with it you know I was literally learned like that and then I went and shot the whole movie I had to shoot the whole movie in two weeks and I couldn't develop the film till i got back so i shot blind not knowing if that camera was even working is it true that you invented the walk away with the explosion behind you yeah that was accident yeah yeah if you can look at all the compilations it starts with desperado because it was an accident i didn't think you know this is what happened so in desperado in the script it says he throws some grenades over the side of this building to blow up the bad guys.
And him and Salma walk away. He was just supposed to see some body parts fly.
It was just a grenade. It was supposed to be a nuclear explosion.
Just some body parts, some shrapnel, and some smoke. But it's two stories up.
And we get there. We're shooting so fast.
I went to my poor effects guy who was just so busy just having done a big shootout. And I went, Mindy, know you don't have body parts we didn't ask for but do you have anything we can just throw it's so high up is there anything you can launch up there and he goes oh no i don't have anything so i need something to come up because i wanted some shit to fly up behind him he goes i give you a fireball i said fireball like like what it'll go up uh 60 feet but it's a but it's propane so it's gonna burn off like that how fast does it burn off like that so okay i'll shoot slow motion okay we'll shoot slow motion i tell the actors just keep walking don't turn around because it's supposed to be pretty big and it might be really hot i want you to send your eyebrows just walk fast walk fast and determine but i'm going to shoot it's going to feel funny but when i shoot it in slow motion it'll look like you're just walking normal speed and it'll slow It looks fantastic.
I remember when I showed it. There it is.
Yeah. It looks fantastic.
See, they're just walking. They don't know.
Look at her. She's just, like, so calm.
But if you play that, if you spit that up and played it in normal motion, it goes by like that. It's crazy because that scene has been copied so many times.
It became an action, like, staple. They even used it for Fear Factor.

Now that I'm thinking about it,

we used it for one of the ads for Fear Factor.

It was me walking away

and they blew some shit up behind me.

It's this cool attitude.

I thought it was the dumbest shit ever.

Because it was a TV show

about people eating dicks.

It wasn't an action movie.

It was just an accident.

Again, the accidents that you stumble upon. There you go.
All right. That's hilarious.
That's where I came from. So that came out in August of 1995.
Just six months later, Dust Till Dawn came out. And I made that.
I enjoyed it so much. I fucking love that movie.
Oh, thanks. I love that movie.
I showed this explosion shot, you know, the movie to Jim Cameron.

He was watching it.

I was waiting for his, you know, he was doing movies like Terminator 2, blowing the shit out of everything.

So I was wondering if he'd like my little rinky-dink thing.

And his hand went up in the air when he saw that moment.

So I thought, yeah, I'm doing that.

I'm going to do that in Dusk Till Dawn.

Dusk Till Dawn, I had it where the actors come out doing the dialogue, though.

And the explosion just keeps going.

And they're walking away while having a conversation. Yeah.
So within six months, you saw two versions of that. So people just started doing it.
You see it in Man and Fire. I mean, you see whole combinations of it.
That's got to be weird for you. You're like, bitch, that's mine.
No, no, because it wasn't mine. Again, it came...
Of course. If I had engineered it, yeah, i'd be really smart but again like i said i'm

not that smart sometimes it's gotta be pretty cool that it's become like a part of like action films yeah dust till dawn is so first of all who knew quentin tarantino would play such a good fucking psychopath who knew what's so fun is um he's in desperado now i met him on the film festival circuit so in 1992 we're both had movies with guys in black and violent movies in fact i met him at the toronto film festival for reservoir dogs had mariachi because they put us on a panel together to discuss violence in the movies in the 90s even though it was only 92 and so we met there we became friends and he said my next movie's in spell fiction next movie's Pulp Fiction. And I just thought, this crazy guy, he's so funny.
And I said, I'm going to ride him into Desperado. It was before he did Pulp Fiction or any of that.
So by the time Desperado came out, Pulp Fiction was a phenomenon, and then people cheer when he walks on set. But when we were doing that Four Rooms, here's another thing that came from Four Rooms.
If I hadn't done Four Rooms, there'd be no Dusk Till Dawn. When we're doing Four Rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me.
And I got it. It's on the Internet.
I put it out. Him reading me the first scene of Kill Bill.
This was in, you know, eight years before he made the movie. And then he said, my very first script I wrote and I didn't get paid shit for like 1500 bucks was

dust till dawn. And now because of the sex of the success of Pulp Fiction,

they want to make all my old stuff and these producers have it.

I didn't get paid dicks.

I'll do a rewrite and you and I will go in together.

You should be the director cause it takes place in Mexico and you're Mexican.

So I was like, all right, that's the second time he read me a scene in 2001.

There's one video where he's even younger in uh four rooms reading me a second version of it so over the years he would be we had an office next to each other when i was writing desperado and he was writing pulp fiction so he'd read out scenes there he is and i would read out you know show him scenes from desperado and we just became friends there he was originally going to make pulp fiction for a tri-star and then they passed on it because they thought it's weird it's long and he went did it for miramax did he want to be the serial killer i asked him to because i knew he he liked acting and i and i just knew him as a person like a lot of times i'll cast somebody just by meeting them i'm going to cast you because you realize you can there's something about them that captures you that's going to just be magnified when you put a 50 feet on screen. That's why I've discovered a lot of talent that way.
That's why I found Salma. I just knew she was going to be it.
But he was so great. And I thought, this is a really fun character.
I bet he could, he likes that. I can get a performance out of him and he'll come in with a take on it.
So I said, I'll do Destel Don. Would you be interested in playing Richie?

He goes, I'd love to play Richie.

I said, okay.

So he was the first person we cast.

And he's fantastic in it.

He's really great.

He's really scary.

Got all into character.

He was terrifying.

Kind of had this really cool haircut.

I showed him a picture of Burt Reynolds in Deliverance.

I said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance.

That was really cool.

He was like, oh, wow. He just really slipped into it.
It was always in character and he was always intense on the set. It was really fun to see him get to do that.
He was very believable. He really enjoyed that performance.
I said, dude, you're so good in this movie. Anyone talk shit, they're just talking shit.
Bullshit through gritted teeth. Don't listen to anybody.
You're really great in this movie. Yeah, no one can listen.
You can't listen. Anybody's talking shit about Quentin in that movie,

shut up.

Oh, yeah. He nailed it.

He scared the fuck out of me.

Well, when you get a lot of success,

people would tend to, you know,

it connects you with Target, you know.

Of course.

So they would say stuff about him

and being in a way,

he shouldn't be acting in this movie.

Of course.

You know, just bullshit like this.

Like, dude, this will shut him up

and if it doesn't, it's just bullshit

because you're really great in the movie.

Yeah, you just have to tune out the noise. Yeah, how do you get past the noise? I just tune it out.
I'm busy. Stay busy.
I don't read anything about me. That's the big one.
Yeah, don't read it. Don't engage.
Like sometimes people send me things. I'm like, don't send me that, man.
I don't want to read it. I'm not going to read it anyway.
They send it to you. Yeah, friends.
Oh, my God. They don't know any better or my sister might send me something.
it's just i just go just leave me out of it i got some really good advice early on like to share people i share this with my actors because they get a lot of shit sometimes um i was afraid to even do like a bigger movie because i was flying under the radar with you know mariachi and desperado and then spielberg sees desperado wants to do zorro with antonio and me directing right so i go cool i'm working with spielberg and it's like oh shit i'm working with spielberg you probably remember this time because we're about the same age remember the 80s and 90s people would just throw shit on him all the time all the time no respect for this guy they were so jealous yes public everything he was like he couldn't catch a break and he was making like the coolest movie that movie movie sucks. Jurassic Park sucks.
Unbelievable. So I thought, oh, shit, it's because he's got his head way up.
Maybe I should fly into the radar and I can make a movie with him. What chance do I have? I went back and rewatched, you know, like Temple of Doom, which people say that's not as good as Raiders.
I watch it. If I can make a movie that's an eighth of that, I'd be lucky.
So I called him and said— Bro, he made Close Encounters.

I know. Jesus.
That's a fucking incredible movie. Some great movies.
But you get that much success, and then people kind of resent it, right? Yeah. It comes with the territory.
Yeah, but how do you get past it? I was curious for him. So I said, hey, man, I just saw Temple of Doom.
I don't know how I'm going to make this movie for you. He goes, oh, don't worry about that.
Just make a great movie. so then I go to him and I say I'm afraid that if I make a movie

at the bigger level i'm just gonna be a target like him i mean he's the best filmmaker and he's getting shit kicked out of him i said how do you do it how do you do it you just you get rocks thrown at you all day long he goes oh robert you just don't blink i was like wow was on like a Clint Eastwood line. I go, wow, that's how he did it all his time.
It's just like, just don't blink. Commit to making a body of work.
I try to tell filmmakers sometimes that they have a success for the first one. They get really afraid of the second one because they think, oh, shit, now I might fail, right? The fear of failure cripples a lot of people.
If you commit to just making a body of work, a body of work, like he did. He just made any movie he wanted.
Some hit, some don't. Some overperform, some underperform.
A movie like Mariachi that was not supposed to go anywhere way overperforms. And you can't tell what's going to be the one.
So just commit to a body of work. And now no one gives him any shit.
I think it's also important to recognize that the people that are tossing shit your way, they're doing it to distract themselves from the fact that they're not contributing anything. It's almost always the case of that.
That's what the critic is. The critic would not be a critic if they had something to contribute.
So they see other people that are taking that chance and going out there and they're acting 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. And they may very well want to.
It's very easy to attack. And they may very well want to, but they're getting hurt by the fear.
The same instincts that make them want to attack successful people are the same things that hold them back from being creative. Talk about closing that pipe.
Yeah. I mean, doing it to yourself.
Doing it to yourself and by doing that to other people. If they would just commit to a body of work, don't blink, and just keep making shit, don't get somewhere.
That's great advice. Commit to a body of work.
A body of work. Like, look at someone.
I mentioned this, and a friend of mine, a businessman, called me and said, wow, I really spoke to me. You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses I've created that failed instead of looking at the whole body of work.
And I fixate on the ones that didn't work. And it's like you don't ever know what's going to work or not.
That's not your concern. Just go make shit.
Follow your instinct. Because, again, maybe that one that didn't work is your four rooms.
And you get two other great ideas out of it. I've forgotten that Dustal Dawn came out of that as well.
So that's the third one out of that four rooms. That thing gave and gave and gave.
Dustal Dawn was so fun because it was two different movies. That's why it couldn't get made.
Really? So when he first wrote it, he couldn't get made because people – okay, so this is what happened. The Fex company hires him.
And they said, we want a movie that'll showcase our effects in this vampire bar. It's about two brothers who go to a vampire bar.
Quentin starts writing, and he starts writing Quentin style. He gets way into the brothers.
So much into the brothers, and it turns into like a Desperate Hours type movie for half the movie. He waits half the movie to get to the bar so now for for financiers it's now like a mixed bag it's like two movies in one right but it was a negative then it was like this movie's all wrong it's like suddenly they're it's one thing and then suddenly it turns into a vampire bar this we can't make this but then pulp fiction comes out and now everybody wants to make it oh it's two movies in one it's great you know a whole different perspective change what a little success will do for you four rooms four rooms oh yes four rooms four times the fun you know so you never know so i told quentin let's make it right now because we made it our next movie right after four rooms so the desperado four rooms and soperado came out in August 1995.
Four rooms in December.

Dust Till Dawn was in January. That's how

fast those came out. We were working that fast

back then. So I said, let's make this right now

because you're starting to steal from the script.

That Ezekiel speech

that

Sam Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, that's

from the original Dust Till Dawn script.

He was pulling stuff out

of it because it was just not going to get made.

He's scrapping an old car. So I said, before

it gets picked clean, let's go make

Thank you. It's from the original Dust Till Dawn script.
Really? He just took it. He was pulling stuff out of it because it was just not going to get made.
Oh, no. He's scrapping an old car.
So I said, before it gets picked clean, let's go make this thing. And we'll shoot it now.
We'll shoot it right now. Wow.
And it was so fun. It was so fun.
I love that movie. It was so fun.
Cheech is so great. You know, we did a table read.
And we have a table read with your actors. You only have your main actors there.
So sometimes you'll assign other parts to other people who are there. So it was like, Cheech, why don't you go ahead and take, you play the main guy at the end, but go ahead and read for the, oh no, he made the guy who gives the speech in front.
He was playing that character. Read for the border guard and for the guy who comes at the end, Carlos, who I was going to get like, you know, Eric Estrada or something.
So he starts reading and he does each one, you know, it's his immediate and he does everything in a different voice and we're like,, by the end I was like, wow, he should play all three characters. And so I asked Quentin.
Quentin goes, hey, what if we get Cheech to play all three characters? I was thinking the same thing. So I go and tell Cheech.
Cheech is just freaking hilarious. And he goes, hey man, you're going to play all three characters.
Do I get paid three times? This is why I love having comedians on the set, you know, because we're out there shooting that desert scene, you know, at the end when the Cheech comes and the whole place is burned down, it's 125 degrees in the shade. We're in Barstow in a dry lake bed.
So freaking hot. We're all just like not moving.
Someone had to go get something. We're all just Cheech is like this in a suit with a hat.
He goes, Hey Robert, can is going to be a while can i go to my trailer i was like oh man by the time you go this guy's going to be back and we'll have to start we should just stay right here okay i'll go into my mental trailer okay ice cold drinks air conditioning lines up the whole set okay this guy's going to be in every movie he's been in 10 movies of mine because there's that attitude. You like that attitude of somebody who can find levity and torture.
Sometimes movies can be torturous sometimes. So having people like that that are really on your team, that can really lighten up a set is just the best.
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You've done so many different kinds of movies.

It's so interesting because you never got,

you know, Quentin essentially does these wild, chaotic action movies that just blow you away. You do everything.
Like, you're doing, like, kids movies. You did animated movies.
Yeah, there's a similarity to them. I'm still that cartoonist.
So what they all have is they're all comedic. Like, even the action movies are kind of just fun.
I mean, think of Desperado. It's like a James Bond movie.
he's got a guitar case that fires missiles he's got this one that's got a weapon design spy kids is very much the same thing it's just summer for big kids and summer for little kids even sin city yeah even sin city is very playful yeah the sin city one was so dark i remember the the first book the one that marv that mickey work plays it was so dark i was going like oh my god it's gonna be. I have to add some levity to this.
And Mickey will bring humor to it. And it's the funniest episode.
It's really funny. But he's in the book.
It's just like, oh my God, he's just killing everybody. But you're really with him because of the way he portrayed it.
We didn't change very much. We just added some humor to it.
And that gallows humor really works. Yeah.
Like when the yellow guy gets shot in the dick. Oh, that's, yeah, that was a good one.

Yeah.

That was a really good use of color.

That, by the way, was one of the fucking creepiest characters ever in a film.

And it looks like that in the drawing.

And I just wanted to, my whole idea was, because I'm so respectful of someone's artwork.

You read Sin City and you realize that art is half of it. If anyone else in Hollywood were to make that into a movie, they would just make it like a gritty crime thriller and take out the whole visual element, which is that stark black and white where people's eyes glow in the dark and it has all these layers of unreality.
And I went to Frank Miller and I said, I want to just make this move. I want, this is like the coolest movie never made.
And he actually wrote it because he had been in Hollywood writing a couple of screenplays and he got shit on and screwed around the whole Hollywood thing. Jamie, can you show me the scene with Mickey Rourke and the yellow guy? Oh, Bruce Willis and the yellow guy.
There's three stories. I just want to, while you're talking about this, I want to look at it.
And, yeah, so he went and made this comic. He said, fuck Hollywood.
I'm going to go make a comic that can never be made into a movie because it's so dark, so sexy. And so, and I'd call him up, man, let's make a great movie.
God, it was so interesting. Oh, Bruce loved this.
I got to tell you this funny. This is the fastest I think any Hollywood movie's ever gotten made.
Really? Yeah, I'll show you the process. It's kind of like this cards thing.
It's gonna blow your mind. What is it now? It's April? Okay, so imagine.
If this is 2000, if this is 2004, April, last year I had two movies out. In the summer it was Spy Kids 3D.
It was the number one movie. A couple months later, Once Upon a Time Mexico, another number one movie, but also both of them ended a trilogy that I had started.
So I was looking for my next thing, and I opened up my Sin Cities again. I was like, oh, shit, I know how to do this now.
I just did a whole movie on green screen, which was really new back then for Spike It's 3D because I wanted it in 3D. It was the first digital 3D movie.
Because when you're in Austin, you just innovate a lot. You know, George Lucas told me that.
It's a good thing you're in Austin. That's why I'm in Marin County.
When you live outside of that box, you think outside of that box automatically. You're just going to stumble upon innovations.
So I thought, I'm going to go take this process and utilize it to make Sin City. So did a test a little test of it i went oh shit this is gonna work so it was october when i got the idea i filmed it i contact frank miller met him in new york i showed him my laptop it looks like his art but then it starts moving it's an actor and he's like wow and he gets all into it right it's november and he goes um oh no but then we have to write a script and the studio is going to have notes and that's not how it works i got my own studio i'll write the script it's going to be unremarkable i'm going to copy right out of your book and i'm going to edit it down i'm going to edit three of the stories together i'll write it this month we'll show it to you in december and then in january we'll get a couple of actor friends we're going to shoot the opening scene as a test you don't give me the rights yet because I understand this is your baby.
You've never given up the rights. I know what it's like for an artist to make something.
Let me take all the risk. I'll go ahead and write the script.
We'll shoot the opening scene. I'm going to fly you down so you can watch.
We brought Josh Harnett, Marley Shelton. That opening scene in Sin City, that was our test, 10-hour shoot day.
And Marley Shelton comes up to me and says did I hire this guy to kill me? Well, I don't know. Let's go ask Frank.
He should know it's not in the book, but I'm curious myself. So Frank answered her question and said, I want to do this movie.
And let's wait. We had a whole process.
I'm going to shoot the opening. I'm going to cut it together.
I'm going to put in the effects. I'm going to put in the music.
I'm going to put in fake titles. Then we're going to watch it.
And if you like what you see, then we do the rights and we make the movie. If you don't like it and you're still on the fence about it, just keep it as a short film.
Keep the gift. So we committed to the process.
We make the opening sequence. He loves it.
He wants to do it. I take it to Bruce Willis first, which was cool about doing it that way, which is unheard of.
When I went to his agent, his agent was like, wait. He leans forward very dramatically.
You brought actors down. Oh, because I told him, this is Frank Miller, he's one of our greatest artists.
He wrote in Hollywood and he got screwed around and the guy goes, welcome to Hollywood. You know, like that.
I'm like, yeah, whatever. I just respect the artist.
So I just so i just thought hey you'll be a partner you're going to co-direct this with me and we're going to make this we're going to take all i'm going to take all the risk you're going to come down we shot this opening which i have i'm going to show it to bruce so he can see the book but then he can see how it gets translated and the guy gets very dramatic he goes wait you brought the actors down you shot this you did the effects for it and you didn't have the rights and i leaned in i went welcome to texas all these little monkeys spit out water frank was dying it was super annoying they said okay he saw it he went okay you can go meet with frank or you can go meet with bruce so i showed it to bruce and he's watching it he looks at the book and he looks at the thing and he goes damn this is really great and then fake titles come up his names in the titles and i go look you have to be in the movie your name's in the titles and he's like i'm in so he was in and we were shooting the finish we're shooting the actual movie by march wow so april we're already done with if we're filming the the second story by april it was out the next year i mean that's as fast a movie's ever gone into production all these actors jumped on right away once we had bruce and he loved he loved doing this film noir type thing and we're doing something very experimental which is green screen nobody knew what green screen back then was and what i told them was well it's kind of like theater but instead of being in front of a black curtain you're in front of a green curtain you'll still have some props you might have a steering wheel like clive there just had a steering wheel. You might have, but just mainly you and the actors, and everything else goes away.
And I'll fill in later. So what's cool is their performances are so focused on each other because there's no other stimulus around.
You got these great performances. We only built the bar.
Hey, Frank, we'll build the bar so that we have a place to hang out with and do our story meetings.

But everything else will just be on the same. You're going to come see

the screen screen when you come visit my studio.

The whole movie was shot in an area

smaller than this room

by the time you bring your lights in

where the actors actually had the playground.

It's unbelievable. Wow.

That's incredible.

And it was so

inspiring, too. That movie was so...

When I left the theater, I remember thinking

I've never seen anything like that before.

It was like the comic because the comic was that way it was so different and it just like when someone does something that really just steps up and enters into like kind of just a new area of art because that's what it felt like it felt like a real legitimate comic book art movie and this is And this is before 300. Yeah, 300 actually.
So 300 kind of took that as well. Oh, yeah.
And then went and said- Zach called and said, how did you do that movie? I said, I just put out a DVD. I put all the secrets on there.
And they went and they shot the same way. It was such a good movie.
And it was so fun. Because it was also a Frank Miller movie.
The thing about the- Yeah, right? Same thing. But the thing about those kind of films where someone does something new, it's like when you see something new and i felt this way about pulp fiction too you're like wow you leave the theater like everything's different you know like the world's different like that got made like this like i now i know and the thing about people today like young people today that don't know like how revolutionary pulp fiction was when it came out when it came when it came out it was like such a different kind of feeling that you got after you saw the movie it was there's so many what the fuck scenes that you left that theater like jesus christ it's like the world was different the world was different quentin tarantino changed the world with pulp fiction profound it was.
Yeah. And I'm not exaggerating.
It changed what was possible in film after that. No, I was there during it.
I remember the studios were just like, we don't understand why this movie's big head. We don't have anything like this coming out except your movie, Desperado, maybe.
Because Quentin was in it. Right.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got our pulse on the on what people want it's like we don't we don't know so i gotta tell you really uh two things first of all george lucas told me that he's like um i showed him the sin city thing because we'd both been early adopters of digital and dps directors of photography didn't want to even look at digital they were like fuck that dude they already spent all their time learning film which by sticking your head in the sand and not seeing where the times are going to the detriment now the cameras are designed and they don't look as good as they could look but they weren't a part of the conversation rob was shooting my own movies i wasn't going to let some dp who didn't want to get in digital keep me from making you know sin city so i just shot it myself i figured it out myself so i showed it to lucas he was like this movie will show people what digital is capable of finally more than the star wars movies i'm doing because it's just so avant-garde and so crazy looking but i only made it for me i i really wanted to see it made i didn't i literally didn't think it would be successful on its theatrical run in fact we didn't even test screen it they're like can we do a test a test screen? I'm like, no.
What for? Everybody's going to say, it's black and white. Why is it black and white? Why are there three stories? That's all wrong.
It's voiceover. It's all voiceover.
That's all wrong. We know it's that way.
Why would we go here? People tell us that that's not what this movie is supposed to be. Let's just put it out.
I figure it won't do well theatrically because you'll just see the first trailer and go, okay, black and white. It's 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 good enough for me.
But then it was a big hit theatrically. Now let me tell you about Pulp Fiction, because 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. I ran across an old journal, and I brought it up to Quentin when I interviewed him for my director's chair episode.
I have a show called the director's chair. I interviewed brighter directors.
His was so big. We did two episodes.
We talked about all those 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 is gonna be pulp fiction i visited the set he was into it he's into it he finished the movie and i said hey how did because i live here in austin i get to hang out with him except when i go to la how did you how did your movie come out he goes yeah it's not it's not the one it's like it still feels like a movie quentin would make i'm going what what do you mean it's like it just doesn't feel like a real movie it feels like movie Quentin would make. And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he would put in.
It should be different. He's like, man, I just wouldn't have it.
It was like 2 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 all his director friends that I couldn't be at because I lived in Austin. So I called one of them.
I said, how was the screening? He was a little bummed about it. He goes, nah, this isn't the one for him.
I was like, really? Yeah, 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 it.
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.
He goes to Cannes. He wins Cannes.
And the friend left him a message. What the hell do I know? I've only made one movie.
Everyone's mind was changed. So he was surprised by it too.
So that's fun people to hear that because you're making something groundbreaking. It's not like you're going, I'm making something groundbreaking.
You don't know that it's going to do that. Sometimes things overperform.
That's why if you just commit to a body of work, you're not going to know which one's going to be your Pulp Fiction, which one's going to be your Four Rooms. And if you just do that, because I saw a lot of people get hurt.
John Carpenter made The Thing. He thought he made a great movie.
He thought he made an thought he made an amazing movie bombs critics called it pornography at the time if you remember like this the the makeup effects of it audiences didn't go it came out the same weekend unfortunately as et right why did they call it pornography just because it was just so self-indulgent and gross and nasty i mean they really like reamed him to the the special effects? Yeah, the special effects are really crazy. Really? Yeah.
If you don't remember the time, it was really like that. It was repulsion towards this movie.
Wow. I know you don't think that now because 10 years later...
I thought it was a hit. It took 10 years.
No, it was not. Wow.
10 years later, it was suddenly considered a classic. Now, if he had committed to a body of work,

he would have just let that roll off his shoulders

and just don't blink.

But it really fucks you up if you think,

my instincts must be off.

I thought I made a great movie.

It's a great fucking movie.

It's a great fucking movie,

but if no one else is saying that.

So I asked Quentin, who?

George Lucas had the same thing.

He showed famously Star Wars to all his director friends. And they're all like, poor George.
Just wasted all his time with this movie. And Spielberg was the only one who was like, it's naive.
It'll do good. And so I asked Quentin, is there anybody in that director's group? And he goes, yes, there was one.
Catherine Bigelow. She was the one who was championed and said, this is something new and different.
No one else was saying that. But that's pretty amazing, right? That's super amazing.
It's really. And I would have forgotten it if I had not written it down.
There's a lot of films that slip through the cracks for whatever reason or they don't get received. For whatever reason.
You know what I saw recently that I fucking loved? The Monkey. Did you see The Monkey? The Monkey, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a Stephen King king book that or maybe might be a short story it was a short story one of it was adapted skeleton crew it's fucking fun man i watched with my youngest daughter loves horror movies we watch a lot of horror movies together and uh we were you know looking for something the other night and we're like all right let's take a chance on this. Had no idea what it was.
Watched the trailer. I'm like, are you in? She's like, okay, this is good.
So it's fucking chaos. It's such a chaotic, insane, hyper-violent movie.
Right, right. But funny and just, you know, kind of scary.
It was really good, man. It was like a a classic what i really love about the early stephen king work like his early work was like that's a here's one that fell through the cracks like and i was there at sony when we were doing mariachi desperado when this movie came out i remember the marketing team said we have a really great movie unfortunately no one's going to see it because of the title so what is it called he goes shawsh Oh, my God.
And it bombed. What? Oh, Shawshank Redemption bombed.
What? It was a bomb. How? Nobody went to see it.
It's called Shawshank Redemption. And what the hell is it? Guys in prison? Nobody went to see it.
And this was Sony marketing. They just couldn't get anybody to go see it.
Wow. But history gets rewritten.
Now, again, you can be Frank Darabont and be really down. But fortunately, he didn't have to wait 10 years.
As soon as it got to video, it became a phenomenon in video. And now it's considered, if you go on IMDb, it's always neck and neck with The Godfather.
It's the best movie of all time. That's a movie nobody saw.
So again, look, don't blink. Commit to a body of work.
You may make a classic. It might be the thing, and you're not going to hear about that for 10 years.
Just keep going. That's incredible.
Don't let it make you question your instincts because your instincts. I would have never guessed Shawshank was a failure.
There's a lot of movies that are like that. Incredible.
That was a time when people could really get a second life on video. Now it's different with streaming and all that.
Opening night to see the audience to view their film, Darabont and Glotzer went to the Cinerama Dome and found no one there. The Cinerama Dome.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
I know. Can you imagine? Just like, I don't know.
I thought, you know, as an artist, you're going to be going, I must be wrong. I must have just don't have the instinct.
That's the marketing no it's also just i'm blaming them yeah i think i mean because if anyone showed up they would have gone and screamed it to everybody else sometimes it's just it's just the way it goes it's just it's supposed to go that way now i'm going to tell you an alternate one that there's a movie called body parts with a guy named jeff fey i loved that movie body, by Eric Redd. He did The Hitcher.
You would never hear about it because the timing of it. And Jeff Fahey, it was a big Jeff Fahey fan.
I remember in the early 90s, I kept going. I was at my mother-in-law's, and across the street was a dollar theater showing body parts.
I'd go every night at 7 p.m. I'd go for a dollar.
It was at the second run and watch it just to hear how an audience responds to it. he was just great and i just felt a connection this guy go i wish i was making movies i would work with this guy he's really a cool actor what is this about it's it's about a guy who gets in a car accident loses his arm and he's given the arm of a killer just to kind of just replace him but it suddenly he starts doing things oh i remember this okay so anyway that's the same dude that was Lawnmower Man.
Yeah, he was in Lawnmower Man, too. Yes.
So this should have been something that was it for him, but this week it came out, they had just caught Jeffrey Dahmer like the week before, so they pulled back on the marketing completely. Oh.
So no one saw it. And so he didn't get that boost to his career.
But the silver lining, the key in the ashes was me. I saw it every night.
So when I went to do Grindhouse, he retired from acting. He was in Afghanistan.
I asked for him to send a tape. He was in Afghanistan? Yeah, he was doing work out there.
What kind of work? He sent me, I don't remember, some kind of, you know, like, helping people and stuff. He sends me a tape.
And so I hired him. I hire him to be in it.
And because he was in that movie, in fact, I'd already hired Michael Biehn. And I went, oh, shit, Jeff sent me a thing.
God, Jeff's great too. I'll just make them brothers.
So they play brothers in Grindhouse. Because he did that movie, he got lost, that show Lost.
He got, he just, his whole career came back. So we were talking about it.
I just recently was telling him, man, came out on 4k you got to come see you probably never seen it I never seen the finished movie and I said you're great in it I was showing him some scenes was blowing his mind he goes yeah this movie didn't do well I remember now why because the Jeffrey Dahmer thing just do it and went that's just how it's supposed to go but I saw it and that's why I hired you and that's how you got that second career later on because i was there every night because it was in the dollar theater so quick i wouldn't have been able to afford it any other way so that's how weird shit happens right it's like so cool it makes you see that you don't it's just sometimes that's just how the balls roll you know it's just all interconnected yeah somehow it's interconnected you have to trust the process you just have to trust the is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Speed dating is an interesting concept, isn't it? Setting an allotted amount of time to get to know as many people as you can.
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I had someone in the audience recently, I was talking about brass knuckle films

and getting everybody all stirred up about it.

And one gal goes, you're real positive, but do you have any doubts?

I was like, well, I've never been asked that question before.

So whenever I don't have an answer, I'll ask them first.

What do you guys think? What do you guys think?

How would you answer? How would you answer?

How would you answer that?

Do you have doubts?

Do you have human doubts?

Everyone has doubts.

Okay.

It's what you do with them.

Do you let your doubts overwhelm you?

Or do you take them into consideration?

Like are these doubts valid?

Right.

And what do I have to do to make sure that these fears don't manifest themselves as reality? I have to do extra work? Do I have to work harder? Do I have to be more objective? Right. You know, you have to take into consideration that anything you're going to do that's going to be exciting also carries the possibility of risk.
And the risk of failure is a thing that keeps a lot of people from acting. So if you're going to commit to a body of work and not blink,

you don't have to worry about that stuff.

There's a jiu-jitsu expression.

A lot of people use it in MMA as well.

You don't lose.

You learn.

Yeah.

So if you know that's the process, this is my answer.

I said, no, I don't have any doubts.

Because I like to be counterintuitive.

Yeah, your process is long.

The thing is long.

It's not a sprint. You're not running to a telephone pole.
You're running to the other side of the world. Right.
Yeah. So I tell them, no, I don't have any doubts.
Just to be counterintuitive. And I say, why? Because if you understand the process, why should you have a doubt? You might fail, but it might be four rooms.
You might. If you have an instinct to go there or you don't know how you're going to do it, what's half the battle? Not knowing.
That's what the magic is. I don't have to know.
I'm going to figure it out when I'm almost done. You know, all the things come together.
Risk averse early on. Risk averse.
And it becomes a pattern. Yeah.
And it's very hard to break out of. And I always tell them, find something that you can have success in.
Find something that you enjoy doing. It doesn't have to be a career.
It could be a game that you enjoy playing. It could be anything, painting, writing.
It could be a thing that you enjoy. Because you love it, you probably will have success at it.
Yes, yes. Because I'm sure you were drawing too in school.
I would be drawing all day in school. All day.
I'd make these flip cartoon books in the sides of the dictionaries, paper dictionaries, flip cartoon movies. I'd get the dictionary that was biggest and fattest.
I'd make these very elaborate stick figure animations. And everyone in class loved him.
And I'd be like, I'm going to be broke. I used to do cartoons.
Because I can't pay attention to class. I used to do cartoons of the teachers in high school.
Yeah. And everybody loved him.
Yeah. I'd pass them around the class and I got in trouble a bunch of times for it.
And one time I had this science teacher, Mr. Holman.
And Mr. Holman was a very odd, very eccentric guy.
And so I drew a cartoon of him behind his screen. So he had a screen that he pulled down where he could show films.
And then when he pulls the screen up, he had no idea that on the chalkboard I had written, had drawn this cartoon of him and the whole fucking class starts laughing the power of the pen you had back then yeah it was like my first introduction to being a comedian it's very satisfying but did you think you were going to make a career out of that no of course not you think I was thinking oh my god I'm going to be so broke I can't understand what they're talking about I'm way behind and I'm not the best artist so it's not like I'm going to be so broke. I can't understand what they're talking about.
I'm way behind. And I'm not the best artist.
So it's not like I'm some protege or something. So I'm fucked.
But that's ended up being my career was just doing that stuff. Because you love it so much.
So I ask people, if you want to find where you're passionate, what is that thing that you run off to do on the weekend? Right. I was always going to making movies, and I was doing that.
Once you're done punching the clock all week, what is it that you go run to? That's probably your passion. Put more effort into that and you'll actually find success doing it.
100%. You'll put stuff together.
Suddenly opportunities are going to fall in your lap. And if that's not it, at least you'll have learned that you could follow this process to get good at something or get really deeply involved in something.
And you can apply that to other things. It might be a new thing excited so this is what i applied it to because i'd forgotten this lesson which was just say you're this person stop aspiring right our words we use are so powerful if you say well you know i'm i'm probably not going to be successful that's your lot in life you just you just did that yourself self-defining so i i had a friend of mine i mean like i i always hated working out i didn't follow any sports didn't know sports in high school they go we need you it's a small school we need you on the team you're tall everything you play basketball i don't know how to play any of these things i hate working out there's a line in the faculty that i gave to elijah wood because that was my line to teachers when they'd make me want to run and go i don't think a person should run unless he's being chased and they would leave me alone but i hated it and so then i became a filmmaker oh but i was a cartoonist my back kept going out 19 i'm like have a have a cane and my back would be out for like a month because i would sit oh wow kitchen table drawing i was so tall that it was just it would throw my back, disc would go out.
And then when I started filmmaking, every year would just go out like clockworks. I'm operating the camera.
I'm operating the steady cam. And when I was doing, you know, Spy Kids 2, I think with Ricardo Montalban had a bad back that he got surgery and it fucked him up and he was in a wheelchair.
He was paralyzed. So he's in a wheelchair and I'm with a walker because my back went out and he goes robert i'm 84 years old what's your excuse you gotta work out robert he was always in shape ricardo that chest and spot in uh in a star trek 2 that's his chest yeah i know and he was in his late 60s or his mid 60s they fused his spine is that what they did yeah they did something god damn it so um every time i hear a story like that i'm like i wish i could talk to that guy before he did that i know and he went to a good place but they just hit something wrong they fucked him up it happens to so many people so i go okay i don't want that to happen to me but i don't know how to work out so the next year i worked with stallone class stallone i gotta get in shape because my back keeps going out and i don't like to work it Get thee a trainer.
Anyone you ever seen in Hollywood got in shape, they had a trainer. What about you? Oh, I need a trainer.
You need a trainer. Well, then if you need a trainer, Mr.
Rocky, what chance do us mortal men have? So I hired a trainer. And guess what happened? Hated it.
Hated it. I hide from the guy.
He'd come to my house. I'd pay him not to show up.
I'd hate it, I'd hide, I'd hide. I'd call in sick.
And then when he did get me, I'd be like half-ass in the workouts. I hated it.
And then one year, it was just torture. I knew I had to do it, but...
So this is my point, is that sometimes it's not a lack of desire. So when people really want to become something and they're not getting it, it's not because they have to change their minds.
There's something that goes with it. I have plenty of desire.
I was paying this guy. I wanted to get in shape.
I didn't want my back going out anymore. I had the desire.
I was missing another key element that I figured out. And it's a lesson I already knew, which was stop aspiring, but I forgot it.
So this woman, a friend of mine from Mexico shows up. She's a production manager.
I have to stop smoking. My doctor said I have to stop smoking or I'm going to die.
I've been smoking since I was eight years old. I said, well, you're going to go back to smoking because you just told me that's your identity.
You've been doing it since you were eight. So right now you're a smoker who's not smoking.
Eventually you're going to conform to their identity. You have to change your identity.
You have to say, I'm a non-smoker. I'm a non-smoker.
Because what does a non-smoker do? They hate smoke. They get sick of the smell of smoke.
She was like, okay, I'll try it. I don't know what happened to her, but I thought...
The voice is killing me. The voice is killing me.
She truly talks like that. So then I go, wait a minute.
Shit, I used to apply to filming, but that's all I was back there. Where else in my life can I do a 180? And it's got to be a 180.
Because if it's just a matter of degrees, it's bullshit. Yeah.
It's much easier if it's just opposite day. So I went, oh, my God, working out.
I hate working out. Of course I hate working out.
Because I tell my trainer and everyone who will listen how much I hate it. I'm an athlete.
Ooh. I'm an athlete.
The last thing I would ever call myself, Mr. Cartoon Guy.
Wow. I'm an athlete.
By the next day, what does an athlete do? Loves to work out. Makes time to work out.
Eats right. And it's got to be opposite day.
It's much easier. When it goes lay on the couch, they just kind of, no, I'm going to go work out.
Or there's a donut. Not going to cut it in half and eat half.
That's bullshit. Those degrees fuck you up.
Opposite day. There's a donut? No, I'm going to reach for an apple apple not only was i able to work out this was 14 years ago i didn't need a trainer again ever i would just be like making myself do because i'm an athlete that's how powerful the mind is so i'm saying if someone says i want to go do this thing on the weekend and i'm you might have the desire but you've to get the identity too.
You've got to say you were that.

And it sounds a little awkward.

Like I asked somebody, Alex Friedman, I said,

do you consider yourself a creative person?

And he went, well, you know, you guys.

That's a good impression.

I said, you're stuttering there, man.

You're stuttering, you're stuttering.

He goes, I know, I know.

I said, no, no, no, you got to say.

And are you technical?

And he goes, yeah.

Okay, you're technical and creative. That was the first thing that stuck in my ear.
It's also what Jim Cameron is. It's also what George Lucas is, technical and creative.
When I first had my first job, my dad had a friend who owned a photo shop and he said, go work for my friend Mario for your summer job when I was 16. I went to work for Mario processing film for photos and he gave me a camera camera and film and said, go home and take pictures with this because I need you to know how to use that camera so you can help me sell the cameras.
So I went home and I'm from a family of nine kids, I mean, 10 kids, nine siblings, taking all these pictures of them, doing cool stuff. Go back.
He looks at the pictures and he goes, whoa, these are really creative. You're creative.
You got to now now learn how to be technical. Because most creative people always need technicians, and technicians always need creative people.
Now, it's just a gift you have. They can never really be creative.
They'll just be technical. But because you have creativity, if you apply yourself, it's against your nature, but if you apply yourself and learn the technical part, you'll be technical and creative, and you'll be unstoppable.
And I, whoa, unstoppable. It's 16.
He was here. I know sometimes I'm going to ask you about who did that for you.
Who was, cause if you look at all the different turning points in your life, there was probably somebody who sent you in a direction. It comes through him.
Cause if I were to go back and ask that guy, hey, that advice you gave me, he'd be like, what? I don't remember saying that. It kind of just came through him at the time.
Yeah, right, right, right. So he pointed me that way.
And that's why I went and made a mariachi by myself. I didn't want to take anybody because I wanted to learn.
I didn't know how to use that camera. But if you go ask somebody to do it for you, your I need list, if you make a list of all the things you need before you can make your dream happen, the longer that list is, the less that's going to happen.
You got to reduce it down to nothing. Me, my hands, my bootstraps, this camera, I'm going to figure it out on the day.
Be technical and creative. So I told Lex, now you got to own it.
When I say, are you creative? You go, yeah, I'm creative. And I'm technical.
And I don't blink. And I'm going to create a body of work.
He just, like, walks out of there supercharged. Lex needs a guy like you in his life all the time.
He's too self-deprecating. He's such a brilliant guy.
And it's nice to be self-deprecating. It's kind of a joke.
A little bit. But the words you use in yourself are very powerful.
He beats himself up. The words you use.
and you're doing that to yourself. Yeah.
The guy throwing cabbage at you on stage, look close. That's fucking, it's you.
You're doing that to yourself. Yeah, he's doing it to himself.
You do that to yourself with your words. He'll make like Twitter posts about how down he is, and I want to go over to his house and fucking shake him like a baby.
Yeah, dude, you're down, you're going to stay down. I have this theory called baseline.
I and we just laugh about it and go okay when shit fucks up but shit's not going right don't be down about it don't feel like you're in a slump because now you just stuck yourself in a grave and it's gonna be hard to climb out right when shit isn't going right oh the tire's flat oh i got fired i call that baseline you're a baseline anything above baseline like this right We're here having this great talk. This is way above baseline.
I'm on the Joe Rogan show. So way above baseline.
Celebrate that shit. Because it's not always there.
Don't say that you're going to go down. You're just going to go to baseline.
It's much easier to accept. And then you're not in a negative position.
You're just kind of at a normal. I'm at a normal.
And I'll really appreciate when anything above baseline happens. My daughter and I are about to go play an arena show.
She's going to sing. I'm going to play with my band.
I told her, way above baseline. We're going to get a nice hotel.
We're going to really celebrate this. Because this shit doesn't always happen.
And when everything is going really, really wrong, baseline. Only when things are really down would you call yourself low.
And you don't want to do that.'ll stay there for a much longer time if you're just a baseline that's just life oh yeah i tried to go make that movie and it didn't work baseline that's such solid advice it's really it's mindset it's all mind it's all stuff you're doing to yourself yes and these are things i like to pass on to people because when they come back and give it back to me i don't know if you'd give your kids advice as you learn it because you learn so much you've got the best job in the world you're learning all day yeah i bet you don't know if that it's going to stick with them i was shocked how much stuff not only sticks but they come back and they feed it back to me oh yeah dad it's just they also just like you taught me they also learn by watching you do it so oh yeah i've seen you the world. Yeah.
If you're the dad and you're making all these films, you're doing all this.

You're involved.

You have action.

There's a lot of action.

You're constantly in motion.

You're doing things.

You're creating things.

That's inspiring to them.

They absorb that.

If you're down on yourself all the time, that's...

They go, okay, that's life.

That's going to happen to me.

Or you can reject that and be the opposite. Like I have a friend, and his family was alcoholics.
He's never had a drop or drink in his life, and he's super disciplined because of that. I'll tell you my secret.
I've never done drugs. None? None.
Nothing? I've never been drunk. Yeah, you don't even drink coffee, you were saying.
I don't even drink coffee. You were telling that story because it's so hilarious.
Oh, a friend of mine, what was his name? He was working at the Sony when I first got there for mariachi. And I was like this kid, and there were people my age who were assistants.
And he was like falling asleep at his desk. And I'm like, why are you falling asleep? And he goes, I'm trying to get off coffee.
And I was like, oh, my God, I'm never going to get on coffee. i want those guys getting their hooks in me and then over the years he's like starbucks showing up and everybody like zombies going in there having to get their coffee went as i drink some right in all marketing and all it's it's it's made to be addictive like nicotine and all that oh and then your body can't create that and i already why i already stay up for days as it is you know i don't want to anything like that do you really i can stay up i just i just did this uh what's your favorite workout music mine yeah yutan clan i just did a little classic stuff like van halen and stuff but i did a music video for wolfgang van halen and uh we shot in two days and i was up two days cutting it because i just wanted to see what was going to happen next two days two days i was just like i want to see what happens next you don't even notice my shoulders getting all fucked up and i'm like what's wrong with my shoulder did i pull a muscle and doing some shrugs or something it was like i went back to sit in that chair i was like oh because i've been sitting like this for two days sitting just doing this that's insane but it's it's really cool it's great don't you hit a point of diminishing returns where it's like you're so tired that you really will be better off sleeping? It's different with editing.
Editing is a weird, I was thinking that as I was doing it, I go, I wish I could do this with writing where I could just write for two days straight, but your words will knock me out, put me to sleep after a while. Editing is just visual stimulus and you're so excited.
I kept going, okay, one more hour, one more hour. And you just can't stop.
You just can't stop because now you're seeing it it came out so cool it's gonna drop eight hours later it's gonna drop like next week it rips your head it's a great workout song for sure but it's just really entertaining that's incredible he uh does all the instruments himself really yeah he plays every instrument he plays the drums the bass the guitar sings writes the songs uh when he goes on tour he takes this really great band with him because he can't play all the parts. But the album, this third album, he's working on, plays all the instruments.
Wow. Super talented.
Really, really fun. But I like working with people who just do more than other people.
They're just at that level, and it's so inspiring. It inspires you.
It's fuel. Yeah, definitely fuel.
That's why I always tell people, if you can surround yourself with other people that are really getting after it in life it will 100 motivate you completely in a different way instead of having that procrastination feeling you get up excited you have to and it's like you know your parents tell you be careful your peers are you know you're younger because it means one thing oh yeah but later even more like when i started going to the film festival and there's quentin and then i meet j Cameron. And then you meet, like, George Lucas.
It's like, you can't hang with these guys if you're not accomplishing something. Right.
So then when they say, hey, what are you up to? Well, I'm down in Texas, and I got my own studio, and I'm pioneering digital filmmaking and green screen technology. And I want to make the first digital 3D movie.
And they go, oh, okay, cool. So I'm going to hang out.
I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to hang out here for a while. God,, I got to be doing something.
That's a great one, by the way.

But still, compared to what they're doing, you know, when I first met Jim Cameron.

Yeah, but it's still exciting.

When I first met Jim Cameron, that's why you don't want to be around people who you're the best.

You're better, you know.

Right.

You want to be the one that they're swinging higher than you.

Yes, yes, yes.

So surround yourself with those people and do something so that they let you hang with them.

But you want to learn.

Like here's to Jim Cameron, for instance.

When I met him, I really wanted to impress the hell out of him.

So I said, I'm about to go do Desperado.

And I can't afford a Steadicam operator.

So I took a three-day Steadicam course.

And I'm going to operate it myself on the movie.

I'm going to operate the Steadicam, that big beast of a camera.

And he went, I bought a Steadicam.

But not to operate it.

I'm going to take it apart and design a better one so I was like that's completely who he is us mere mortals are like trying to operate the thing he's designing whole new systems and if you think of it that's very consistent with who he is that's the person you want to hang out with not someone, the guy had said oh me too, I'm doing the same thing didn't he go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench or some shit? So he's got a summary that he designed. It's only, yeah, it's on his desk.
It's like this big on his desk, this green machine. And I was looking at it going like, weren't you afraid? I mean, I've got kids and wife.
You've got kids and wife. Weren't you afraid of going down that deep and something happening? He's like, no.
I said, why not? Oh, I designed the escape vehicle. So if any other bozo had done it, I'd be afraid.
Because he did it. He had all the confidence in the world.
Talk about Simon, no doubt. That's so insane.
Isn't that hilarious? That's great, though. That's him, though.
It's like, yeah, if someone else had designed the escape vehicle, I'd be afraid. But no, I did it.
So he had no pause at all. That's so crazy.
So that's kind of confidence. Those are the people you want to hang out with.
Yeah, that's a legitimate genius. It changes your perception of life.
And by osmosis, you pick up, I call it this proximity phenomenon. I took a painting class with Sebastian Kruger, a painter in Germany.

I saw this class that he gives for a week.

I went, I'm going to go do that class.

Not to learn how to paint so much.

I know I'll be a better director by learning paint because it's another way into creativity.

Again, you just want to get better at creativity.

So just do as many jobs as you can and that you're interested in.

Because if you just do one job, you barely know that job.

You have to do all these other ones to kind of inform it.

So I went out there. He doesn't teach you anything.
He just paints. I'll show you the examples before and after.
I thought for sure I did a pre-painting before we went out there. It looks like crap.
I went, I don't know what brushes he's using and the kinds of paints. It's a different method.
He must have some trick. I go, and he's painting this amazing Mick Jagger photo reel in in front of us and we all can paint alongside him and what paint are you using it's regular paint what brushes are you using regular brushes how come i can't do that i go back and suddenly it's a different painting i'm going to try one more it's more photo reel when i show it to you it's going to blow you away it looks like i dropped the brush i was like holy shit it's because i finally given myself permission to do it because you you have the ability but you're blocking it because you go i don't know i don't know there's something i don't know so again you're just chopping off your own lake and by being around somebody who's doing it at that level suddenly you can do it too it's like breaking the m field like as soon as i made mariachi no one had ever done anything like that suddenly there's 10 12 13 movies made you know very low budget because they go oh it's possible now suddenly you can do it too and when it's in the room when you're right near it it's just a phenomenon that you can just glean off them without them teaching you anything just by being around and seeing how they move through the world and seeing they've accomplished and that they're regular people that are just accomplishing at a high level it just blows your mind mind.
That's really important in stand-up comedy. I was having this conversation last night in the green room.
We were talking about this area of the country that's falling apart. And I was like, comedy is top-down, man.
You have to have a bunch of assassins all working together in the same location. They all feed off each other.
And then all the people coming up below below they see that they see these these young guys that are coming up

They see these people working really hard and constantly creating and hustling doing all these different sets and constantly working on new material And they get inspired by and then you see these guys get Netflix specials and do it and it's all happening at the club So this club that we're doing in Austin is all about that process. Yeah, like we have specifically designed it to have two open mic nights Sunday and Monday so new

people people no experience, get up there. People from all across the country moving here so they can be a part of the process.
But there's like a real path to success that you can see because guys like Ron White are there, guys like Shane Gillis are there, Tony Hinchcliffe and these young guys. Derek Post and all these young guys

that are coming up that are really exciting.

It's really fun.

There's a vibe of

creativity that everybody feeds off of.

I love what you've built. You've come here

for four years and you've already built

this whole community.

It kind of built itself, man.

It's the same thing we were talking about before

with instincts. First of all, I had the instinct to escape L.A.
I was like, this is not going to change. It's going to get worse.
I got to get the fuck out of here. And Ron had already been here.
Ron was here in 2018. And once my family was interested in doing it, it was pretty easy.
Because I'm one of those guys like like i just can just pick up stakes and go i'm

like okay life is different now let's live in texas like i want that i like change i like i like not having any idea what's going to happen i'm excited by that and so then once we got out here and then ron's like we gotta open up a club okay we gotta open up a club and so then i started looking for, and luckily the Ritz was available. Wow, that's right.
We did – I'd been under contract for this One World Theater that was owned by Colt. Oh, right.
I remember that one. That fell apart.
There's a lot of issues. Ritz is cool.
It's right down there with all the – Oh, the Ritz was the perfect spot. When the Ritz was available, it was like, oh, my God, this is it.
And then we walked in, and it was still the Alamo, so it was like set up for a movie theater with like the – The sloping thing. is it and then we walked in and it was still the alamo so it was like set up

for a movie theater with like the sloping angle slope seating and then we had to change everything but i'm like this is it and then i started bringing in other comics to help me i'm like what would you do and louis ck came and he was like i think you should make this stage smaller make the stage smaller i think you should make the ceiling lower make the ceiling lower like so So we were able to do whatever we wanted to do and design the club from scratch just for comics and Once everybody knew that it was happening people just start moving here, man So it's nuts bill that they will come it really was like that But it was it was like the universe wanted it to happen and I say that it sounds so Self-important, but no, it's like i believe that it's just you you're stumbling upon so many things had to happen in this order for it to happen this way and then you had to have someone who's like me who's accustomed to just going by instinct yeah and i've always done that i always my whole life i'm like it let's do this i'm like that's what i do and so when this came up i'm like okay well you're not gonna stop doing what you do now don't be a pussy this is what you do you're gonna throw a bunch of money at this thing let's make this happen and tell everybody you're doing it and and call all your friends in la and call your friends in new york and come on down man we're making this happen wow wow i tell people that after mariachi It's like i i never thought i could get into the industry because i didn't live in la and you need contacts and all that so i just you know again i made a practice film but then when it got bought and it was getting released and it won sundance my practice film i thought i don't have to move to la that but they won't even know i'm not there between an airplane flight and fedex i'll just stay in Austin. So for the past, you know, 35 years, people are like, why do you live in Austin? I don't understand.
It's like, now they're all moving here. But it's because you could just think outside of the box here.
So yeah, I would tell people, filmmakers who all thought they needed to move to LA, stay where you are, build up your community around you. We built this amazing community of filmmakers here.
All they made here were Westerns before that. Suddenly I was making Spy Kids, Sin City, you know, these crazy movies that really changed the ripple effects to the whole community.
It's huge because you're changing the workforce. And so you just, by doing that thing, and it's like, it is like an instinct.
It's like it's pre-planned. It's like it's pre-laid out.
I tell my artists, when you come to my house, you're going to feel it. You'll feel like these connections.
And I go, I think we realize we're not that smart. You know, we're not smart enough to predict all that stuff.
I think we've lived this life many times before and we forget a lot of it. So we have a barely impression of what we're supposed to do.
But it's because we did it a thousand times and we forgot it each time. Like a dream when you wake up from a dream.
That might be true. Because, you know, you wake up from a dream and you go, I was a filmmaker in that dream and I had five kids.
You know, that's what it's going to be like when our life is over. You'll wake up and it'll be like your past lifetime just goes away and then you go start again.
And only now you're a fish or something. But I had this thought, wow, what if I wake up and I can barely remember the dream? And that's it.
Because it feels like sometimes you feel like you can predict the future, but not like you can predict it. You recognize it once it happens.
Like, oh, yeah, this is right. But how did I know to go this way? I didn't, on purpose, like you said, I didn't set all the, all the things that needed to fall into place are too coincidental.
What is that about so that's why even more just just follow your instinct follow your instinct even if it sounds bonkers follow it and if it fails keep going because that might be your four rooms or something just keep going that really is an important piece of advice too to if you're outside of a hive of like-minded thinking you could when you're outside of that you can think on your own go

another way yeah you i mean it's like high school you go back to that you know someone famously leaves high school and goes off to college and goes off sees the world they come back to their old hometown and they find their old friends still driving the same streets that's la yeah they're still doing the same shit the same way and you just went off the reservation and discover But also, their opinions are only based on what's popular.

It's like you were talking about pulp fiction yeah like before they're like what the fuck is this and then they're like oh my god now we got to make something like this let's make dust till dawn like that's what it is like they don't their opinions are bullshit it's like it's all just based on they lick their finger and they find out which way the wind's blowing and that's how they think and that's how they are politically that's how they are socially it's like it's all just based on they lick their finger and they find out which way the winds blowing and that's how they think And that's how they are politically that's how they are socially And so it's like they're nonsense people Yeah, and you got to get away from that get away and just create your own thing And the problem with comics is that we got all we all got trapped in the velvet prison of television Right, right so televisions the velvet prison the real art form is what we do on stage That's what what everybody really loves. What do you mean by being on television? You mean like sitcoms and stuff? Yes, sitcoms, game shows.
It seems like it's come back the other way. So many comics have such great, like Netflix specials are massive.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where it's basically them doing stand-up, but they've got a huge audience.
Exactly. Well, what happened was the internet came along and a bunch of unconventional people became very famous on the internet without the help of Hollywood.
People that – the Tim Dillons of the world that don't fit into this television box. But when you get them on the internet and they can get buck wild, like, oh, my God.
And then they have this massive following, the Theo Vaughns, all these different people that have this very unconventional approach that for whatever reason wouldn't fit in. They couldn't host The Tonight Show.
Right. But, you know, once they get on their own and now they develop these, like there's more arena acts now for stand-up comedy than ever before in the history of comedy.
Wow. Yeah.
That's amazing. Yeah.
I mean, not even close. I mean, the only arena act in the 1980s 1980s was Andrew Dice Clay So first it was Steve Martin then it was Andrew Dice and Steve Martin kind of decided that the popularity of it all was so Confusing to him that everything that he said was funny and it didn't make any sense It didn't feel and he stopped doing comedy right stop doing stand-up Would you ever he had a very different kind of stand-up anyway? Yeah, play the banjo and sang songs.
So Dice comes along and Dice Clay is selling out Arena. It's like the first comedian ever to do that.
And then later in the 2000s, it was Dane Cook because Dane Cook figured out how to use MySpace and developed this gigantic following online. Same kind of thing.
And so then by the time the pandemic hit, I was like, we don't need to be in L're not going to be on tv the only reason why we're in la is the comedy store and the comedy store is closed for the next year and a half because these idiots that are running the city and we came to texas and once when we're out here i was like oh this is so much better because now instead of being around these Hollywood people that don't really have opinions

They just go whichever way the breeze is going now. You're hanging out with regular folks.
Yeah, like regular people cut people that are cops and

firemen and auto repair guys and you're just

Humans, yeah, so all the people I interact with are just normal humans

What I always loved about living. Oh, this is like there weren't any filmmakers here.
So much better. It's infinitely better.
Nicer. Everyone's waiting.
You'll get a lot more done. Sometimes I'd have two movies out a year.
I would be making so fast because I just had a studio where it's like, let's just make more stuff. There also has to be something cool feeling about doing it on your own, away from the hive.
Way better. Way better.
That's why it's like I try to create original franchises because if you go direct one of the james bond you're one of the james bond director but if you create your own franchise yeah like a spike it feels so much better right that's successful and someone says wow i really love that movie go oh i did that voice flip us man help us save us that's you oh my god i grew up with you know it's like oh yeah it's a homemade movie you know so it's much more gratifying and yeah, I did the, help us save us. He goes, that's you? Oh, my God, I grew up with that.
You know, it's like, oh, yeah, it's a homemade movie. You know, so it's much more gratifying.
And, yeah, you did the right thing by moving out. One movie that seemed like it could be a franchise is Alita.
Oh, yeah, we want to do another one for sure. For sure.
It was part of a graphic novel series. Yes.
You got to come to my studio. That whole set.
I want to go. That city is still in my parking lot.
Really? 20-foot ceilings, seven streets. It's like the largest standing set in the country, if not the world.
Can I come on Friday? Yeah, come Friday. You're not going to believe what's here.
Okay, we're in. And you're going to go like, okay, because I'm putting you in a movie.
Okay. Because talking about what you just said about how people are different here, I just started a new label.
Like the label I gave myself, I'm an athlete. When you create a label, it's a business thing too.
What a label is is a filter. So I'm doing an action slate.
So already you get a bunch of ideas because it's just action. An action slate of four pictures.
It's called Brass Knuckle Films. And you're going to be in the first one because I'm going to direct the first one.
I've already got which one it is. I'll show you.
It's a great part for you. You're going to come to the studio and I'll tell you about it.
But Breast Knuckle Films is cool because it's the first time that it's an investable film slate. So fans can invest in a movie.
They get perks and stuff, but it's not crowdsourcing or crowdfunding. Like you can get killed in the movie if you put in a certain amount of investment.
But what's cool about it, I just want the audience to win because the audience is an afterthought. Like you say, you go to the studios and the people in Hollywood and you go, they barely even watch movies.
And then you come meet the real audience and they're so into it. They're so behind it.
It's like, where's your cut of it? Studios only show up to an audience at the end when they want you to go get your friends to come spend money on their overpriced movies. So I'm going to do this thing where even at $250, the lowest level, you put into this thing, any of the four movies, one of which I'm going to direct for sure, producing all of them, they're a troublemaker to keep the cost down so they go to profit sooner.
Any one of these movies success, you, you share in that success all the way through sequels. And for even the 250 bucks, anyone who puts money in, you get to have that proximity effect because we have a whole group together.
That's such a great idea. And everybody gets to pitch their action movie idea.
And I'm committed to making at least one of the movies on the slate from a fan investor's idea. So not only will you be an investor, but you be a creator.
So we're almost already topped out. We're going to hit our we still have 20 days left and it's gonna surge again we're gonna raise like 1.5 million for development funds and we're yeah we're almost at a million already 22 days left so I'm telling everybody who's listening coming at the lowest level just be part of our community because people who come here get proximity.
And the lowest level is $5. $250.
$250. $250.
But you make that back on success of any of the movies. That's awesome.
And it just hedges your bets. And it's just action because there's always an appetite for action.
Like if you ask Netflix right now, what kind of movies do they need? They'll say action, action, action. We don't have enough action.
And internationally, we're going to make the thing that people always buy and they're also really fun to make and you're going to be perfect in it. I want to bring you back to Frazetta.
Oh yeah. Because this is the thing that I wanted to pitch this to Quentin and maybe I could pitch this to you.
Somebody needs to make a real Conan the Barbarian. Yeah.

A real Conan the Barbarian that's like the Robert E. Howard books.

Yeah.

The real Conan the Barbarian.

Those are amazing books. Because the Arnold ones are great.

They're fun.

And Momoa, I think, is the best Conan of all time.

Because he was that, the guy, what was his name in Game of Thrones?

I don't remember, yeah.

Khalil Drago.

Khalil Drago.

Yeah.

He's the most realistic of all Conans.

That's what Conan's supposed to look like he didn't look like a bodybuilder he looked like a fucking super fit assassin he came from the mountains of Samaria yeah but the books books are awesome they're fucking awesome and it's right up your alley it's about It's about the barbarian is actually the one who's got code and who has morality. Yes.
And all the bigwigs are the ones that are like fucking crooked and shit. Yeah.
It's just so classic. And the barbarians got calm.
And that guy was from Texas. That guy, Robert E.
Howard from Texas. Outside of Dallas.
Back where I have a house where I made all these movies, it's in the land that he looked over and saw and said, that's Samaria. That's where Conan is from.
So I always felt this connection. I wanted to do a Conan movie.
So I almost did a Conan movie. I even wrote Jim Cameron into wanting to do it.
Really? We were going to do kind of like what we did with Alita. I said, dude, let's do a Conan movie, and we'll make it look like the paintings.
Technology wasn't there yet, and I ended up doing Sin City instead. I'd already written, uh, it was going to be three movies.
So he does different occupations. It's kind of built like a James Bond series, you know, where you follow him on his different.
So it starts with him as a thief. And the second movie is him as a buccaneer mercenary.
And the third one is when he becomes king. So the actor can the role you know the way you know like you took daniel craig and started him casino royale by the end he's no time to die you got to get an actor who who does the whole journey so i had a whole trilogy uh marked out go i know it's let's go netflix had it i went pitched it to them and then they let the light rights lapse like they had too much...
Sometimes it's too much baggage for a character. Dude, let me call them.
Let me get on the phone with Ted Sarandos right after this episode. Let's go make it.
Jamie, can you pull up Frazetta Conan the Usurper? It's probably a painting called Chain. Is that the one with the chains? I berserk? There's a bunch of the...
He named them different than the books because of the copyright issue. Oh, I see.
So whatever's on the... But you'll find the cover of it, but the painting itself might have a different name.
If you just pull up Frazetta Conan, because he did a bunch of them. So you'll love this.
Yes, here we go. Chained.
The Barbarian. That's incredible.
Man ape. The one when he's standing over the bodies with the sword pointed to the ground.
That's called the barbarian. Yes, that's the one.
I remember seeing that when I was a kid because I was always into graphic novels and I was always into comic books. And I saw that when I was a kid at a comic book store.
I was probably like 11 years old. I was like, holy shit.
That is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. And he still comes, let me tell you

today, he has this very triangular way of

composing that tells a story. The posters

still look like this. That fucking...

Look at the one with the snake. Again, if you see

the triangular design, your head

goes immediately to the snake and then down to him

and it tells a whole story.

I have a theory of why

his art is the way it is. Now, you know, I knew him.
Did I tell you? Really? Okay. So first you get to Hollywood, right? So I'm just this kid who's an artist.
You get to Hollywood, first thing you want to do is work with all your heroes. So Dusk Till Dawn, I said, I want to work with Frazetta because he used to do some movie posters like The Gauntlet with Clint Eastwood, that gauntlet one he did.
look up the gauntlet, Clint Eastwood, Frazetta.

And so I called him and he said, yeah, I'll do it.

In fact, when I showed him the movie, he goes,

where'd you find this gal?

And I said, yeah.

That was Frazetta?

Yeah, he did that.

Wow.

So I wanted to get that for Dusk Till Dawn, right?

So he said, where'd you find this gal?

I wish I had a gal like that to paint.

I go, she's based on all your paintings. The girl that's always in your paintings, I made Salma dress like that because it's a Frazetta come to life.
He goes, oh, that's all you need on the poster. I go, well, you added all the other actors.
So when you come to the house, you'll see the painting he did. It was the year he got his first stroke.
So it took him, by the time I got the painting, we'd already made posters. We thought, okay, it's not going to come.
And then it showed up at the last minute. But we gave it away at comic book stores.
But it's really cool. But at the bottom of the painting, there's some of the actors.
Even Peyton Harvey could tell. He's just like, the other actors, Quentin.
And then instead of vampires, he just did his monkey dudes that he always does. And it's really cool.
It's really cool. But I got to know him, and I got to go visit his studio because we kind of, again, it's that similar mindset.
And I didn't realize he had all his originals i see that little monkey dudes on the bottom wow he had all his originals in his next to his house in his museum like all those that you were just looking at they were all there i didn't realize as an illustrative artist sometimes you don't own your own material he made it a point to own his own originals so like the ones you just were salivating over, those were in my house. Wow.
I wish I knew you seven years ago. Damn.
Because his kids. Oh, my God.
His kids are so impassioned about the art. Even his granddaughter, Sarah Frazetta, she has Frazetta Girls.
They're so always bringing up his legacy and keeping it alive stuff so cool but um i really wanted to go do like a conan type movie or john carter i wanted to do one based on fire and ice which is the only one he had actually it was an animated film thought well maybe if conan's been used too much let's do fire and ice as a movie because he worked on that as an animated film let's just make us i just want his paintings to move Miller's art move. I want for Zetta's paintings to move, because he was transporting us to another world that we all recognized.
If you could make that Conan with the sword. Make him look like that.
Yeah. Go back to that photo again, Jamie.
With the sword? It's called The Barbarian. You could say that Conan's been done too many times.
No, the one with the sword? Yeah, that one. Yeah, they've never seen it like that.
Yeah. But the thing is, it's like...
And look, that's not a guy that's just been in a gym. Right.
He looks like a freaking beast. He's been swinging a sword and cutting off that.
With technology, you can do that. That's why I'd gotten Jim interested in it.
Let's make him look like that. It's like a made-up even anatomy in a way you know the books were so fucking good man even though conan's been done a bunch of times it hasn't never been done the right way yeah no it hasn't been done like the books and it's so ripe like you because it was done that way first like with with arnold in it people just figured oh we'll just hire a bodybuilder to be, you know, a barbarian type

character from then on.

But to do it really like that,

he's more like

a James Bond character.

You know,

he goes from movie to movie.

Yes.

Yeah.

And he's really fucking smart.

Yes.

And he's just,

no,

but I got to meet Frazetta.

So keep that up for a second.

So I went to his,

we talked about his paintings

and how he did it

and I got a theory

on how he did this.

But when I went and saw the originals, like, holy shit, you got all the originals. How did you make the, and he really loved to live life.
Like he'd go play golf, baseball. He'd get an assignment and he'd wait to the last minute and go and paint it.
So what happens when you wait to the last minute, you have to just open up the pipe and let it through, right? Yeah. I think that's why we all know this place, you know, collectively, you know, Jim Cameron would come over to my house, you know, Del Toro, George Miller, Jon Favreau, to see these originals in person, when you see them in person, it blows your mind.
It feels like you're being transported. I think because he did them at the last minute, they just came from the universe.
Because that's why people were related to him. people would just buy these paperbacks for the art yes this this conan was created in the 30s yeah books came out in the 60s right they didn't become a big hit till these books came out because of the art exactly and then when you read the stories the stories were really great but they got them for the art 100 and he was showing me his his his layout of paintings and he went two days, one day, three days.
Wow. Four days, two days.
I was like, holy shit. Just locked in.
Just locked in. And it's just coming out.
Because he had to, and his wife would say, yeah, his paint was still wet when I was taking a time to get shit because he would wait till the last minute. But these masterpieces would come out.
And I just was really inspired by him. So when he passed away, you know, his kids said, what should we do with the art? So let's make a movie based on the art.
Cause who's got this now. So different, they've sold some of them, but the kids, like if you go to Frank Jr.
Frank Jr. still has, uh, the museum up there.
He still has a lot of the masterworks. The kid, each kid has some of the masterworks and, um, and they're all great.
And then keeping his legacy going. And I want to make a movie about it just to get his name back up.

You know, we're blown.

We were all inspired by him.

Oh, so inspired. So what was so cool was.

How did he find out about those books?

I think it was just an assignment.

And he would barely read the book.

He would just be like, ah, he would just do his own thing.

So they start putting the books out more mass publishing in the 1960s.

Yeah.

So he does these illustrations. He does the paintings.
They're flying off the. Flying off the shelves because of the paintings.
Because of the paintings. Wow.
And those paintings and those books, no matter even the best art book today, when you see the original, they cannot capture what the original has. You'll be blown away.
You got to see, I've got like 14 different Frisettas that you got to come see. That's so cool.
Especially as an illustrator, you're going to freak out. We have one of the prints.
I had all the masterworks. We have one of the prints.
Go back to those images, Juan. The one that we have, Jamie, with him with the giant gorilla.
Yeah. We have one of those where he's fighting the gorilla.
He's on its back. He's got a red cape.
Yeah, that's called Man Ape. Man Ape, that's right.
We just pan over to the left and it's on the left side i saw it there it is that's it we have a print that was in my house oh okay so the real one the real one okay so here's what happened we have that out by the kids table the kids said hey fucking cool that is the kids said um can you take our paintings first and show them to influential people because hurricane season's coming they lived in florida and we don't want anything to have they're're insured, but they could be gone. Oh my God.
Can you take it? I was like, fuck yeah, I'll take them to my house. So for a year and a half, I had these, the barbarian one you were just, the one with the sword standing? I had that one in my house.
Oh my God. So I would have everyone who came to South by Southwest or was just in town, they'd come to my house and make them pizza and we would just stare and drool over the Frazettas.
Those inspired me so much as a kid to be an illustrator. Yeah.
Those, the Frazetta paintings and some of the drawings from the graphic novels that people had made of these inspired me so much as a kid. It's just, it was dream imagery.
It's like the new dreams were. You know, would just feel like we dreamt this too and recognized it yes and every young kid one oh i wish i was conan yeah you know skinny little kid and you're going like is that what i'm gonna be when i go no i hate you're 11 you're like oh god i wish i was i wish i had that kind of power and strength yeah yeah so i don't know if you've read these books but they were based, these comics, they were based on the books.
They would just translate the books. There was a comics code.
So the Conan, the barbarian comic, had to follow the code. But then there was a black and white magazine called Savage Sword of Conan.
Oh, I read those. They didn't have to follow the code.
Right. That's why people would get killed.
Yes. And Roy Thomas would just, like, take the book and put the book in several chapters.
Yeah, they were brutal really great yeah that's what size grew up with that drawing out of that learning how to draw anatomy from the Conan the Marvel comics were fun but they were this was still under Marvel but it wasn't under the code because it was considered a magazine that's what I'm saying like the Marvel comics were fun but they weren't brutal enough they weren't brutal because they had a comics code yeah because they're comic size by doing magazine, they got around it. See if you can find the Savage Sword of Conan.
Yeah, look at Savage Sword of Conan number one. There it is.
Yeah, look at the one where he's nailed to the cross. That's Boris Vallejo.
Yes. Oh, this is a great Frazetta story.
He's another one. Boris Vallejo was incredible.
He came out later in the 70s, so this is a great Frazetta story. Several of his paintings, when you see them, they're not very big a lot of times because they were for paperbacks so they didn't have to be that big but then there were some like in the early 70s that were big silver warrior uh at the earth's core and i and i asked Frazetta i said what what was this era here because a lot of these were in the 60s what's these seven this these four bigger ones you didn't what was that for you oh they were saying i was washed up up that i was finished it's because boris vallejo was coming out and they're like oh he's the new frisetta so i did one two three four beauties shut them all up shut them all up pull up boris vallejo conan because boris had a different style it was like a little more it also you could feel sexual or something but you could you know I love his art but you could almost feel the model in it you could almost see that there was a model he was painted from well it was very cool but it was a different feeling Frazetta was more raw very raw Boris Vallejo it was great though I mean he's doing the Frazetta style I mean Frazetta was the Jimmy Page of art.
Everybody wanted to be him. So everyone couldn't, you couldn't unsee Frazetta's work when you were doing your own work.
I mean, this is Man Ape. Yeah, he's doing Man Ape again.
He's doing Man Ape and a different version of it. And, you know, I drew a lot of things that were like that, like a different version of Frazetta's stuff.
Everybody did. But, yeah, I was more of a Frazetta guy than a Boris Vallejo guy.
I loved it. It great i was happy that he was doing it like the one where he's crucified to the cross that's pretty dope that that was pretty oh and the one the far bottom left is the first issue of savage sword that one was really cool because it had yeah i thought that was cool yeah but not it doesn't come close to you know no it's just forzetta it was more fantastical.
I think it's because of that process. It was just the way he did them.
Yes. There's some magic to them.
And I'll show you a couple of things that will blow you away when you see them in person. But the in-person thing will really floor you.
Just how much even the best books cannot capture the art as it exists. I'm sure.
I saw your gym. Your gym is awesome.
I thought I had the best gym. You've got a great gym, but I got one thing you don't got.
You got to come see. What? I don't have mirrors up.
You don't have mirrors on purpose? It's because I just have the original Drew Struzan painting for First Blood Stallone. Oh, wow.
Because it's got glass over it. You you can kind of see yourself in it but i just stand in front of it i go i'm not there yet i'm not there yet that's my inspiration good for just say for form it's i can kind of see the form but that's my mirror when you come it's the it's the stallone painting and that's one that one see like that one.
But it doesn't capture the painting at all. Even this digital copy of it.
Like, look at the original poster of it that has the writing on it. The way they printed it was like ass.
Look at that thing. So when you see the original one, you're like, oh, my God, this is like fine art.
And that still doesn't capture it. But it's closer than the poster.
Well, there's something about seeing the actual physical thing.

When you see the real thing, it's so inspiring.

And then when you see the physique that he has, you're just like, okay, I'm going to work harder.

But that's in my gym, so you've got to come check that out.

I've got a photo of Alexander Karelin out there.

That's my photo to remind me every day what a pussy I am.

Alexander Karelin was like the greatest Olympic wrestler to ever come out of Russia.

There's a photo. Pull up the photo that we have in the gym.
He was a freak. They called him the science project because his parents were like 5'5".
And he was like 6'2", 300 pounds and just built like a panther. Look at that.
That's him. Oh, geez, yeah.
That's the picture. That picture up in the gym.
That's my inspiration. Every day I work out.
Because he was just such a fucking physical freak. And it's just that particular image, that intensity.
If I'm ever tired, I look at that image. What's your workout routine? How often do you get to work out? I work out every day.
Basically every day. First thing in the morning? Occasionally I feel like I need a day off.
I'll take a day off. But, yeah, first thing in the morning.
Yeah, that. That's the thing.
Get up. Get up.
Get going. Get going.
Cobwebs out of your head. Well, it's like you said.
Like, you decide I'm an athlete. I sort of decide I'm this person who gets up and gets in the cold plunge first thing in the morning.
Right, right. I'm this person that does these two-and-a-half-hour workouts and then gets in the sauna.
That's what I do. I do it every day.
I do a thing. This might inspire some people.
So I don't have a trainer, but I like watching other people see what they do in their routine, so I adopt some of that. I saw Josh Brolin all freaking in shape for the Deadpool movie, and I was like, dude, I texted him, what is your workout? Could you tell me? He goes, oh, I'll send it to you.
He sends me a PDF of his whole workout routine that the trainers have given him. It's intense.
It was like, okay, if I do one-fourth of this, I'll have a quarter of his results. I'm fine with that because I'm going to have this shit to do anyway.
So I would be in and out of there a half hour. So you don't have to commit all the way.
As long as you're doing something, you're getting up and you're working out and you're doing it very strategically, if you don't have a lot of time, there's no excuse.

You can make time.

Oh, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time.

You get a lot done in a short amount of time.

Yeah.

A reverse pyramid train or something.

You've got three minutes in between each one.

You can get work done doing it.

You certainly can.

In fact, there was a study that just came out recently that showed that you get more results from one set to failure than you do with three sets. Yeah.
Sometimes I would then just keep holding the bar after I was done, just like for 10 more seconds. Yeah, there was some study.
See if you can find this. It was a very recent study that was very counterintuitive because a lot of people think more work, better results.
But in this study they were showing that they got more strength gains and more muscle recruitment in one hard set to failure there's a lot of counterintuitive stuff yeah i like when i hear stuff like that i try it you know i just roll it into the routine and give it a try yeah because you don't know you don't know what's going to work for you there's no there's no one right way to do anything so i try to just get advice and and adopt it and I had this funny Stallone once. Did you ever have Stallone on the show? No.
He's a great interview. My best interview on the director's chair is him because it's the most one that any layman could identify with.
That guy really is Rocky. His story is unbelievable and he's really funny.
I interviewed him before for the UFC. He called me and said, he asked if an actor friend of mine could be in one of the Expendables.

He was like, my actor fell through.

Can you ask, what's his name?

You know, my friend was.

Yeah, I'll ask.

So I asked my friend.

My friend goes, oh, no, it's too short notice, you know, because it was a last minute replacement.

I need to get in shape.

Okay, that makes sense.

But it's not a physical role.

You just want to be in a Stallone movie and not be in shape. So I have to get in shape.
And I don't have enough time, you know, just going to shoot in a week. So I go to Sly, and I say, Sly, yeah, he said, you know, I figured Sly would understand.
Yeah, he has to get in shape. Get in shape.
Get in shape. You don't get in shape.
You stay in shape. I was like, yeah, that makes sense.
You got to stay in shape. There's a photo of Stallone walking around Malibu looking like he's nine months pregnant.
Have you seen that photo? No. I don't know if he did that for a movie.
It was probably for Copland. No, it wasn't for Copland.
It was recent. It was like within the last few years.
What is he now? He's like 70. No excuses.
No excuses. Stay in shape.
Stay in shape. That dude, such a great interview because I watched the Rocky movies.
When was the last time you saw the Rocky movies? Yeah, here it is. Study finds higher training volume increases size, not strength.
Oh, this isn't it. No, this is in May of 2024.
It was very recently. It was about one set.
Doing one set to failure shows strength and muscle recruitment benefits over three sets. Yeah, so I mean, I don't know when the last time we saw the Rocky.
Yeah, here it is. New research says you could build strength and muscle with single set training.
No, this isn't it either. It might be December 2024.
It might be it. So just one hard set per exercise delivers impressive results.
At least try that. Get in and out.
They were saying it actually works better. So maybe this is another thing.
Because I read it just a couple of days ago. It doesn't matter.
We get it. But that is also very counterintuitive.
Because most people think, oh, it's all about the amount of time you spend. The amount of time and pressure.
Yeah. But I do a lot of different exercises.
I do full body workouts almost entirely. A very rare, unless one day a week I do heavy leg stuff or it's just legs.
You know, because there's so many muscles of the legs. I don't, you know, when I want to make sure that I'm doing that i just it takes too much time yeah because i'm doing leg curls and leg presses and lunges and it's like i can't do other stuff too um but i like working out by myself yeah yeah i don't train it because it's time to think yeah time to really know what the voices yeah and you work in the body and the but you getting ideas, and I keep my computer there, and I write down ideas.
Oh, nice. Did you see the – I was watching the Rocky movies again, and I was like, we watched the first one, showed it to my lady.
She loved it. So I said, we've got to watch the second one.
We watched the second one. The next time we watched the third one, I finally got to the fourth one.
I said, okay, I'm going to write Stallone. I said, dude, you are consistently moving that character through the different eras.

And you need to go back to directing.

Because when I worked with him, he'd done a bunch of movies in the 90s.

And he was telling me why the movies didn't work.

I said, you've got to go back to directing.

No one was at your level.

Directing yourself, getting career bests out of your other actors.

While you're also not just the star, but the franchise.

And being in insane shape back then, which was way before anyone knew anything about training.

You were probably in the star but the franchise and being in insane shape back then which was way before anyone knew anything about training you were probably in the gym much longer than you needed to be and he said very perceptive i was like you probably were way over training because then people didn't know there were no science to it back then right and getting all that done. So how can you work with another director now?

They can't have their respect. You gotta go back to directing.
Because you can't

argue with the result. And he was like,

well, we did this movie together.

It was his biggest opening

ever with Spy Kids

3D. Two years later

or a year later, he goes, I'm writing another

Rocky. And that was that new Rocky.

He hadn't directed in 22 years. Whoa whoa he went back to directing and writing did another rocky another rambo and then a whole new franchise expendables crazy like for your career to come back like that did stunts and expendables and broke his fucking neck crazy but because he went back and that's sometimes to be late 60s.
And I say, yeah, it's harder. And he's doing his own stunts.
It's harder to go do it all yourself, but look, you can't argue with the results. Look at the results you got back then.
And I'm so glad he went back to it because it inspires me all over again. So it's, you know, I'm sure you've done that.
Someone that really inspired you. And I want to know, who are your heroes that you got to inspire back in some way? And then you're just just like, Oh my God, they inspired me so that I could be here for them when they needed to hear that to go on.
It was like all part of the universe of that creativity. You know, you're, you're the one who goes whispers in their ear.
Another one with him, cause he inspired me, you know, so many times was I started working with my kids more. It's very counterintuitive.
Like, I don't know if you work with your kids or whatever, plan to work with your kids, but I would say to anybody, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, take it. Because when I was like, when I turned 50, I thought, I guess I could keep making movies.
It's been good to me. I guess I could just make more.
I mean, I was way into it, you know, when I was younger and it's been good to me. I bet there might be another job I can take that with the knowledge I have, I could probably make just as much money or something.
I don't even know what jobs exist. I got this job when I was 21.
So I got jobs for dummies. And I started looking at where all the other jobs were.
Oh, I want that job, I want that job. And then I get to Filmmaker and it has a little icon of a guy with his hands up like this.
And it says, this is the best job. Just make movies with your friends.
You sit back, watch the watch the money roll in but 99 of film students can't get this job so give it up so i actually got the best job so i stick with it but it still wasn't enough desire until i made that seven thousand dollar movie with my kids and they got so into it i realized that's my next 10 years i'm going to work my kids. I'm going to make them all work on movies because it's not about making movies.
It's about life lessons. It's a huge project that you have to, you don't know how you're going to get through even the day, much less the project.
But that's life. It's like I felt so good afterwards saying, you know the process now.
If I get hit by a bus, you guys are going to be fine. Because it's just like the movies.
The story of life is just like the stories we make up.

You go get your plan together, which is kind of like your script.

You attack it, try to make it as bulletproof as possible.

Go for your goal, whether it's building a comedy club or whatever.

Watch it all fucking fall apart.

And then that's when you roll up your sleeves, turn chicken shit to chicken salad.

The finished result's way better than your original vision.

Wash, rinse, repeat. That's life.
It's a microcosm of how life works i made them work on the movies

and i did this manifesting thing my son said well i'd like to do a vr movie so let's make a company together we'll call it double r you all have double r names double r company watch i'm gonna show you this how this works because i did this with brass knuckle a label. Double R, that'll be our logo.
And I made T-shirts and little notepads. And then you got way into it.
Because now that we have a company, you have to do stuff to fill the company. So we'll call a VR company and say, you all need to sell headsets.
Give us some money to make a movie and we'll make you a movie. We did one with Michelle Rodriguez and Norman Reedus called The Limit.
That had the, they made us a big Double R logo in the front. That was like in March.
Later that year, we made that $7,000 movie. That also had the double R logo.
Then I went to Netflix and they said, could you make us a spy kids type thing? That always does well. So I thought, okay.
I kind of came up with it in the room. I thought little kids superheroes who have to save their superhero parents.
That's We Can Be Heroes, another double R movie. My kids wrote it with me.
It's the most watched and rewatched movie in Netflix history. Nothing can touch it.
Kids cannot stop watching it because as little kids superheroes, no one's ever done that before. And my kids are like, dad, it really works this thing.
And I was like, shit, better than I thought. I was just, I was just making an example, but that's, that's how it happens.
Right? Like it feels predestined, but also you're like, let me just show you how it works.

And you go to show someone an example, and that becomes your bread and butter.

And so I just tell people, if you have an opportunity to work with your kids, you're mentoring them.

They're mentoring you because they're the age I was when I was making Mariachi and Desperado.

They got so many great ideas.

And you're taking on this big project that's teaching them about life. And because're both in the same boat you both know what it's going to take and it's family time so you're like checking all the boxes and i was telling this to sly i was so excited back in you know 2019 and his wife jennifer was like you don't work with your daughters she hits him you don't work with he's like, oh, shit.
Maybe I should dial this story back. I was so evangelical about it.
But I get people in trouble. But they couldn't then hear it.
And the next year, the daughters started a podcast. He would show up for once in a while to get ratings up.
Now they have a TV show, second season, Family Stallone. They're all working together.
They're all living the best life. So I tell anybody who listens, because it's something I stumbled upon, because it's very counterintuitive, because you would think, oh, if I work with my kids, doesn't that look like privilege or whatever? So I'll tell you this.
What happens when we die? Don't you just give everything that you created over your life to your kids because they have your last name? They weren't a part of it. If you have a chance to work with them and build it with you, you have that next level mentorship relationship.
Don't just parent, because after a while, once they're in the teens, they don't really need you. Jeppetto-ing over them.
Partner with them. Become their mentor, their Obi-Wan, and they mentor you back.
It gives them such a boost in confidence when they teach you some shit. And you'll have that next level experience.
That way, when you pass on, you give them the stuff, they'll go, yeah, I made this with my dad. That's great advice.
Especially when you do something like you do. Depends on what you have.
Find your version of it. Not everybody can necessarily work with the kids, but you have an opportunity to do it.
Right, but like this thing that you were saying about jobs for dummies. 99% of people are not going to be able to do this.
Well, that's the thing. It's like, yeah, but it's possible.
It is possible. And part of the 99% not going to do it because they don't know anybody who's done it.
Right. That's part of the problem.
And once you see like, oh, look how he did this. He just did.
I think I could. He told me how he made El Mariachi.
I think it can be done. That wasn't taught in film schools.
That was completely. Again, they don't teach you.
They teach you how to do one job so that you can go pull cables on someone else's movie.

My thing was like, be the owner, be the creator, be everything.

And you cut the line and suddenly you're at the film festival.

But no one had really done that before you.

Nobody had done that before.

It was the first time.

That's why even when I was doing it, I was like, I kind of have the idea this can do it because I did that short film and I'm doing the math.

But somebody must have done this already. Even when the studio, in the book it shows, even when the studios were flying me up because they saw Mariachi and wanted to do a deal with me, I went, I've never heard of anyone getting in a business like this.
This must happen all the time where they find some filmmaker, student, they whine and dine them, and then you never hear from them again. Because I've never heard a story like this.
And I was the first one. That's why.
That's wild. It was really crazy.
And I didn't even want them to release it. I didn't want them to release it because it was my practice film.
I just threw it away. They said...
Wasn't everything one take? One take because I was shooting on film. And if I shot two takes of everything, I'd double my budget.
Because most of the money went to the film. I wrote the script around everything I already had.
So I wouldn't

have to buy anything. So it's like, well, what do we have? We took stock in what we have.
And this is a lesson for life. Like if you think you can't do anything, well, look around.
You've got a lot of resources. It's about being resourceful.
We have a turtle we found. We have a dog.
We've got a ranch. Your brother-in-law has a school line, I mean, a bus line.
We'll borrow one of the buses. When you see what we do with a bus, he crashes into it.
He has a bar. Let's ride everything around that.
So we just have that. And if I shoot two takes, we double their budget.
How about let's shoot one take of everything? I know not everything's going to come out because I'm doing everything myself. I'm pulling focus.
I might meter it wrong. Who knows? But I don't want to shoot a safety take or it's going to double the budget.
We'll go home after I finish shooting the whole movie. I'll see what stuff didn't come out and I'll go just reshoot that.
Of course, you get home and you're, I'm not going to fucking go back to Mexico and reshoot anything. I'll just figure out a way to edit around all the stuff that didn't come out.
Not everything came out. But yeah, it was merely just following your nose and not knowing if it was going to work.
Somebody must have thought to do this already, but no one had ever done that before because it's so counterintuitive. You're told – but that's how movies started.
You know, you think back in the old days, Charlie Chaplin and a guy behind the camera doing this. They didn't have 200 people.
It turned into a business, just like with comedy, and it turns into a business to where you think that's the art form. That's not the art form.
That's the business of the art form. The original art form is you by yourself doing it.

This is how by myself I was.

It was like, you've got one guy here now, right?

Because you have all these digital cameras.

I had one camera and I had the sound

and I can't do them at the same time

because the camera sounds like this.

Really noisy.

And it sounds like all your money is going away.

So I'd have no slates. I would run the guy starts running stop filming cut you know like i would just shoot my little pieces like this much after i would do a whole scene one take one take one take one take put the camera down get the microphone really close to him like that okay see all your lines again lines again.
Pick up the glass again. Do all that stuff again.
Wow. Cut it in by hand.
So you cut in the audio by hand and try to sink into the mouth? So when they're not, because they're non-actors, a lot of times, like, repeat what you just said. Wait, so you cut it by hand and it would match, right? Yeah.
And if it didn't match, I would cut away to the dog or to the knife or to the other person. That's why it's got a really fast cutting style, which became my cutting style, was just to get them back in sync because I didn't want it to look like a low-budget, rubbery lip thing.
But if you watch it, you see them in sync. Every time they're on screen, they're in sync.
And then as they start to go out of sync, it cuts. And it cuts back.
But this is about being resourceful. But it saved me a ton of money doing it that way.
And it made it actually interesting to watch. It makes it more interesting to watch.
Yeah. Oh, so anyway, so originally I didn't have any ideas.
I was going to make three of these movies before making my serious American independent film. But my first movie, I gave it to an agent in Los Angeles.
And he said, I can get you to work off this now as a writer director and i went writer director i'm not a writer well i guess i wrote the script i guess that makes me a writer again i didn't know how to own stuff yet so you just got to say you're a writer i still thought well like i'd even written a movie i didn't consider myself a writer yes that's that's the shit we do to ourselves right so i said okay so he sent it around all these studios were flying. It's in the book.
It's just crazy how fast it happened. And they were offering me these deals because they saw that I went and did something.
That's why you just got to go make something because people are sometimes they're so impressed that you even did anything. Most people never start.
And they went, wow. And I thought, well, it's actually a good calling card.
Now, if you like the cinematography, I did that. Hire me as a cameraman.
If you like the editing, I did that. Hire me as an editor.
But they hired me as a writer-director. And they said, what movie do you want to do? I go, this all happened so fast.
I didn't really have a chance to think about it. I was going to do three of these practice films and then make a real one.
So, but you like Mariachi, why don't we remake that? And they said, with like Antonio Banderas. I'm, okay, okay.
But audience might not like that the girl dies. So we're going to screen this version that you have now to an audience.
So we screened it to an audience and they liked it the way it was. So they said, we're going to take this to some film festivals.
I was like, no, don't show this movie. It's my practice movie.
Literally, no one's supposed to see this one. They go, no, no, you got something really special.
I said, no, dude, I'm telling you, I can do much better than that. Give me $2,000, I'll go reshoot half of it, just knowing that people are going to see it now and do completely differently.
And they go, you've got something. They're smart enough.
Mark Canton there said, you got something really special here. We're going to take it to the festivals.
And we won Sundance because I made it for myself. It was a real lesson in that.
Like, if I was trying to think about what all the audience was going to want to see, I would have changed so many things. But because I knew no one was going to see it.
It's probably the only movie in history ever made where people were guaranteed not to see it. Just by the title.
I titled it that way so nobody would see it. I didn't want anybody to see it.
I wanted to just throw it away and practice. I figured maybe the third one might be the better one.
You know, like that advice. Throw three scripts away and then do a fourth.
I'm going to throw three movies away so that by the fourth, I'm so savvy, know how to film and do all these things. This first practice film is not going to be it.
That's the one that's going to be it. Wow.
So commit to a body of work, throw shit away. Don't be precious about it.
Just go make it. Don't blink when people criticize it and just keep going, make a body of work.
That's it. That's the secret.
And that's the secret to life, too. Just keep trying to make it the best.
That is phenomenal advice. And coming from a person like you that has accomplished so much, it's so resonant.
That's why I accomplish it, by doing those things, which everybody can do. It's not because I'm not that smart.
I'm telling you, I'm not that smart. I just follow your instinct like you did.
When you follow your instinct, you're letting the universe do all the talking.

And I saw that sounds wonky, but I just call it that because it is from some other place.

And you're just an instrument.

You're just a pipe.

Yes.

The soul that gets into your body.

And you realize that when you have kids, I don't know if you had that experience.

As soon as I had my first kid, I was like, this isn't my kid.

You can just tell it's not my kid.

I mean, it has physical characteristics.

It may even mannerisms in my walk. But there's another soul in here that's from some other place.
And each one is so different. I have five kids and I have nine siblings.
They're from different planets. Right.
And so you realize that the soul is on a communication level with some other thing that our human bodies are just very primitive to do. So when we get a voice, we can't tell if it's coming from the universe, if it's for our own mind, or if it's just, because it all sounds like fucking Morse code because the brain is so primitive.
It's a three pound meat computer. That's why we can't remember shit.
It's like we're limited by the body our soul got put into, just like we'd be limited if we were put in a fish because they got an even smaller brain. They only go forward and backwards.
That's why a lot of people say you have to learn how to get out of your own way. Because you think I'm so limited.
Yeah. But you actually.
Also, maybe you don't and maybe you're cocky, which is equally bad. Yeah, because that's beginning your own way in a different way yeah it's a false it's a false where you think i can do anything because i'm just so cool well you're saying no you can do anything because you're just a pipe be that and then you'll see much more flow happening yeah you'll see things just falling in your lap yeah don't think about you at all yeah get you out of it it's not you have to be very humble it's a very humbling thing the more humble you are the more shit happens not just for you but everyone around you being creative and i figured this out like when you're um there was a book called the one thing a business book called one thing like do one thing and just do that well okay that book's not for me when i was doing this talk where they introduced me they said robert he's a writer director editor composer long list of all the jobs I do.
And I went up there like, wow, that I get tired just hearing that list. And I keep seeing that book, the one thing.
And I thought at first I thought that's not me, but I realized, you know what? I don't just do all those things. There's one thing I really do that ties all those together.
When you think about it, I do one thing and it's, I live a creative life. And if you commit to living a creative life, like literally applying creativity to everything you do, your workout in the morning, how you interact with your kids, the meal you cook, what you're going to do that night, a business call you take, be creative.
I love my business meetings now the most. I make people pizza.
I'm making my chocolate. We talk about creativity and they want to be in business with you.
It's like so good because you're adding creativity. It enriches your life and everyone around you.
And that way, anything that touches creativity, whether it's painting, drawing, sculpture, music is available to you because what 90% of that job is just being creative. And if you're doing it all day, you're always going to be in a flow.
If you don't embrace that and you go about your daily life and you don't apply creativity, well, when you go home that night to write your novel or something, you're going to be blocked because you're not in a creative flow. But if you've just been applying creativity all day long to everything, I'm going to do this talk creatively.
I'm going to bring some cards. I'm going to go do this.
You're applying creativity. You're always in a flow.
So when you go back to go do your main job, you've already been doing've already been doing it and you're living your best life. Cause I found I was most successful, happiest, and most fulfilled when I was being creative.
So why not just do that 24 seven? And it's been a life changer. It's been doing that like 15 years with consciousness, like consciously say, cause people don't like to say they're creative.
Like when I asked, are you creative? And Lexi, yeah, you know, like stumbling through it. It's's like because people think being an artist means you have to have the mustache and the hat and it's like no artists are regular people and regular people are flawed and that's why you relate to something that they do because it's flawed if you made it perfect they couldn't relate to it because humans are flawed and if you think of it that way you go well i can create flawed stuff i can do that all day long and then that gets out of your way because then somebody who comes to you and they go, I really love that part where the explosion is you go, well, I can create flawed stuff.
I can do that all day long. And then that gets out of your way.

Because then somebody who comes to you and they go, really love that part where the explosion is, oh, well, that was an accident because I didn't get what I really wanted.

And I had to make this work.

And that was an accident.

They respond to those accidents in a big way because they're from another universe.

They're the part that's magic, the part you didn't know and the part you couldn't have predicted.

And so if you set up, I purposely make my budgets smaller and my shooting schedules shorter so that those more of that stuff happens because that's the stuff people will relate to. And it gives you complete creative freedom.
Like you have a lot of creative freedom here. I probably the director who's worked with the most outcast, ostracized, or people who are considered difficult

than any other filmmaker, mainly because I'm independent. And I don't have to listen to a studio if they're like, oh, you can't work with that person.
So like Mel Gibson couldn't get a job back when I hired him on. I was just always a big fan of his always like a creativity first and talent first bullshit controversy, not even distance.
It's not even considered. And I get to work with these amazing people.
Steven Seagal, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan. And then people who are considered difficult were like Michael Parks.
I got this from Quentin. Michael Parks was in Dustal Dawn.
He's the sheriff at the beginning. The Texas Ranger.
Quentin said, man, I love this guy, Michael Parks. He was going to be the next James Dean.
He had a show on TV in the 70s called then came Bronson but then he kind of got difficult for people to work with and so he was relegated to these low-budget grindhouse films but check him out he's always really great I want to put him in Dusk Till Dawn but I hear him he's my difficult to work with you work with him first and if he's great to work with I'll work with him I was all right sure so I work with him it's a dream it's amazing he was really great no bullshit of all the people like that and then we both kept putting him in movies Mickey Rourke was considered it couldn't work think he couldn't get a job I gave him once upon a time but once I met him I was like oh my god he's just like Mickey in the old days you know Quentin I actually wanted him in Dusk Till we both wanted mickey rourke in the lead role but he retired from acting he was just boxing you don't even look at the scripts we're like oh man we can hire mickey rourke and there's no mickey rourke now we're so bummed but then years later i went back to him and uh no one was hiring him so i met with him i said okay i'll meet with him it's like holy shit he still has that charm and everything so i put him in give him a role in Once Upon a Time Mexico, and I kept riding him more scenes. He was broke.
I mean, I gave him money to go buy his own suits because he always dressed to the nines in his movies. It's like, look, I'm all out of time costume designing this thing.
I'll give you some money. Go buy your own clothes.
You're always going to dress. He came with these Billy Martin suits and stuff.
I said, I'm going to put a bullet hole in the back of one digitally just so you can keep – because he wanted to keep the clothes. You can keep the clothes.
Thanks, brother. And then I put him in Sin City and it relaunched his career.
But he was always a dream to work with. And I would hear from people later, oh, he's been difficult again.
I was like, really? So he'd come back again. No, again.
100% of the time, I've never had any difficulty with even the difficult ostracized one. one so it makes you think and you know that because you have anybody you want on your show but it makes me wonder what environment are you putting them in right that makes them like that because like somebody was saying that about uh redger howard was amazing hard to work with really no i wasn't at all but for some people i didn't know you had the reputation i don't know but somebody told me loved him loved him and stuff blade runner oh hitcher um bruce willis people would tell me it was difficult to work with like bruce i've worked with him four times let me tell you this is what bruce is like when he walks in the set hey heavy what's going on man hefe means boss does that sound like's difficult? That's going to be somebody who's just so happy.
One time I was doing this Kobe Bryant Nike commercial. I was going to be in with Kobe.
I was directing it. And I was working out at the gym where Stallone works out, Gunnar Peterson's gym.
And Bruce was there. And I was trying to get an actor to do a cameo in this commercial.
I shooting that weekend i was working out because i was going to be on camera and so then i go to bruce and i go hey what are you what are you up to and he goes oh i'm just looking for a job and i said well are you a basketball fan so i'm shooting a kobe bryant commercial saturday what once you come by the set it's downtown you play this role bring bring a couple of suits because it's very last minute but last minute replacement yeah yeah sure would love to meet okay good so i went back to the nike people said bruce said he's going to be in it well we'll call his agent no no don't call his agent because he probably didn't tell him and he said he'll come down i think he will because he's cool like that oh we think we should call him anyway so they call the He just go, Bruce Willis is not going to be in a Nike commercial.

Well, he talked to Robert.

Oh, okay, I guess he is going to be in a Nike commercial.

So then we're down there in the set.

We're downtown L.A. We're filming Kobe.

We're filming everything else.

And it's like almost time for him to show up.

And they're like, you sure he's going to come?

He said he would.

He said he'd bring two suits.

And now I'm thinking how ridiculous that sounds that I told him in the gym

and said, come down with a couple of your suits from your own closet.

Like there's no wardrobe.

There's no time to get a wardrobe fitting.

And just show up.

Thank you. that I told him in the gym and said, come down with a couple of your suits from your own closet.

Like there's no wardrobe,

no time to get a wardrobe fitting and just show up.

He shows up, shows up, does it.

So I'll film you out in an hour because he knows how we work together.

Had a great time.

He's great in it.

Takes off, brought his two suits.

That's amazing.

It does not sound like somebody who's difficult.

No, it's the environment that you put these people in.

Totally the environment you put them in. Because I was watching like a dog whisperer and it's like, if you have a pit bull, some of these guys can be alpha male pit bull.
If you put them in a situation where aggression is needed. Like if you have a chaotic set and producers are coming down going, no, you can't wear that.
You can't talk like that. Of course you're going to piss these guys off.
But if you put them in an environment where they know there's somebody who's a boss i mean they show up it's my studio i'm operating

the camera i'm the dp i'm there acting with them we're shooting it in record time getting them out

of there fast they're having a ball pitbull just wants to follow he doesn't want to he doesn't

wonder if i can take over the show and so everyone's really that's my theory on it anyway i think it's

just the environment because they always say oh if you have a dog that's misbehaving, it's the owner. It's the owner and the environment.
It's not the dog. There's nothing wrong with the animal.
The animal is fine. The animal can be very calm and assertive and even submissive.
Well, it's also these exceptional actors with these eccentric personalities. They're oftentimes like if you put them in a bad environment, you're going to get a fucking terrible result because part of what they are is, like, a little bit of chaos.
Well, they're also just going to have to protect themselves. Yes.
They have to protect themselves if this environment is fucked up. Think about the type of guy that told you that, like, wait, you filmed this and you didn't get the rights.
Yeah, yeah. Those are the guys that are going to drive you up a wall.
Exactly. We've all encountered those executives.
Yeah. Yeah.
I remember I talked to Mick because I'd heard, you know, he'd been in trouble and something. So maybe his head got big and was troubled.
So I said, well, what was wrong? Everything had to be what Mickey wanted to say, what Mickey wanted to wear, what Mickey wanted to do. So, okay, well, maybe he's gone back to some...
I'm about to work with him again. So he comes, no, he's a dream again.
So at the end, I go, man, you always bring it, brother. You always bring it, and it's just so great to see.
Yeah, with some people, you deserve it. Most people don't deserve it.
Because he remembers I gave him his shot back. So I was like, okay, he didn't give me any shit.
Maybe he gives other people shit. That's awesome.
Listen, brother, I've really enjoyed this. I really enjoyed talking to you.
We'll have to bring you studio a lot of things i want to see the studio but i think a lot of things you said are really going to help a lot of people yeah hopefully hopefully because it's uh it's been helpful to me to then tell people and then the feedback loop they tell me back something i said but they morphed it into something new like they've added their own thing to it yeah and i go that's not what I told you you know oh we've added to it no shit well now now i'm taking your advice that came from my advice my kids do that all the time they go it all comes back to what you taught us dad what was that what did i tell you that one time you said you know basically like the glass is half full half empty okay but i didn't tell you all this other stuff where'd that come from oh we added to it since i was like well shit that's the cool part yeah like my son got on uh

you half empty okay but i didn't tell you all this other stuff where'd that come from oh we added to it since i was like well shit that's the cool part yeah like my son got on uh was a japanese knife maker you know in his teens he just wanted to get into japanese like this is a guy from another lifetime you know different you obviously knew this was his path that's when you know it's a soul born in there didn't get that from me making these japanese style knives selling them for like a thousand dollars or pop by the he was 18, he got on that show Forging a Fire and won. And I was like, how did you, you didn't even know how to use most of the equipment they gave you.
You got $10,000? How did you, what was your mindset? He said, I imagined I had won already. Somehow I had won.
And so when I'd come up against a challenge that I wasn't sure how I would get by, I just had to remember what I did to get by it rather than trying to be freaked out about it. I was like, whoa, that's some freaking samurai shit.
You've obviously been in another life before to come in armed with that. You didn't learn that from me.
And it's like, well, it's kind of like, no, that's nothing like anything I ever told you. So the feedback loop, when you share with people, I love people coming and telling me, hey, I was really inspired by your book and you said this.
I'm like, I don't remember saying that in the book. I think you added to it a lot.
It triggered something in you and we all keep compiling our ideas. Yeah, we all do that.
I'm interested in everybody else's perspective because we all have our own relationship to creativity in the universe and all that yeah and the more you interact with things the more you contribute but come being a brass knuckle film that sounds like right up reality let's do conan

or frisetta something you gotta come see that definitely i can't wait to see your because

you'd be great i can already tell you i got a great part for you where you will knock it out

i will talk thank you very much.

Thank you, sir.

It was awesome.

I really appreciate it.

All right.

Bye, everybody.