#2310 - Robert Rodriguez
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The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast.

Oh, man. Hey. Very, very nice to meet you. Incredible to meet you. I'm a 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 just an incredible accomplishment to make a movie that people still watch and talk about today for seven grand. 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, you know, when you're in your early 20s,

Six months 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 now and I'd go, oh, my God, this is an impossible story. I keep laughing during the audiobook going, okay, what you're reading right now never happened before and 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 try 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 them 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, OK, I'm not going to tell them 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 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 2, written like Lethal Weapon 2.

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 $8,000, probably more like $5,000 or $6,000.

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 that's winning all these awards they're not going to hire me to do a short film 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.

I guess I could do action. I started as a cartoonist. I 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...

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 gonna make a movie that's got so much action and it's actually shot on film but I'll call it basically the guitar player which promises no action whatsoever put it on the shelf and if someone happens to be so desperate to watch it they'll be surprised you know that was like my joke to myself but I just want to practice so I did this method where I just got the cards and I go

I'm used to making short films. Guy with a guitar case walks into a bar looking for work. They refuse, saying, we don't hire people. We use a synthesizer now. He leaves. A guy with a guitar case full of weapons walks in after, shoots the place up, says he's going after the guy who owns it because he did him wrong.

So I put those two cards down and I went, okay, that's how a short film would start. But shit, this is a feature. So let me put, it's 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, OK, we got to figure out who this guy. OK, how about he's a control partner who's coming into town? But wait, who's the guy that shoots the place? Let's start with him in jail. I read a story about a guy in Mexico who was running his drug business from his 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 mariachi 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. And because it's a 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, he has to die. Yeah.

Because that's going to be, every movie is going to be like a sad song in a songbook. So it kind of just broke that fast. I went and I shot it. Did you do it like that with the index cards? Index cards. I do this for everything. And just lay it out on a table? I do this for everything. For everything. I tell people, I do this talk where I, by the end of the talk, I say, I keep these in my...

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. With 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 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 do you, why did that make you feel? Why'd you do that? And what's up? What's going on? If we do 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. They 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? Everybody's hands go up.

I toss one out and 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, is 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. Well, I'm going to 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. It's coming out. It's called Fight or Flight with Josh Hartnett. Wow. After hearing the talk, he went and picked up this old thing that he thought was cool.

And I get this a lot when I've talked to people. It's really inspiring to them to hear other people. That's why I'll ask you questions about it, too. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Have you ever been shopping online and the website just gave you the ick?

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How did you develop this approach? Like, 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 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 for the joke here. And they 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 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 there's another question. 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 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've got that power, you can make literally anything happen. And 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. You wanted to work out today. What happened? Bunch of shit, right? Got in the way. Your tire's flat. Fires went up. You just got fired. You're not ready for life. You're like this. Right. But for some reason, people or artists think that they need to be ready to create art. It's like, no, you've got to jump in and just start. You just need to start. You're not going to...

really feel ready till you're almost done with a project. I didn't feel ready to make that $7,000 movie till 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 don't have the confidence to just potentially fail. And just to just try it, just get moving. Just get, you know, Hemingway, my friend Ari on his laptop, he has this quote.

top of his keyboard, first draft of everything is shit. Yeah. And it's Hemingway. Yeah. God, what a great fucking, it's like such an important thing to know. Because he knows the process. Yes. If you trust the process, 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 Pressfields book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing book. 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 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. You 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 when I really found success was when I took these ideas and moved it to another area. But like I try to figure this out when I was I was doing that other method, the wrong method when I was cartooning, because I would 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 Burt Bread that 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, oh, here it is. And I realized something really profound back at, you know, 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 realized, oh, I just have to be a conduit or a pipe. And if I just start doing

I'm going to be like, whoa. And you got to keep your ego out of it because then 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 got to teach it to my kids. And since they hadn't learned any bad habits, they went, oh, so we don't have to do anything? We just have to start writing? It's going to come out? Go, yeah. And they went and they wrote all this amazing stuff. And I was like, they don't have to be reversed, you know, 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 that 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 going to do it. By the week they started shooting, they were already talking about their next three films. Like they changed their idea of what was impossible. It 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. I brought my son, Racer, to do it.

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 until 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 interests. 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 open. 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, I never knew how my dad did mariachi. And now I know because I just did this project. He didn't know either. He just started. And he figured it 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, you know. I'm an aspiring filmmaker. And he goes, 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 it printed 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. I started making these films even for Spanish video. And so you have to think it through. And I'd 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 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 of – 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 was 19 doing the comic, but then it kept getting –

repeated. But you realized it at 19. I realized 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's a...

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? And it was only 12 notes, you know, even less than a scale. So you hit three notes, four notes. That's a bad note. Okay. That's pleasing to the ear. And I was just writing a 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 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 don'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 there'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 to shoot the movie. 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 and

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 and they do it and i put a stencil of a line drawing of their face over it i'll show you something you're not going to believe it josh brolin was way into it lady gaga did one bruce willis didn't want 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 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

and solve any creative problem because it was much harder in the faint room figuring out gels and mediums and all this stuff. They go back to the set and they can solve any problem instantly. And you'd 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 how it does that's like something he would say to you that's so funny that's like a miyamotu masashi 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 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? And a lot of musicians 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? He goes,

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. 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, even though it's 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, I just need to be a pipe. Yeah. A clean pipe, a conduit. So more stuff comes through. And that means take your ego out of it. I mean, just do the work. Just show up and start. Yeah. Pressfield literally thinks that it's like an angel or like some sort of a divine presence that presents you. I think there's something to it, man. And it sounds so kooky. But if something is super successful for amazing people. Yeah.

And they're all telling you the same thing. Like, why do you have to – nah, man, I'm not stupid. I'm not going to believe in the concept. 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. Something is happening to you. Yeah, you're tapped into –

I had a friend of mine, Tim Ferriss, was over at my house, and I was telling him about some kind of, you know, it's a very creative house, really, because 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? Yeah. Oh, my God. We'll get to that. We'll get to that. Oh, my God. You going to make it out? But it's just totally, totally...

You have so much affair for that is totally creative place. And I like people to come there, but it's, it's just inspiring to be in an environment where everything around you is about creativity. Cause then you get in that head space and you're able to do more because you realize it's not you. It's just coming through you and you just gotta, 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 that, Oh, it's not, I don't have to do it. I just have to actually pick up the pen. Yeah. It's, it's very freeing. Hmm.

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. 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 it.

And she went, I learned a good lesson the hard way. 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 as a moneymaking scheme, go do that. Literally, you had the instinct. And 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 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? What would you say? Are you more, are you more instinctual? A hundred percent. Yeah. I'm primarily instinctual. I figured, cause 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 cause 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,

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 an 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 this story. Artistically, it was a very good movie. There's a lot of great stuff in it, but it was 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. 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 Tamal and 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. 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...

From that thing you would call a failure. 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. What you really need is a boost of confidence in your instinct or you will find something better.

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...

actually good. That means when it does work, it'll be even more rewarding. Yeah. I mean, mariachi didn't work. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. It's the end of tax season, and I know by now you all are probably sick of numbers, but there's one more expense we need to talk about, and that's how much you're investing in your well-being. The cost of traditional therapy can be outrageous, between $100 and $250 a month or even more.

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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 go, I got an Aerie 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, 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. And I had to shoot the whole movie in two weeks.

And I couldn't develop the film until 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 an accident. You invented that? Yeah, yeah. If you look at all the compilations, it starts with Desperado. Wow. Because it was an accident. I didn't think, you know, this is what happens on 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. It was just supposed to see some body parts fly. It was just a grenade, you know? It wasn't 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, and we're shooting so fast. I went to my poor effects guy who was just, you know, so busy just having done a big shootout, and I went...

I know you don't have body parts, 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, no, 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'll give you a fireball. I said, fireball? Like what? It'll go up 60 feet, but it's propane. So it's going to 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 determined, 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 down the explosion. Well,

Well, it looks fantastic. I remember when I showed you. 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 sped 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's me walking away and they blew some shit up behind me. Because it's just like, it's this cool attitude in working with music. 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. Ah!

So I thought, yeah, I'm doing that. I'm going to do that in Dust Till Dawn. Dust 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 like whole combinations of it. But it's an accident. That's got to be weird for you.

Like, you're like, bitch, that's mine. No, no, because it wasn't mine. Again, it came, it came, if I had engineered it, yeah, I'd be really smart. But again, like I said, I'm not that smart. Sometimes you stumble upon. But 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 he's in Desperado.

Now, I met him on the film festival circuit. So in 1992, we both had movies with guys in black, in violent movies. In fact, I met him at the Toronto Film Festival for Reservoir Dogs. I 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 and became friends, and he said, "Oh, Midex movies and Pulp Fiction." And I just thought, "This crazy guy, he's so funny." And I said, "I'm gonna write 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 stage, 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, it'd be No Dust Till Dawn. When we're doing Four Rooms, he takes me into a room and he starts reading me. And I got a... 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 dick. So I'll do a rewrite and you and I will go in together. You should be the director because 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 four rooms reading me a second version of it. So over the years, 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.

We just became friends there. He was originally going to make Pulp Fiction for TriStar 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 liked acting 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 how 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 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 Destledon. 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 said, dude, you got the haircut of Deliverance. That was really cool. He's like, oh, wow. You know, he just really slipped into it and 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 tend to, you know...

It connects you with Target. Of course. So they would say stuff about him and being in a way he shouldn't be acting in his movies. Of course. It's bullshit like this. 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. 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. 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. Send it to me.

Yeah, friends. Oh, my God. They don't know any better or my sister might send me something. Yeah, it's just, I just go, just leave me out of it. I got some really good advice early on. I like to share this with my actors because they get a lot of shit sometimes. 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,

working with Spielberg and they're like oh shit I'm working with Spielberg you probably remember this time because we were 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 press public everything he was like he couldn't catch a break and he was making like the coolest movies ah that movie sucks ah Jurassic Park sucks and all this

So I thought, oh, shit, it's because he's got his head way up. Maybe I should fly under the radar and not go make if 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, there's an eighth of that.

I'd be lucky. So I called him and said... Bro, you make close encounters. I know. Jesus. That's a fucking incredible movie. But you get that much success and then people kind of... 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 going to 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 get rocks thrown at you all day long. He goes, oh, Robert, you just don't blink. I was like, wow. It's not like a Clint Eastwood line. Wow. That's how he did it all this 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 them 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 so they're very easy to attack. And they may very well want to, but they're going to

hurt by the fear. Most of them, yeah. Well, 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 work, don't blink.

Right. And just keep making shit. Don't get somewhere. That's great advice. Commit to a body of work. Body of work. Like look at someone, I mentioned this and a friend of mine, a businessman called me and said, wow, I really, I really spoke to me. You know, I tend to look at all the different businesses I've created that failed and

instead of looking at the whole body of work. And I fixate on the ones that didn't work. And it's like, you never 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.

Dusseldorf 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 effects company hires him, and they said, we want a movie that'll...

showcase our effects in this vampire bar. It's about two brothers that 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 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. 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. A whole different perspective change. A little success will do for you. Four rooms. Oh, four rooms. Oh, yes. Four rooms. Four times the fun. You never know. So I told Quentin, let's make it right now.

because we made it to our next movie right after Four Rooms. So Desperado, Four Rooms. So Desperado 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. 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. When 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 like that.

So he starts reading and he does each one, you know, it's because in media 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 guys? And 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 so i'm gonna have to go get something we're all just cheeches like this in a suit with a hat he goes hey runner can i this is gonna be a walk can i go to my trailer i was like oh man by the time you go this guy's gonna be back and we'll have to start we should just stay right here okay i'll go into my mental trailer ice cold drinks air conditioning it just lines up the whole sound 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. Because 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. There's a similarity to them, though. You did animated movies. Yeah, there's a similarity to them. I'm still that cartoonist. Mm-hmm.

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 some are for big kids and some are for little kids. Even Sin City. Yeah, even Sin City is very playful. The Sin City one was so dark. I remember the first book, the one that Mickey Rourke plays.

It was so dark. I was going like, "Oh, my God, it's gonna be dark. 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 it very much. We just added, you know, some humor to it. And that gallows humor, you know, really helps. Yeah. Like when the yellow guy gets shot in the dick. Oh, that's-- yeah, that's the-- 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. Right. And take out the whole visual element, which is that stark black and white where people's eyes glow in the dark. Yeah. And it has all these layers of unreality. And I went to Frank Miller. I said, I want to just make this move. I went, 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, this is Bruce Willis and the yellow guy. Excuse me, Bruce Willis and the yellow guy. There's three stories in it.

Just, I just want to like, while you're talking about this, I want to look at it. And yeah, so he, 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 everything I call them up, man, let's make a great movie. God, it was so interesting. Oh, Bruce loved this. I gotta tell you, it's funny. So this is the fastest I think any Hollywood movies ever gotten made.

Really? Yeah. I'll show you the process. It's kind of like this cards thing. It's going to blow your mind. What is it now? It's April. Okay. So imagine this is, if this is 2000, if this is 2004, April last year, I had two movies out in the summer was spy kids. 3d was the number one movie. A couple of 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 was, 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 Spy Kids 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. George Lucas told me that. He said, 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 I did a test a little test of it I'm gonna shit that's gonna work. So it was October when I got that 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 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 gonna have notes. I know 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. Brought Josh Harnett, Marlee Shelton. That opening scene in Sin City, that was our test. 10-hour shoot day. And Marlee Shelton comes up to me and says, why did I hire this guy to kill me? 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 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's one of our greatest artists. He wrote in Hollywood. He got screwed around. And the guy goes, welcome to Hollywood. You know, like that. Yeah, whatever. I just respect the artist. 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 want to show it to Bruce so he can see the book. 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 and went welcome to texas all these little monkeys spit out water it was super annoying they said okay you saw it he went okay you can go meet with frank or you 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 name's 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 actual movie by March. So by April, we're already done with it. We're filming the second story by April. It was out the next year. I mean, that's as fast as a movie has ever gone into production. All these actors jumped on right away once we had Bruce in.

And he loved doing this film noir type thing. And we were 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 just 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 the later. So what's cool is their performances are so focused on each other because there's no other stimulus around that you got these great performances. We only built the bar. Hey Frank, we'll build the bar so that you have, but we have a place to hang out with and you know, 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 that,

Let smaller than this room by the time you bring your lights in where the actors actually had their playground. It's unbelievable That's incredible and it was so inspiring to that movie was so cuz when I left the theater I remember thinking I've never seen anything like that before it was like that was so because it was that way it was so different and it just like when someone does something that really just steps up and and 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 before 300. Yeah.

Yeah, 300 actually. So 300 kind of took that as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. 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. It was a new thing. 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 like does something new, it's like when you see something new, and I felt this way about Pulp Fiction too, you're like, wow. Wow, what the hell? 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 how revolutionary Pulp Fiction was when it came out. 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...

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. That's how profound it was. 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, we don't have anything like this coming out except, except your movie, Desperado maybe because Quentin was in it. Right. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we got our pulse on what people want. It was like, we don't, we don't know. So I gotta tell you really two things. First of all, George Lucas told me that and he's like,

Showed him the sin city thing because we'd both been early adopters of digital and DP's directors of photography didn't want to even look at digital They were like that they already spent all their time learning film 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 gonna 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

I figured it out myself. So I showed it to Lucas and 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 really wanted to see it made. 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 screen?" I'm like, "No, what for? Everybody's gonna 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 the way a movie is supposed to be. Let's just put it out. I figure it won't do well theatrically because you 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. 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 interview writer-directors. His was so big, we did two episodes. We talked about all his movies. And I said, do you remember this time I found in my diary? Right down to the hour, we went out to dinner. I mean, he was so into Pulp Fiction. Ever since I met him, my next movie's going to be Pulp Fiction. I visited the set. He was into it, he was into it. He finished the movie and

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 your movie come out? He goes, yeah, it's not the one. It still feels like a movie Quentin would make. I'd be like, what do you mean? It just doesn't feel like a real movie. It feels like another movie Quentin would make. And I was trying to be the supportive friend because I knew how much he would put in. It should be different. He's like, man, it wouldn't happen. It's like two in the morning. I was dropping him off at home after we'd been out.

And so I went back to Austin and he had had a screening for his, all his director friends that I couldn't be at because I lived in Austin. So I called one of them, say, how was the screening? And he was a little bummed. He goes, nah, this isn't the one for him. And I was like, really? Yeah, it's, it's just too, yeah, it's just not it. And I asked him this and he goes, you're right. You know, he'd forgotten about that moment. He goes, 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... Wow. It'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 amazing movie. Bombs. Critics called it pornography at the time, if you remember. Like this, the...

the makeup effects, the audiences didn't go. It came out the same weekend, unfortunately, as E.T., right? Why do 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 point... So the special effects? Yeah, the special effects are really crazy. Really? Yeah. If you don't remember the time, it was really like that. There was repulsion towards this movie.

I know you don't think that now because 10 years later... I thought it was a hit. 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. He's wasted all his time on this movie. And Spielberg was the only one who was like, it's naive. It'll do good. And so I asked Quinn, was 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.

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. You know what I saw recently that I fucking loved? The Monkey. Did you see The Monkey? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a Stephen King book.

Or it might have been a short story. Yeah, it was a short story. That was adapted. It's fucking fun, man. My youngest daughter loves horror movies. We watch a lot of horror movies together.

And we were 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 fun. It was like 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 and 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? Shawshank redemption. Oh my God. And it bombed. What? Oh, Shawshank redemption bomb. What? It was a bomb.

Wow. 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 there's the Sony marketing. They just couldn't get anybody to go see it. Wow. But you've...

History gets rewritten. Now, again, you can be Frank Darabont and be like really down. But fortunately, he didn't have to wait 10 years. As soon as it got to video, it became a phenomenon on 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. Wow. That's the 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. 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... Incredible. That was a time when people could really get a second life on video. Now it's different with streaming and all that. Look at this. 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 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 clearly a fault of 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 the way it goes. It's supposed to go that way. Now I'm going to tell you an alternate one. There's a movie called Body Parts.

with a guy named Jeff Fahey. I loved that movie, Body Parts, by Eric Redd. He did The Hitcher. We never hear about it because the timing of it. And Jeff Fahey 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 go every night for seven at 7 PM. I go for a dollar. Is that the second run and watch it just to hear how an audience responds to it. And he was just great. And I just felt a connection to this guy. I 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 that's the same dude that was lawnmower man. Yeah. He was in lawnmower. So another, this should have been something that, you know, was it for him, but this week it came out, they just caught Jeffrey Dahmer like the week before. So they pulled back on the marketing completely. So no one saw it. And so he didn't get that boost his career, but, but the silver lining, the ash, 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 working, doing work out there. What kind of work? I don't remember. Some kind of, you know, like helping people stuff. He sends me a tape. And so I hire 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, it just came out on 4K. You got to come see. You've probably never seen it. He goes, I've never seen the finished movie. And I said, you're great in it. I was showing him some scenes. It was blowing his mind. He goes, yeah, this movie didn't do well. I remember now. Why? Because the Jeffrey Dahmer thing just went crazy.

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? Yeah, that's so fascinating. It's 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 somehow. Yeah, somehow it's interconnected. And you have to trust the process. You just have to trust the process. This episode is brought to you by Farmer's Dog. It doesn't matter how old your dog is, it's always a great time to start investing in their health and happiness. And thankfully, the Farmer's Dog makes it easier than ever to feed your dog a healthy diet of real meat and veggies.

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I was like, well, I never been asked that question before. So whenever I don't have an answer, I'll ask them first, you know, what do you guys think? What do you guys think? How would you answer? How would you answer that? Do you have doubts? Do you have any human doubts?

Everyone has doubts. Okay. It's what you do with them. Right. 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? Do 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 all

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. There's a jujitsu 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 where the magic is. I don't have to know. I'm going to figure it out when I'm almost done. All the things come together. Risk averse early on and it becomes a pattern. 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. Yeah.

It could be a thing that you enjoy. And because you love it, you probably will have success at it. Yes, yes. Because I'm sure you were drawing too, you know, 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, and I'd make these very elaborate stick figure animations. And everyone in class loved them, 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 them. 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 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 gets to show, like, films. And then when he pulls the screen up, he had no idea that on the chalkboard I had written, I had drawn this cartoon of him and the whole fucking...

class starts laughing. The power of the pen you had back then, right? 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. No, of course not. 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 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 what 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 put stuff together. Suddenly opportunities are going to fall in.

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 every other thing you get 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 probably not going to be successful. That's your lot in life. You just did that to yourself. Self-defining. So I had a friend of mine. I mean, like, I always hated working out. I didn't follow any sports, didn't know sports. In high school, they'd go, we need you. It's a small school. We need you on the team. Look, you're tall and 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 cane. And my back would be out for like a month because I would sit at the kitchen table drawing. I was so tall that it was just, it would throw my back out. I would just, disc would go out. And then when I started filmmaking...

Every year we just go out like clockwork. So 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 got to work out, Robert. He was always in shape, Ricardo. That chest in 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 and fucked him up. God damn it. Every time I hear a story like that, 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 too, so man. 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.

So I still own. I got to get in shape because my back keeps going out. And I don't like to worry. Get thee a trainer. Anyone you ever seen in Hollywood had gotten 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-assed in the workouts, you know, because 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 not get in it, it's not because they have to change their minds. There's something that goes with it. I had 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... That voice is killing me. She really talks like that. So then I go, wait a minute. Shit, I used to apply to filmmaking, 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. Yeah.

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. I'm an athlete. The last thing I would ever call myself, Mr. Cartoon Guy. 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. I want to go sleep on the couch. They just kind of know 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. 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 it because I'm an athlete.

That's how powerful the mind is. So I'm saying if someone says, oh, I want to go do this thing on the weekend and you might have the desire, but you've got to get the identity to you've got to say you are that. Yeah. And it sounds a little awkward. Like I asked somebody, Alex Friedman, I said, do you consider yourself a creative person? Anyway, well, you know, you guys, you're stuttering there, man.

you're stuttering you're stuttering he goes i know i know she said no no no you got to say and are you technical 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 you know george lucas is technical and creative when i first had a my first job my dad had a friend who owned a photoshop 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 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 learn how to be technical because most creative people always need technicians and technicians always need creative people. Now it's against you. 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 impossible and be unstoppable. And I was like, whoa, unstoppable. It's 16. He was here. Go, go. I know sometimes I'm going to ask you about who did that for you? Who was, because 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 them.

Because if I were to go back and ask that guy, hey, that advice you gave me, he'd be like, what? I didn't remember saying that. I just came through him at the time. 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? Yeah, I'm creative and I'm technical.

And I don't blink. 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 cabbages at you on stage...

Look close. It's fucking, it's you. You're doing that to yourself. You're the one who's like, 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 going to, you're down. You're going to stay down. I have this theory called baseline. I talk to some of my kids and we just laugh about it. I 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, tires flat. Oh, I got fired. I call that baseline. You're a baseline. Anything above baseline like this right now. We're having this great talk. This is way above baseline. Yeah. I'm on the Joe Rogan show, you know, so way above celebrate that shit. Yeah, 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. Otherwise, you'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 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. Dad.

It's just like you taught me. They also learn by watching you do it. Oh, yeah. I've seen you move through 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 of drink in his life and he's like super disciplined because of that. I'll tell you my secret. I've never done drugs. None. None. Nothing. Never. 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 was named he was working at the Sony when I first got there for mariachi and I was like this kid and there are people my age 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 gonna get on coffee fucking 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 now it's fucking all marketing it's made to be addictive like nicotine and all that and then your body can't create that and I already stay up for days as it is you know I don't want anything like that do you really normally I can stay up I just did this uh

What's your favorite workout music? Mine? Yeah. Wu-Tang Clan. I just did a...

I love classic stuff like Van Halen and stuff, but I just did a music video for Wolfgang Van Halen and we shot it 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? I couldn't, two days. I was just like, I want to see what happens next. You don't even notice. My shoulder's getting all fucked up and I'm like, what's wrong with my shoulder? Did I pull a muscle doing some shrugs or something? I 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 really cool. 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 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.

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 off it's a great workout song for sure but it's just really entertaining that's the kids talent 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's his third album he's working on his um

All plays all the instruments Wow super talented really really fun, but I like working with people who just do more than I

than other people. They're just at that level and it's so inspiring and 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 who your peers are when 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 Jim 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. 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? In 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 a wife. Weren't you afraid of going down that deep and something happening? He was like, no. I said, why not? I said, why not?

Oh, I designed the escape vehicle.

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 so insane. That's him, though. It's like, yeah, if someone else had designed this 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. That's 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. Yes. When you're just near, 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 want, as you can, 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. Yes. 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 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 front of us, and we all can paint alongside him. I go, 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 real. 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 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 leg. 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 this episode is brought to you by Amazon MGM Studios new movie The Accountant 2 in theaters April 25th Ben Affleck and John Bernthal are back in The Accountant 2 when an old acquaintance gets murdered he leaves behind a cryptic message that leads straight to Christian Wolfe's

the uniquely skilled accountant, to figure out who's behind it. To solve this thing, he will need to team up with his estranged and seriously lethal brother, Brax. It's got crazy action, but it's also hilarious. The relationship between the brothers is something anyone with a sibling can relate to. And trust me, this is an R-rated action thriller that you got to experience on the big screen. The Accountant 2, only in theaters April 25th. Check out theaccountant2movie.com.com.

To learn more. That's really important in stand-up comedy. Yeah, right. 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, they see that. They see these young guys that are coming up. They see these people working.

working really hard and constantly creating and hustling, doing all these different sets and constantly working on new material and they get inspired by it. And then you see these guys get Netflix specials and it's all happening at the club.

So this club that we're doing in Austin is all about that process. We have specifically designed it to have two open mic nights, Sunday and Monday. So new 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 could 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 like really exciting. You know, it's like it's really fun. There's like a vibe of creativity that everybody feeds off. I love what you've built. You've come here, you've only been here like four years and you've already like built this whole community.

Well, 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 –

I just can just pick up stakes and go. I'm like, okay, life is different now. Let's live in Texas. I want that. I like change. I like not having any fucking 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 got to open up a club. I'm like, okay, we got to open up a club. And so then I started looking for locations, and luckily the Ritz was available.

That's right. We either had, we did, I'd been under contract for this one world theater that was owned by a cult. Oh, right. I remember that one. That fell apart. There's a lot of issues. Ritz is close, right down there with all the live shows. 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 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 C.K. came and he was like, I think you should make the stage smaller. Make the stage smaller. I think you should make the ceiling lower. Make the ceiling lower. 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 started moving here, man. It was nuts. You build it, they will come. It really was like that. But it was like the universe wanted it to happen. And I say that and 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 Yeah in this order for it to happen this way and then you had to have someone who's like me who's a custom to just going by instinct Yeah, and I've always done that. I always my whole life. I'm like fuck 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 call all your friends in L.A. and call all your friends in New York. Come on down, man. We're making this happen. Wow, wow. I tell people that after Mariachi, it's like, I never thought I could get into the industry because I didn't live in L.A. 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 in one Sundance, my practice film, I thought, I don't have to move to LA. But they won't even know I'm not there. Between an airplane flight and FedEx, I'll just stay here 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. And I would tell people, filmmakers who all thought they needed to move to L.A., 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. Wow. Suddenly I was making Spy Kids, Sin City, you know, these crazy movies that really changed. The ripple effects to the whole community is huge because you're changing the workforce. Yes. And so you just...

By doing that thing, and it is like an instinct. It's like it's pre-planned. It's like it's pre-laid out. Yeah. 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. 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 can 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 things that needed to fall into place. Too coincidental. What is that about? So that's why even more, just follow your instinct. Follow your instinct, even if it sounds bonkers.

Follow it. And if it fails, keep going because there might be your four rooms or something. Just keep going. That really is an important piece of advice too. If you're outside of a hive of like-minded thinking, when you're outside of that, you can think on your own. Go another way. Yeah.

I mean, it's like high school. You go back to, you know, someone famously leaves high school and goes off to college and goes off and sees the world. They come back to their old hometown and they find their old friends still driving the same streets. That's L.A. Yeah. They're still doing the same shit the same way. And you just went off the reservation and discover a whole world. It's 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 Dustal 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 is blowing and that's how they think. And that's how they are politically. That's how they are socially. It's like they're nonsense people.

Yeah. And you got to get away from that. Get away and just create your own thing. The problem with comics is that we all got trapped in the velvet prison of television. Right, right. So television's the velvet prison. The real art form is what we do on stage. That's what everybody really loves. What do you mean by being on television? You mean like sitcoms and stuff? Yes, sitcoms, game shows. Okay, because right now 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 Dylans 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. But once they get on their own and now they develop these. 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 was Andrew Dice Clay. Right. So first it was Steve Martin, then it was Andrew Dice Clay. 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. Stopped doing stand-up, which he had a very different kind of stand-up anyway. He played the banjo and he sang songs and everything.

So Dice comes along and Dice Clay is selling out arenas. 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 when by the time the pandemic hit, I was like, we don't need to be in L.A. Right. We're not going to be on TV. The only reason why we're in L.A. is the comedy store. And the comedy store is closed for the next fucking year and a half because these idiots that are running the city. And we came to Texas.

And once we were 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. 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. That's what I always loved about living here. It's like there weren't any filmmakers here. So much better. It's infinitely better. Nicer. Everyone's waiting. You get a lot more done. I was cranky. 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 like doing it on your own away from the hive. Oh, way better. Way better. Way better.

Yeah. That's why it's like I try to create original franchises. Because if you go direct one of the James Bonds, you're one of the James Bond director. But if you create your own franchise, like a Spike, it feels so much better. Right. When that's successful and someone says, wow, I really love that movie, you go, oh, I did that voice.

Floopers of Batman, help us, save us. 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, I 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. I want to go. That city is still in my parking lot. Really? 20-foot ceilings, seven streets. It's like a movie.

It's like the largest standing set in the country, if not the world. Can I come home 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 that 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 what it is. What are we doing? 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. Okay. But Brass Knuckle Films is cool because it's the first time that it's an investable film.

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 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 excited.

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 share in that success all the way through sequels. And for even the $250, 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 the fan investor's idea. So not only will you be an investor, but you'd 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 going to surge again. We're going to raise like 1.5 million development funds. And...

Yeah, we're almost at a million already. 22 days left. So I'm telling everybody who's listening, come in at the lowest level. Just be part of our community because...

People who come here get proximity and the lowest level is five 250 bucks 250 250 bucks, but you know you make that back on Success of any of the movies that's awesome And it's 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 of sure and internationally that's so it so we're gonna make the thing that people always buy and they're also really fun to make and you're gonna be perfect in it I want

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. Sure. 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? Yeah.

I don't remember, yeah. Khalil Drago. Yeah. He's the most realistic of all Conants. That's what Conan's supposed to look like. He didn't look like a bodybuilder. He looked like a fucking super fit assassin. Yeah. Sword in the mountains of Samaria. But the books. Books are awesome. They're fucking awesome. And it's right up your alley. It's about...

The barbarian is actually the one who's got code and who has morality. And all the bigwigs are the ones that are like fucking crooked and shit. It's just so classic. And the barbarians. That guy was from Texas. That guy, Robert E. Howard, was from Texas. 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 Conan. 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, 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 grow with the role. You know, like you took Daniel Craig and started him in Casino Royale, and by the end, he's no time to die. You got to get an actor who does the whole journey. So I had a whole trilogy marked out. Let's go, dude. I know. Let's go. Netflix had it. I went and pitched it to them, and they let the rights lapse. Like, they had too much... Sometimes it's too much baggage for a character to...

Dude, let me call them. Let me get on the phone with Ted Sarandos right after this. 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 don't. Or is it the one where he's 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 cover, 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, 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 and I was like, holy shit.

That is the coolest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. And he's still imitating 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 eyes go immediately to the snake and then down to him. Yes. 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, Dust 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, when he did, was really nice. 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 Dust Till Dawn, right? Yeah.

He said, where'd you find this gal? I wish I had a gal like that to paint. 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. And I go,

Well, you had to draw 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. He didn't even paint Harvey Cattell. He was just like,

The other actors, Quentin. And then instead of vampires, he just did his monkey dudes. 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. There it is.

I see a 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 seven years ago.

Damn. 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. So cool. But I really wanted to go do like a Conan-type movie or a 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. I 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 his... I just want his paintings to move. Like, add Frank Miller's art move. Yeah. I want Frazetta'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. Sure. You... It's...

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 heads. And with technology, you can do that. That's why I'd gotten Jim interested in this. Covered in scars. Let's make him look like that. Yeah. It's like a made-up...

Even anatomy in a way. The books were so fucking good, man. Even though Conan's been done a bunch of times, it hasn't been done right. Never been done the right way, yeah. No, it hasn't been done like the books. And it's so ripe.

And because it was done that way first, like with Arnold in it, people just figured, oh, we'll just hire a bodybuilder to be a barbarian type character from then on. But to do it really like that, he's more like a James Bond character. You know, it goes from movie to movie. Yes. 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 original, it's 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, he'd go play 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. And that's why we all know this place, you know, collectively dream, 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. People would just buy these paperbacks for the art. Yes. Conan was created in the 30s. Yeah. These books came out in the 60s. Right. They didn't become a big hit until these books came out because of the art. Exactly. And then when you read the stories, the stories were really great. But they got him for the art. 100%. And he was showing me 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 pain was still wet when I was taking it to get shipped because he would wait until 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 because who's got this now. So different. They've sold some of them. But the kids like if you go to Frank Junior, Frank Junior still has the museum up there. He still has a lot of the masterworks. The kid, each kid has some of the masterworks. And and

And they're all great and keeping his legacy going. And I want to make a movie about it just to get his name back up, you know, where below. 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. So he does these illustrations. He does the paintings. They're flying off the shelves. Flying off the shelves. Because of the paintings. Because of the paintings. Yeah.

Those paintings and those books, no matter, even the best art book today, when you see the original, it cannot capture what the original has. You'll be blown away. I've got like 14 different Frazettas that you've got to come see. That's so cool. Especially as an illustrator, you're going to freak out. 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. 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 of that. That was in my house. The real one? The real one. Okay, so here's what happened. Oh, my God. We have that out by the pool table. Look how fucking cool that is. The kid said...

Can you take our paintings for us and show them to influential people? Because hurricane season's coming. They lived in Florida. And we don't want anything to happen. They're insured, but... Oh, my God. ...fucking, 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 throwing with a sword stand? - Yeah. - 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 a pizza and we would just stare and drool over the Frazettas. - Those inspired me so much as a kid to be an illustrator. The Frazetta paintings and the stuff

some of the drawings from the, 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, you knew what dreams were. You know, it would just be, it would feel like we dreamt this too and recognized it. Yes. And every young kid wanted, oh, I wish I was Conan. Yeah. You know, skinny little kid and you're going like, is that what I'm going to be when I grow up? No, I hate working out. You're 11. You're like, ha ha.

I wish I was that guy. I wish I had that kind of power and strength. Yeah. So I don't know if you've ever read these books, but they were based on, I mean, it's comics, they were based on the books that would just translate the books. There was a comics code, so the Conan the Barbarian comic had to follow the code. But then there's 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 and they would just and right time is we just like take the book and put the book in several chapters yeah they were brutal they're really great yeah that's what science grew up without 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

because it was considered a magazine. That's what I'm saying. The Marvel comics were fun, but they weren't brutal enough. They weren't brutal because they had a comics code. Because they're comic-sized. By doing a magazine, they got around it. See if you can find the Savage Sword of Conan. Yeah, look up Savage Sword of Conan number one. There it is. Look at the one where he's nailed to the cross. That's Boris Vallejo. 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. Yeah.

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, Aetherius Core. And I asked Frazetta, I said, what was this era here? Because a lot of these were in the 60s. What's these four bigger ones you did? What was that for? He goes, oh, they were saying I was washed up, that I was finished.

It's because Boris Vallejo was coming out and they're like, oh, he's the new Frazetta. So I did one, two, three, four beauties. Shut them all up. That's so cool. That's incredible. 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... And 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 painting 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. Yes. I mean, Frazetta was the Jimmy Page of art. Everybody wanted to be him. Right. Exactly. So 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 in a different version of it. And I drew a lot of things that were like that, like a different version of Frazetta stuff. Everybody did. But yeah, I was more of a Frazetta guy than a Boris Vallejo guy. I loved it. It was great. I was happy that he was doing it. There's several. Like the one where he's crucified to the cross. That's pretty dope. That one's pretty dope. Oh, and the one in the far bottom left is the first issue of Savage Sword. Oh, wow. That one is really cool. Yeah, I thought that was cool.

Yeah. But it doesn't come close to, you know. No, it's just Frazetta just had a, it was more fantastical. I think it's because of that process. It was just the way he did them. Yes. There were just, 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 ever.

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 can kind of see yourself in it, but I just stand in front and I go, I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. That's my inspiration. Mirrors are good for form. To see for form. 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 it doesn't capture it 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 yeah look at that thing it does 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

But there's something about seeing the actual physical thing that someone has created. 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 go 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. Yeah.

Basically everything. 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. Right. Yeah. That's the thing. Get up. Get going. Get going. Cobwebs out of your head. Well, it's like you said. 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 the thing. This might inspire some people like-

So I don't have a trainer, but I'll look at... 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 had 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 don't have this shit to do anyway. So I would be in and out of there in a half hour. So...

you don't have to commit all the way you know if you if as long as you're doing something you're getting up and you're moving 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 you can you can get a lot done you get a lot done a short amount of time yeah reverse pyramid train or something you got three minutes in between each one you get work done you certainly can you try in fact there was a study that just came out recently that showed that you get more results from one set to failure

Then you do with three sets. Yeah, sometimes I would then just keep holding the bar after I was done Just like for ten more seconds. Yeah, there was some study see if you could find this It was a very recent study was very counterintuitive because a lot of people think more work better results, right? But this in this study that we're 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 what's going to work for you. There's no one right way to do anything. So I try to just get advice and adopt it. I had this funny Stallone once. Have you ever had Stallone on the show? No. He's a great interviewer. My best interview on the director's chair is him because it's the most one that any layman could identify with. The 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's like, my actor fell through. Can you ask, what's his name? 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're just wondering, I wouldn't 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. 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's probably for Copland. No, it wasn't for Copland. It was recent.

it was like within the last year now he's like 70. no excuses no excuse stay in shape stay in shape yeah that dude such a great interview because i've watched the rocky movies you know when was the last time you saw the rock 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. Yeah, at least try that. Yeah. Yeah.

Get in and out. They were saying it actually works better. So maybe this is another kind of thing. Because I read it just a couple of days ago. It doesn't matter. We get it. But that is also very counterintuitive. Yeah. Because most people think, oh, it's all about the amount of time you spend. Time and pressure. Yeah. But I do a lot of different exercises. I do full body workouts almost entirely. Unless one day a week I do heavy leg stuff where it's just legs.

Because there's so many muscles in the legs. When I want to make sure that I'm doing that, it takes too much time. Because I'm doing leg curls and leg presses and lunges. I can't do other stuff, too. But I like working out by myself. Without a trainer, because...

It's time to think. Yeah. Time to really know what their voice is. It's like meditative. It's very meditative. Yeah. And you're working the body and you're 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 got to watch the second one. Watch the second one. The next time we watched the third one, I finally... We got to the fourth one. I said, okay, I'm going to write Stallone. I said, dude, you were 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 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 gym much longer than you needed to be.

And he said, very perceptive. I was like, you probably were way over training because people didn't know. There were no science to it back then. Right. And getting all that work done. So how can you work with another director now? They can have their respect. You got to 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 movie.

And that was that new Rocky. He hadn't directed in 22 years. Whoa. He went back to directing and writing, did another Rocky, another Rambo, and then a whole new franchise, Expendables.

Crazy for your career to come back like that. Did stunts on Expendables and broke his fucking neck. But because he went back and that's sometimes, you know, that's the key to success. Late 60s. And I said, 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.

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 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 the one who goes whispers in their ear. Another one with him, because 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, but 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 for all the other jobs where, oh, I want that job, I want that job. And then I get to filmmaker. 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 money roll in. But 99% of film students can't get this job, so give it up. So I went, I actually got the best job, so I'll stick with it. But there still wasn't enough desire until I made that $7,000 movie with my kids. And they got so into it, and I realized that's my next 10 years. I'm going to work with my kids. I'm going to make them all.

work on movies because it's not about making movies 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 and

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 results 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 going to show you how this works.

Because I did this with Brass Knuckle Films, which is creating a label. Double R, that'll be our logo. And I made T-shirts and little notepads. And they 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. 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 re-watched movie in Netflix history. Nothing can touch it. Kids cannot stop watching it because it's little kids superheroes. No one's ever done that before. And my kids are like,

it really works, this thing. And I was like, shit, better than I thought. I was just making an example. But 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 you'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 2019. And his wife, Jennifer, was like, you don't work with your daughters. She hits him. You don't work with your daughters. And he's like, yeah.

I was 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 hear it. And the next year the daughters went on, started a podcast. He would show up for once in a while to like get ratings up. Now they have a TV show, second season, family still alone. 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 tell you this, what happens when we die? Don't you just give everything that you've 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 their teens, they don't really need you to peddling over them.

partner with them, become their mentor, their OB one. 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. So I tell people, especially when you do something like you do, that's what,

It depends on what you have. Find your version of it. Not everybody can necessarily work with it, but you have an opportunity to do it. Right, but 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, yeah. And part of the 99% are not going to do it because they don't know anybody who's done it. Right. That's part of the problem, right? 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. Yeah. 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... Right. ...so that you can go pull cables on someone else's movie. My thing was like... Right. ...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 into business like this. This must happen all the time where they find some filmmaker, student, they wine 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. 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. 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 like, 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 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 not noisy and it sounds like all your money's going away. So I had no slates I would just say run guy starts running stop filming cut 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 pick up the glass again Do all that stuff again? Wow cut it in by hand. Oh

So because they're non-actors, a lot of times...

like repeat what you just said wait so you cut it by hand it would match right yeah and if it didn't match i would cut away to the dog or to the knife or 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 work off this right 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. It's like, you just got to say you're a writer. I still thought, well, I'd even written a movie. I didn't consider myself a writer. That's the shit we do to ourselves, right? So I said, okay. So he sent it around. All these studios were flying me up. 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. But you like mariachi, why don't we remake that? And they said, with Antonio Banderas. I'm like, 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 screen 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. Mark Kenton there said, you've got something really special here. We're going to take you 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 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, one might, might be the better one. You

You know, like that advice, throw three scripts away and then do a fourth. Well, 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 put 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 the instinct like you did it.

When you follow your instinct, you're letting the universe do all the talking. And I know this 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 from nine siblings. They're so they're from different planets. Right. And so you realize that the soul is on a communication level with some of the thing that our human bodies are just very primitive to do. So when we get a voice, we can't tell if it's come from the universe, if it's for our own mind or,

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 putting 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. It's a false where you think I can do anything because I'm just so cool. No, you can do anything because you're just a pipe. Be that and then you'll see much more flow happening. You'll see things just falling in your lap. Yeah, don't think about you at all. Yeah, get you out of it. 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 one year, 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 make them 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, I'm going to do this talk creatively. I'm going to bring some cards. I'm going to go do this. You know, you're applying creativity. You're always in a flow. So when you go back to go do your main job, um,

You're in, you've already been doing it and you're living your best life because 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, because people don't like to say they're creative. Like when I asked, are you creative? And Lexi goes, well,

Yeah, you know, like stumbling through. 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, 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 like those acts. 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. I always look at creativity first and talent first bullshit controversy, not even distance. I can, 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, uh,

Dustle 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 Dustle Dawn. But here 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 like, all right, sure. So I worked with him. It was a dream. It was 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, he couldn't work, 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 and I actually wanted him in Dust Till Dawn. We both wanted Mickey Rourke in the lead role. But he'd,

retired from acting he was just boxing he don't even look at the scripts we're like oh man we could hire make you work and there's no make your work now we're so bummed but then years later i went back to him and uh no one was hiring him and so i met with him i said okay i'll meet with him it's like holy he still has that charm and everything so i put him in give him a small role once upon time mexico and i kept writing him more scenes uh he was broke i mean uh i gave him money to go buy his own suits because he always dressed to the nines in his movies it's like like 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 so that 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? He's going to come back again? No, again. 100% of the time, I've never had any difficulty with even the difficult exercise one. So it makes you think. And you know that because you have anybody you want on your show. But it

It makes me wonder, what environment are you putting them in that makes them like that? Because somebody once said that about Redger Hauer. It was amazing. Hard to work with. Really? No, it wasn't at all. But for some people... I didn't know he had the reputation. I don't know, but somebody told me. I fucking loved him in Blade Runner. Loved him in stuff. Blade Runner, The Hitcher, The Hitcher.

Bruce Willis, people would tell me it was difficult to work with. I was like, Bruce, I've worked with him four times. Let me tell you, this is what Bruce is like when he walks into set. Hey, Hefe, what's going on, man? Hefe means boss. Does that sound like somebody who'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 was shooting that weekend. I was working out cause I was going to be on camera. And so then I go to Bruce and I go, Hey, what are you up to? And he goes, ah, I'm just looking for a job. And I said, well, are you a basketball fan? Cause I'm shooting a Kobe Bryant commercial Saturday. What, why don't you come by the set? It's downtown. You play this role, bring, bring a couple of suits cause it's very last minute, but last minute replacement. Yeah, yeah, sure. I'd love to meet him. Okay, good. So I,

Went back to the Nike people and 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 anyways. They call the agency agents go Bruce Willis is not going to be in a Nike commercial. Well, he talked to Robert. Okay, I guess he is going to be. So then we're down there in the set. We're downtown LA. 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, now I'm thinking how ridiculous that sounds. But 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. That 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 those guys can be alpha male pitbull 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 the 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 fucking take over the show. And so everyone's really, that was 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 it's 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. I remember I talked to Mick because I'd heard he'd been in trouble and something. So I was like, oh, maybe his head got big in trouble. So I said, well, what was wrong? And he went, 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, it was a dream again. So at the end I go, man, you always bring it brother. You always bring it. It's just so great to see. Yeah. With some people you deserve it. Most people don't deserve it. Cause he remembers I gave him his shot back. So I was like, okay, he didn't give me any shit. Maybe he gives it to people. Shit. But that's awesome. Well,

Listen, brother, I've really enjoyed this. Oh, man. We'll have to bring you to the studio. 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. Because 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. And I go, wow.

that's not what i told you you know oh we've added to it no shit but 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 i don't 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 a

was a Japanese knife maker, you know, in his teens. He just wanted to get into Japanese life. 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. It didn't get that from me making these Japanese style knives, selling them for like a thousand dollars a pop. By the time he was 18, he got on that show, forging a fire and one. And I was like, how did you, you didn't even know how to use most of the equipment they gave you. You get $10,000. How did you, what was your mindset? He said, well,

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.

I was like, whoa, that's some freaking samurai shit. I read that. 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. Wow. 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. That's why I'm more interested in everybody else's perspective because we all have our own relationship to creativity and the universe and all that. Yeah, and the more you interact with things, the more you contribute.

But come be in a brass knuckle film. That sounds like a great reality. Let's do Conan or Frazetta something. You got to come see that. Definitely. I can't wait to see your show. Cause 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. Thanks, sir. It was awesome. I really appreciate it. All right. Bye everybody.