INTERVIEW:
ROBERT RODRIGUEZ, FILMMAKER

Interview by John Connor

(Note from exposure's editor: John has been kind enough to post this early interview from Robert Rodriguez, which took place just as his first film El Mariachi was grabbing the headlines. Its really interesting stuff from a film-maker riding out that transition from backyard movies to big-time blockbusters. Of course he went on to direct Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, The Faculty and Spy Kids amongst others. But it all started here).

From selling blood one summer, to a two-year contract with Columbia Pictures the next.

And not only that, but his film, EL MARIACHI, just won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival! Austin resident Robert Rodriguez is living a dream. At age 24, his full-length feature EL MARIACHI has drawn raves at Film Festivals, and will be released in 50 theaters on February 26th. Dominic Cancilla and I met with Robert just before he left for the Sundance Film Festival. You've got to read his incredible story.

Robert Rodriguez on the set of The Faculty, some years later.

John: Is your movie one of the "competition" films at Sundance?

Robert: Yeah, I'm in competition. I have about six showings up there, so it's pretty good. There's a film print version of my seven thousand dollar version. Columbia is paying for the blow up to 35mm from my 16mm negative for a show print, and they're making about 50 other prints for national release in February. Sundance is going to launch that off. After Sundance, I'm going on a road tour--being interviewed to publicize the movie, which will open February 26th in Austin, San Antonio, Los Angeles, New York, Albuquerque, and San Francisco.

John: Will that be 50 theaters in those cities?

Robert: All together it will be about 50 theaters. In Los Angeles, they're showing it in about 40 theatres--from the spanish speaking sub-titled theatres to the mainstream. So, they're running the whole gamut there in Los Angeles.

John: How many features are in competition in the dramatic category at Sundance?

Robert: I don't even know. [There are 16. - editor] I was just glad to make it in there to get shown in competition.

John: I'll be rooting for you. Let's talk about how you got started. What were you making in your teens?

Robert: Gosh, I was making all sorts of different things back then. When I got to high school, I met the guy who plays the mariachi--Carlos Gallardo It was a boarding school. We would make home video action films together with some other friends from school. Sometimes we'd go to his hometown in Mexico and shoot some movies there during vacation.

Other than that, I would make movies with my family. I come from a family with ten children -- I'd have huge casts. I made about thirty short, fiction narratives over the years -- including action films and comedies. When I came to Austin to go to school at UT, I wanted to get in the film department. I wanted to get a college degree, and at the same time, go into film here, because I knew as a student I could get my hands on 16mm equipment for free; it's too expensive to rent. I enjoyed making films, borrowing music and sound effects from other movies and creating new movies.

John: How long were most of these?

Robert: Usually less than thirty minutes -- anywhere from five to twenty five. The longest I made was thirty minutes. That was in high school. I like keeping them short and interesting. There's nothing worse than watching long home movies. I wanted people to come and watch them with family or friends. I wanted to make the movies entertaining enough that they'd want to rewind it and watch it again. That's why I stayed away from a longer movie, because it's hard to keep that kind of energy up for an hour and a half.

When I came to Austin to get in the film department, I couldn't get in, because my grade point average wasn't high enough. There's so much competition to get into the small, hands-on classes. They go by GPA more than anything else. Always being a creative type person, in school I was all the time day-dreaming about movie ideas. I'd be drawing pictures and I was never one to pay attention to math and science and such. That's what did me in when I tried to get in school -- to get into a film class I didn't have that high GPA, and other people did. So I just kept making movies myself with my family and my friends and entering them in the contests.

John: What kind of contests?

Robert: Local contests...Austin CableVision video contests or Aquafest video contests. Finally, there was a film/video festival here. The Eighth Annual Third Coast Home Video Festival in1990. Warren Skarren (the late, legendary script-doctor of such films as TOP GUN and BATMAN) was one of the judges.

I turned in compilations of short videos that I had made that had won awards in the past. I called it Austin Stories. It had my brothers and sisters in it, and some other friends of mine. There was three short stories in it. It won first place, beating out films made in the UT film department. So I went to Steve Mims, who was teaching film at UT, and showed him the movie. I asked him if, since I won the contest even without the high GPA -- maybe he could get me into the class somehow. So he did. He let me come in.

The next thing I set out to do was to make an award-winning 16mm film. I carefully storyboarded it and planned it out ahead of time. Then I made it, BEDHEAD, with all of my brothers and sisters in it.

John: Dominic showed me BEDHEAD a while back.

Robert: Yeah, that's the one I made from class. That was the movie I wanted to make. It was a lot of work and all that, but it came out just right. It went off to win a lot of awards. At that point, film festivals were accepting video tapes and judging video tapes also; it opened the doors to video. I shot BEDHEAD on film, but I had it edited on video. I won ten or twelve different festivals with that tape. I sent it around to, and won first place there, the Marin County Festival, and even in Australia I won something.

John: How did you find out about all the festivals?

Robert: Well, no one seems to know [where they are]. You have to just find them on your own. I found a lot in the back of THE INDEPENDENT magazine, they had a list of festivals. Just looking on the bulletin boards at school, and other different places, you'd find out that way. It was hard to find, there wasn't any master list of festivals.

John: So you sent BEDHEAD out to all these places -- did you have to attend?

Robert: No, I couldn't attend. They'd want me to be there sometimes, but I couldn't afford it. I was really poor to begin with, and any prize money we won we put into trying to fix up BEDHEAD a little more.

I'd decided that BEDHEAD was getting me the attention I wanted, but I was afraid that if someone had asked me to make a feature film, I wouldn't know what to do because I'd been doing this somewhat obsolete art form; the short film. So I decided that I needed just as much practice making something longer as I'd had making these shorter films. So that's when Carlos and I got the idea to make a movie for the spanish home video market, where, since we didn't have very much money, we could make a film that was about ninety minutes for less than ten thousand dollars, being real careful and trying to shoot everything in just one take, and sell it to the spanish home video market. We thought we could make back enough to make another one and then another.

So I made up this character, the mariachi, that I was going to do three stories about very quickly. And after I had those three, I figured I could cut together a good demo tape to pursue getting an independent film financed. I wanted more practice also, and I figured after three movies, making them all by myself, I would know so much about making a movie and would have so much practice that that would give me what I needed to go on.

I really didn't want to go to Hollywood just with my short films, knock on some doors and try to get some job doing something small. I really wanted to come in on the level of being a director and writing my own material, so I knew I needed a lot more experience. So I created my own film school, the Robert Rodriguez film school. The idea was to get as much money as you can, which turned out to be about $9,000 between Carlos and I, and we went out, no crew, and shot one take of each of our shots. We transferred it to video and edited it between two VCR's, and finished the videotape that we could go and sell. Even if we (practically) gave it away, we'd still make back what we spent so we could out and make another one. It was a win-win situation, it was like going to school. It was completely hands-on, learning how to make a film by trial and error, and then being able to get back your investment.

John: How did you make the contact with the Mexican distributor that you figured you could sell to?

Robert: We knew they were all in Los Angeles, but we were going to finish the film first and then just take it out there and shop it around, see who would give us the most for it. We really didn't have a problem finding out how much they would pay us, but we wanted to have it first. We were kind of afraid it wasn't going to work, but in the back of our minds we kind of thought it would work.

John: The subtitle of this interview is, "From selling blood one summer, to a two-year contract with Columbia Pictures the next." Tell us about the medical research connection.

Robert: When we were about to make the movie, Carlos sold some land that his father had left him, and I checked into a medical research center, because I'd been in there before when I wanted to raise money for BEDHEAD. [The research facility tests new drugs on participants and takes blood samples to see how fast the body assimilates the drug. - editor]

It was a great place to go -- it's quiet, you can write, I could get away from my real job. I could start earning money for the movie, yet have a lot of free time to watch movies, because they rent you a bunch of movies. And you can write your script and just think about your movie. Carlos would send me videotapes in the mail of locations that I asked for, so I could study the locations while I was writing the whole month I was in there -- you can't leave, you're stuck in there the whole time.

So when I left I had the script, and I had met an actor in there that I decided to use as the bad guy in the movie, and I had $3,000 to spend on the movie. So it was a great place, it's like filmmaker heaven (laughs).

I got to really just think about the movie, plan it out, because that's the main thing, especially if you're going to go and shoot, not just a movie for a low budget, but... I mean you can just have two people sitting in a room and make a whole movie about them, and make for like $7,000, but I was going to making an action film for under $10000, and I knew I really needed to have everything planned out so that I could get everything in one take. And it works fine because how many takes do you need to get of someone running across the street or kicking open a door? There was so much action that it was easier to capture things, there wasn't a lot of performance necessary. It was easy to get things when they were carefully planned and to get it all in one take.

John: How long did the script end up being?

Robert: I didn't really write the script to have other people read it. I wrote a script in the form that I thought it should be -- I'd never seen a real script before. Mine was about forty pages, [ a "real" screenplay, formatted, is about 115 pages] formatted in a way that it was very compact, and everything that's in the movie is in the script. But it was mainly just for me to read, I couldn't hand it to you and have you understand what's on it.

John: Almost like shorthand?

Robert: Yeah, very shorthand, all the lines are there, and all the action in maybe one or two sentences. I can't write scripts that read almost like a novel, it wasn't anything like that, it was very much your basic little directors' script. Exactly what was going to happen, what shots were what, what they looked like. Then all we did was just cross out each thing that we did and go on to the next shot.

I never gave it to the actors to read either, because I didn't want them to rehearse the lines or feel like they had a lot of lines. So we would just give them a line before we shot it, shoot that one line, and have them forget that line so that they were always giving natural reads, non-rehearsed. And the look of confusion on their faces helps, because they're supposed to be confused in the movie anyway. (laughs) It came out great, the performances are wonderful, and they had no idea what they were doing.

John: I heard you had to give your villan his lines phonetically?

Robert: Yeah, the villan is the one I met in the medical facility and he didn't speak any spanish, so he had the hardest job of all. Not only did he have to get his lines fed to him (we had a day and a half to shoot all his lines), but he didn't know what he was saying either. And he had to say his lines with conviction. He did such a good job, I think. It was really tough on him, he was tortured (laughs again). All he could say was "Man, you need to make a movie in english."

John: Where did the actual idea for the story and the characters come from?

Robert: I had the idea for EL MARIACHI about two years back. Back when we were making the other movie, I was thinking I could try to create a Latin hero, kind of along the lines of a ZORRO or something like that. So I thought of the character of the Mariachi, this guy dressed in black with a guitar case full of weapons and gadgets, a kind of mythical character.

This movie is the genesis of that character, and like I said I was going to make three movies back to back about him. So this first one was how he came to be El Mariachi, who you see at the end of this movie. And in my videotape version of the film, at the end, just before the credits start, it says "Coming Soon - El Mariachi II". You're supposed to know that the next couple of films are coming right away.

So I came up with that character just being the guy dressed in black, El Mariachi, all decked out with the guitar case full of gadgets and weapons. When it came time for us to do our first feature down there, I knew that was the character that I wanted to do. There was a lot of potential for a lot of action and adventure and romance -- it was just going to be a lot of fun.

John: Without giving things away, what's the basic story of this one?

Robert: This first one just creates the character for us. We find that the Mariachi really is a mariachi. He's a musician who comes to a small town looking for work, and he gets confused with a hit man who carries a guitar and dresses in black, but his guitar case has weapons in it. It's one of those mistaken identity kind of things, where he goes through all this stuff and by the end, turns out somebody different. Somebody bitter and angry, going off to another picture.

And in the sequel he would become the reluctant hero, and in the third one he'd try to regain his innocence or something. It'd be a lot of fun. Having fun was the main thing, especially since I was going to be making this all by myself, and not really showing it to anyone; this movie was not supposed to be sent to Hollywood as a "resume' tape". I wasn't going to use anything like that until I did the second or third movie and I figured I'd get the best scenes or maybe the best movie and show that.

So this one was really just for practice, so I knew I needed to make it as entertaining for myself and as fun for myself as I could. Because it's such an obscene amount of work putting a film together, especially all by yourself, and it's just not worth it if you're not going to enjoy it. That's why the movie is kind of goofy in a lot of areas, I was just entertaining myself. I think that's what people like about it, that it's very whimsical and you can tell that someone was making it for their own enjoyment rather than wondering what age group it was going to appeal to.

John: I first heard of you through Dominic, back in the days of the ill-fated Texas Film Alliance...

Robert: Oh yeah, actually that worked out good for me.

John: He just raved about you, and wasn't there some contact he had through the Film Alliance that kind of got things rolling?

Robert: Yeah, he had given me a list of people who were going to speak, a lot of producers, directors and people, and one of the names that was on there was an agent from ICM. I didn't know this person, but I was in Los Angeles trying to sell the movie to the spanish home video market. I went ahead and called up ICM, because he was the only agent I even knew of, and I asked him if he'd take a look at the two minute trailer movie. He asked me if I wanted representation, and I really didn't think I would, I just wanted them to give me an idea if they saw any talent there. I thought it might be a good idea.

That was the only person I gave it to, I didn't go on to the other agencies or anything, because I didn't really think it would do me any good. I just wanted one professional opinion from one of the bigger agencies as to what they saw, if they saw any raw talent, and then to tell them my plan. That I planned on making two more films like this and that maybe in a couple of years, after I had some more seasoning, maybe they'd be interested in me or could direct me to someone else. So I handed it to them in that way, and they watched the trailer very carefully and got back to me and said "we want to work with you, could you send us the entire film?" They had only seen the trailer and BEDHEAD, because I wanted it to be short so they wouldn't fall asleep. And I'd never really even shown EL MARIACHI to anyone, so I didn't even know how it played. My wife liked it, but, you know, she's my wife and loves me, so she's not a good judge (laughs). So when they asked for the whole movie I thought "Oh well, that's it. It's over." Because I couldn't even sell it to the spanish distributors.

John: They didn't want it?

Robert: Most of them didn't want it because it didn't have a name spanish actor in it. Their movies are so awful that they've got to sell them on the basis of who the recongnizeable face is on the cover . They figure no one's going to rent this movie, even if it's got a good trailer. We had one company that was going to give us some money for it, but they were shuffling their feet, so I went ahead and gave it to ICM (International Creative Mangement).

When I went back to Austin I subtitled the videotape, because it wasn't even subtitled yet. I sent it to them figuring they'd call back and say, "Uh, we liked it okay, maybe after you finish the next two send us the next two." I was just hoping, you know, that I could still be in contact with them. Well, they called back and said they were sending the paperwork over; they would represent me. So I signed with them and they made copies of EL MARIACHI and sent it all over Hollywood.

John: So who's your agent?

Robert: Robert Newman.

Dom: Robert Newman is actually representing you himself? He heads up one of the departments doesn't he?

Robert: He's handling all sorts of young new directors. I think he just signed Bas Norman (Baz Luhrmann surely. Although I would love to see film critic Barry Norman direct something. Any why not? - Ed) who did STRICTLY BALLROOM.

Dom: What about Stephanie Allain? What's her role with you?

Robert: Okay, well like I said, this movie wasn't supposed to be a demo tape or anything, and suddenly they're copying it and sending it all over Hollywood. I figured that would be it for me, you know...

John: (laughing) You were pretty much ruined!

Robert: Yeah, here I was, brooding man, I thought everyone was going to know me from this movie, rather than from the second or third which were going to be even better. Because when we were filming EL MARIACHI, we'd cut out action scenes and cut out steps, saying "Man, let's save this stuff for the sequels, the sequels' supposed to be better than this one anyway." (a round of laughter) We were just taking everything out, we cut out whole sections of it just to finish quickly, we wanted to finish it fast. And the camera we borrowed, the person we borrowed it from needed it back, so we had to finish shooting in two weeks. So we cut a bunch of things out and said "Oh, it's alright, as long as it's got a little bit of action - the sequel will be that much better. We'll put more energy and money into the sequel and the third one, and use that as our demo tape."

So this wasn't supposed to be our demo tape, we didn't even know if it was going to come out. We didn't even know if the camera was going to break on us, or what. We were just hoping we could finish it and make it ninety minutes. We shot a lot of slow motion (laughs), all sorts of stuff like that to drag the time out. Dream sequences, you know, we just really wanted to make it and see if it would work because this was my first feature film. And I knew there would be more and I'd get better. So this one was no big deal, it was very laid back. "Okay, so what if it even came out."

So when they sent it out all over Hollywood, I figured that was the end of my career before it even got started. But I started getting calls back right away, not realizing the impact a seven thousand dollar movie would make on Hollywood. These guys never understood how I could do that, how one person could put all of this together. It's crazy.

Dom: I had a distributor tell me not long ago, after he'd seen the trailer, "Seven thousand dollars? I've spent more than that on dinner!"

Robert: Oh, I know, jeez, it's pretty scary, but it's true. Now that I've been out there a little while I can see why they were so surprised. The community here, that was no big deal. I mean I'd been making movies for much less than that on home video that were just as fast moving and fast paced and stuff.

The only reason this cost so much is that we shot it on film before transfering it to video. It didn't seem like a big deal to me at the time, but now I can see why they're all excited, but it's really not that hard. Plan it out and play with your camera, know what you're doing... sometimes, I mean, I didn't even know what I was doing half the time (laughs). But that was the idea, that we were out there to learn. So I started getting calls back from the studios, who really liked it. And what really surprised me was a lot of them really liked the story, even without knowing how much it cost; they just liked how the movie moved. So they were flying me out to LA, offering me this or that, and just seeing what ideas I had. I had a bunch of ideas that I would give them. they all liked the ideas enough that they started offering me an "overall deal"; to buy up my ideas.

It came down to having to choose between which studio I wanted to go to.

John: Oh, dammit. (laughs)

Robert: It was pretty awful, because you -- like everybody -- you just want to get work. And suddenly you've got people calling you up and making you feel like you're "burning a bridge" if you say no to them. I gets pretty tough, it was tense. You'd think, "How wonderful to have them fight over you." But actually they make you feel bad if they think you won't choose them; "Oh, what can we do?" It just got really... I didn't want to do that anymore! (laughs)

I ended up choosing Columbia, because from what everyone was saying, they give you a lot of creative freedom. And they really proved it with John Singleton (BOYZ IN THE HOOD). And they're doing it again by releasing EL MARIACHI; I wanted to go back and re-shoot some of it, but they didn't want to mess with the integrity of the film the way it was. That was when Stephanie Allain came in, she was the first person at Columbia to see the movie; the agent sent the movie to her. She was the one who had originally found John Singleton.

I liked the whole group at Columbia, especially Stephanie -- it just seemed like the place to go.

Dom: I'd heard that Jeffrey Katzenberg of Disney called from the opening of EuroDisney...

Robert: Yeah, he called my agent: "How can we get this guy?" I had become The Next Hot Thing -- people were scrambling around -- it gets pretty silly. As soon as the month is over, it's all forgotten, you'll be forgotten. So I was looking forward to that! (laughs) But actually Columbia hasn't forgotten me.

John: A lot of people don't know what these "overall deals" are; could you describe them?

Robert: Neither did I. First the agents send me into the studios to pitch them my ideas, hoping that I could get an assignment to write a script for the studio. Then the agent can go and tell other studios and producers, "Hey, this guy is writing for X studio." And then they can sell another script that I wrote solely on that, that I was writing for a studio. So that's what I went in there for first -- telling them ideas that I had. They heard most of the ideas and liked enough of them, that they offered me what is called an Overall Deal. Which means I would have a "home" there at the studio; they would set me up in an office. I would develop not just one script, but all my story ideas for future projects with them. They would sign me to an Overall Deal, meaning I couldn't take any of these ideas to another studio. They would get a First Look at them. Or, if it was an exclusive deal, which mine is for the first year of my contract, you can't go anywhere else until that first year is up. If they don't make the movies after that first year is up, I can take them to other studios. It's nice in that you're in a secure position. The Overall Deal I have with Columbia is for two years; first year is exclusive, the second year is first look only.

John: Have you handed in anything yet?

Robert: I just turned something in, and they're reading it this weekend.

John: Is this new script anything to do with EL MARIACHI?

Robert: It's another mariachi story -- one I would have done last year if all this studio stuff hadn't happened...

John: What about budgets. What is considered low budget by Hollywood standards?

Robert: You know, I asked them that, and someone told me that low-budget by Hollywood standards is, like, $7 million. I said, "Do you know that I could make a thousand EL MARIACHIs for that? I could program my own cable network.

John: The Rodriguez Channel! So, with this Overall Deal, you'll be moving out to LA to work on the Columbia lot?

Robert: No, I don't have to move out there. Part of the deal I made with Columbia, while all the other studios wanting me -- my agent said, "Hey, just ask for anything you want and see what they say." I said I wanted to stay in Texas. So Columbia said, "Okay, we don't want to upset your artistic environment." (laughs) So I said, "All right. I'll stay here."

John: What part of the movie making process do you like the most?

Robert: One thing that kind of discouraged me from going to Hollywood is that I always knew you had to split up the work. They teach you that in film school, too; you can't operate your own camera if you're the Director, you can only do one little thing. That always bugged me, because I love the whole process. I love editing -- there's nothing more fun than that, that's when it all comes together. But I don't like to just edit anybody's movie; I like to research shots and all that, so I'd rather operate the camera also to get the shots that I want. Crazy, different kinds of shots that still tell a story. But not just being a cameraman, because what's going on has to be dictated in a certain way, so I like to Direct in that way. Directing on it's own is not that much fun -- pretty boring actually. All the fun is with the camera and the editing room and the writing. Which is why I like to write the stories also, so that there's plenty of good stuff going on all the time. I don't care to act, but everything behind the camera -- it's just so much fun. It's a lot of work, too. I mean, after I finished editing EL MARIACHI on videotape, I was just wasted, drained, I couldn't even drive home. But it's a good feeling.

John: Did you write the new script in more of the traditional format?

Robert: Very much in the more traditional format. I read a few other scripts to see how they were written, and I just went ahead and tried to adopt my own style. The early word on it is that it's really well written. I guess they were really surprised that I could write (laughs) -- they weren't sure since they hadn't read anything by me before, they'd just seen my movie. I tried to make it not like a novel, just all the sights and sounds so that you could really picture it. Some of the comments I got back were like, "I could see the whole thing from the first page!" That was kind of what I tried to do.

Dom: Did you buy any script writing programs?

Robert: When I first signed with Columbia, they gave me a computer, and I went ahead and bought a scriptwriting program which formats the whole script for you as you write.

John: What one do you have?

Robert: Final Draft for the Macintosh, it's great. Anything that makes the process easier, which is why I loved editing the film on video before cutting the film. Creatively, having to wait just kills you, anything that takes a long time. But I just enjoy doing it all; I don't call it "auteur" filmmaking, I call it frantic filmmaking. Keeping the crew rate small and the time limit very small, and the budget, you're forced to use your creativity more than your money. And that's what a movie is -- the creative process.

John: I'm guessing the studio won't let you do all that.

Robert: I couldn't do everything, and I wouldn't want to; for one thing, I don't want to operate the sound anymore. I'm happy to hand that and the lighting over to someone else. But I'm hoping I can operate the camera at least some of the time. Just because a lot of it is hand-held, it beats looking at the shot through a video screen. If you're operating the camera, you can see what you're getting all the time, and you can change the shot midway through. It's something I've always been used to doing, and it's worked for me, so why change? Why change something because you have a lot more money in the budget? That's one of the reasons why I didn't want to go to Hollywood, because I didn't want to give up all the fun of making a film. And all that fun is translated to the screen, because of the way it was put together. Ridley Scott still operates his own camera, so its not totally unusual to do that.

John: And what about editing?

Robert: Especially with video editing, I could go make my own Director's cut all by myself, and then have them make those cuts on the film. Part of the fun in editing, if you get to do it from scratch first, you get to try out all sorts of things that you never would have thought of, just by working the raw material. If I had some editor working on the cut as I was shooting, I'd come and see his first cut, but I wouldn't see all the other options -- it would be too late. His cut would already be in my head the way he did it. There's some real neat stuff in EL MARIACHI simply because I had to work it myself. And on video, it's so quick that I could try so many different things; I came up with some stuff that I never would have thought of in the Writing or Directing stage, or if I'd had someone else cut it.

Whatever works for you is what you should do. You shouldn't have to adopt other peoples' practices. If you got three Directors in a three ring circus, give them all the same pages, and they'll all Direct it a different way. There's no right or wrong way to do it. And if you've got a very clear vision, and you can produce that vision yourself, you should go ahead and so it. If you prefer collaboration, and having an editor take his turn in creating something, do it that way. I felt like I couldn't go to Hollywood and make movies simply because my way was too much, "I want to have a hand in how the movie looks because I've got such a clear idea of how it should look."

Dom: Since EL MARIACHI is action-oriented, do you think you might get pigeon-holed in terms of genre?

Robert: That's why when I went to the various studios who'd seen EL MARIACHI, I showed them BEDHEAD -- a family comedy, so they could see a whole other side of filmmaking I can do. That really opened their eyes to see that I could do different things, because EL MARIACHI was not supposed to be my demo tape; I made that clear to them. Although I like the blood-and-guts action, that's not all I want to do. So being able to show them two different sides to yourself early on, helps.

John: Did anything funny or unusual happen during the filming of your movie?

Robert: Oh, jeez, are you kidding? That was funnier than the movie itself. When I came back I told Steve Mims that I wished I'd had more money, so I could have shot the "Behind the Scenes" at the same time. So many crazy things happened; I have it all written down in a diary, which begins before we started making the movie. It's still being written, because of course the movie isn't released yet. It's called, "Rebel Without A Crew: the making of El Mariachi". It's about 75 pages now, with each day being a few sentences.

But funny things, let's see... Well, we were filming in the town jail, and all the guards were in the film -- they loved it. They took all the real prisoners and put them in one cell and we filmed in the other one. One of the prisoners was drunk and being a bit rowdy, so the took him outside. While the guards were watching the shoot, the prisoner escaped! A bunch of crazy stuff happened. The local cops let us use their guns, because we needed real guns for close-ups and to shoot the blanks. The rest of the time we used plastic water pistols.

But the police would take the clips out of their guns and say, "Sure, go ahead and use these!"

John: In some of the shots you see in the film, the actor is holding a squirt gun?

Robert: There's one where he comes right up to the camera and he's talking on a walkie-talkie, and he's holding a squirt gun. You can tell if you look real close. [I looked for it at the Sundance screening, but I didn't notice anything that looked like a squirt gun. -- editor] But nobody ever notices it.

John: Assuming you could get funding for anything you wanted to do, what would be the next things you would make?

Robert: I want to do a family comedy quickly, either a television series or a movie. It would work better as a TV series, I just don't know that I could commit myself for that long. I want to do something about a family with ten children, shot from the children's point-of-view; a half-hour show shot on film.

John: Similar in format to THE WONDER YEARS?

Robert: Somewhat similar, but much faster-moving -- like my short BEDHEAD. Maybe mount a camera on a four year old's head and let him run around, see the world from his point-of-view. I've got so many ideas for it, since I grew up in a situation like that. I'd also like to do an animated comedy show, since for three years I did a comic strip for The Daily Texan newspaper called, "Los Hooligans", based on my family. The studio liked that strip a lot, and they're thinking about an animated movie along that line. We'll see. Some more action movies, too. Probably just nothing really dramatic.

Dom: What has it been like exhibiting at the Festivals?

Robert: I've done two -- Toronto and Telluride -- and Sundance will be the last one. It's been great! I wasn't sure if audiences would like the movie or not. I knew I liked it, because of all the crazy stuff we went through making it. And the studio people might have just liked it because it was made with such a low budget, "Hey, this guy will save us some money." But I wasn't sure if audiences would want to sit through it. But the audiences liked it just because they liked it, so that made me feel good. It's been popular with the festival audiences; in fact, I even videotaped the line of people waiting to get into my screening in Toronto! I couldn't believe it. It was strange (laughs).

John: Did you get a count of people?

Robert: It was something like 950 people waiting to get in to EL MARIACHI. I had my actor walk the whole line, then showed the video to my family of that when I got back. It was funny, too, that Columbia would rent us a limosine to take us from the hotel to the theater, which was three blocks away! It was crazy, one of those things where you could die a happy person after that.